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.

Serafíne
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.

Serafíne
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.

Serafíne
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."

Serafíne
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

A lack of dishonesty

Elijah
He had ducked out the back of a bar for a much needed moment to breathe.

Santa Fe looked very different when you weren't looking at the store fronts. The allies and the backs of buildings and the trash cans all made the places look the same. There was the occasional puddle, the loose gravel and hints of grass trying to stubbornly shove itself up through the pavement and say that it endured, because it is true and strong. Elijah wonders, briefly, if the Order felt strongly about weeds, how they persisited. How they were the epitome of something exerting their will upon their environment.

Weeds will grow because they want to. How dare anyone try and say otherwise.

But there he was, sneaking out the back of a bar with his top button unbuttoned and for the first time in a long time feeling like he was drowning in the open air. Feeling smothered by the actuality of the world around him and tonight, yes tonight, he was trying so goddamned hard to be present. COuld have gotten shitfaced but, instead, was outside of a bar in the back alleys sober, deciding instead that he needed to walk. Needed to pace. Needed to recenter himself before he rejoined the rest of the world and pretended that his best friend wasn't in mortal fucking danger. That there was nothing he could do about it.

That he could pretend that one of his other friends was dearly hurting, so disconnected and curled in on herself and splitting apart and he doesn't even know where the fuck to find her. Knows someone is taking care of her but, frankly, given who it is Elijah feels like his world is resting too much on the shoulders of a man who he has barely met. Trusts, yes. But perhaps...

Perhaps.

He makes his way through the back alleys, wonders if he should try and score something harder than whatever he could comfortably get from Samir.

Being present is fucking hard.

Serafíne
AWARENESS!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Serafíne
Weekend and still early enough that the bars and galleries are packed and there's foot traffic, not so much in the back alleys where Elijah has gone to pace but still: a cater-waiter taking out the trash, a prostitute with a short man in a dumpy suit negotiating at the back entrance to a dive bar.  And so on.

Chilly but not precisely cold, with banks of clouds slipping across the sky, and between the clouds and the light pollution there's not even a hint of the stars tonight.  Not from the downtown streets.

Elijah finds Sera on the empty patio of a small bistro (the last few patrons inside linger over after dinner drinks and desserts).  Coincidence this, really.  No reason, but sometimes the world functions like that.  Things fall apart, other things are put together again.  She's sitting on one of the wooden tables set back against a brick wall.  In summer these are shaded by great big offset market umbrellas but the umbrellas have been taken down: either for the night or for the winter.  The chairs are locked down and shunted forward against the table, but there she's sitting, leaning back against the brick, legs crossed at the ankles, wearing her curb-stompers and fishnets and a leather skirt that is half-metal rings, an old Siouxsie Sioux t-shirt, a flannel shirt, a leather jacket.

Leaning back against the brick, smoking a joint, one hand resting on Sid's big head.  The dog, of course, curled up beside her.

Banked glimpse toward Elijah out of the corner of her eye as he emerges from the mouth of the alley next door.  "I knew you were around."  Closes her eyes again, takes another drag.  "No one else feels like you."

Elijah
He exhales, hard and harsh like he took a hit of something that was too strong and it didn't feel good in his lungs. Like he was fifteen and lighting up for the first time because it seemed like something that could be fun or it got passed to him at a party and you fucking go for it, freshman. If you're gonna party with seniors, you don't wuss out.

"What do I feel like to you?" he asked, "I know how i see you, but it never really hit me to ask how I come across on a-" waves a hand, doesn't want to flat out say metaphysical level and words are failing him "-y'know. I get a lot of hurricane but I could never really swallow the irony."

comes her way, because she is there, a

Not quite alright.

Serafíne
Thursday late night: a few galleries still open, sure.  This opening or that charity function, the warmth of the sunlit day fast fled but anyplace with a patio has gas-flame heaters going to extend the useful life of their outdoor spaces well beyond summer.  Pedestrians aplenty though at this hour most of the people slipping out of the odd gallery or restaurant still open are not heading out to bar-hop, but are heading home.  Taxis hum on the corners and the bars are still - not crowded, precisely, but pleasantly full and life pulses up and down the street.

The Stone Pony had one of its signature Low-Dough Local Shows tonight and is more crowded than most.  There's even a fresh-donut food-truck (WARD'S DO-NUTS) parked in the empty lot across the street, which is hard to resist after a night full of drinking.

Out on the sidewalk in front of the bar, a certain creature sits.  Legs drawn-up to her torso, one arm loose around them.  Cheek resting against the apex of her knee, eyes kinda-mostly closed, she has had enough to drink and/or smoke that she is in that drifting phase, but periodically brings a spiced cigarette up to her mouth (sideways, pointing on an upslant, away from her golden curls) and takes a drag.  There's a dog curled up on the sidewalk at her side.

Folks leaving the bar to head across to WARD'S DO-NUTS walk around her without really looking at her or acknowledging her, but folks do that all the time with strangers sitting on the street.  Avoid eye contact, refuse acknowledgment, ignore, ignore, ignore.

Elijah
It had been a running of the gauntlet, really. He had intended on talking to Yvette today but found that she was conspicuously not at work and doing whatever it was Yvette did when she had a day off work. Nobody at the gallery knew whens he was coming back,; Elijah presumed she got fed up and quit. Shrugged it off, lacking some vital information to follow up on. It was the first few moments that he hadn't spent glued to Jenn today.

She was scared; he couldn't stop apologizing. We digress.

So, he was walking, walking because he needed the air and he's tracing back his thoughts and the words he's said. Should probably feel guilty about not offering to help but, frankly, Elijah wanted to be involved with this whole human chimera business about as much as he wanted to remove his kidney with a butter knife- which is to say, not at all. He inhaled slow and deep and tried to remember where it was that he had parked in the first place.

The walking always takes you somewhere, though, and soon enough the walking took him to a bar that he had considered going into but decided against because, well, he was working right now. It might not have looked like it, but the young man in his vest and button down shirt had actually been doing things that he had deigned to be important.

He doesn't pass by Serafine, though. Stops and sits down beside her, on the opposite side of the dog.

"You have a new friend," he said,indicating over to the dog.

Serafíne
Something so liquid about being this drunk, makes her feel like every joint in her body is made of warm, kinda melty butter, and that same looseness is evident when the creature opens her eyes and lifts her chin up-up-up just high enough to perch her chin-not-cheek on her bent right knee.  Up close she smells like burnt sugar, cloves, whiskey, sweat.  Has on this long-sleeved, high-necked dark sweater with little thumb loops at the end of the oversized sleeves, which may be the most modest thing he has ever seen her wear other than men's pajamas,

but no.  When he sits down or maybe when she moves he can see that it is cropped so high it does not cover the lower curve of her breasts, and is oh-so-slowly raveling.

"Hey."  Drunken ghost of a smile across her mouth, though its context is hard to read.  Maybe she's curled up here because she can't quite walk.  Maybe she's at the maudlin stage of way-too-much.  "Long-time no-see.  How're you?"

Then, a sort of orienting side-glance.  Oh, the dog.  Could be some random dog, right.  "That's Sid."

Serafíne
How are you Elijah?  Per + Empathy because.

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Elijah
He's stressed, that much is clear. He's stressed but he's trying to play on being normal, because he can fake some normalcy from time to time- he's done it for years. Faked being fine long enough to get out of state care. Long enough that people think he's clean when he's not. He's stressed, but he wears it well when he's being honest about it.

Up close she smells like s'mores to him. The only time he's ever really had s'mores was when people were drunk and he associates the whiskey smell with camp fires for reasons he doesn't entirely understand. Or bonfires, more accurately. He associates campfires with tea and being cold enough that his bones ached and the air in his lungs was freezing and he had loved every blessed second of it because it meant he was alive and pushing past whatever limits he'd thought he had. Work until whatever the discomfort is becomes normal. Then, redefine.

He's stressed, but he's happy to see her. The kind of happy that comes when you've missed someone and he has, indeed, missed her. Missed the smell, missed the context. Missed the textures ebcause she had a number of textures. He didn't have enough details to render her into spoken word, but some part of him now has a strange taste in his mouth when he thinks of people as art because the concept could be taken too far and-

Well, now. That evokes a completely different scent on his senses.

"Hi, Sid," said in the voice that is reserved for puppies, a little like he's talking to a baby that might bite his arm off. Then, back to normalcy, "I'm tired, but I'll be okay."

A beat.

"Taking tonight to be alone?"

Serafíne
Sid cocks an ear and lifts her muzzle from her paws and looks up and across Sera's when Elijah speaks to her in that puppy-baby voice.  It's a look, you know: strange little doggie eyebrows moving, something on her new spiked-leather-collar clinking with the motion.  Then she drops her head back to her paws.  Thumps her tail once or twice in acknowledgment of the greeting but it is late and she is tired and it is sleep-time even if her human pack doesn't seem to understand that that's what darkness is for.

Sera, though.  Sera looks at him longer than the dog does.  Pivots her chin on her knee as if it were a fulcrum, and reaches out to offer him her cigarette.  Awkward little movement, that - hand half-buried in her too-long sleeve, thumb and index finger pinched around the filter of the cigarette like she was holding a joint.

And if he takes the cigarette, then her hand is free and she reaches out to give his hair an affectionate and maybe comforting ruffle.  Brushes her thumb over his temple.

And he asks if she's taking tonight to be alone and well, she gives him a neat little shrug and a banked, drunken blink.   "Yeah."  Could just have slid out of the bar for a smoke, though on an ordinary night she might've done that alone or might've done that with a stranger she wanted to make out with.  "Not sure if I can get up right now.  Ever have one of those nights where you're all fuck.  What the fuck are these things at the end of my things and how the fuck do they work?"

Elijah
She offers the cigarette and he does take it, takes a drag and tastes what's there. Has a moment and he's absorbing tastes and sensations and the way it feels when smoke tries to encroach into your lungs and your brain is insisting that this is bad for it but your body is telling your brain to fuck off. He doesn't actually smoke that often, all things told. More for ritual purposes or, in these instances, when someone else is smoking. He smokes a whole lot less once he started taking studying a little more seriously.

He closes his eyes when he feels her hand in his hair. Grins just a little at the edges and exhales away from Serafine and her new canid companion.

"I'd offer to take you home, but I'm afraid you might fall off the back of the motorcycle," he tells Sera, "and Sid wouldn't fit."

It takes him a little while, though, to piece through what she just said and it makes him laugh, "I haven't had one of those in awhile, I'm kinda jealous not gonna lie."

Serafíne
Truth is, she wouldn't mind if he exhaled in her direction.  She'd breathe that in, the way she does everything else.

"I have - " there's hang-time in her sentences, space-between and he can here that now, maybe see it.  She gestures with her free hand (the worn not sliding through his block locks) like the word she wants is floating in the air in front of her if only if only she could pull them out of the ether.  Oh, there.  " perfect balance.  I wouldn't fall off.  Sid's a fucking racehorse. "

He hasn't had one of those in a while; one of those nights, when she strings them together, one after another, like gleaming little gems on a hand-knotted necklace.  "S'cause all'a that fucking book-shit.   If you'd been my apprentice - "

Inhales again, all-at-once, and kinda refocuses, reaches for the cigarette because here's the deal, she wanted it back, yo.  "That why you're all stressed out?  Or is it something else?"

About ten feet down, the door to the bar opens.  Music spills onto the street, some electric blues with a deep bass line and a girl's lilting soprano floating above it as people come out into the bright, crisp night.

Elijah
"Well, if you want to go home, let me know because I can take you. And I'll go slow enough that, y'know, Sid can follow. It'll be like having a one person parade or some shit," he replies.

Forgets he has the cigarette, though, and then she's talking about how he could have totally had more blazing drunk nights and epiphanies set in motion by pushing and transcending basic human consciousness into something sublime. She's plucking it out of his fingertips and once he realizes she wants it he makes a little sound of recognition, gives it up with little fanfare.

Was he stressed out about the Order, though? Or was it something else?
"The book shit's pretty relaxing, not gonna lie. I like it a lot better than I thought I would," he starts, "but mostly it's-"

a second, he hears the floating soprano songstress in the background, enough to catch the pitch but not enough to pick out whether or not he knows the singer. "You remember that thing that tried to eat Sam and me in the park back in August?"


Serafíne
He asks her if she remembers that thing that tried to eat Sam and Elijah in the park back in August and Sera makes a strange little face; straight flat brows drawn together and a note of something like she's trying to put together a dimensional puzzle on a remarkably flat surface, or is maybe simply drunk, or maybe both and she doesn't really understand which is which.  But:

"Mmph."  That noise means, no.  She does not?  Remember that thing.  Remembers Samir being in quiet, though.  Remembers - oh so distinctly - a particular branching of time that no one else remembers quite simply because she reversed and reworked it and got knocked the hell out by reality for her troubles.  So: maybe one thing (hungry-monster) explains the other (Samir-in-quiet) and that Mmph could mean as much yes as no, or maybe even go on.

Someone's holding the door open for other someones and this little knot is breaking away to head across the street to WARD'S DO-NUTS, why not.  The soprano voice lilts beautifully in the bright cold air.

Elijah
[can I place that voice? Do I know it? Looking! per+alert]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Elijah
"Well," he continues, because there's a whole story here, he continues, "once Sam was a functional person again, we went to go check some things out. Looked back at the past, blahblahblah got a lead-"

it dawns on him that talking about this out in the middle of the open air when some incredibly polite Euthanatos is looking for a person who could literally be anyone probably wasn't the best idea. Drops his voice because (given the fact that he just saw a very familiar arm attached to a bearded person he totally recognizes) and-

"Long story short, Jenn did a painting that turned out to be a Nephandus and now Henry's calling in favors and I'm trying to sell Jenn on the idea of chilling with a bunch of reality breakers out in Morrison on an extended witness protection-style vacation."

Kiara
[Can we sense a Sera and an Elijah?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne
She's really fucking drunk.  Takes her a minute to let the loops and whorls of the story, the declensions and the allusions and all the strange little bits of code our Elijah (conscious of the public street, the story, the potentiality of intrusion) wraps this in but she's really strangely still while she follows the looping path and finally (does she know who Henry is?  WE ARE NOT SURE AND NEITHER IS SERA but this happens pretty regularly to her so it's really no big deal and also No Big Deal.
"Have you warded her?"  A sloe-drunk blink.  A beat.  "Has anyone?"

Has a few places where Jenn could stay if Morrison's objectionable.  Or if the folks out there object to having a potentially-hunted human so close to the Node, but doesn't say anything about that.  Not yet.

Meanwhile the last of the group has spilled out of the door and yeah, Elijah, you recognized that arm and the owner of that arm is starting to cross the street when he does a bit of a double-take and waves off Dee and a few friends and redirects, heads straight for the young Hermetic.

"Hey man." Dan greets Elijah when he's close.  "What are you doing out here by yourself?"


Kiara
"I don't get half of what we just spent two hours lookin' at, but damn if I didn't enjoy the free food."

The voice that curls along the street is masculine; low and steady. There's a consideration to the subtle edge of twang to it. Texan, perhaps, long ago. Now it's melted and softened into something else, something that doesn't stand out so entirely against the backdrop of Denver, but still -

"Well you've been collecting dust out there in Morrison long enough, I figured - "

"Funny. You remember where Deb said she was gonna swing by?"

There's the scuffle of footsteps and a couple appear, meandering down the street. They're dressed a little fancier than some; suit and tie for the man, a dark burgundy dress for the female that slinked around her ankles in a swish of silk. There's a slash of red painted across the female's mouth, it might have been enough to sight Kiara Woolfe but then -

There's that little give to the atmosphere. That pulse; that tickle of rejuvenating energy. Sid may well be the first to feel it. There's that supple tremor to the universe the Verbena brings with her with all her dark hair and quicksilver smiles; a vibration against the strings.

-

Half way down the street and they're passing a bar and Kiara makes this soft, subvocal noise and unlinks her arm; turns her face into the distance for a beat. Neal's pocket vibrates.

"Deb. She's about a block up." A beat, he's studying the younger female's face, tracking her eyes toward the bar. There's a cough. He passes her back a shawl with a pointed look that doesn't quite sit on his rugged features; handsome, though. Underneath the tired eyes and scruff and the softening paunch; still a handsome man.

Built from strong stuff, that was most of those from the mountains.

"Don't stay out too late."

She leaves a little red smear of lipstick on his cheek as they part ways and it's Kiara alone, eventually, the staccato clip of her black pumps against the pavement that finds the gathering, adjusting the strap of her little evening purse over a shoulder.

Elijah
"Yeah, she's covered. It's cool. She doesn't want to drop her whole life because bad shit happened. Like, I get that. I don't know when shit's going to blow over and you can't stop living your life because there's a possibility something horrific is going to happen," he sighs. Hard, harsh. Ah, that is what has stressed him out. "I've asked? But Jenn is not down with the whole witness protection spiel beyond what Mike's already done."

A beat.

"Mike's a wheel turning kind of guy," shrugs, that's all he says on the matter. "He's, like, the most weirdly honest person I've ever encountered.  Once shit blows over I'm totally buying him a bowl of pho or a beer or something."

Dan is coming across the street though and he smiles, bright, gives a wave, but it's his turn to make the puppy dog expression, head cocks to the side and looks at Dan like he doesn't quite understand what he means that he's out here by himself.

"S'just me and Sera and Sid," he gestures to the dog, "that's Sid. I think you have a new housemate."

Serafíne
WHAT THINGS DO I FEEL.  (Awareness)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 3, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

Serafíne
So now: Elijah and Sera on the sidewalk and Dan closing the distance to Elijah, giving the young man a still, level sort of look that hooks his breath somewhere in the center of his body.  He glances at at Kiara and gives her wave of greeting.  Gaze snags on the retreating frame of the strange from whom she's parting, something about the set of his shoulders or -
- but no.  Dan's blue eyes drop to Elijah and he sinks into a crouch.  The sort of crouch an adept adult of some authority takes when speaking with a child in the midst of a tragedy.  Getting on his level.  "Sera's with you?"  Looks up from Elijah, searching the empty space beside him like he's trying to trace out her outline against the pitted brick wall of the Stone Pony.  Breathes out, softly.

Swears, beneath his breath.

And Sera can feel Kiara, the moving pulse of her energy, breathes that in feels it mingle strangely with her blown-out senses, breathes it in and in and in again, like maybe she'll never have to breathe the other way.  Except: she always does.

But there's Dan.  She's looking at him and can't quite look away, all snagged.  "He can't see me." Sera murmurs to Elijah.  She could shout, though, all she fucking wanted.  Doesn't have to be quiet about a thing.  "None of them can."

(Oh god, she's: drunk and god-knows-what-else and something hitches inside her like whoa.)


Elijah
[Manip+sub, I totally did not just say I saw Serafine.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Elijah
There is this horrible moment when Elijah realizes that he can see and hear Serafine.

Dan can not see and hear Serafine. She says nobody can hear her, or see her for that matter.

Now, there is a moment when Elijah has this dawning horror that there is a very real possibility that Serafine, the woman without a last name, is very much dead and he's seeing and hearing her because Elijah Poirot is a person who sees and hears dead people. This is not uncommon. There have been instances where it has been slightly more difficult to pick voices out in a room and tell which of them belong to bar patrons and which of them belong to people who are no longer people in the strictest of senses.

Usually, when he says shit like this, people ask him if he's on his medication (he's not) and try to determine whether or not he is hallucinating and a danger to himself or others.

So: Dan gets this.

"It's just one of those nights that you feel like you're with a person, that kind of persistent idea," he says, like it's an apology, "I don't know, it feels like..."

He sighs, runs his hands through his hair but stops where she might still be making contact because he doesn't want to brush her away. He's totally not going to be the one who tells Dan that Serafine is dead. He's trying very hard to spare him that information.

Which is good, because Serafine is very much not dead.

Kiara
The Verbena arrives somewhere between Dan dropping to his haunches and Serafine informing Elijah that Dan can't see her. That she's a phantom to them. Kiara's curling the edges of her shawl around her arms; winding it through and there's a little glossy program twisted in one hand. Something about a gallery showing - makes sense.

The dress, the complicated messy updo she's managed with her dark hair; it sits with strands framing her cheekbones. The cut of it, a v neck that highlights her lean frame, there's a lone pendant around her neck on a thin silver chain; crystal, it looks. Cut into a thin shape with a pointed edge and maybe once, something like it would have been enough to draw sidelong glances.

Murmurs and certain assumptions (hell, maybe it still does in the right company).

"Hey." She greets, her heel scraping against the ground as she comes upon them. She's wearing some vaguely sweet perfume the brunette. Her dark eyes swinging down and they fix, of course, on Elijah's company. Trace over (thin air). People spill out, talking about the music and Kiara's eyes shift to them for a beat as Elijah is saying -

"What's going on?" - Sharper, that. Kiara's voice comes out a little too punctuated, she's staring down at Elijah, now. The edges of her generous mouth pinching into a frown; brows constricting.

Serafíne
"I know what's going on, Elijah.  Pan explained it to me.  I just - " Dan is still crouched on his haunches, skinny jeans pulled tight across his knees, hands braced on his thighs, weight balanced, only so.  Looks tired, sad, maybe a little bit strained but he is also trying not to look like any of those things and trying not to draw too much attention from his friends (and SERA'S FRIENDS) over there chatting and buying donuts.
"She's supposed to be staying with a friend of Pan's."  Neat glimpse up then, this grimace of greeting when Kiara walks up to them.  "I don't think it's a good idea for her to be here.  Right now it's only going to hurt her."
Then he looks past Elijah, not really close to picking out Sera's place beside Elijah against the wall.  "I'm sorry."
(Sera has, in the interim, buried her head in her knees.   Sid kinda stirs but Dan doesn't notice the dog either, even as the dog gives a hopefully-comforting thump-thump-thump of its tail.)
--
Kiara asks what's going on, maybe she's asking Elijah but Dan knows what's going on.  "Sera got hit with paradox, or something.  She can only communicate with people who are Awake.  She's invisible to everyone else. "
"I should probably go."  Before more folks come over and make the whole thing stranger and harder and more terrible and more remarkably ordinary: talking about the band, eating donuts, chatting about the party at so-and-so's tomorrow night, or such-and-such's dislocated elbow at the last Derby meet, and on and on and on.  Unless someone stops him, off he goes.


Elijah
"That... is so much better than what I thought it was," he looks at Dan, puts a hand on the back of his head and leans in to kiss him on the forehead. The gesture is one that bleeds off a very real, very palpable amount of tension that the young man was feeling. Pan explained what was going on to Dan. Dan knew Serafine wasn't dead, and right now this is absolute news to Elijah.

Dan explains what's going on and Elijah eventually lets go of the other man so he can actually leave, Elijah leans a little against Serafine, kisses her on the head, too, because she was there and she was alive and Kiara is there and she seems concerned but Elijah, for his part, was decidedly less stressed out because, obviously, while one of his friends was in mortal peril right now one of his other friends was very much assuredly not dead and this was a blessing.

"Sera's not a restless spirit," he tells Kiara, like this is fantastic news.

He curls in, content to stay on one side for the time being. Content to stay at Sera's side and doesn't say anything. Runs his fingers through her hair and doesn't know what to say to her. The world is passing around her, and she's an observer right now. People are moving on without her, and that is a painful place to be.

Kiara
There's this little moment where Kiara's features harden into something quite furious and angry. This moment where her spine straightens and her shoulders round back and she's got this gleam in her eyes that's all agitation. Her mouth thins into this little seam and she's staring down at the ground for a second as if she cannot for all her days quite decide what to do with that.

The anger. Not at Elijah, not at Dan. Not at Serafine, but - "Fuck." She lets out this little catch, her eyes closing and she turns her face into the distance, frowning hard.

Serafine's head is between her knees when she manages to compose herself enough to look back and then Dan is leaving and Kiara makes this tiny motion; a uncurling of her fingers as if she wants to say something to the man to comfort him because his friend is invisible, but how do you offer comfort for that. Where is the damn rule book for friends of those removed from your sight by paradox?

"We'll take care of her, Dan."

It's a quiet, futile thing to say and Kiara seems to know it. She does move, though. Wedges herself down near the Cultist and folds the edges of her dress between her knees, presses her shoulder against the other woman and says in this furious, vibrant undertone. "You're going to be okay, you know. Screw the universe. You'll be fine. I missed you."

That's futile too, but maybe it's also enough. She says, after a beat: "I have a spare room. If you want somewhere to be, you can stay there. Anytime."

Serafíne
Elijah kisses Dan on the brow and the older man allows it, gives this twinge of a not-quite-smile through his beard and returns half the gesture: reaching to cup the back of the young Hermetic's skull with tattooed hands.  Then he lets Elijah go and pushes himself upright.  Shares a grimace of something (and maybe anger is the right response to this bullshit, but it is rather difficult to work his way through his very real concern to something that bright and righteous.  And then there are Dee and Rick on the other side, absolutely in the dark, both kinda angry with Sera instead of for her, because for them the absence is total, is the story of Sera's semi-regular disappearances from their lives and some of the committments she makes in them: like really making a go of the band, you know, that one.

Fuck.

But, he straightens.  Says, "Thank you," quietly and simply to Kiara and turns on his heel to cross the street to the food truck and as he goes he's getting out his phone, texting or maybe calling someone.  And he doesn't want to look back, is telling himself not to but he cannot help it, as if he might someone turn his head fast enough to catch a glimpse of her and then hold her in his gaze.

--

Kiara wedges herself down between Sera and an adolescent dog with a spiked-leather collar who was laying down but sits up and puts her chin on her paws as Kiara sits.  Thumpthumpthump goes Sid Vicious' tail.

Sera sits there, her shoulders move like bellows, but without the regularity of tears.  Those are just great-big-breaths she is taking, maybe to steady herself, maybe to feel her body open up, maybe because they make her ribcage seem like it is being pried open and she would rather feel that physically than the other way it sometimes happens, the cracked ribs and the marrow within.  Or maybe she's doing that to try to keep from throwing up.

And she finally lifts her head from her knees, hair sliding through Elijah's fingers and she gives Kiara this quick tight smile of gratitude.  Oughta say screw the universe, I'll be just fine right along with her but she can't say either.  She is: a hungry ghost of a thing, and she wasn't made for silence, or anything like it.  "My phone doesn't fucking - "


One of her arms unfurls from around her legs, she makes a loose gesture, "work."  No selfies.  No texting.  No Ginger, no nothing.  "And I don't - I don't even know where you live."


Elijah
He's there, and he's trying to process, can't imagine what this is like for Dan. Can't imagine what this is like for Dee or Rick, either. Because they have no idea, just know that she isn't there anymore and doesn't know what they know about what but he presumes the answer is nothing. He presumes the answer is nothing and it doesn't drive a complete wedge in Serafine's friendship with them.

He doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know how to say it, either, only that he is glad she is alive. Only glad that she is a presence, even if it is a presence that is stuck between the worlds.

A second, then?

"You know, I could text people for you if somebody else can make your phone work. You just... y'know... gotta get people to do your communication by proxy," he says. Leans a little into her but then realizes that's not enough independence.

"We can make things work out."

Resolute. Because, if he said this, it obviously can be willed into being. They can make things work out, it would just take time.

Kiara
There's a cat on the second floor of Kiara Woolfe's apartment building that follows her on occasion. Sees the brunette passing and uncurls itself, stretches and arches its spine and slinks along with a chiming bell as its herald to wind around her legs when she passes. Sometimes, it happens. Other times - there's a dog walked in Washington Park that nearly threw itself at her; frothing and snarling.

They sense it, sometimes. What she is, that delicate twinge to the order of the universe. Sid, like the cat on the second floor, sits up and pays attention - Kiara's fingers reach out and ghost over his head, her fingernails scratching behind an ear.

There's a flash of a smile at Elijah over Serafine's head; bracketed in there between the pair of them as she is; a sliver of gratitude. A little indication of her approval, because: "Well that's just plain rude." A curl of amusement, a husk of wry humor in the pagan's voice as she unclasps the little purse she's had with her all night; the outside glitters with tiny black beads and inside there's a fold of notes, a credit card and a few loose dockets for who knew what.

She extricates a pen, Kiara. Uncaps it with the lid held between her teeth and scribbles down on the back of a take out receipt her address. "817 17th St, Bank and Boston Lofts. Apartment ... 422." She shakes it out to dry the ink a little and then holds it out to Serafine, her dark eyes roving her face.

"Whenever." She lets her gaze tick past her to Elijah and her mouth curls a little, because: has she seen Elijah since they'd returned? Days bleed together and its disjointed and odd to her, not a student of Time, but: she loses track.

The when, the where. "Hey, kid." Soft and easy, as if it were any other night and she'd caught sight of Elijah in a crowd. Never mind the universe.

Serafíne
Sera bumps Elijah back and doesn't really say much.  Pressure there, acknowledgment, awareness.  He's so damned optimistic it makes her spine feel brighter and she could tell him that it's not the same, because it isn't, but he says it so resolutely that she doesn't.  Somewhere in the middle of all this she turns and cups his head and kisses him firmly on the temple like she's comforting him not the other way around.

Then Kiara is scribbling out her address on a receipt, waiting for the ink to dry, handing the piece of paper to Sera who is drunk enough that she has to do a single and then a double-take as her focus narrows and then zippers open and then folds the receipt very, very neatly and lifts the fraying hem of her raveling cropped top and tucks the address into her lovely little black-lace bra.
Drifts for a while, after.
--
Not much later, a cab or maybe a solid and non-descript mid-price sedan pulls up.  Luxury brand, probably, but not the sort one notices.  The sort one doesn't-notice.  The street is mostly empty and that's a no-parking zone right in front of them but it's late.  No meter maids out.  Doesn't matter that he's double-parked in front of a fire hydrant.  A man Elijah knows, whom Kiara does not yet know (methinks?) gets out of the driver's side and circles the car.  He's tall(ish), mid-30s, pale skin, dark hair.  Greets Elijah.  Greets the dog and she knows him enough to stir-to-life when he comes around.  Introduces himself to Kiara, not formally because they are out in the open, but conveys enough about himself that she can guess his tradition and rank from his words, demeanor, and resonance.

Offers Sera a hand-up and she takes it and she doesn't wanna go,
but she does anyway.

Elijah
He waits until she goes, as though he can't quite process anything but wanting to be there with her. Doesn't know that she doesn't think this is the same, that she feels so apart, that she's aching that the world is passing around her and she can't touch any of it. He doesn't know what that's like, but he can imagine, does know from stories what it's like for ghosts. What it's like when they experience that second death- the one that comes when all of the people who remember you are starting to pass on and you fade from stories. Cease to be, drains your passions and leaves you there.

He doesn't envy the dead.

He looks at Kiara, grins something playful, "hey, you don't glow in the dark anymore. I'm a little disappointed, honestly."

Kiara
She watches Serafine go, Kiara, with this complicated little expression.

There's concern there of course, but something else fractured in it. A splintering of regret and uncertainty, a lingering consideration that doesn't quite abate even after she's inside the sedan and the mystery man climbs out and introduces himself. She looks at him but the focus is fleeting and brief.

A smile that doesn't reach her eyes, a long pause after the car peels away and she looks after it; evening wind rustling and winding loose hair around her shoulders; over a collarbone. There's music throbbing inside the bar, it sounds vaguely like a promise and a threat; the dull repetition. Like the distant boom of thunder that predicts the storm; the static gathering in the air.

Hey, you don't glow in the dark anymore, she laughs and scoots across with care until she's closer to him; until her shoulder brushes into him and she's pushing against him in a bid to unsettle him. "Shut up." She smiles and twists the program around in her fingers until the smile wears thin and dissipates, cants him a neat little look over her shoulder.

There's a faint sheen of glitter to the gold eye-shadow dusted on her lids tonight. It makes them sparkle. "How are you, Elijah?" She breathes out in this quick, sharp little exhale. "What's going on." It's the second time she's asked that, tonight. She sounds less agitated this time, though. More - resigned, now. To the awareness that there is something.

There was always something and perhaps in the wake of Sera - it feels far more conclusive.

Elijah
[This is me. This is me making us inaudible for other people. Forces 2: Shhhhhhh.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (6, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Elijah
She pushes against him and, melodramatic, he leans to the side as though he is off balance. lets out a sigh as though this were a big upheaval, as though she had toppled some great and powerful stone figure. He laughs, because at that moment there is delight. He leans back into his old position, back into something that he is comfortable with.

She splinters to regrets, you see. Elijah knows regret pretty well, tries not to live with it but there's a young woman whose name he almost equates entirely with regret. With longing. She was gone and he was still here and he could be fine with that but occasionally things remind him of Alicia and he is reminded of the fact that he is human. That he makes mistakes. He's been looking for paintings and talking to gallery owners and making up excuses as to why his best friend can't make a gallery opening because he's scared and it's his fault and-

exhale.

Looks up. Talks to himself for a second.

"There is a silence where hath been no sound,
   There is a silence where no sound may be,
   In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea,
Or in the wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
   No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently,
   But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
   Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls,
   And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone"

Exhales and something releases, lets go, and the world around them seems... quiet. For now, at least, the world is quiet. For now, they could probably yell their damned heads off and nothing would happen. There's a problem with a person who could literally be anyone. Elijah isn't privy to letting his conversations be overheard for the time being.

"Remember that painting I posted on Ginger? The one that I asked my room mate to do and it was beyond fucking breathtaking?"

He knits his fingers together, gets comfortable because he's going to be here for awhile and he hasn't quite gotten the urge yet to go home because he's going to spend the rest of the night trying to ward the ever loving shit out of his apartment, work on contingencies and defenses and anything that would work as self-defense. He has someone to protect, and while there is something to be said about being a protector there is also something to be said about not putting people in situations where they will need to be protected. Perhaps, guilt. Perhaps.

He couldn't have known, neither could Jenn. They had all been operating under false pretenses.

"Anyway, turns out that whole thing isn't vampires, it's Nephandi and the guy who came and picked up Sera is dealing with it," he exhales, "I thought the whole thing was handled so, like, it didn't dawn on me that Jenn should have just trashed the damn thing and it would have been fucking wrong to ask her to do that anyway, she created a fucking masterpiece. I was pretty fucking sure Kalen said that the issue was handled and taken care of."

Shrugs.

"I should have followed up. Nobody knew, I can't be angry about that."

Kiara
It's a lot. Elijah spills out information and some of it the woman beside him can piece together; slot into some impression like pieces of a jigsaw. This connecting to that, slivers of information digested on Ginger. Visitors in town, a murder that would happen again, shapeshifters being hunted and the Fallen Ones.

(Not vampires, which must, to some tiny degree, be a blessing. But. Oh.)

It's a lot to process and the Verbena settles there beside him with a shawl half fallen down her back and her legs neatly crossed at the ankle. There's a ring around one of her toes, the nails all painted a shade to match the lipstick she wears and it's this thing she does, the pagan. Wears the clothing of some elegant city swan but lingers in the truth of what she was. Offers the hints, you understand, of something else. The pendant around her neck, the ring.

The little way she checks when Elijah starts to speak because - it's one of those nights, again. They aren't quite like the others spilling around them from the bar, meandering across to the vendor on the other side of the street. Not quite, though they do a decent job at pretending.

(Woolfe in Sleeper's clothing, indeed.)

So, then: "You couldn't have known. None of us could. That thing in the park we got rid of?" She leans back and turns her dark eyes on his face, assessing; remembering. The smoldering ruin of it; mouths and gaping teeth and the stench of diseased, misused flesh. She's got these delicate, lovely hands Kiara and they'd helped dismember and dispose of a corpse. Weighted it down in a river.

She'd closed the eyes of her mentor with those fingers, stood in the aftermath of the Union's work in a forest not so far from them, too. Slid dirt through her fingertips and look in the void carved into Time itself while another Verbena wept for the lost and all she'd felt was a kind of righteous fury, because how dare they. Because they'd live enough to pay for it.

Because, Jenn didn't deserve this, either and Kiara's expression gives that over, too. Sympathy, a lick of kindling displeasure. "How could we have known." A beat, her eyes drop away. "He's dealing with it, how, exactly?" She plucks and arranges her words carefully. A thoughtful arrangement.

Her mouth softening to some brief, considerate smile. "People talk about handling things so much, have you noticed? Contain it. Put it into a box with a cute label and somehow it's .... better. It's .... " She shakes her head, straightens and lifts her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "Sometimes you can't contain it. It's not that easy. I'm sorry that Jenn's been pulled in."

She touches his hand, a brief connection.

"What can I do? I want to help."

Elijah
"This Michael MacCarrick guy warded the ever loving shit outta Jenn. Like, I'm pretty sure that, for all intents and purposes, if someone tried to find her magically on a map they'd think she's in Canada or something," he said, "and frankly I care fuck all about whatever this Nephandus freaking does so long as Jenn stays a singular, easily recognizable human being.

"I met this guy and aside from being, like, not at all intimidating like the fucking Hermetics that sat on my couch a month ago- he's actually working with people. He didn't write Grace off when she was like dude, this is my city too and I'm not burding on not helping, swore a freaking capital letter Oath to the effect of I'll protect you with every bit of my being, and I really get the impression that he's been tracking this Nephandus for a long time. I don't think he's gonna stop until either said unspeakable evil is dead or he's shuffled off into the cycle again."

A beat happens. Elijah realizes he's talking a lot. Realizes he's saying a lot of things and hasn't probably given Kiara any time to process, he just went on with an explanation, and it was an explanation with a clear point- Elijah had respect for what Euthanatoi do. Has more than a vague understanding of what that entails (but not enough to really tout being an expert on the tradition, just enough that there had been courtships. If meetings had gone differently he wouldn't be with the Order and, instead, probably would have been calling Eleanor Yates his acarya instead of calling Henry his mentor.)

He takes a second, looks sideward at her and seeks her eyes. Takes in that considerate smile and he continues, "I think... that handling something is a process. It's not in a past tense. It hasn't been handled, it's in the process of becoming. It isn't enduring something- which says it is a labor, a burden to be taken. It's not fixing something, because that implies that a situation is broken or that you can even touch the tools necessary to repair it. You handle wild animals- it's either you, or it. And perhaps you find an accord and perhaps you don't. Perhaps one of you withers and dies and the other stalks triumphant."

He shrugs. Realizing that he's talking again, going on and on about what? Antics?

"I have no clue... talk to Grace? She has a better grasp of what's going on and what isn't. Maybe beef up security at your place?"

Kiara
"I don't know if there's any real way to handle the Nephandi."

Kiara speaks looking down at her hands; she's set the program in her lap; weighted down there beneath that tiny purse of hers and runs the edge of her thumb over her palm. She's quiet in the wake of Elijah's explanation, of his speech. There's so much urgent, striving belief in him and she doesn't, as she often doesn't, know how to process it.

Other than to tilt her face back at him and find his eyes and deliver a curling smile, tinged with affection and some flicker of regret. For what she'd seen, for what she's heard.

Perhaps for the whole sorry situation.

"Survive, maybe. But nature takes its course. You can throw your fury against a storm but it'll still rage on." She sits up, the pagan. Stretches out her legs and braces her hands either side of herself, her expression lingering for a beat in all Elijah had offered, painted into shades of concern and thoughtfulness. "If he's has been hunting this Fallen One that long, it must be powerful," Kiara offers in a murmur, cutting a glance at Elijah.

"Maybe the best thing we can do is stay out of his way and hope it stays out of ours."

A pause, then: "Although, given our track record, that doesn't seem likely, does it?" She smiles and leans back into him, rests her head on his shoulder, curling in. "I almost think I preferred the dragon."

Elijah
"Dude, this person made a chimera out of two living people and didn't flinch at reality. I don't think powerful quite describes what I'm thinking," he quirks his mouth to the side, inhales slow and deep and decides-

"I dunno. And, y'know? I don't care, I genuinely... genuinely don't care if it's nature or nurture or whatever, the whole pursuit-of-Descent thing? Doesn't jive with me. And I don't feel like ostriching on this but I'm not gonna get in the way if someone- anyone- has made it their business to make sure that what they do doesn't hurt more people," it's a strange sentiment. Not that he has it, but that it is a conviction. That this is something he could stand behind, a banner he would not put down, and Ideal. That there is suffering in the world, that you can not be complacent to that suffering.

Especially when it's so close.

"Is it kind of fucked up that I wonder if people would have given a shit about any of this if it wasn't one of our friends that is in trouble?" he leans into her, lets the thought sit there before he smiles, something lighter, "eh, you know, I feel like Henry really got me ready to handle dragons. I should move on to something else next- a new terrifying mountain."

Kiara
"You mean would we have let Michael MacCarrick hunt it down alone?" She murmurs, face half pressed into his arm; she winds one of hers around his and allows her weight to press in, there. Feels the comfort and familiarity of his warmth for a beat. "I don't know. Maybe. Can you really judge anyone if they said yes?"

She pulls back, searches his face.

"Ian told me that the Techocracy is here. That they're sniffing around and the first thing that I wanted to do, other than curse their names, was run. But I've seen what they're capable of. The way they take what they want with no regard to what came first." She looks out, beyond Elijah, then. Her expression hardening. "The Fallen Ones are no better.

They take life and twist it. They just devour everything. That's not nature. There's no process to that."

Her eyes tick back, mouth softening a touch. "I think I'd care. But I think I'd do whatever I had to, if it meant keeping people who matter out of harm's way." She reaches over and brushes her fingertips over his face; tenders them back through his hair in this ghosting, feather-light manner.

"We'll deal with this. And whatever comes next." She cuddles back in, the Verbena, folds the edges of her shawl around her body and tilts her face up; across. The vendor across the street is packing things up for the night; somewhere down the street a dumpster has overflowed; scraps of paper scatter along the gutter, some turning into a pulpy, gluey mess where the water touches them.

They'll dry there, most likely. Become a part of the streetside landscape.

Inside the Stone Pony the band plays on; or maybe it's just music, now. The door is pushed open and sound blasts out. This sudden auditory assault that Elijah's working dampens just enough that it sounds softer; translated through water.

"And Serafine, too. She'll be fine. It's - " There's this shift where Kiara presses against him. The nagging worry in her voice, low but persistent. "She's fine." The emphasis of it, her state of being might be as much for Elijah as Kiara.

Elijah
There is a moment when he just lets her stay at his arm, before he finally puts an arm around her, like this is familiar. Like this is comfortable. He knows he can't do a damned thing, when push comes to shove or any other cliche of finality, Elijah knew that he did not have the magical chops to make the big moves or the sweeping gestures. Has realized a long time ago that he has to deal in the finite and measurable.

Takes what she says and absorbs it. Thinks about it. Tries to process what precisely is there and what he has to do. He'd said as much- he gives two shits about the Nephandi. Is probably too naive to be terrified, or too brazen to be immobilized by the prospect that something may happen. Has had his feathers ruffled by close calls with the technocracy and here is his friend- telling him that she's seen what they can do and she wanted to run when she'd heard.

Kiara does mention Serafine though, how she'll be okay too.

"I don't want to run," he says, like this made it true. He didn't want to run, so the natural explanation was that he wasn't going to run. "And Serafine isn't fine right now. She has to have someone take care of her because..." he gestures, "there's a whole world full of people that she is very much a part of... that she can't be a part of right now. And I get the feeling that if someone wasn't here taking care of her, she wouldn't take care of herself.

"She doesn't ask for help, doesn't let people know if she's hurting and she expects people to just let her be this great untouchable goddess. We had a talk awhile back, about how I wanted to know her as a person and not as an idea and it was hard on her."

Kiara
Kiara is quiet for a long time, then.

Not a tense silence by any measure but perhaps - a thoughtful one. Elijah can all but feel the gears shifting in the Verbena's head. Turning over loose memories of the Cultist. Snapshots of moments she's shared with her, were they all surface, after all? Had Kiara ever really glimpsed who Serafine was beneath the exquisite tangle of chaotic beauty?

She can't argue with Elijah when he says that she isn't fine.

She knows it. They both do, but there's a comfort to be had in simple, useless words. Metered out as if they could somehow bolster hope; cradle a tiny cough of smoke and spark a flame. "She was in Thailand." She does offer, eventually, from her curled perch beside him. The dress she's wearing is silk; wispy soft and giving beneath his fingers; her body heat bleeding through it where she's pressed into him.

Easy, unfettered connection.

"That much I got from Dan. Whatever happened to cause .... that. She's not fine." She sighs, acknowledging his comment with a fine little lift of a shoulder. "It's fucked up and I hate that she's going through it but I don't think we can fix this for her. I don't think it works like that.

Sometimes it's harsh." She's thinking of Arionna, now. Her blindness. The cost exacted from her. "You feel like walking a lady home?" She lifts her face to smile at him; it's a bright, infectious thing. Sudden and captivating and she wields it quite so.

"I'll buy you the last donut."

Elijah
"She's complicated," Elijah said, "but she's not broken. You can't get the places she's gone and break."

He smiles at that, and in that he does find comfort. Smiles at Kiara, for Kiara, because he feels like smiling. Because that is the comfort he can offer, because words for Elijah Poirot need not be hollow, and they need not lose their meaning. Everything he does now is wrapped in symbol and definition. Every nuance has a meaning beyond the meaning he's finding, every bit of being just another step towards some larger immutable Truth that he can't touch.

"And dear lady, I would love nothing more than to walk you home and for you to feed me donuts."

Kiara
[What up, wrap? How you doin'.]

The Reality of People

(first part missing)

Serafíne
"Which dreams do you mean?"

The glasses give nothing of her eyes away but oh there goes her mouth, the slow-burn-crawl of it, just at the corners and nothing more.  There go her straight little brows, rising into a brief but thoroughly eloquent arch, which is more challenge that query.

"The kind that crawl across the surface of your brain at night, and linger in the morning like a half-remembered cigarette? Or the ones you cultivate yourself, watching the light drift across the surface of a cup of tea, while the world slides by?"

Her shrug is shortened, arrested.  The motion inhibited by a deep, dull, healing ache.

Hangovers.

Gotta be.

Elijah
"Like, the ones that pop in your head at night and disappear the next morning if you don't quite grab hold of them fast enough. The this is my aim for a better world and this would make me happy to see into fruition works, too, but specifically I was thinking about the sleeping ones," he tells her.

She's gotta be hungover, he thinks, but he's got delight written on his face and takes her in while she's still processing the day through hazy ouchness.

Has to be a hangover. But, he asks anyway.

"By the way, you want Tylanol or something? I'm pretty sure I've got some in the car."

Serafíne
"That's sweet, kiddo."  Wry.  This humming awareness in her voice, a throaty affection.  "But I don't think Tylenol'll do much for me.  I got my ass kicked by reality, not booze."

Neat little curl of her shoulder, then, a herky-jerk motion that stitches the joint back into place and tugs the nubby coverlet as it happens.

"Hawksley once told met that he'd dreamed of flying since he was a baby.  You know: taking off, climbing up into the sky, soaring.  Not just daydreaming, you know?  Night-dreaming too.   Night-dreaming first, I fucking think, like this piece of his soul that had to work its way out one way or the goddamned other.

"I never had dreams like that, thought sometimes I'd get glimpses of what-might-be, usually all wrapped up in weird half-raveled metaphors.  Sometimes they'd be a little more straightforward - so obviously meaningful that it was hard to let go of even when I couldn't fucking figure it out.

"Last night I dreamt that I was walking through this spiraling cocoon of pearl, holding a baby that was either a person or a six-pack of Monk's Sour Ale, searching for Debbie Harry because I had to return her ant colony, and when I found her, every word we said to each other made sense backwards and forwards, and then Debbie was gone and I was standing in the middle of this road in a place that felt like the desert, right?  That sky, those stars, that lonely fucking expanse of possibility, and there was a road and I was beside it, and I was walking because I'd been waiting for someone to pick me up, but he never came.

"So I said: fuck it, and started walking the way I wasn't supposed to go, flipping off the stupid moon."

--

"What about you?  What do you dream about?"

Something in her tone - some slanting awareness, perhaps - shades that to mean: when you aren't dreaming about drowning.

Remembers that, Sera does.  Is: careful around it, too.

Elijah
"I kinda figured it was something? But if it was something normal I figured, hey, stuff." He tells her, keeps sitting up but eventually halfway through the story concludes that he doesn't like sitting up and looking down at her because it felt a little like he was towering. Screw being towering, there was a blanket, so it was down to the blanket. Back on the fabric, eyes at the clouds until, of course, he decides he'd rather look over at her.

He listens to the dream, acutally kind of laughs a little at part of it, some of it was absurd, some of it was... Well, he could empathize. Maybe he flipped off the moon in his dreams, too.

"I have no idea who Debbie Harry is, is she, like, GReta Garbo but less mainstream?"

--

What does he dream about?

"Mermaids, usually. Or unicorns. Once I had a dream that I was supposed to get married and I was all fuck that so I went into this forest and came across this pool of water and there was a lady in it, so I followed her. Like, I went into the water but the world turned upside down and it wasn't water and I was in, like, Gotham City and I crawled out of a puddle and kept, like, skipping between medieval fantasy world and Gotham City. And somehow I met Batman, but he stole my car because for some reason I had a car.

"The mermaid dreams usually make more sense. Like, you hit the ocean floor and everything glows blue and there's an epic battle with a giant angler fish and sometimes I don't win, and it's not like breathing is a problem? Like, the fact that we're under water doesn't even matter.

"But man, fuck angler fish. Those things are cool and creepy."

--

"Where are you from?" next, casual and curious.

Serafíne
Head tipped back, fair hair rippling, mussed beneath her scalp, caught up in the texture of the picnic blanket, spare shoulders open, that suggestion of attention beneath the dark sheen of the glasses, which is always, somehow - sharper than one thinks.

"Do you think that matters?"  The sloe-gin-hum of her voice.  "Where a person's from?"

Elijah
"It mattered to me," he said, "if it doesn't matter to you, it doesn't have to. I like knowing where people started, even, y'know, if the concept of people starting anywhere but between the Tigris and Euphrates matters much."

He takes in the details, sideward and lights bathing down from the sky. He could have,f or a moment, forgotten that she was here to enjoy the sun and he was here to ... you know... not run into park benches.

"I guess the better question is: where do you think your story starts. Doesn't have to start where you accidentally popped out."

Serafíne
Her kinda-smile starts as a slice and carves itself across her neat little mouth once again and there is no particular sense of deliberation about its progress, except for the deliberate choice she makes to enjoy even this: the warmth of the sun, the reality hangover, the young man beside her who is both chaotic and strangely precise in the midst of that chaos.

"I have no fucking idea where my story starts," of course, she counters, this rough clearing-of-throat noise that is rather like a laugh.  She thinks: that we, ourselves, singular and individual are least equipped to tell our own stories and she thinks, on some level, that even the concept, the conceit of that is rooted in the strangest sort of human solipsism, which somehow combines self-obsession with the ineluctable need to be seen.  And it's not like she doesn't share in that need to be seen, because fuck.  Look at what she's wearing.  And she doesn't say any of that because she doesn't really know the word solipsism and is instead mostly think-feeling all that shit.

Complicated, see?

"My folks had two places when I was born.  This apartment on the Upper East Side that was mostly my dad's during the week, and a house in Bridgehampton, where the family stayed.  He'd come home, sometimes.  Weekends, I guess. Went to boarding school when I was seven or eight.  Then it was summers and holidays, then like, that time kinda eroded, too. School was out in the middle of fucking nowhere in the west of Ireland.  This big fucking neo-Gothic mansion called Kylemore.  All girls, run by nuns.  Hail Mary full of fucking Grace."

Elijah
"The only way that a place called Kylemore could even be remotely cool would be if the place had secret passageways and you girls had this whole Secret Garden style escape from oppressive nuns and the world blossomed into fucking technicolor as a respite for gray skies and rulers," he says, muses. builds it up because he has within him a desire to embellish things. To paint something drab a little more favorable color instead of seeing what he had been invited to see once before- something desolate. Something lonely.

It's complicated, see, when people can split time. When children are accessories or burdens.

"Nuns are fucking brutal."

Not joking. Completely serious. He's been on the wrong side of an angry nun a couple times. You don't grow up in Louisiana without brushing against Catholicism at the very least. He ruminates on this for a moment before firing back with.

"Best kiss? Or favorite?"

Serafíne
"How about first?"

She tosses back.  As if this were an auction, or a treaty negotiation.  Mouth curled, yeah.

Always.

Elijah
""First? Sold."

First?

He had tot hink about this one, could think about the first time he had sex easily enough, if only because he'd told someone, hunted through details, went back through a year book to see if he could find that girl's name out and still drew a blank.

"I was thirteen and her name was Megan. Megan was a freshman and people kinda thought she was going tyo get pregnant before she graduated and drop out or whatever, but we were in the same pottery class. Jenn didn't like her," Jenn still doesn't like her, "but I didn't think there was anythign wrong because she was cool, yeah? She went to parties with seniors and had her belly button pierced.

"Like, I knew girls were around? And I knew guys were around? The first person I wanted to kiss was James Evanson but I was pretty sure the dude who sat behind me in algebra would have kicked my ass if I kissed him so, like,  second person was Jenn but I thought that's gonna be weird, you know her mom and her dad went to prison once and might actually kill you so no.

"So anyway, Megan was actually about number seven on the list of people I wanted to kiss when I was thirteen but that's totally not the point." He laughed, laughed because thirteen year old Elijah logic was, for lack of a better word, completely irrational. He shrugs, goes on through the story. Cavalier about the experience, "So Megan shows up and I'm elbow deep in clay and she tells me her parents aren't going to be home until late so I walk her home after school and she lives in the freaking swamps in this trailer park and nobody in their right mind wants to actually go there but she lives there so we're going, right?

"The house is a place straight out of the seventies, and she pops the liquor cabinet open and offers me a bottle of something that tastes like fucking rubbing alcohol. So we drink a little... or a lot... I don't know. I remember feeling really shitty, like, an hour in and she told me that this was completely normal and she ends up sitting on top of me on the couch and we kind of made out and I had no idea what I was doing but I ended up with my hand up her shirt and that was the first time that I had encountered real, non-imaginary boob so I thought I was doing pretty awesome.

"I walked home after that? It was kind of a standing arrangement after that? Tuesdays, I'd walk her home, she'd get me drunk and we'd make out on a shitty couch. Lasted about a month before she got a real boyfriend. She ended up being my dealer later."

Serafíne
"Katie O'Connor.  In the Chapel, this night in October.  You know how the light changes in fall, right?  Just kind of starts gathering itself inwards, shrinking.  It's not dark all the time yet and the sun is so fucking persistent but the bite in the air, come morning.  The frost from your breath.

"Goosebumps prickling up your arms as you're stumbling out of the dorm for vespers and breakfast and that sense of night around you, even when it is just incipient, the world stitching itself up at the edges.

"I had cigarettes, sometimes.  One of the gardeners would bring them to me, and somehow I lifted the sacristy key right off Father Flaherty, like three fucking times, is how little attention he paid.  Finally managed to make a mold from it in this old bar of soap.  Communion wine is shit, man. Usually, but sometimes he'd buy himself a nice bottle and to sip on a Friday then blend in the remainder of it to be blessed.

"Fuck it, anyway.  We'd sneak off to the chapel to smoke cigarettes or maybe get high.  It was away from the dorms, away from the great house, down this path in the woods and we'd sit behind the altar, watching the smoke rise and mingle with the moonlight.  I think the first seventeen joints I smoked were tobacco and like dried banana peel but finally we go our hands on the real thing.  It was so fucking blissful.

"She fell asleep with her head on the crook between my arm and shoulder.  We woke up in the predawn, shivering, it was so cold.  Our breath looked like smoke.

"I kissed her, then.

"After that, we'd go to the chapel to smoke and get high and make out and I kissed her a helluva lot more.  'Til we got caught.

"She got suspended I got expelled.  Because I was quote unquote incorrigible.

"She had freckles like you wouldn't believe, Katie."

Elijah
He listens to the story. To the whole of it, the ins and the outs with Katie O'Connor and the moments of rebellion and the taste of another person. The feeling of something that felt, loud and clear like it mattered. Something that pinged on his senses like romance, actual romance.

She had freckles like you wouldn't believe, Katie.

"Personally, I think incorrigible is a fucking fantastic way to be. They're implying that it's a hopeless cause, but... y'know... it's incorrigible, not to be corrected, improved, or reformed because there isn't anything there that needs to be changed."

A beat, a thought, then?

"Do you ever wake up and think you know, I'm pretty fucking awesome?"

Serafíne
"I always wake up and think, you know, I'm pretty fucking awesome."

The wry curl of her mouth crawls wider.  The convex surface of her dark lenses just hold his gaze, fixed and unyielding.

"Do you?"

A beat.

"Doesn't everyone?"

Elijah
"It's hit and miss," he doesn't look away. She doesn't look away, and he doesn't either. Isn't going to shy away since he'd been the one who had wanted to talk about things. He'd wanted to know, so he asked, "but generally the I'm pretty neat outweighs the I'm a royal shitbag most of the time. I'm cool with the awesome-to-not ratio."

[Scene in progress]

Elijah
[Per+alert, pay attention to the road, kid, +2 diff(App4 chick sunbathing is distracting)]

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7) ( botch x 2 )

Elijah
[Dex+athletics- I meant to do that]

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

Elijah
Serafíne is sunbathing somewhere in the park.

Elijah had been running, not that he is a particularly adept runner, or really even particularly remarkable in regards to his relative speed, but he does happen to last a little longer than most people would in this weather. He wasn't the kind of guy who would train for a marathon, but something got stuck in his head that made him want to- namely, being stuck in a class about gemstones referred to as "Rocks for Jocks" and being told that there was no way in Hell that he could actually survive running a marathon without tapping out or throwing up. Seeing as how he was never one to settle for being told he couldn't do something, he was out running.

He was running and he'd come across Serafíne sunbathing. Now, grant you, he's seen Sera in relative states of mostly dress or dress that rounds up to being clothing but there's a point when you're running or exercising that your brain goes fuck this nonsense, you need to put your energy into moving and not thinking. And eventually, you hit the point where the only thing your brain can process is obscenities and breathing. And in that moment, amidst his running, amidst the appreciation of whatever she'd been wearing and wherever his imagination was going, Elijah failed to notice that there was a park bench in front of him.

Which he ran headlong into.

Tumbled. Rolled, rolled, rolled some more and almost took out a cyclist who happened to be passing on the trail. The cyclist veered, nearly toppling into a tree but, instead, heading straight for the bushes, which made someone making out with his girlfriend (second base, wooo!) squeak the sound that a romantically frustrated teenager can make. The chain reaction was set into motion and Elijah, for his part, was content to sit on the ground and be torn between Serafíne, who is sunbathing, and the chaos he caused.

"Hi."

Serafíne
What she is wearing is a cheetah print bandau style bikini top and a pair of daisy dukes, unzipped and unbuttoned, so short that the pockets are visible below the hem of the shorts.  Some sort of bikini bottom beneath, slightly mismatched from the top.   Her skin loves the sun, absorbs it and reflects it back into the world.  She is beautifully tan everywhere one can see, and her dyed-blond hair is brighter for the sun in the sun.  Or perhaps the bleaching is recently refreshed.

There she is, sunglasses covering her eyes, hair pulled back, feet bare, flat on the slightly nubby surface of an old white coverlet turned picnic blanket, alone for the nonce.  There's a picnic basket at the foot of the blanket, closed right now.  No visible evidence to show how much she's still hurting.

But she is.

"Hi."

Okay, moving a little slow as she turns her head to regard Elijah, neatly ignoring the chaos too.

Maybe she's hung over.

"You put on

Serafíne
"You put on quite a show."

Elijah
"They totally just put park benches in random places sometimes, It's a city initiative," or I totally wasn't paying attention to the fact that there was a park bench in front of me and I caused the human equivalent of a five car pileup. He smiles, something bright and shameless, because he didn't have time to be ashamed right now of being just a tad unobservant.

He catches that she's moving a little slowly, though, cocks his head tot he side but doesn't say anything. There's lots of reasons a person could be moving slowly, right? His first thought is that she's moving hangover slow, but then again- has he ever seen Sera hung over? Wouldn't magic kind of negate the need for having a hangover unless one wanted a hangover?

He does get up, grass stains on his knees and he'll no doubt end up with a bruised elbow, or bruises somewhere because he'd actually been making decent stride before the unfortunate meeting with a parkbench occurred.

"But yeah, I... uh... that was completely unintentional. The you can't run a marathon gauntlet has been thrown, once Dan and I went out when I'd had a shit night sleeping and we hiked and just did shit and it was meditative so I figured that running could actually be a good alternative to getting shithoused regularly."

Serafíne
"Mmm." She hums back.  Agreement or acceptance or something of virtually everything he said.  This hum that is physical and sub-liminal, somehow.  Held in the instertial space that always feels somehow beneath her skin but above her body, this framing awareness of the world she carries like a second skin.

"I like to rockclimb.  Jim was into yoga in the fucking park.  Are you really thinking about training for a marathon?  You might want to take up something safer than running, yeah?"

Elijah
"Given my propensity for running into things?"

Serafíne
"Naw.  Given the universe's propensity for throwing park benches right in front of you."

This quick skim of her mouth, the briefest flash of her teeth behind glossed lips: perfection.

Elijah
"The universe just knows- Poirots and park benches are natural enemies," he grins, playful, brushes off his knees and checks out the slight scrape on one of his elbows. "I like the idea of trail running. It's running, but through nature. Or those obstacle courses people do? Those seem cool, but I figure why fuckin' climb a fake tree when you can climb an actual tree."

Scoots over, carefully pets her hand for a moment before settling in, comfortable, nearby. He establishes where he is, what the space is, whatever comes next.

"I didn't know you rock climbed," he said.

Serafíne
That draws out her smile again: quick and sure.  Almost viciously confident, the slash-and-draw of it beneath the bright, reflective opacity of her dark glasses.  Something animal about it, even with the sort of slow-glandular movement that most people assume is the visible evidence of one of those knock-you-on-your-ass hangovers.  Maybe an acid hangover.

Elijah pets her hand, which she finds a little bit weird, but doesn't seem to mind, and settles in.  Probably on the expanse of that nubby coverlet.  There's room for another body, another several bodies, that hasn't been filled yet.

"There's a helluva lot you don't know about me, kid."

Says our Sera, who is older than he is and rough-voiced today, muscles bunching in her stomach as she shifts her body to sort of lean in his direction.

"The idea of it and the fact of it are pretty different things.  If you like the idea, fuck.  Give it a try.  Maybe you'll like the idea of it more than the fact of it.  Maybe you'll like the fact of it more than the idea of it. Then you'll know."

Elijah
There's a helluva lot you don't know about me, kid.
"Do I get to find out?" the immediate response. Doesn't seem keen on not knowing something, but is incredibly interested in the idea of finding things out. Sera defies definition, she just is and there's layers. Beyond that, there's delight in his voice, somewhere in his eyes that make them more green than amber and the south creeps in because- well, because. Doesn't need a reason to have origins.

"I think I like the idea of a lot of things, but find myself missing the mark on the actuality of them. I didn't think I'd like camping though, and I fucking love camping so maybe trail running will be like that," he said, paused and grinned, "about a week ago I ran into this one chick and we ended up racing in the forest, she was like this wood nymph- I think she's still in my phone. I figure if trail running is anything like that, I'll like it."

A second, then?

"I'd like to find out more about you, at least. I want to know a person and not the idea of a person."


Serafíne
"If I were you I'd stick to chasing wood nymphs over mere trail running any day.  If that girl's in your phone you should give her a call.  See if she wants to race through the forest again.  See where it leads."

This neat little shrug of her shoulders, mild, incisive, the movement cushioned at the edge of her range of motion because: ow.  Ow ow ow.

"Or where it ends."

She looks: up then, and then, away.  Back towards the sky where the failing sun reflects in the dark surface of her lenses.  Doesn't seem at first to be reactive or reacting to his comment that he wants to know a person and not the idea of a person, except:

"Alright.  Ask me any question you want.  I'll answer. Anything in the fucking world."

Elijah
Ask her anything?

It's not a moment where the gauntlet is thrown, not something that seems like a challenge- an aha, I can ask whatever I want! moment. Not a triumph, just an offer. He perks up, but for all his delight and eagerness he's hesitant. There's no room for hesitation, though. Not in his mind, at least.

But he hesitates anyway. Any question, and she'd answer.

"What is..." he stops, "is it weird that now that I have the opportunity to ask anything I don't know what to ask?" Laughs because it's disarming, laughs to himself more than anything,. more an exhalation of breath than laughter.

"What do you dream about?"

Serafíne
(pause!)