(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."
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Sunday, September 6, 2015
A terrible thought can have a terribly long career
Elijah
There is a moment of dawning horror that comes when Elijah realizes that his friends are going to burn two people alive in their home and act like this was not a big deal. Or, perhaps, it was a big deal. Perhaps they realizes precisely how important and how horrifying this is, but...
There's always a but. So, it was an evening full of distraction. Which, strangely enough, involved wanting to hang out with Samir. And pretend like nothing was weird. Nope, none of this is anything other than normal. Nothing about this is a complete nightmare that he's trying very hard not to think about. Nope. Tonight was fine.
To his credit, he hasn't started drinking yet, but he's got a backpack full of books and tequila and things that are built for forgetting. He's accustomed to doing this kind of thing. He's been hanging out in the floor, has already made his way through a book about the printing press and how fascinating that was.
The horror's part of the wonder.
Just keep telling yourself that.
"So, uh..." awkward smalltalk time, "what do you do here?"
In the sparse apartment that smells cleaner than any hospital he'd ever been to.
Samir
Elijah is not the first person to step foot inside Sam's apartment since he moved in. The landlord let himself in a few times before Sam managed to ward the place against either detection or intrusion. And Grace slept here last night while he stayed awake and watched the inside of the safehouse from his computer monitor.
Three computer monitors share two desks. None of the windows open. All of the blinds are drawn tight and the air conditioner drips into an old coffee can. A cactus lives on a bookcase made out of cinder blocks and two-by-fours. A television sits on a middle shelf but it is unplugged and turned around to face the wall. That's what it gets for telling him to kill himself. Asshole TV.
While the Hermetic apprentice studies the Mercurial Elite sits in his wheelie chair and alternates between typing away in the monitor responsible for his Tor connection and the monitor responsible for the same Civilization V game he's been running since his last Seeking and the monitor responsible for keeping an eye on Kalen.
Gandhi is an even bigger asshole than his TV.
Unless Elijah indicates that he would love some lighting all he has is the glow from the LED monitors.
So, uh...
Though Sam's eyebrows rise he doesn't turn around until the question hits him.
"What?"
Elijah
He leans over, pretty sure that if he touches anything it would break immediately. So, he's nervous, appalled, and awkward. This is just like the time that he and his mother visited his grandmother in Quebec. He remembers the house being strangely earthy and his mother looking like she wanted to go home immediately. There wasn't some mythic fairytale forest at the back of this propertty. No, there was a Chinese laundry service.
Well, laundry is kind of mysterious and terrifying. Maybe it's similar.
His eyes flicker to the screen, brows raise up and he starts the arduous climb to his feet. It's a slow thing, it's a purposeful thing, it's a lazy thing because he's still trying to make sense of what is going on in front of him and-
"Hey, is that Civ?" he starts to meander over once he's finally gotten on his feet, "do you have another chair? I wanna watch."
Samir
"Ah..."
Sam looks around as if he might have misplaced a second chair. He has an air mattress that is fully decked out to look like a proper bed with the exception that it's on the floor rather than up on a frame and box spring. That is it. It would appear as though he takes his meals standing up in the kitchen or sitting at his computer.
No second chair exists. He sighs and looks over at the closet.
"Hang on."
[lololol conjuring up a fucking chair. matter/prime 2. base diff 5 (SANCTUM FTW) -1 quint.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Samir
[extending +1]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Elijah
Samir opens the closet, and there is a chair.
There is a fucking nice chair. His brows raised, his expression impressed and he started to head over to the closet to acquire said chair so Samir didn't have to, you know, move the chair. Not that he would really have to of course- it has the kind of wheels on it that make the thing move like an Olympic figure skater.
He blinks.
Blinks again.
"... do you wanna trade chairs? I feel really bad now, this is a really nice chair."
Clearly, he is on the edge of a breakdown. He's being entirely too timid about a fucking chair.
Samir
As of right now Sam is not distracted by what is going on on his middle monitor. He has a Bluetooth headset plugged into his right ear and he does keep looking back at the text scrolling alongside the video feed but he is not attending to it active and alert. His guest wanted a chair and it only requires a series of keystrokes in a terminal window on the same monitor for him to pull a new chair out of thin air.
When he gets up it looks as if he just happened to have one in storage. Elijah knows better. He's seen what the VA is capable of doing across distance and using bottles of cleaner and bottles of drugs.
One brow quirks when Elijah asks if he wants to trade.
"... it's a chair," he says. "Are you...?"
Fuck. He doesn't want to ask. He knows what Elijah's problem is. That's the danger of paying attention though.
[perc + empathy: i hate myself.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 7) ( success x 1 ) [Doubling Tens]
Elijah
[Willpower: IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CHAIR!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Samir
[REROLL THAT'S BULLSHIT]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]
Elijah
[Manip+sub: I'm fine!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
He needs to find some way where his conscience can justify setting what he presumes to be human beings on fire in their own homes (which he also presumes to be a pretty gruesome and horrible death). What he saw of their foes was this- reprehensible people doing something that is reprehensible. The deed must be done, they can't continue to exist on this mortal plane and let reincarnation sort everything out. This is understandable and reasonable.
Burning to death is a horrible way to die. It's why he'd gone overkill on his particular rote dealing with the human amalgamation they'd dealt with. He didn't want it to suffer, he wanted it to end. Quick, painless, final. The act is done before you even begin to fathom what happened.
This, what Grace and Kalen are going to do (what Samir is assisting in and observing), is not quick. It is not painless. It is not merciful. It is torture- in the best of scenarios they would be smothered to death by the smoke and debris. Their lungs would burn and they would die struggling for air. Drown in smoke.
What he needs is to find something that makes it okay, that lets him come to terms with the fact that good people he knows and cares about are going to torture living beings (reprehensible monsters, he knows), until they are no longer alive.
He doesn't know if sex will make things better. He doesn't want to touch people, as strange as it seems. He wants to sit in a shower and boil until he feels clean. He wants anything that will make him forty thousand miles from here. He wouldn't mind having sex, but he makes no promises that he might not start crying or dissociating.
Sex might be nice. Sitting with a person who gets it might be nice, too.
Barring any of that, he'd settle for heroin and laying in the bathtub.
Samir
For those of you playing along at home: Samir Lakhani is not a bad-looking male specimen. Quite the opposite. He has two eyes and he owns mirrors in which he does not look because he spends an inordinate amount of time in a world where he cannot trust his own perception. But on the occasions he has looked in a mirror he has seen the face the rest of the world sees. He knows he looks good.
So when he stands still despite the distraction of keeping an eye on his friends - their, both of them, he and Elijah are remote while another of Samir's kind shields herself from invasion and Elijah's former mentor walks up to a building filled with slumbering evil things without heartbeats - he also locks his eyes warm and brown onto Elijah's cool blue ones and what he sees in them makes him feel for him.
Samir hates feeling for other people. He feels for the cashiers and the taxi drivers and the homeless he passes every day. He feels and he knows what it is they need in order to make it through the day and if it weren't for his own mental illness he could bleed himself dry to give it to them.
A sigh quiet and calm leaves his lungs. He is beginning to give a shit about Elijah. This is not a burden for him. It could be a distraction but Samir is capable of multitasking. It could be a distraction but Samir could pull anything Elijah needed out of thin air.
So he grabs hold of the wheelie chair and pulls it out of the closet. Knocks his own shittier one out of the way and positions it in front of his computer setup. Starts to type a command onto the keyboard.
"... hang on."
[matter 2: transmutating the really nice wheelie chair into a loveseat or something so elijah can play civ 5 while he does his shit. -1 practiced rote -1 unique focus.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 8) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
[Per+empathy- how close CAN I get to you before this is uncomfortable?
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
And, within a moment, he is done sitting in a chair and then it's a loveseat. A really comfy loveseat, come to think of it. He doesn't quite sink in, being damned near six feet tall. He doesn't often get to fall into couches unless they are particularly magnificent or they're spectacularly shitty. This is not the Taj Mahal of sofas, but it's certainly not comfortable.
Elijah scoots over, eyes flicker back to the screen and he looks a little distant. A little absent, but then there's Civ. His lips upturn.
"Man, why is Suleiman all up in your ass," he reaches forward to take control of Civ. Picks it up like it's not a big deal. He might not be fantastic with computers, but he sure as shit knows how to play video games. This was a nice distraction. Civ was not going to make Elijah start irrationally crying for reasons he believes are entirely natural.
"What're they doing now?"
He really doesn't want to know, but he really does.
Samir
So he drags Elijah and the wheelie chair from the closet to the computer. The wheelie chair morphs from a super awesome wheelie chair into a comfortable loveseat. When Sam sits down next to him he has to grab his wireless keyboard and balance it on his knees. He has one keyboard per monitor. Samir Lakhani is a busy man.
When the Hermetic apprentice asks about Suleiman he slides the appropriate keyboard in front of his guest and settles back on the couch.
"... I, ah... I have two gold mines. And all the coastal tiles on this portion of the map. And he's super fucking pissed."
Tap tap tap. Tap tap. If Elijah looks over at the middle monitor he may not be able to make much sense out of what he's seeing. That doesn't matter. It isn't as if he's a Sleeper.
What're they doing now.
"We're waiting on Kalen." A beat. Shit. He's read too much on Ginger. He knows Kalen and Elijah are close. He stifles a sigh and points at the monitor responsible for Civ. "If you want to start a new game that's cool. You're probably gonna get fucked in about seven turns."
Elijah
"Are you presuming I suck at Civ, or do you have the difficulty jacked all to Hell?" he's in the process of starting up a new game, saves where Samir is right now because it sin't fair to jack up someone's game irreparably and then run away. He has no idea that this game has had the longevity of most people's college boyfriends. This is a pretty long standing game, it looked developed.
His eyes flicker tot he screen, and he stays there for a minute. He isn't paying attention to the game, he's paying attention to the trainwreck and-
nope. Back to Civ. Back to the new game because why the Hell not?
He taps idly on the space bar. Doesn't push it down but he does tap. Doesn't know he's doing it, but probably realizes it's kind of annoying. Tap... tap... tap tap... taptaptap... taptaptaptaptap. Fibonacci numbers, exhales slow and long. This is just a part of awakened life, they're going to do atrocious things. Inhales. Exhales.
Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.
Samir
They're waiting on Kalen and then Sam says:
"Yes, there are."
Elijah can't hear what precipitated that answer. He asks if he's presuming he sucks at Civ. That is the least of Sam's concerns right now but a razor-quick flick of an almost-grin tugs at the corner of his mouth anyway.
"... yeah, I've got it on fucking Deity Mode. Go ahead."
Elijah has no way of knowing the other young man forgot to turn off his mic before he answered his question or that Kalen and Grace both heard him as he said this. Or that Sam is too distracted by his newfound friend's at-bay nervous breakdown to care.
He isn't paying attention to the game. He may not make anything of it when Sam says into his mic:
"Right behind you, yo."
A few seconds later it becomes apparent that Sam is Working and Elijah is losing himself to a sort of number-based self-soothing with which the reality hacker is beyond intimate. Fibonacci and he go way back. He begins to type on his keyboard and the glow from the middle monitor becomes a bit sharper. Penetrating. It could get into Elijah's skin if that's what he wanted. Sam knows he needs that sort of distraction. Now is a bad time.
"... you okay?" Sam asks as his resonance begins to take over everything else at the desk.
Elijah
He's halfway to twenty oneby the time Samir asks if he's okay. To be fair, he eventually leaves the keyboard alone and turns his attentions toward tapping on the table so it's somehow less obnoxious. Seventeen in and he stops, purses his lips. Wants to lie, it's written across his features and his shoulders and it's on his countenance.
"I'll get there?" he says, "but right now, no. No, I am not okay."
Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap. Twenty one.
Lays his palm flat on the table and stays there and he doesn't lean in, stays still for a long moment which feels wrong on so many levels. He does lean a little against Samir, that sort of guarantee that this is a person and not something he's making up. Elijah runs his hands through his hair, both of them, exhales hard again because he's trying to remember that he needs to breathe.
"... is it fucked up that I want to see what happened? So... like... context?"
Samir
No one can see how Sam stares straight ahead and convinces himself that he can tolerate the pressure and presence of another living breathing filth-beast against his arm. Even after that other living breathing filth-beast rests its head against his shoulder. He stares straight ahead and by this point he has passed the event horizon of what will agitate him to the point where he needs to stand up and clean the ever-loving fuck out of his apartment.
This apartment reeks of bleach and vinegar and verbena. It is not physically possible for the place to get any cleaner without obliterating all organic life within the four walls.
So Elijah is not okay right now and Sam accepts that because half the time he isn't okay either. It's a wonder he's okay right now. He was okay when they started. Some small feat of will. He is okay because he has to be.
Hands go through Elijah's hair and Sam clenches his teeth and inhales deep to let it go again like to remind Elijah hey buddy this is an important part of your metabolic function. He could speak if he had to but he focuses on the middle monitor. On the Code rushing by and morphing reality in the small window in the lower left corner of the monitor.
"No," Sam says. Not fucked up. "Kalen is going to start a fire and Grace and I are making sure it doesn't spread. Look."
Look. Like Elijah can make sense of the Code rushing by.
Elijah
He looks at the corner of the screen, the part that is going to give him some kind of view into what, precisely, is going on. See? They're doing things to make sure this doesn't hurt anyone else, just the people inside of that house. It somehow seems a little less like mass murder when they're trying very actively to just murder a finite number of people and not an abundance of them.
He just kind of awkwardly stays hung out on Samir's shoulder like a tired toddler who doesn't quite want to take a nap just yet. There isn't any shame in feeling the frailties of being human. There's no shame in being afraid, in being appalled (tells himself again that the horror of this all is not separate from the wonder. They are one in the same. In their own rights, there is something to be said sbout the artistry of what is happening here. Beautiful disaster.)
Drowning on land, he thinks. Tells himself. Like drowning on land, drowning's peaceful at the end. He knows this, once you stop fighting and accept it- the sinking is almost pleasant. Maybe it's like that, once the terror of everything passes, it will go easily. Maybe he underestimates Kalen, hopes the place goes up in an absurdly quick inferno, like spontaneous house combustion. Like the people would be ash before they realized what happened to them.
"What language are you coding in?" he asks, like he would know what that meant.
Samir
"... what?"
Like asking what language he's speaking when they're both speaking the same language. That wasn't a question he was expecting or prepared to answer. Not when a good part of his attention is on keeping a budding fire contained within a two-story building where four sentient creatures are currently taking a dirt nap.
And yet Sam has within him a teacher's spirit. He does like other people. Likes them from a distance but distance doesn't mean shit to a Virtual Adept.
"Oh." He gestures to the middle monitor with the hand not attached to the shoulder Elijah is leaning on. "I, ah... I knew a guy, once. He called it Reality Code. It's just... you know how DNA is? Makes a double helix and somehow that makes atoms and atoms make cells and cells make... whatever cells make? Tissue? Yeah. That's reality. And the Reality Code. Super small command chains you can change and make a, ah... an office chair into a sofa. Or whatever." A beat. He actually looks over at Elijah. "Since we hemmed the fire in, both of us, it'll... ah... consume faster. They're asleep, they won't suffer. It's almost over. Look."
Elijah still can't make sense of the Code. Can't even make sense of the cadence of it. He has to take Sam's word.
Elijah
[WP: don't equate creating a sofa to Downs Syndrome]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
He leans forward a little, actually gets himself off of Samir's shoulder in order to actually look at the screen and see what was going on. He looks at the code, peers like he genuinely wants to udnerstand but just can't. There was a time that maybe that was something that he could have factored into his world view but that time has long since passed.
"So it works... like... you're manipulating reality on a cellular level, a couple genes makes a big fuckin' impact," looks back to see if he understood what was going on there.
But, the heart of the matter was actually addressed, and soon enough his eyes go back to the screen, like it's a train wreck. Still looks like he might get sick. Still looks like he doesn't quite know what to do with himself. Still looks about like the bus dropped him off somewhere completely wrong and he has no idea how to get home but knows if he doesn't get home by five thirty his ass is getting beaten.
It's almost over, Samir tells him.
Silence.
"I seriously don't know if I want to blow you or drink a bottle of tequila and let today be yesterday when I come back around."
Samir
A couple genes makes a big fuckin' impact.
The Mercurial Elite nods his head but does not take his eyes off the screen in order to check on his charge. For now Elijah is okay even if he is Not Okay. For now Sam is focused on Kalen and Kalen's escape even if they all know Kalen is going to make it back to his vehicle without drawing attention to himself.
What Elijah overhears as Sam talks into the headset involves firetruck response times and whether or not 'man' is alright. Silence as he listens. Silence as the other two resolve their ends of the bargain and the three dissolve into their own ones again.
He knows it's over when Sam removes the earpiece from his head and sets it down on the desktop. Runs a hand over his own restrained hair and turns to look at Elijah. He heard him when Elijah said he didn't know whether to blow him or consume a bottle of tequila. Whatever he and Grace did drained him quite a bit but not as much as fighting back Quiet drained him. He is lucid when he speaks.
"... do you want me to make a bottle of tequila, or...?"
Elijah
"I'd kinda like to be cool on my liver, but if you're not cool with it, I'll totally just drink. Besides, you did a lot of hardcore, terrifying and upsetting shit, I kinda figure you deserve a blowjob or something."
Samir
The way they're angled on the loveseat Elijah and Sam can look sidelong at each other. Elijah may very well look straight ahead but Sam is aware of the weight of what Elijah says. He had the weight of the kid's former mentor's words in his ear. Weight he ought to have known a Hermetic to be capable of but had not experienced in a long time.
So Elijah indicates the binary of his options and then gives a strong preference for one over the other. It is not the option Sam would have preferred but to be quite honest Sam would have preferred not to have had another sentient being cross his threshold to begin with. They're already way beyond his comfort zone. His comfort zone is in another fucking galaxy.
There's that word 'deserve' again. Sam sighs quick and almost quiet and runs the hand closer to Elijah over his own hair again.
"... do you wanna smoke a joint first, or..."
Elijah
[1-5 good, 6-10 not good]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
Does he want to smoke a joint first? He doesn't really have tot hink about this, he laughs because... well... why not? They could smoke a joint, then could do whatever. He does have a preference, but his eyes drift back to the screen again. Where there had been a fire, where there had been a disaster. He exhales again.
Thinks about taking smoke into his lungs. Thinks about drowning on land.
Gets up and heads to the bathroom. Quickly.
He doesn't so much shut the door as he does pull it tight and lean against it. Doesn't even turn the light on, just retreats and retreats quickly because he needs to be somewhere that isn't here. Needs to think about something that isn't dying or whatever happened. He doesn't know they weren't people. Doesn't know what they were dealing with, doesn't know huge chunks of the details there, but that was all something that he presumed he could fill in if he wanted.
And right now, he wants to throw up, so he's knelt over the toilet in the dark. Just waits there.
Samir
Were not for the fact that Sam knows what it is to feel crazy on an ordinary day he might have looked up sharp from his monitors and followed Elijah to the bathroom. He knows what it is to feel like that and he knows what it is to lose control over his body when control is all he feels he has to hold onto. Before they went out in search of the fiends responsible for the monster in the park he had cracked a quip about vomiting. Sam is used to feeling crazy.
Watching others struggle with their own sanity isn't anything he's used to. He was the crazy one in his previous cabal. He was the one who would bolt out of a room without apparent provocation. The others all had their own flaws sure and they had their own mental cracks. Elijah has his own too.
Sam can respect that.
So the kid goes from talking blowjobs and tequila to leaping up and shutting himself in the bathroom. So Sam gives him until the slamming of the door to turn and watch the the door. To listen and make sure Elijah isn't in there retching or trying to hang himself with the shower curtain.
Elijah has about sixty seconds before Sam feels concern enough to get up and knock on the door. Sixty seconds is more than most people would give him.
The reality hacker exits out of the new game he started and pulls up the old one. Fuck Suleiman.
Elijah
There's a sort of catharsis that you have when you are doubled over a toilet breathing some sort of chlorinated air. There is a feeling where you sense the cold ceramic close to your skin but not quite and the tingle in your arms when you're leaning too hard on them and he's counting through his head item after item after item. Trying to think of some distraction, trying to think of something that will put this in perspective because he doesn't want to run off and dive into a goddamn bottle or do any number of things-
But he needs a break. He needs a push. Even Sherlock-fucking-Holmes had his vices and they sure as shit weren't all violins and fireside chats.
Breathes in again and the air is cold. Exhales and can feel the ripples on the water- thinks and wonders if it's Emmanuel or Raphael. Confuses fire and water, and knows which scares him more. No longer thinking of drowning when he stands up, turns on the water in the sink that's damned near too hot to put his hands in it, but he splashes his face anyway.
There's a knock on the door- "I'll be out in a figurative minute."
Washes his face. Washes his hands. Steals some of Samir's mouthwash and washes the taste of whatever the fuck out of his mouth. He comes back out and he's decidedly less panicked.
"Let's get stoned. And if it's weird, you can totally call me Renee."
Samir
Within a matter of seconds Sam's expression goes from confused to concerned to committed to not asking. If it's weird he can call the kid Renee. Sam does not speak French. He speaks Spanish and Arabic and is starting to get a grasp on Mandarin Chinese. He isn't a slouch. He just relies on his current location to dictate his linguistic needs.
One day he will be able to execute a program that will allow him to understand everything regardless of tongue. Today is not that day.
Today is however a day that he happens to have a joint rolled and stored in the top drawer of his desk. He doesn't have to conjure up the paper or the stash. He levels his gaze at his guest. No seduction or suggestion in it. Sex is not an escape for Sam. He is an attractive man and he is nice to Elijah and he is interested in what he has to say. Likes sitting and talking to him. Recognizes that he needs time and space to get his shit together. That his shit is not together right now.
So he removes the joint and a lighter from the drawer and stands to drag the loveseat back three paces from the computer desks. Give them some space. No point opening a window to air the place out when he can make the smoke and the smell disappear with a few keystrokes.
"I'm not gonna call you Renee," Sam says.
Elijah
"Cool," he says, plops down on the couch but doesn't actually invade Samir's space for some strange reason - strange because he had just espoused an interest in going down on the dude but not in getting into his space because... well, because. He rode a fine line between needing the comfort of another human being who knew what the fuck was going on and needing nobody to ever touch him ever again and to keep their goddamned hands to themselves.
Except, of course, he realizes that Samir is about to move the couch and the time mage has impeccably horrible timing and he rolls off and gets to his feet. Lets Sam do the moving because he is still getting his bearings from rolling off the couch.
"My middle name's Renee, by the way, it was supposed to be René, but my mom was doped all to Hell and the nurse didn't speak French," Elijah clarifies.
Samir
Elijah is not smooth. His rolling has Sam stopping what he's doing to ensure the other man isn't going to break his nose on the beat-to-shit hardwood floor. They settle after a moment. Moving the couch doesn't take much effort. Sam isn't going to sit down until his guest does.
"That's alright." This to the matter of Elijah's middle name. "My grandparents are from Gujarat. My middle name would've been my father's name, but my mother doesn't know who my father is, so... I don't have one."
He holds out the joint and the lighter. Guest gets first toke.
Elijah
[Gujarat? int+academics]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
Truth be told, Elijah has no idea that his father is not his father. He has no idea that his mother had an affair with some slender blond thing that worked on a construction site and came home when her husband wouldn't. He had no idea about it, because it hadn't mattered to Charles Poirot. It didn't matter to him that his wife had cheated and strayed, Elijah was his son because fatherhood wasn't the same as being a sperm donor.
Elijah takes a seat on the couch, though, doesn't put his feet on it because it would be rude. Samir conjured a couch out of thin air for him. He would much rather be respectful of his space and just hang out. Takes the joint between his fingers, takes a long, steady hit and holds it like he's done this before- probably within the week, all things said. He's a young, attractive, cisgendered white male who came from an upper middle class family. He's set to do any number of things to press against the seams lest he have to think too hard about the privilege he's oblivious to.
And let's not mince words, he's privileged. Even in awakened society, he's privileged. Not everyone has someone to sit up with them when the more well-versed mages in town commit atrocities and you need a break to process.
Hands the joint over. Starts to think that, maybe, he doesn't want to have sex. Maybe he just wants to talk, feels pretty damn lucky for a second. Then two. Then three and five eightthirteentwentyonethirtyfour.
"Where's Gujarat? North or west part of India?"
Samir
As it happens Elijah is in the company of a person who can tell what other people need even if those needs don't coincide with needs he himself could claim to have or harbor. Their kind gravitate towards egocentric and antisocial tendencies but they are both young and they have not yet convinced themselves of their own godlike potential.
One of them is revered by the online community. He could have called up any number of faceless nameless persons to help him in his quest tonight but his quest tonight was not one he undertook on his own. Sam was not the only person who suffered an injustice in the park that night. When Elijah said he wanted adventure the reality hacker sighed and called him out on his bullshit but he did not tell him to go it on his own.
Grace and Kalen are eating udon and contemplating the weight of interring undead creatures to ash when they know at least one of their kind to be Not That Bad.
The word 'vampire' is not in Sam's vocabulary as anything other than a mythology to which some of his kind make reference. It may be a euphemism. So far as he can tell he and Grace helped Kalen torch some Fallen tonight. Doesn't make it easier to stomach. He sat up all night and watched them torture and kill several young people.
"It's, ah..." Sam drags hard on the joint the way smokers drag on cigarettes. It shuts down the part of his brain that won't shut up. He holds the smoke heavy and hot in his lungs and lets it out slow so he won't cough. Hands it back and finishes his thought once the burning in his bronchioles dissipates: "West. West India. Shares a border with Pakistan. They moved to Vancouver when my mom was a baby."
Elijah
"I've never been to Vancouver. I've been to Quebec, though- my mom's from there... are you from Canada or was there another big countrywide shift in the cards for you guys?"
Takes the joint back if it's passed, will take another hit until they are out. He's engaged, and there's something to be said about Elijah- he liked people. He really did like people, liked what they were capable of. Liked the things that made them who they were. Liked their drie and wants and needs and the little idiocyncratic pieces of bullshit that made human beings fantastic because they were.
He adjusts on the couch, takes a second to look at the other young man. The one who also did not think of himself as some godchild. No, they were just people. Two dudes sitting on a couch smokingpot.
Elijah adjusts.
"Dude, your couch is pokey as shit."
Which will be something he revisits as they get progressively more and more stoned. They'll talk, maybe Elijah will tell him stories or spout off poetry or ask him more about the code of Reality, even though he doesn't quite understand what it means because it's important to try and understand people. There's rules, there's protocols. There's shit you have to do when you're coding, that much he knew.
He might talk about poems, might tell Samir ghost stories that don't actually have scary points, they're just literal ghost stories. He's met and heard a lot of ghosts, some of them were interesting people. Probably keeps from talking about the dead, though. Probably just talks books or something and the marvels of how Samir can fucking will furniture into existence.
There is a moment of dawning horror that comes when Elijah realizes that his friends are going to burn two people alive in their home and act like this was not a big deal. Or, perhaps, it was a big deal. Perhaps they realizes precisely how important and how horrifying this is, but...
There's always a but. So, it was an evening full of distraction. Which, strangely enough, involved wanting to hang out with Samir. And pretend like nothing was weird. Nope, none of this is anything other than normal. Nothing about this is a complete nightmare that he's trying very hard not to think about. Nope. Tonight was fine.
To his credit, he hasn't started drinking yet, but he's got a backpack full of books and tequila and things that are built for forgetting. He's accustomed to doing this kind of thing. He's been hanging out in the floor, has already made his way through a book about the printing press and how fascinating that was.
The horror's part of the wonder.
Just keep telling yourself that.
"So, uh..." awkward smalltalk time, "what do you do here?"
In the sparse apartment that smells cleaner than any hospital he'd ever been to.
Samir
Elijah is not the first person to step foot inside Sam's apartment since he moved in. The landlord let himself in a few times before Sam managed to ward the place against either detection or intrusion. And Grace slept here last night while he stayed awake and watched the inside of the safehouse from his computer monitor.
Three computer monitors share two desks. None of the windows open. All of the blinds are drawn tight and the air conditioner drips into an old coffee can. A cactus lives on a bookcase made out of cinder blocks and two-by-fours. A television sits on a middle shelf but it is unplugged and turned around to face the wall. That's what it gets for telling him to kill himself. Asshole TV.
While the Hermetic apprentice studies the Mercurial Elite sits in his wheelie chair and alternates between typing away in the monitor responsible for his Tor connection and the monitor responsible for the same Civilization V game he's been running since his last Seeking and the monitor responsible for keeping an eye on Kalen.
Gandhi is an even bigger asshole than his TV.
Unless Elijah indicates that he would love some lighting all he has is the glow from the LED monitors.
So, uh...
Though Sam's eyebrows rise he doesn't turn around until the question hits him.
"What?"
Elijah
He leans over, pretty sure that if he touches anything it would break immediately. So, he's nervous, appalled, and awkward. This is just like the time that he and his mother visited his grandmother in Quebec. He remembers the house being strangely earthy and his mother looking like she wanted to go home immediately. There wasn't some mythic fairytale forest at the back of this propertty. No, there was a Chinese laundry service.
Well, laundry is kind of mysterious and terrifying. Maybe it's similar.
His eyes flicker to the screen, brows raise up and he starts the arduous climb to his feet. It's a slow thing, it's a purposeful thing, it's a lazy thing because he's still trying to make sense of what is going on in front of him and-
"Hey, is that Civ?" he starts to meander over once he's finally gotten on his feet, "do you have another chair? I wanna watch."
Samir
"Ah..."
Sam looks around as if he might have misplaced a second chair. He has an air mattress that is fully decked out to look like a proper bed with the exception that it's on the floor rather than up on a frame and box spring. That is it. It would appear as though he takes his meals standing up in the kitchen or sitting at his computer.
No second chair exists. He sighs and looks over at the closet.
"Hang on."
[lololol conjuring up a fucking chair. matter/prime 2. base diff 5 (SANCTUM FTW) -1 quint.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Samir
[extending +1]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Elijah
Samir opens the closet, and there is a chair.
There is a fucking nice chair. His brows raised, his expression impressed and he started to head over to the closet to acquire said chair so Samir didn't have to, you know, move the chair. Not that he would really have to of course- it has the kind of wheels on it that make the thing move like an Olympic figure skater.
He blinks.
Blinks again.
"... do you wanna trade chairs? I feel really bad now, this is a really nice chair."
Clearly, he is on the edge of a breakdown. He's being entirely too timid about a fucking chair.
Samir
As of right now Sam is not distracted by what is going on on his middle monitor. He has a Bluetooth headset plugged into his right ear and he does keep looking back at the text scrolling alongside the video feed but he is not attending to it active and alert. His guest wanted a chair and it only requires a series of keystrokes in a terminal window on the same monitor for him to pull a new chair out of thin air.
When he gets up it looks as if he just happened to have one in storage. Elijah knows better. He's seen what the VA is capable of doing across distance and using bottles of cleaner and bottles of drugs.
One brow quirks when Elijah asks if he wants to trade.
"... it's a chair," he says. "Are you...?"
Fuck. He doesn't want to ask. He knows what Elijah's problem is. That's the danger of paying attention though.
[perc + empathy: i hate myself.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 7) ( success x 1 ) [Doubling Tens]
Elijah
[Willpower: IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CHAIR!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Samir
[REROLL THAT'S BULLSHIT]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]
Elijah
[Manip+sub: I'm fine!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
He needs to find some way where his conscience can justify setting what he presumes to be human beings on fire in their own homes (which he also presumes to be a pretty gruesome and horrible death). What he saw of their foes was this- reprehensible people doing something that is reprehensible. The deed must be done, they can't continue to exist on this mortal plane and let reincarnation sort everything out. This is understandable and reasonable.
Burning to death is a horrible way to die. It's why he'd gone overkill on his particular rote dealing with the human amalgamation they'd dealt with. He didn't want it to suffer, he wanted it to end. Quick, painless, final. The act is done before you even begin to fathom what happened.
This, what Grace and Kalen are going to do (what Samir is assisting in and observing), is not quick. It is not painless. It is not merciful. It is torture- in the best of scenarios they would be smothered to death by the smoke and debris. Their lungs would burn and they would die struggling for air. Drown in smoke.
What he needs is to find something that makes it okay, that lets him come to terms with the fact that good people he knows and cares about are going to torture living beings (reprehensible monsters, he knows), until they are no longer alive.
He doesn't know if sex will make things better. He doesn't want to touch people, as strange as it seems. He wants to sit in a shower and boil until he feels clean. He wants anything that will make him forty thousand miles from here. He wouldn't mind having sex, but he makes no promises that he might not start crying or dissociating.
Sex might be nice. Sitting with a person who gets it might be nice, too.
Barring any of that, he'd settle for heroin and laying in the bathtub.
Samir
For those of you playing along at home: Samir Lakhani is not a bad-looking male specimen. Quite the opposite. He has two eyes and he owns mirrors in which he does not look because he spends an inordinate amount of time in a world where he cannot trust his own perception. But on the occasions he has looked in a mirror he has seen the face the rest of the world sees. He knows he looks good.
So when he stands still despite the distraction of keeping an eye on his friends - their, both of them, he and Elijah are remote while another of Samir's kind shields herself from invasion and Elijah's former mentor walks up to a building filled with slumbering evil things without heartbeats - he also locks his eyes warm and brown onto Elijah's cool blue ones and what he sees in them makes him feel for him.
Samir hates feeling for other people. He feels for the cashiers and the taxi drivers and the homeless he passes every day. He feels and he knows what it is they need in order to make it through the day and if it weren't for his own mental illness he could bleed himself dry to give it to them.
A sigh quiet and calm leaves his lungs. He is beginning to give a shit about Elijah. This is not a burden for him. It could be a distraction but Samir is capable of multitasking. It could be a distraction but Samir could pull anything Elijah needed out of thin air.
So he grabs hold of the wheelie chair and pulls it out of the closet. Knocks his own shittier one out of the way and positions it in front of his computer setup. Starts to type a command onto the keyboard.
"... hang on."
[matter 2: transmutating the really nice wheelie chair into a loveseat or something so elijah can play civ 5 while he does his shit. -1 practiced rote -1 unique focus.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 8) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
[Per+empathy- how close CAN I get to you before this is uncomfortable?
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
And, within a moment, he is done sitting in a chair and then it's a loveseat. A really comfy loveseat, come to think of it. He doesn't quite sink in, being damned near six feet tall. He doesn't often get to fall into couches unless they are particularly magnificent or they're spectacularly shitty. This is not the Taj Mahal of sofas, but it's certainly not comfortable.
Elijah scoots over, eyes flicker back to the screen and he looks a little distant. A little absent, but then there's Civ. His lips upturn.
"Man, why is Suleiman all up in your ass," he reaches forward to take control of Civ. Picks it up like it's not a big deal. He might not be fantastic with computers, but he sure as shit knows how to play video games. This was a nice distraction. Civ was not going to make Elijah start irrationally crying for reasons he believes are entirely natural.
"What're they doing now?"
He really doesn't want to know, but he really does.
Samir
So he drags Elijah and the wheelie chair from the closet to the computer. The wheelie chair morphs from a super awesome wheelie chair into a comfortable loveseat. When Sam sits down next to him he has to grab his wireless keyboard and balance it on his knees. He has one keyboard per monitor. Samir Lakhani is a busy man.
When the Hermetic apprentice asks about Suleiman he slides the appropriate keyboard in front of his guest and settles back on the couch.
"... I, ah... I have two gold mines. And all the coastal tiles on this portion of the map. And he's super fucking pissed."
Tap tap tap. Tap tap. If Elijah looks over at the middle monitor he may not be able to make much sense out of what he's seeing. That doesn't matter. It isn't as if he's a Sleeper.
What're they doing now.
"We're waiting on Kalen." A beat. Shit. He's read too much on Ginger. He knows Kalen and Elijah are close. He stifles a sigh and points at the monitor responsible for Civ. "If you want to start a new game that's cool. You're probably gonna get fucked in about seven turns."
Elijah
"Are you presuming I suck at Civ, or do you have the difficulty jacked all to Hell?" he's in the process of starting up a new game, saves where Samir is right now because it sin't fair to jack up someone's game irreparably and then run away. He has no idea that this game has had the longevity of most people's college boyfriends. This is a pretty long standing game, it looked developed.
His eyes flicker tot he screen, and he stays there for a minute. He isn't paying attention to the game, he's paying attention to the trainwreck and-
nope. Back to Civ. Back to the new game because why the Hell not?
He taps idly on the space bar. Doesn't push it down but he does tap. Doesn't know he's doing it, but probably realizes it's kind of annoying. Tap... tap... tap tap... taptaptap... taptaptaptaptap. Fibonacci numbers, exhales slow and long. This is just a part of awakened life, they're going to do atrocious things. Inhales. Exhales.
Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap.
Samir
They're waiting on Kalen and then Sam says:
"Yes, there are."
Elijah can't hear what precipitated that answer. He asks if he's presuming he sucks at Civ. That is the least of Sam's concerns right now but a razor-quick flick of an almost-grin tugs at the corner of his mouth anyway.
"... yeah, I've got it on fucking Deity Mode. Go ahead."
Elijah has no way of knowing the other young man forgot to turn off his mic before he answered his question or that Kalen and Grace both heard him as he said this. Or that Sam is too distracted by his newfound friend's at-bay nervous breakdown to care.
He isn't paying attention to the game. He may not make anything of it when Sam says into his mic:
"Right behind you, yo."
A few seconds later it becomes apparent that Sam is Working and Elijah is losing himself to a sort of number-based self-soothing with which the reality hacker is beyond intimate. Fibonacci and he go way back. He begins to type on his keyboard and the glow from the middle monitor becomes a bit sharper. Penetrating. It could get into Elijah's skin if that's what he wanted. Sam knows he needs that sort of distraction. Now is a bad time.
"... you okay?" Sam asks as his resonance begins to take over everything else at the desk.
Elijah
He's halfway to twenty oneby the time Samir asks if he's okay. To be fair, he eventually leaves the keyboard alone and turns his attentions toward tapping on the table so it's somehow less obnoxious. Seventeen in and he stops, purses his lips. Wants to lie, it's written across his features and his shoulders and it's on his countenance.
"I'll get there?" he says, "but right now, no. No, I am not okay."
Tap.Tap.Tap.Tap. Twenty one.
Lays his palm flat on the table and stays there and he doesn't lean in, stays still for a long moment which feels wrong on so many levels. He does lean a little against Samir, that sort of guarantee that this is a person and not something he's making up. Elijah runs his hands through his hair, both of them, exhales hard again because he's trying to remember that he needs to breathe.
"... is it fucked up that I want to see what happened? So... like... context?"
Samir
No one can see how Sam stares straight ahead and convinces himself that he can tolerate the pressure and presence of another living breathing filth-beast against his arm. Even after that other living breathing filth-beast rests its head against his shoulder. He stares straight ahead and by this point he has passed the event horizon of what will agitate him to the point where he needs to stand up and clean the ever-loving fuck out of his apartment.
This apartment reeks of bleach and vinegar and verbena. It is not physically possible for the place to get any cleaner without obliterating all organic life within the four walls.
So Elijah is not okay right now and Sam accepts that because half the time he isn't okay either. It's a wonder he's okay right now. He was okay when they started. Some small feat of will. He is okay because he has to be.
Hands go through Elijah's hair and Sam clenches his teeth and inhales deep to let it go again like to remind Elijah hey buddy this is an important part of your metabolic function. He could speak if he had to but he focuses on the middle monitor. On the Code rushing by and morphing reality in the small window in the lower left corner of the monitor.
"No," Sam says. Not fucked up. "Kalen is going to start a fire and Grace and I are making sure it doesn't spread. Look."
Look. Like Elijah can make sense of the Code rushing by.
Elijah
He looks at the corner of the screen, the part that is going to give him some kind of view into what, precisely, is going on. See? They're doing things to make sure this doesn't hurt anyone else, just the people inside of that house. It somehow seems a little less like mass murder when they're trying very actively to just murder a finite number of people and not an abundance of them.
He just kind of awkwardly stays hung out on Samir's shoulder like a tired toddler who doesn't quite want to take a nap just yet. There isn't any shame in feeling the frailties of being human. There's no shame in being afraid, in being appalled (tells himself again that the horror of this all is not separate from the wonder. They are one in the same. In their own rights, there is something to be said sbout the artistry of what is happening here. Beautiful disaster.)
Drowning on land, he thinks. Tells himself. Like drowning on land, drowning's peaceful at the end. He knows this, once you stop fighting and accept it- the sinking is almost pleasant. Maybe it's like that, once the terror of everything passes, it will go easily. Maybe he underestimates Kalen, hopes the place goes up in an absurdly quick inferno, like spontaneous house combustion. Like the people would be ash before they realized what happened to them.
"What language are you coding in?" he asks, like he would know what that meant.
Samir
"... what?"
Like asking what language he's speaking when they're both speaking the same language. That wasn't a question he was expecting or prepared to answer. Not when a good part of his attention is on keeping a budding fire contained within a two-story building where four sentient creatures are currently taking a dirt nap.
And yet Sam has within him a teacher's spirit. He does like other people. Likes them from a distance but distance doesn't mean shit to a Virtual Adept.
"Oh." He gestures to the middle monitor with the hand not attached to the shoulder Elijah is leaning on. "I, ah... I knew a guy, once. He called it Reality Code. It's just... you know how DNA is? Makes a double helix and somehow that makes atoms and atoms make cells and cells make... whatever cells make? Tissue? Yeah. That's reality. And the Reality Code. Super small command chains you can change and make a, ah... an office chair into a sofa. Or whatever." A beat. He actually looks over at Elijah. "Since we hemmed the fire in, both of us, it'll... ah... consume faster. They're asleep, they won't suffer. It's almost over. Look."
Elijah still can't make sense of the Code. Can't even make sense of the cadence of it. He has to take Sam's word.
Elijah
[WP: don't equate creating a sofa to Downs Syndrome]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
He leans forward a little, actually gets himself off of Samir's shoulder in order to actually look at the screen and see what was going on. He looks at the code, peers like he genuinely wants to udnerstand but just can't. There was a time that maybe that was something that he could have factored into his world view but that time has long since passed.
"So it works... like... you're manipulating reality on a cellular level, a couple genes makes a big fuckin' impact," looks back to see if he understood what was going on there.
But, the heart of the matter was actually addressed, and soon enough his eyes go back to the screen, like it's a train wreck. Still looks like he might get sick. Still looks like he doesn't quite know what to do with himself. Still looks about like the bus dropped him off somewhere completely wrong and he has no idea how to get home but knows if he doesn't get home by five thirty his ass is getting beaten.
It's almost over, Samir tells him.
Silence.
"I seriously don't know if I want to blow you or drink a bottle of tequila and let today be yesterday when I come back around."
Samir
A couple genes makes a big fuckin' impact.
The Mercurial Elite nods his head but does not take his eyes off the screen in order to check on his charge. For now Elijah is okay even if he is Not Okay. For now Sam is focused on Kalen and Kalen's escape even if they all know Kalen is going to make it back to his vehicle without drawing attention to himself.
What Elijah overhears as Sam talks into the headset involves firetruck response times and whether or not 'man' is alright. Silence as he listens. Silence as the other two resolve their ends of the bargain and the three dissolve into their own ones again.
He knows it's over when Sam removes the earpiece from his head and sets it down on the desktop. Runs a hand over his own restrained hair and turns to look at Elijah. He heard him when Elijah said he didn't know whether to blow him or consume a bottle of tequila. Whatever he and Grace did drained him quite a bit but not as much as fighting back Quiet drained him. He is lucid when he speaks.
"... do you want me to make a bottle of tequila, or...?"
Elijah
"I'd kinda like to be cool on my liver, but if you're not cool with it, I'll totally just drink. Besides, you did a lot of hardcore, terrifying and upsetting shit, I kinda figure you deserve a blowjob or something."
Samir
The way they're angled on the loveseat Elijah and Sam can look sidelong at each other. Elijah may very well look straight ahead but Sam is aware of the weight of what Elijah says. He had the weight of the kid's former mentor's words in his ear. Weight he ought to have known a Hermetic to be capable of but had not experienced in a long time.
So Elijah indicates the binary of his options and then gives a strong preference for one over the other. It is not the option Sam would have preferred but to be quite honest Sam would have preferred not to have had another sentient being cross his threshold to begin with. They're already way beyond his comfort zone. His comfort zone is in another fucking galaxy.
There's that word 'deserve' again. Sam sighs quick and almost quiet and runs the hand closer to Elijah over his own hair again.
"... do you wanna smoke a joint first, or..."
Elijah
[1-5 good, 6-10 not good]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
Does he want to smoke a joint first? He doesn't really have tot hink about this, he laughs because... well... why not? They could smoke a joint, then could do whatever. He does have a preference, but his eyes drift back to the screen again. Where there had been a fire, where there had been a disaster. He exhales again.
Thinks about taking smoke into his lungs. Thinks about drowning on land.
Gets up and heads to the bathroom. Quickly.
He doesn't so much shut the door as he does pull it tight and lean against it. Doesn't even turn the light on, just retreats and retreats quickly because he needs to be somewhere that isn't here. Needs to think about something that isn't dying or whatever happened. He doesn't know they weren't people. Doesn't know what they were dealing with, doesn't know huge chunks of the details there, but that was all something that he presumed he could fill in if he wanted.
And right now, he wants to throw up, so he's knelt over the toilet in the dark. Just waits there.
Samir
Were not for the fact that Sam knows what it is to feel crazy on an ordinary day he might have looked up sharp from his monitors and followed Elijah to the bathroom. He knows what it is to feel like that and he knows what it is to lose control over his body when control is all he feels he has to hold onto. Before they went out in search of the fiends responsible for the monster in the park he had cracked a quip about vomiting. Sam is used to feeling crazy.
Watching others struggle with their own sanity isn't anything he's used to. He was the crazy one in his previous cabal. He was the one who would bolt out of a room without apparent provocation. The others all had their own flaws sure and they had their own mental cracks. Elijah has his own too.
Sam can respect that.
So the kid goes from talking blowjobs and tequila to leaping up and shutting himself in the bathroom. So Sam gives him until the slamming of the door to turn and watch the the door. To listen and make sure Elijah isn't in there retching or trying to hang himself with the shower curtain.
Elijah has about sixty seconds before Sam feels concern enough to get up and knock on the door. Sixty seconds is more than most people would give him.
The reality hacker exits out of the new game he started and pulls up the old one. Fuck Suleiman.
Elijah
There's a sort of catharsis that you have when you are doubled over a toilet breathing some sort of chlorinated air. There is a feeling where you sense the cold ceramic close to your skin but not quite and the tingle in your arms when you're leaning too hard on them and he's counting through his head item after item after item. Trying to think of some distraction, trying to think of something that will put this in perspective because he doesn't want to run off and dive into a goddamn bottle or do any number of things-
But he needs a break. He needs a push. Even Sherlock-fucking-Holmes had his vices and they sure as shit weren't all violins and fireside chats.
Breathes in again and the air is cold. Exhales and can feel the ripples on the water- thinks and wonders if it's Emmanuel or Raphael. Confuses fire and water, and knows which scares him more. No longer thinking of drowning when he stands up, turns on the water in the sink that's damned near too hot to put his hands in it, but he splashes his face anyway.
There's a knock on the door- "I'll be out in a figurative minute."
Washes his face. Washes his hands. Steals some of Samir's mouthwash and washes the taste of whatever the fuck out of his mouth. He comes back out and he's decidedly less panicked.
"Let's get stoned. And if it's weird, you can totally call me Renee."
Samir
Within a matter of seconds Sam's expression goes from confused to concerned to committed to not asking. If it's weird he can call the kid Renee. Sam does not speak French. He speaks Spanish and Arabic and is starting to get a grasp on Mandarin Chinese. He isn't a slouch. He just relies on his current location to dictate his linguistic needs.
One day he will be able to execute a program that will allow him to understand everything regardless of tongue. Today is not that day.
Today is however a day that he happens to have a joint rolled and stored in the top drawer of his desk. He doesn't have to conjure up the paper or the stash. He levels his gaze at his guest. No seduction or suggestion in it. Sex is not an escape for Sam. He is an attractive man and he is nice to Elijah and he is interested in what he has to say. Likes sitting and talking to him. Recognizes that he needs time and space to get his shit together. That his shit is not together right now.
So he removes the joint and a lighter from the drawer and stands to drag the loveseat back three paces from the computer desks. Give them some space. No point opening a window to air the place out when he can make the smoke and the smell disappear with a few keystrokes.
"I'm not gonna call you Renee," Sam says.
Elijah
"Cool," he says, plops down on the couch but doesn't actually invade Samir's space for some strange reason - strange because he had just espoused an interest in going down on the dude but not in getting into his space because... well, because. He rode a fine line between needing the comfort of another human being who knew what the fuck was going on and needing nobody to ever touch him ever again and to keep their goddamned hands to themselves.
Except, of course, he realizes that Samir is about to move the couch and the time mage has impeccably horrible timing and he rolls off and gets to his feet. Lets Sam do the moving because he is still getting his bearings from rolling off the couch.
"My middle name's Renee, by the way, it was supposed to be René, but my mom was doped all to Hell and the nurse didn't speak French," Elijah clarifies.
Samir
Elijah is not smooth. His rolling has Sam stopping what he's doing to ensure the other man isn't going to break his nose on the beat-to-shit hardwood floor. They settle after a moment. Moving the couch doesn't take much effort. Sam isn't going to sit down until his guest does.
"That's alright." This to the matter of Elijah's middle name. "My grandparents are from Gujarat. My middle name would've been my father's name, but my mother doesn't know who my father is, so... I don't have one."
He holds out the joint and the lighter. Guest gets first toke.
Elijah
[Gujarat? int+academics]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
Truth be told, Elijah has no idea that his father is not his father. He has no idea that his mother had an affair with some slender blond thing that worked on a construction site and came home when her husband wouldn't. He had no idea about it, because it hadn't mattered to Charles Poirot. It didn't matter to him that his wife had cheated and strayed, Elijah was his son because fatherhood wasn't the same as being a sperm donor.
Elijah takes a seat on the couch, though, doesn't put his feet on it because it would be rude. Samir conjured a couch out of thin air for him. He would much rather be respectful of his space and just hang out. Takes the joint between his fingers, takes a long, steady hit and holds it like he's done this before- probably within the week, all things said. He's a young, attractive, cisgendered white male who came from an upper middle class family. He's set to do any number of things to press against the seams lest he have to think too hard about the privilege he's oblivious to.
And let's not mince words, he's privileged. Even in awakened society, he's privileged. Not everyone has someone to sit up with them when the more well-versed mages in town commit atrocities and you need a break to process.
Hands the joint over. Starts to think that, maybe, he doesn't want to have sex. Maybe he just wants to talk, feels pretty damn lucky for a second. Then two. Then three and five eightthirteentwentyonethirtyfour.
"Where's Gujarat? North or west part of India?"
Samir
As it happens Elijah is in the company of a person who can tell what other people need even if those needs don't coincide with needs he himself could claim to have or harbor. Their kind gravitate towards egocentric and antisocial tendencies but they are both young and they have not yet convinced themselves of their own godlike potential.
One of them is revered by the online community. He could have called up any number of faceless nameless persons to help him in his quest tonight but his quest tonight was not one he undertook on his own. Sam was not the only person who suffered an injustice in the park that night. When Elijah said he wanted adventure the reality hacker sighed and called him out on his bullshit but he did not tell him to go it on his own.
Grace and Kalen are eating udon and contemplating the weight of interring undead creatures to ash when they know at least one of their kind to be Not That Bad.
The word 'vampire' is not in Sam's vocabulary as anything other than a mythology to which some of his kind make reference. It may be a euphemism. So far as he can tell he and Grace helped Kalen torch some Fallen tonight. Doesn't make it easier to stomach. He sat up all night and watched them torture and kill several young people.
"It's, ah..." Sam drags hard on the joint the way smokers drag on cigarettes. It shuts down the part of his brain that won't shut up. He holds the smoke heavy and hot in his lungs and lets it out slow so he won't cough. Hands it back and finishes his thought once the burning in his bronchioles dissipates: "West. West India. Shares a border with Pakistan. They moved to Vancouver when my mom was a baby."
Elijah
"I've never been to Vancouver. I've been to Quebec, though- my mom's from there... are you from Canada or was there another big countrywide shift in the cards for you guys?"
Takes the joint back if it's passed, will take another hit until they are out. He's engaged, and there's something to be said about Elijah- he liked people. He really did like people, liked what they were capable of. Liked the things that made them who they were. Liked their drie and wants and needs and the little idiocyncratic pieces of bullshit that made human beings fantastic because they were.
He adjusts on the couch, takes a second to look at the other young man. The one who also did not think of himself as some godchild. No, they were just people. Two dudes sitting on a couch smokingpot.
Elijah adjusts.
"Dude, your couch is pokey as shit."
Which will be something he revisits as they get progressively more and more stoned. They'll talk, maybe Elijah will tell him stories or spout off poetry or ask him more about the code of Reality, even though he doesn't quite understand what it means because it's important to try and understand people. There's rules, there's protocols. There's shit you have to do when you're coding, that much he knew.
He might talk about poems, might tell Samir ghost stories that don't actually have scary points, they're just literal ghost stories. He's met and heard a lot of ghosts, some of them were interesting people. Probably keeps from talking about the dead, though. Probably just talks books or something and the marvels of how Samir can fucking will furniture into existence.
A terrible, terrible thought
Samir
And so they three go off into the early evening to investigate a football field.
Sam is not so much with riding in other people's cars. If the others are getting the impression he thinks of the outside world as a breeding ground for germs and disease and potential Quiet episodes then that just means they've had enough exposure to him to know how fucked up he gets when he fucks things up. But they have to go together and it's too far to walk so when he returns from the bathroom with the blood washed off his face and his big boy pants on they head off in Grace's car.
This time of year the football field is in use. Luck is on their side. There is no game tonight and if there is it's at another school. Only one light shines on the field. Its bulb is flickering.
The parking lot butts up against a chainlink fence that butts up against bleachers that stands over packed dirt and dirty cigarette filters and discarded cans of Natty Light. Crickets drone in the darkness. They three are alone.
"Fuck," Sam says as he reaches down and hauls his book bag onto his lap.
Grace
First things first, Grace has on her anti-bite jacket, zipped up to the neck. It might not stop anything from biting her face, but it's better than nothing. And jeans (honestly, does she wear anything else?)
She also has her phone out, to bend space and create a firewall from it, so that nobody can spy on them from afar.
Well, at least, that's the plan.
[Corr 2: Ward. -1 diff from taking time]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
And so, Samir knows the terrible not-so-not-obvious truth. Elijah was delighted at the prospect of actually getting to work. Grant you, last time that he saw something absolutely horrible he almost threw up, and pretty much presumed that he was going to throw up behind the bleachers of the stadium again, not unlike he was still in high school drinking Natty Lite and smoking pot. You start with the little stuff, moved on to the harder things pretty quick but the light stuff was fun. The light stuff had some pretty fond memories, namely because he could remember them. There were gaps, he minded them less now.
The light over the field is flickering and Elijah gets on out of the car, checks his pocketwatch like he didn't need it for something other than magical purposes. He could pretty well guess what time it was, didn't need to reach forward into things without a mention of how a watch that couldn't keep time was suddenly so perfect at noting things down to the second.
Circles upon circles. Spirals within a point that he didn't much care for, implied an end so he's tracing a circle along the face, over the crack in the glass where it broke on impact in a car accident. Just a crack, there's blood in the front of it, and he hasn't bothered to clean it off. Kinda likes it that way, but won't admit to it. Just says it's hard to get out.
"See, when you're, like, sixteen this isn't creepy," he said as he made his way to the fence. Kinda wants to jump the fence, but he knows it isn't strictly necessary. Suspects it might be but he's meandering that way anyway.
Samir
Sam frowns at the logic Elijah attempts to leave them with and scrambles out of the car to keep up with him. At once he fumbles the left strap of his book bag over his shoulder and hip-checks the door shut. If Grace hasn't got a wide area of effect going on her ward she may want to rethink her conservative strategy.
"No shit?" he asks sarcasm dripping thick as blood from his tone as he hurries after Elijah. Like he may have to haul him back from walking up to some unseen four-armed monstrosity and giving it a hug or whatever the fuck he was going to do the night Reality and Samir had their last tiff.
While Elijah is standing still for the five seconds he's liable to keep doing that Sam pulls out his handheld computer and taps a couple of buttons.
[corr/matter/mind scan: NO ONE IS SPYING ON US RIGHT? -1 diff for practiced rote.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 6) ( success x 2 )
Grace
[Extending!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Grace
"Okay. I think we're good," Grace says, finally opens her door and steps out.
"Yeah, I think this is pretty nightmarish even without the nightmare things wandering around."
She heaves a sigh and walks up to the fence with Elijah. "Got wards up."
Elijah
[Doin' magic. Doobeedoo- looking at the past. Time 2. Diff 5- 1 (practiced) -1 (special focus [mothafuckin' pocketwatch])
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Elijah
[and more?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 9) ( success x 1 )
Samir
No one else can see what Elijah sees. It does not play itself out in the face of its bloodied bruised watch. Nothing outwardly weird happens. As Grace climbs out of the car and Sam comes to stand beside him the sound of slamming doors and heaved sighs and unzipping book bag zippers all fall away.
The night the two teenaged girls became one they came not because of the beyond-beautiful man but because of the tall bruiser who came with him. It was the bruiser who tied the two threads together. Who acted as a gateway. Before they met the otherworldly creature they met the bruiser.
As time rewinds Elijah can see the girls walking through the parking lot one of them firing off a text on her phone while the other cups her hands and calls out a greeting that causes a girl who shares her honey-blond hair and heart-shaped face to stop her practicing and rush to the bleachers to greet them. Can spot him at the edges of the field watching not the cheerleaders practicing but the parking lot. Waiting for the two to arrive. His arriving some time before that. Expectant. They meant to meet here.
Before he came here he stepped out of a vehicle parked some distance away at the edges of the parking lot. Elijah can identify the make and model of the car and read the license plate number. The bruiser drove the car unaccompanied. Hard to tell from whence he came but if he's known to the bruiser it won't take much to find him. Not with two Mercurial Elites at his side.
Elijah
[Int3+technology2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
"Jesus, guys, what was high school like for you?" he asks, the relatively liked blond stoner who (for his part) managed to not get caught doing drugs on campus or having sex on campus or any number of things on campus that he actually did because schools didn't really care so long as he wasn't dealing and besides, nobody cared that Megan was dealing.
We digress.
He's holding his watch, making a slow and purposeful walk towards the fence. He looks over his watch, has his thumb pinned to a point, stuck over the fifty three minute mark. He moved back just a tad. He stops walking, focuses his gaze on the face, cocks his head to the side before looking in the distance at the fence. Pins a place while his eyes flick to the face of the watch again.
Fifty one.
Looks back to the parking lot, then down at the watch.
"Q-U-E ... two fourteen. Green old sixty-something mustang. Door's got a rust stain on it, can't see the interior... Someone backed into it once and the paint's fucked on the passenger side, but they have motherfucking steel frames so who gives a shit who runs into it," he says. His voice isn't idle. Comes back to reality with his finger on the mark forty-seven.
"It looks, to me, like your regular joe guy knew our victims. The whole older guy in a car that could be cool when you're young and dumb kinda thing. "
Samir
While Elijah is looking through time to see what brought the two girls here Sam is unzipping his backpack to remove his laptop and balance it on the chainlink fence's top pole. He is not the most dextrous creature in the world so it is a precarious sort of balancing.
He comes back to the present and brings with him identifying information about a motor vehicle. The older kid's eyebrows fly up. This was more useful than anything he was expecting to come out of the Hermetic apprentice's glance back. Not that he doubts the apprentice! Elijah kept him from getting eaten by the girls after someone turned them into a sarlacc-mouthed monstrosity! But it is physical information that they can track.
Green old sixty-something Mustang. QUE214.
"Right on," Sam says before he starts typing.
[int + computers: LOL SAM DOESN'T KNOW ALEX IS A COP.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens] [WP]
Grace
"Ahh, cool. I'll see if Alex can look up that plate. He's got like, cop privileges. Should be pretty simple," Grace says. Perhaps it cuts Sam's hacking attempts short, perhaps not.
In any case, she's got her phone out and letting Ginger know.
Elijah
"I'm totally useful," he said, meandered back to the car and slipped his pocketwatch into his pocket. "How am I doing with the whole Hermetic Hubris thing, Grace? I'm totally terrible at being full of myself."
Samir
His eyebrows go up again when he hears Alex is a cop. He might have picked up on that from trawling through old Ginger posts but it isn't until Grace says his name aloud that he actually remembers meeting the guy.
Oh shit, his eyes say.
Kind of want to see if I can actually hack the DMV, his fingers say.
So Elijah meanders back to the car. Sam stays at the fence a moment.
[YOLO. 3 dice in this pool bc of the initial hack thing.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Grace is typing away at her phone while Elijah is talking to her. She barely hears him, but looks up with a bit of conusion as she puts what he said together.
"Hubris? Oh yeah," she says, gives Elijah a thumbs up. "Totally nailing the awesome cosmic power pride."
Elijah
They just keep going.
He looks at them. Sitting there, looking at the two Mercurial Elite typing away and doing whatever it was that they were doing and... huh. They were still typing. Elijah cocked his head to the side, watching people type was.. uh...
"Oh my god..." he says, after about seventeen minutes.
During that time, Elijah paced a good circuit around the car, back to the fence, and then to the place where he could almost see grass. Elijah then laid down and stared up at the sky. Pats himself down to look for a pack of cigarettes.
"I'm gonna go stare at the otherworldly beyond," he finally finds a cigarette... but no lighter.
"... does the lighter in the car work?"
Samir
"... you can use my lighter."
He says this without looking up from whatever the fuck it is that he's doing with his laptop balancing on the fence. If Elijah comes closer to accept the gift of the shitty Bic lighter then Sam keeps typing with his left hand and uses his right to reach into his pocket and extract the thing.
If Elijah glances at the screen he won't be able to decipher the mess of windows the reality hacker has going on his screen. That's probably for the best.
Grace
Grace's spiel on Ginger doesn't take long to write. It'll take longer to work though, and she slips her phone in her pocket and looks over at Samir.
Blinks a few times.
"Dude. There is a car you know. I can keep people from spying on us, but not if they walk by."
She then looks a bit harder. The DMV eh? Samir looks pretty into it, so she doesn't chide him about the fact that she's already on that. Sometimes, you just want to see if you can do a thing...
She can definitely decypher the mess of windows hes got on his screen. She prefers different tools, yeah. But now's not the time for a holy war. Instead, she just watches him work, occasionally coming out with a "Holy shit, look at that" or "Craaap, they have the 4.9 version, patched that gaping vulnerability..."
Does Samir like the fact that he has a back-seat-hacker? Heh.
Elijah
[Staring at the universe, doobeedoo- Spirit 1]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 5) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
[No, seriously, unbridled cosmos.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 3) ( fail )
Elijah
[Motherfucker]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
So, he accepts the lighter. Lights up, takes a drag and gives the lighter back before going back to where the grass meets the pavement and he takes a long, purposeful drag. He takes a drag and he waits for the world to come around and become something fascinating but, it is really just a ball of frustration.
It takes half the damn cigarette until he finally feels the world coming apart. Coming between. He thinks about orders and hierarchies. He thinks about the mirror of how things work. Mostly, he lays back with his legs outstretched and stares at the stars.
"I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts..."
Shooting star, across his periphery between the worlds. He grins.
Samir
And that's how Elijah almost lost two of his friends on the Internet.
Were not for the fact that Grace has so thoroughly distracted Sam from the outside world that when he tries to pass back the lighter the reality hacker already has that wrist back to its place stabilizing the bottom-heavy laptop on the fence and is more aware of her presence at his left side because she is commenting on the same thing that has his attention already.
Behind them the world feels slightly like adventurous tumult but they aren't aware of it until one of their phones chimes with a notification and drags them back to the physical world. Right. Two grown people hanging around a football field fence while another lies in the grass and contemplates his place in the universe. Sam would have Internet access in Siberia. No reason to remain rooted in place for two fucking hours.
He taps a few more keys just to make sure the file he's looking for is actually uprooting itself and he mumbles something like acquiescence and then he's carrying the laptop towards the car cradled in the crook of his elbow. Grace is responsible for Elijah. She's meaner than Sam is.
Elijah
[Int+streetwise, diff 10. Do I know this chick?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN10 (1, 2, 6, 9, 9) ( botch x 1 )
Grace
Grace is responsible for Elijah. She walks up to his form lying on the grass, an imposing figure in the stuttering light.
"Hey. We're getting out of here."
Then, she turns and heads off to the car. It's almost as if -- he can come, or not. His choice. But they are leaving.
Elijah
He was laying on the grass. He had passed out after a good total of... uh... twelve minutes. He opens his eyes and the world floods back and there is GRace- a feeling of winged, keen-edged sharpness thanks to Samir being Samir, and he inhales sharply. Leans over to see if something is poking him in the ribs.
It's not his ribs, that's magic.
He grudgingly stands up.
"Hey, yay, we didn't need to get a posse today, win!"
And so they three go off into the early evening to investigate a football field.
Sam is not so much with riding in other people's cars. If the others are getting the impression he thinks of the outside world as a breeding ground for germs and disease and potential Quiet episodes then that just means they've had enough exposure to him to know how fucked up he gets when he fucks things up. But they have to go together and it's too far to walk so when he returns from the bathroom with the blood washed off his face and his big boy pants on they head off in Grace's car.
This time of year the football field is in use. Luck is on their side. There is no game tonight and if there is it's at another school. Only one light shines on the field. Its bulb is flickering.
The parking lot butts up against a chainlink fence that butts up against bleachers that stands over packed dirt and dirty cigarette filters and discarded cans of Natty Light. Crickets drone in the darkness. They three are alone.
"Fuck," Sam says as he reaches down and hauls his book bag onto his lap.
Grace
First things first, Grace has on her anti-bite jacket, zipped up to the neck. It might not stop anything from biting her face, but it's better than nothing. And jeans (honestly, does she wear anything else?)
She also has her phone out, to bend space and create a firewall from it, so that nobody can spy on them from afar.
Well, at least, that's the plan.
[Corr 2: Ward. -1 diff from taking time]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (4, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Elijah
And so, Samir knows the terrible not-so-not-obvious truth. Elijah was delighted at the prospect of actually getting to work. Grant you, last time that he saw something absolutely horrible he almost threw up, and pretty much presumed that he was going to throw up behind the bleachers of the stadium again, not unlike he was still in high school drinking Natty Lite and smoking pot. You start with the little stuff, moved on to the harder things pretty quick but the light stuff was fun. The light stuff had some pretty fond memories, namely because he could remember them. There were gaps, he minded them less now.
The light over the field is flickering and Elijah gets on out of the car, checks his pocketwatch like he didn't need it for something other than magical purposes. He could pretty well guess what time it was, didn't need to reach forward into things without a mention of how a watch that couldn't keep time was suddenly so perfect at noting things down to the second.
Circles upon circles. Spirals within a point that he didn't much care for, implied an end so he's tracing a circle along the face, over the crack in the glass where it broke on impact in a car accident. Just a crack, there's blood in the front of it, and he hasn't bothered to clean it off. Kinda likes it that way, but won't admit to it. Just says it's hard to get out.
"See, when you're, like, sixteen this isn't creepy," he said as he made his way to the fence. Kinda wants to jump the fence, but he knows it isn't strictly necessary. Suspects it might be but he's meandering that way anyway.
Samir
Sam frowns at the logic Elijah attempts to leave them with and scrambles out of the car to keep up with him. At once he fumbles the left strap of his book bag over his shoulder and hip-checks the door shut. If Grace hasn't got a wide area of effect going on her ward she may want to rethink her conservative strategy.
"No shit?" he asks sarcasm dripping thick as blood from his tone as he hurries after Elijah. Like he may have to haul him back from walking up to some unseen four-armed monstrosity and giving it a hug or whatever the fuck he was going to do the night Reality and Samir had their last tiff.
While Elijah is standing still for the five seconds he's liable to keep doing that Sam pulls out his handheld computer and taps a couple of buttons.
[corr/matter/mind scan: NO ONE IS SPYING ON US RIGHT? -1 diff for practiced rote.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 6) ( success x 2 )
Grace
[Extending!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Grace
"Okay. I think we're good," Grace says, finally opens her door and steps out.
"Yeah, I think this is pretty nightmarish even without the nightmare things wandering around."
She heaves a sigh and walks up to the fence with Elijah. "Got wards up."
Elijah
[Doin' magic. Doobeedoo- looking at the past. Time 2. Diff 5- 1 (practiced) -1 (special focus [mothafuckin' pocketwatch])
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Elijah
[and more?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 9) ( success x 1 )
Samir
No one else can see what Elijah sees. It does not play itself out in the face of its bloodied bruised watch. Nothing outwardly weird happens. As Grace climbs out of the car and Sam comes to stand beside him the sound of slamming doors and heaved sighs and unzipping book bag zippers all fall away.
The night the two teenaged girls became one they came not because of the beyond-beautiful man but because of the tall bruiser who came with him. It was the bruiser who tied the two threads together. Who acted as a gateway. Before they met the otherworldly creature they met the bruiser.
As time rewinds Elijah can see the girls walking through the parking lot one of them firing off a text on her phone while the other cups her hands and calls out a greeting that causes a girl who shares her honey-blond hair and heart-shaped face to stop her practicing and rush to the bleachers to greet them. Can spot him at the edges of the field watching not the cheerleaders practicing but the parking lot. Waiting for the two to arrive. His arriving some time before that. Expectant. They meant to meet here.
Before he came here he stepped out of a vehicle parked some distance away at the edges of the parking lot. Elijah can identify the make and model of the car and read the license plate number. The bruiser drove the car unaccompanied. Hard to tell from whence he came but if he's known to the bruiser it won't take much to find him. Not with two Mercurial Elites at his side.
Elijah
[Int3+technology2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
"Jesus, guys, what was high school like for you?" he asks, the relatively liked blond stoner who (for his part) managed to not get caught doing drugs on campus or having sex on campus or any number of things on campus that he actually did because schools didn't really care so long as he wasn't dealing and besides, nobody cared that Megan was dealing.
We digress.
He's holding his watch, making a slow and purposeful walk towards the fence. He looks over his watch, has his thumb pinned to a point, stuck over the fifty three minute mark. He moved back just a tad. He stops walking, focuses his gaze on the face, cocks his head to the side before looking in the distance at the fence. Pins a place while his eyes flick to the face of the watch again.
Fifty one.
Looks back to the parking lot, then down at the watch.
"Q-U-E ... two fourteen. Green old sixty-something mustang. Door's got a rust stain on it, can't see the interior... Someone backed into it once and the paint's fucked on the passenger side, but they have motherfucking steel frames so who gives a shit who runs into it," he says. His voice isn't idle. Comes back to reality with his finger on the mark forty-seven.
"It looks, to me, like your regular joe guy knew our victims. The whole older guy in a car that could be cool when you're young and dumb kinda thing. "
Samir
While Elijah is looking through time to see what brought the two girls here Sam is unzipping his backpack to remove his laptop and balance it on the chainlink fence's top pole. He is not the most dextrous creature in the world so it is a precarious sort of balancing.
He comes back to the present and brings with him identifying information about a motor vehicle. The older kid's eyebrows fly up. This was more useful than anything he was expecting to come out of the Hermetic apprentice's glance back. Not that he doubts the apprentice! Elijah kept him from getting eaten by the girls after someone turned them into a sarlacc-mouthed monstrosity! But it is physical information that they can track.
Green old sixty-something Mustang. QUE214.
"Right on," Sam says before he starts typing.
[int + computers: LOL SAM DOESN'T KNOW ALEX IS A COP.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens] [WP]
Grace
"Ahh, cool. I'll see if Alex can look up that plate. He's got like, cop privileges. Should be pretty simple," Grace says. Perhaps it cuts Sam's hacking attempts short, perhaps not.
In any case, she's got her phone out and letting Ginger know.
Elijah
"I'm totally useful," he said, meandered back to the car and slipped his pocketwatch into his pocket. "How am I doing with the whole Hermetic Hubris thing, Grace? I'm totally terrible at being full of myself."
Samir
His eyebrows go up again when he hears Alex is a cop. He might have picked up on that from trawling through old Ginger posts but it isn't until Grace says his name aloud that he actually remembers meeting the guy.
Oh shit, his eyes say.
Kind of want to see if I can actually hack the DMV, his fingers say.
So Elijah meanders back to the car. Sam stays at the fence a moment.
[YOLO. 3 dice in this pool bc of the initial hack thing.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Grace is typing away at her phone while Elijah is talking to her. She barely hears him, but looks up with a bit of conusion as she puts what he said together.
"Hubris? Oh yeah," she says, gives Elijah a thumbs up. "Totally nailing the awesome cosmic power pride."
Elijah
They just keep going.
He looks at them. Sitting there, looking at the two Mercurial Elite typing away and doing whatever it was that they were doing and... huh. They were still typing. Elijah cocked his head to the side, watching people type was.. uh...
"Oh my god..." he says, after about seventeen minutes.
During that time, Elijah paced a good circuit around the car, back to the fence, and then to the place where he could almost see grass. Elijah then laid down and stared up at the sky. Pats himself down to look for a pack of cigarettes.
"I'm gonna go stare at the otherworldly beyond," he finally finds a cigarette... but no lighter.
"... does the lighter in the car work?"
Samir
"... you can use my lighter."
He says this without looking up from whatever the fuck it is that he's doing with his laptop balancing on the fence. If Elijah comes closer to accept the gift of the shitty Bic lighter then Sam keeps typing with his left hand and uses his right to reach into his pocket and extract the thing.
If Elijah glances at the screen he won't be able to decipher the mess of windows the reality hacker has going on his screen. That's probably for the best.
Grace
Grace's spiel on Ginger doesn't take long to write. It'll take longer to work though, and she slips her phone in her pocket and looks over at Samir.
Blinks a few times.
"Dude. There is a car you know. I can keep people from spying on us, but not if they walk by."
She then looks a bit harder. The DMV eh? Samir looks pretty into it, so she doesn't chide him about the fact that she's already on that. Sometimes, you just want to see if you can do a thing...
She can definitely decypher the mess of windows hes got on his screen. She prefers different tools, yeah. But now's not the time for a holy war. Instead, she just watches him work, occasionally coming out with a "Holy shit, look at that" or "Craaap, they have the 4.9 version, patched that gaping vulnerability..."
Does Samir like the fact that he has a back-seat-hacker? Heh.
Elijah
[Staring at the universe, doobeedoo- Spirit 1]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 5) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
[No, seriously, unbridled cosmos.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 3) ( fail )
Elijah
[Motherfucker]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
So, he accepts the lighter. Lights up, takes a drag and gives the lighter back before going back to where the grass meets the pavement and he takes a long, purposeful drag. He takes a drag and he waits for the world to come around and become something fascinating but, it is really just a ball of frustration.
It takes half the damn cigarette until he finally feels the world coming apart. Coming between. He thinks about orders and hierarchies. He thinks about the mirror of how things work. Mostly, he lays back with his legs outstretched and stares at the stars.
"I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts..."
Shooting star, across his periphery between the worlds. He grins.
Samir
And that's how Elijah almost lost two of his friends on the Internet.
Were not for the fact that Grace has so thoroughly distracted Sam from the outside world that when he tries to pass back the lighter the reality hacker already has that wrist back to its place stabilizing the bottom-heavy laptop on the fence and is more aware of her presence at his left side because she is commenting on the same thing that has his attention already.
Behind them the world feels slightly like adventurous tumult but they aren't aware of it until one of their phones chimes with a notification and drags them back to the physical world. Right. Two grown people hanging around a football field fence while another lies in the grass and contemplates his place in the universe. Sam would have Internet access in Siberia. No reason to remain rooted in place for two fucking hours.
He taps a few more keys just to make sure the file he's looking for is actually uprooting itself and he mumbles something like acquiescence and then he's carrying the laptop towards the car cradled in the crook of his elbow. Grace is responsible for Elijah. She's meaner than Sam is.
Elijah
[Int+streetwise, diff 10. Do I know this chick?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN10 (1, 2, 6, 9, 9) ( botch x 1 )
Grace
Grace is responsible for Elijah. She walks up to his form lying on the grass, an imposing figure in the stuttering light.
"Hey. We're getting out of here."
Then, she turns and heads off to the car. It's almost as if -- he can come, or not. His choice. But they are leaving.
Elijah
He was laying on the grass. He had passed out after a good total of... uh... twelve minutes. He opens his eyes and the world floods back and there is GRace- a feeling of winged, keen-edged sharpness thanks to Samir being Samir, and he inhales sharply. Leans over to see if something is poking him in the ribs.
It's not his ribs, that's magic.
He grudgingly stands up.
"Hey, yay, we didn't need to get a posse today, win!"
[Interim]
Elijah and Samir met at the warehouse and discussed what a terrible idea that the investigation was.
Saturday, September 5, 2015
A Terrible Thought
Samir
Somewhere between mid-afternoon and sundown Elijah gets a text message from a number he's never encountered before. The perks of knowing the Mercurial Elite.
Hey Elijah. It's Samir. I never gave you your shit last month. Discuss?
Elijah
He's sitting on his couch right now. There are books on the coffee table and writing on the wall where he, again, spent his time trying to piece through the inner workings of ars whateverthefuck and prime. Forces and prime. HIs brain was not processing Latin, or really english, but then there was a text.
He looked down.
"Oh, shit, right!"
Super lame, Samir. Totes leaving you a bad review, how dare you almost die and forget to give me shit. LOL.
Samir
Three minutes pass before he receives a response.
"0/10, would not buy from again."
And then:
Do you want a refund, or do you want to meet up so I can give you the latest book drop-off in the world, or do you want me to just send it to you? Or some other nebulous fourth option I'm not thinking of?
Elijah
He laughs, looks at his text messages and puts the phone down. Stares at the ceiling before the phone vibrates again. He picks it up, rolls over.
"What're you laughing at?" Jenn called from the back bedroom.
"Dude I met," Elijah replied.
"Are you bringing him home?"
"I don't think so?"
"Lame," Jenn called back, then got back to her painting.
Post sucks in my building, I'm pretty sure my neighbor takes my mail as some part of a weird Helga Pataki-esque shrine to the people who live in my apartment.
I'm down for a late drop. I could buy you beer or vegan beer.
Samir
What the hell is vegan beer?
And then:
Actually let me try something. Are you near a mailbox or a cabinet or something in that general category of container type things?
Elijah
Vegan beer is like regular beer but it costs $3 more
Elijah read the next text message and got up, meandering over to the refrigerator. He opens it, listening the the little gasp of its frosty depths being invaded by warm air. He shuts it.
I have a fridge with nothing in it. That work?
Samir
Yeah that works. Hold please.
--
first roll:
[corr 2/mind 1: WHERE YOU AT SON. base diff 5, -1 for practiced rote, -1 unique focus.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Samir
[LATE SPHERE ADDITION: needs matter to find the fridge. pretend dorn added matter.]
Samir
second roll:
[corr/matter 2: APPORTATE BITCHES. i'm being a twink and counting this as coincidental bc he's casting from his sanctum even tho idk if it would be considered coincidental on elijah's end or not. base diff 5, -1 for taking his time, -1 for quint.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (5, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Samir
A few minutes pass. Then Elijah receives another text message.
Okay open your fridge.
When he does Elijah finds amidst the nothing a small spray bottle of Mrs. Meyer's lemon verbena Clean Day spray with a note taped onto it:
Did it work?
Elijah
[Singy singy]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
"The hardest button to buttooooooon," he half sings. He's not trying, it doesn't sound terribly good, but then again neither do the White Stripes.
"Staaaaaaaaap," Jenn yells from her room.
"The hardest button to buttoooon WHOA-OHHH!"
"IsweartogodIwillendyou!"
Which made Elijah erupt into laughter. Maybe the closest he gets to maniacal. The phone vibrates again, and he opens the fridge. Looks at the bottle and takes it out. Elijah cocks his head to the side and checks to see how much is left in the bottle. It goes under the kitchen counter.
Could you have tried a hot pocket or something? Lemon verbena is the shit, though. Hard choice.
Samir
Hot Pockets are triggering for me, okay?
A beat.
Doing it for real this time. Don't go anywhere.
--
[DOING IT AGAIN but no quint this time. i swear to god if you botch this...]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Samir
After a few more minutes he receives another text:
Check your shit, yo.
This time when he opens the refrigerator Elijah finds a small orange vial with a black A Sharpied onto the white lid and another small orange vial with a black E Sharpied onto the lid. And another note:
Sorry I bled on your shirt. Don't worry about the beer.
Elijah
Never forget. #HotPocketHell
He leans against the fridge, expects to feel something different but, really, he can't distinguish Samir's resonance from the standard feeling of a refrigerator, or perhaps he wasn't supposed to feel it at all.
Vibrate. Check. Open door.
"Oooh," he says, pleasantly surprised and it was off to stick his newly found goods in hispantry next to the pill bottles for all of the medication he was supposed to be taking but didn't because his diagnosis seemed to have changed. Even if you can break reality to your whims, saying that you hear a voice that continually tells you that you're going to die so live is probably still going to make you sound delusional.
Shit happens, I've been going through a lot of shirts recently. Hella lame.
Samir
There's an app for that.
Ah, reality hacker humor. He probably does have a rote for that.
That's the last Elijah hears from his buddy this afternoon.
Somewhere between mid-afternoon and sundown Elijah gets a text message from a number he's never encountered before. The perks of knowing the Mercurial Elite.
Hey Elijah. It's Samir. I never gave you your shit last month. Discuss?
Elijah
He's sitting on his couch right now. There are books on the coffee table and writing on the wall where he, again, spent his time trying to piece through the inner workings of ars whateverthefuck and prime. Forces and prime. HIs brain was not processing Latin, or really english, but then there was a text.
He looked down.
"Oh, shit, right!"
Super lame, Samir. Totes leaving you a bad review, how dare you almost die and forget to give me shit. LOL.
Samir
Three minutes pass before he receives a response.
"0/10, would not buy from again."
And then:
Do you want a refund, or do you want to meet up so I can give you the latest book drop-off in the world, or do you want me to just send it to you? Or some other nebulous fourth option I'm not thinking of?
Elijah
He laughs, looks at his text messages and puts the phone down. Stares at the ceiling before the phone vibrates again. He picks it up, rolls over.
"What're you laughing at?" Jenn called from the back bedroom.
"Dude I met," Elijah replied.
"Are you bringing him home?"
"I don't think so?"
"Lame," Jenn called back, then got back to her painting.
Post sucks in my building, I'm pretty sure my neighbor takes my mail as some part of a weird Helga Pataki-esque shrine to the people who live in my apartment.
I'm down for a late drop. I could buy you beer or vegan beer.
Samir
What the hell is vegan beer?
And then:
Actually let me try something. Are you near a mailbox or a cabinet or something in that general category of container type things?
Elijah
Vegan beer is like regular beer but it costs $3 more
Elijah read the next text message and got up, meandering over to the refrigerator. He opens it, listening the the little gasp of its frosty depths being invaded by warm air. He shuts it.
I have a fridge with nothing in it. That work?
Samir
Yeah that works. Hold please.
--
first roll:
[corr 2/mind 1: WHERE YOU AT SON. base diff 5, -1 for practiced rote, -1 unique focus.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Samir
[LATE SPHERE ADDITION: needs matter to find the fridge. pretend dorn added matter.]
Samir
second roll:
[corr/matter 2: APPORTATE BITCHES. i'm being a twink and counting this as coincidental bc he's casting from his sanctum even tho idk if it would be considered coincidental on elijah's end or not. base diff 5, -1 for taking his time, -1 for quint.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (5, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Samir
A few minutes pass. Then Elijah receives another text message.
Okay open your fridge.
When he does Elijah finds amidst the nothing a small spray bottle of Mrs. Meyer's lemon verbena Clean Day spray with a note taped onto it:
Did it work?
Elijah
[Singy singy]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
"The hardest button to buttooooooon," he half sings. He's not trying, it doesn't sound terribly good, but then again neither do the White Stripes.
"Staaaaaaaaap," Jenn yells from her room.
"The hardest button to buttoooon WHOA-OHHH!"
"IsweartogodIwillendyou!"
Which made Elijah erupt into laughter. Maybe the closest he gets to maniacal. The phone vibrates again, and he opens the fridge. Looks at the bottle and takes it out. Elijah cocks his head to the side and checks to see how much is left in the bottle. It goes under the kitchen counter.
Could you have tried a hot pocket or something? Lemon verbena is the shit, though. Hard choice.
Samir
Hot Pockets are triggering for me, okay?
A beat.
Doing it for real this time. Don't go anywhere.
--
[DOING IT AGAIN but no quint this time. i swear to god if you botch this...]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Samir
After a few more minutes he receives another text:
Check your shit, yo.
This time when he opens the refrigerator Elijah finds a small orange vial with a black A Sharpied onto the white lid and another small orange vial with a black E Sharpied onto the lid. And another note:
Sorry I bled on your shirt. Don't worry about the beer.
Elijah
Never forget. #HotPocketHell
He leans against the fridge, expects to feel something different but, really, he can't distinguish Samir's resonance from the standard feeling of a refrigerator, or perhaps he wasn't supposed to feel it at all.
Vibrate. Check. Open door.
"Oooh," he says, pleasantly surprised and it was off to stick his newly found goods in hispantry next to the pill bottles for all of the medication he was supposed to be taking but didn't because his diagnosis seemed to have changed. Even if you can break reality to your whims, saying that you hear a voice that continually tells you that you're going to die so live is probably still going to make you sound delusional.
Shit happens, I've been going through a lot of shirts recently. Hella lame.
Samir
There's an app for that.
Ah, reality hacker humor. He probably does have a rote for that.
That's the last Elijah hears from his buddy this afternoon.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Orchids with Names
Elijah Poirot
There were calls made- actual phone calls, too, and not text messages. People were invited, plans were made- botanical gardens. Specifically, the ones on York Street, because they had bromeliads and an entire section devoted to the drylands and he wasn't sure when he started actually liking plants, but it was probably around the same time that he figured out that nature wasn't trying to kill him and it could actually be enjoyed.
You couldn't show up to Colorado and not try to ditch a little of your inner city boy. (Or swamp-admirer, because it was hard to enjoy parts of Louisiana without being about knee deep in you-don't-want-to-think-about-it.)
And thus: plans were made- meet me by the bright yellow things that are inside... I don't know what those are... yeah, that sounds about right, I'm googling it... huh, Larry Johnston. Okay, meet by those. And he was there, standing tall and comfortable in a pair of jeans that had seen better days and a shirt with three quarter length sleeves that buttoned halfway down. And a vest, because he needed somewhere to put his pocketwatch. He took the bus here, walked the rest of the way because he figured he'd need the exercise.
"Why the Hell is it called Larry Johnston," he half muttered to himself, scrolling through page after page on his phone to find the reasoning as to whythis particular orchid sounded like it was an investment banker.
Claudia Cole
The truth is, Claudia could use an excuse to get out of Boulder now and then. Not that she really needed one, but Denver was always better explored with a friend. So when Elijah calls, she considers his invitation for a moment before agreeing to meet him. It helps that he suggests the Botanic Garden.
Perhaps he'll be expecting something different when she walks into the Greenhouse Complex. Someone a little more wild. (Someone who reminds him of a wood nymph.) Instead, the girl who walks through the glass doors into the visitor center resembles someone much more cosmopolitan. She's wearing calf-high leather boots (the heels give her small frame a bit of extra height) and a pair of maroon swede shorts with a black cotton halter top. There's a small, very expensive purse hanging over one shoulder.
Claudia pauses inside, scanning the space with an alert gaze until her eyes land on the aforementioned yellow flowers and, by extension, Elijah. He gets a small smile from her as she approaches.
"I approve of your choice of meeting place."
Aidan Smith
[perc + awareness - spec intuition]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Elijah Poirot
It's very Audrey Hepburn, really. Or at least he thinks so, always thought of Audrey Hepburn as cosmopolitain but really should have thought of her not as a style icon but as a woman who did remarkable things with her life. But he isn't thinking of the cultural implications of Audrey Hepburn, he's more taking in the Dryad-turned-fashionista who came along to take in bottled nature.
"It was either here or aquarium, but they don't have mermaids today," almost a bit of lamentation around the edges. Elijah had a particular fondness for mermaids, and one he didn't seem particularly keen on disguising, "but drought resistant gardens and tropical badassery won out today."
He grins, bright and pleased. Thumbs looped through his belt loops.
Aidan Smith
Aidan was not known for his practical clothing choices because...well...he didn't have any idea what was practical. Human sensibilities seemed a little strange to him; why did he think that, he often wondered, but regardless of the why, it was still there. Humans were an odd animal, one that he connected the least with. But plants! Plants he understood.
Trees were timeless. When they spoke, they spoke in long speech, with a sense of time that most humans couldn't understand. Aidan loved them for that. They saw more than he would ever see, remembered times long before, and had a way of talking that was almost mesmerizing. The flowers and plants too spoke differently than humans, though they were less timeless. They didn't live nearly as long, but they had a way of speaking in a softness, in a slowness that lifted and dropped just as the rising and fall of petals might. They were most cheery when the sun was out, and spoke tiredly when it no longer shined.
Aidan didn't mind.
But we've forgotten Aidan's attire. He was not practical. He liked long sleeves and sweaters, and he liked to wear his own. Aidan knitted, and this one he knitted a bit more loosely with a baby blue thread intertwined with the pastel yellow so often found in baby blankets; Aidan didn't understand the concept of babies having colors. Colors were for everyone. His jeans were simple, and a bit tighter than the long sleeve that dangled off his frame, threatening to fall to the floor. A necklace sporting some raven talisman hung from his neck, a homage to a very particular friend, and a particular mentor.
Aidan laughed as he kneed next to some plants, the bright cheery cascading out from him. He was listening to them, the flowers and the bees that whizzed by. He was listening to the bugs that skittered on the ground, preparing for the cold coming their way. He laughed because he heard them all at once, and he found them all beautiful; he could never imagine a quiet world.
Did he come because of summons? Maybe, or maybe he came because the world had a tendency to throw him in the path of others. He was there nonetheless, and he felt them tingle at the edge of the skitters, snifflers, chitters, and whispers. Aidan lifted his head, tuning out the sounds that came in because if he didn't, he'd be unable to focus so well.
Claudia Cole
[Per+Awareness]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
Claudia Cole
"Nothing to do with being afraid of water?" The subtle curl of Claudia's smile speaks of shared secrets. Secrets she ought not to know, really, but... one never knows what they'll find when reading someone's fate. There have been times when she's seen far worse things.
She steps toward the orchids and reaches out as though to run the tips of her fingers over the bright yellow flowers, but her hand stops just centimeters away, hovering in the air. She feels instead the energy coming from them. The delicate heat and humidity in the greenhouse air. For a moment she closes her eyes - breathes the place in.
"There's someone else here," she says, without turning to look in the direction of Aidan's resonance. "Perhaps we should buy our tickets and go find them."
Elijah invited her there, so perhaps he intends to pay, but if so he'll find himself beaten to the punch when she steps up to the welcome counter and opens her purse. "Two, please." She smiles at the old woman behind the desk, who offers a pleasant greeting in reply. It isn't long before Claudia is making her way toward the entrance to the Rock Alpine Garden. When she pushes the door aside, she and Elijah are hit with a gust of warm air from the summer evening.
And there is Aidan, kneeling down beside a collection of tiny wildflowers.
Elijah Poirot
[Per+aware- do I notice people?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah Poirot
"Possibly," he kept that grin on his face, "probably... Okay, yeah. Until I can figure out how to deal with the whole I can't breathe underwater thing aquariums could take a little more doing."
He's headed up, going for his wallet, but she's beaten him to the punch, brows raise for a second before heading on towards the entrance, "I'll get the next one?" presumptuous thing, isn't he? Assuming there will be a next time. He paused for a second, inhaling and feeling the sensation of something almost charming. Something spry and full of life.
"I think I might know who that is," he said, expression brightens and he takes a few steps inward, called out, "Marco!"
Waits to hear if Aidan calls back Polo. Probably not, but he tries.
Aidan Smith
Curling, rolling, flying through the air like a soft glow on a summers eve, enticing children and adults alike into something beautiful. It danced and shimmered, it pulsed with a sense of joy that few could rival. That was Aidan. A small sprite that danced among the flowers, unknowing that the winter would bring them to slumber, others to their deaths...or perhaps he understood it in a way that made it beautiful. Death was never the end.
A beating of wings turned his focus away. He didn't catch the source. The moment his focus was entangled, it was pulled from one thing to the next and the sounds came rushing in. Some spoke over the others because they were, by nature, much louder, and others grew louder because they sat so near; sometimes he couldn't tell which was which.
But in the distance (though it's not so very far off), he can hear Elijah, and feel the push of their resonance against his own. He hears the word, and some part of him knows the answer...though he doesn't recall exactly why. "Polo!" He raises an arm quickly as if to flag them down. Where had he learned that game?
He rose slowly and turned towards the two of them, moving into a slow jog, his lips curling into a bright smile. Aidan was always so happy to meet people, or well...anything for that matter. "I didn't get lost this time." He said with a bit of pride. "I don't think anyway. I don't really remember if I meant to come here, but I think I did."
Claudia Cole
She's small, Claudia. Short enough that even in heels Aidan exceeds her height. Her body frame is petite and delicate, her face soft and heart-shaped. She looks younger than she actually is. (She and Aidan have that in common.)
She's beautiful the way that faeries are beautiful. Ageless and a little untouchable. But the way she feels is something altogether more chilling. Shadows, cold and primordial. The infinite abyss of darkness.
She watches Aidan approach with soft, clear eyes. There's a hint of amusement at the manner in which he and Elijah greet each other. "Perhaps it was fated," she offers. There's a glance thrown between the two men before she begins to walk along the stone path, surveying the garden with a slow sweep of her gaze.
"I haven't been here in a long time. I should come more. It's beautiful."
Elijah Poirot
His suspicions are confirmed the minute he hears Polo- he isn't entirely sure where Aidan learned the game but for a brief moment Elijah was pleased that the young man actually caught the reference. Considers it a win for integrating into the rest of society when you can pick up the basic childhood references that one makes. He takes a second to just breathe in the warm air, feel the rush of being around two creatures that he assumes are more like fae than human beings-
That was the thing with Claudia, that shadow, that cold- something born of winter because there could not be an endless summer. Aidan is that endless summer creature. And there he is, hapless mortal, just set to enjoy their company.
"Claudia, this is Aidan," he says, takes a step to continue along the path, nods a little so Aidan can come along and enjoy the scenery. "Aidan- Claudia?"
Introductions sufficiently made, he (oddly enough) seems content to listen for a minute. Doesn't feel the need to fill up the silence.
Aidan Smith
Aidan rarely dislikes the feelings of others. Resonances of people are different, and none are wrong, though he has experience with something that has never felt just right. That is not these moments and these two of course, so he takes the sensation of both in stride, reveling in the difference between himself and Claudia. "Maybe!" He says to Claudia, flashing her a bright smile and stepping in line with her, reaching out to wrap his arm around hers momentarily. "Your name is pretty. But it misses something I think. Claw. Di. Ah. You didn't pick it did you? I met someone else who picked her name...and it fit her better." He doesn't see this as an insult at all, though others might. It's just that, the way it rolls off the tongue isn't write for her.
He uncurls his arm and steps back in line with Elijah, wrapping around his this time. He was an affectionate creature who found the warmth of others enticing. Being so close to other beings...what would the world be like if he couldn't?
"Yup! You Should! They like visitors here. They were made for that. That's what some of them say." Did they really Aidan? Sometimes even Granna wondered. "They really like it when people ooooo and aww over them. " He stepped away from Elijah, pressing past them slowly. "Some of them like it more because they're only here for a season. It makes them happy to be loved."
Claudia Cole
Aidan attempts to grab Claudia's arm, but when he steps in close she pulls back, fixing him with a chilling stare that is instantly less gentle than the look she first greeted him with. One might imagine that many people think they can grasp onto her. People who look at her and see someone childlike and nonthreatening. (She has had a lifetime of it, in fact.) Aidan doesn't seem to pick up on the nonverbal warning, so when he's finished speaking, she says:
"If you touch me again without my permission, I will hurt you."
It's soft, the way she speaks. Quiet but... resonant. It is the only warning on that matter he is likely to get. The issue of her name isn't addressed.
She glances at Elijah then, but whatever she's thinking isn't clear. She goes quiet after that, stepping out ahead of the two men to pace the length of the walkway. After a while she bends to trail her fingers over a patch of flowers, watching as a honeybee lands on one to collect its nectar.
Elijah Poirot
[Manip+sub: I am totally pretending that this isn't awkward]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah Poirot
[Also: int+science- do I have any idea what those flowers are?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Elijah Poirot
Things move pretty quickly, and he takes the opportunity to... use proximity as a deterrent. Or, at the very least, to stand between Aidan and Claudia so Aidan wouldn't be tempted to be in her space and... uh... there would be a body in the way should things become problematic. It's diplomacy by space allocation. Everyone gets their own bubble, life is good, yes?
He looks down the way, down at one of those flowers that a bee landed on and he tries to think of something, and all he gets is "-I think those are... uh.. zone ten? Maybe pushing a nine? So if you ever get the sudden urge to move to the tip of Florida you could conceivably plant them. Does it say what they are?"
He turns to Aidan, "I guess you're right about the whole showy nature of it? There's no way they could grow outside of here."
Aidan Smith
[perc + emp - hey! Are you ok Claudia? What's up?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )
Claudia Cole
[Hmm. How difficult to read is she today? Manip+Subterfuge]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Aidan Smith
Aidan doesn't seem perturbed by her backlash to his affection. He doesn't shun or cry, he doesn't whimper or look shocked at her reaction; Aidan acts as if it's completely natural and expected, as if her reaction was something he was very familiar with. In truth he finds it odd that someone would hate to be touched. Sure there were spirits that didn't do well when they came together; power cords or electrical wires weren't very friendly much of the time, unless they had a healthy distance between one and the other. When one of them violated the space of the other, they got angry and they fought. Electricity wasn't a very docile spirit, and neither were all the smaller ones that were a part of it. He still liked them though, he just learned to keep a specific amount of space between them and him.
Claudia, he decided, must be part electrical spirit, or maybe she was raised by them, or maybe she was very good friends...or maybe ...well maybe she had a spark in her that was so close to electricity that she might as well be just like them. He doesn't know the reason, but Aidan lets out a small laugh, his cheeks growing a little pink. He scratches at his neck and at the back of his head.
"I didn't see your spark." He says warmly to her. "I get lost a lot." He continued on, as if it made complete sense to everyone what he was talking about. "I'm not very good at finding my way back. Especially when the wind comes by. We start talking and I forget where I was going." Distraction at his finest. Someone might have thought he was afflicted with ADHD (if not with a multitude of other illnesses) if only because he had a hard time focusing on one thing (the world never stopped moving).
"When I was at the ward, I had this one socket that I talked to a lot. We were really good friends and then I touched him and he got really angry at me." Aidan laughs again warmly. Because Aidan doesn't really mean to upset anyone, and he actually hates to do it.
His laugh softened and he curled his face behind his arm, still lingering at his neck. Aidan peeked at her. "Are you still mad? Are we still friends?" And truly...truly he felt worry that maybe she was still angry.
Elijah draws his attention and Aidan, hiding his face mostly behind his sleeve still, glances to Eli and smiles softly. "I just listen."
Claudia Cole
[Prime 2 / Forces 2 - vulgar (oh Claudia, you should really care more about Paradox) diff 6 -1 (practiced) -1 (resonance) and it's probably about late enough in the evening that her cyclical magic is at neutral]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Claudia Cole
[Paradox]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Claudia Cole
[*sigh* really dice? Stamina]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Claudia Cole
"The plaque says it's a Pasqueflower." Claudia touches the tip of a petal with her finger, mindful not to disturb the bee. When she stands up, she turns to regard Aidan. At first she's quiet, taking him in without much reaction. Then she exhales, and some of the tension melts out of her shoulders.
"Friendship is something you earn. It isn't the place you start from, it's the place you end up. But no..." her voice softens. "I'm not still angry."
She glances around, searching for other visitors, but it's late enough in the evening that the three of them are alone on the trail. "Do you want to see something pretty?"
Claudia's heels scrape lightly against the pavement as she steps closer to Aidan and Elijah. She stands so that their bodies block the view from the nearby greenhouse. Then she draws a tiny knife from her purse and pierces the flesh on her palm. Once the blood begins to well at the wound, she slips the blade away again. When she's ready, she places her hands together in a sphere, fingers spread and not-quite-touching. Like she means to conjure something between them. And in fact, that's precisely what she does. Concentrating on the empty space and the drop of blood in her palm, she focuses... draws forth the energy in her being and makes a tiny shadow with it.
It grows between her hands, flickering and dancing. Claudia uncovers it so they can see, smiling softly (pleased with how pretty it is - with the way is slides along her skin like liquid.)
She feels the pain when it hits. The little snap behind her skull like being struck with a rubber band. A drop of blood starts to run from her nose, but she doesn't reach up to wipe it away until it gets to her mouth. Then, reluctantly, she lets the dancing shadow disperse back into the air and reaches into her purse for a tissue.
Aidan Smith
[OH SHIT I forgot - nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Elijah Poirot
[Prime 1: Oooh, how'd you do that? (watching the weaving, doobiedoo)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Elijah Poirot
He observes, at first there is tension, the desire to open his mouth and smooth things over or do anything to make this not a disaster but... he doesn't need to, things do go on without him pushing on them. And truth be told there is relief, just the barest hints at the edges.
It's all forgotten in moments of beauty, moments of something conjured into reality by will and intention alone. Brows raise, words spoken almost by instinct and instead take to the realm of intention. A request, to see past the veneer and on to the actual working. All he sees is the hints and movements of shadow moving elegantly across her palm, over her fingers. Something that is beautiful, "is it cold?" he asks. The first thing he asks, and there is light and life on his features.
Considers shadow something to be solid, something with intention (thinks of Kiara, briefly, spinning, jumping, elated and the cosmos coming apart. The truths in the spaces between the stars.)
"It's a different sort of lovely," he says, bumps Aidan with his him to remind him of his own presence. Not floating off into space, the movement is one that definitely relays a familiarity between the two. A comfort.
Aidan Smith
Friendship is earned
Aidan blinks in confusion. "I'm everyone's friend." He says with a raise of his cheer. "I'll be your friend. Promise." Aidan uncovered his face and held up his hand, palm facing her and a bright smile appearing suddenly. "I'll remember you're friends with the children of electricity." That is how he will forever associate her, no matter how she might normally feel - it's better for him this way.
What she offers is beautiful and, like Elijah, he is fixated on the way the dark emerges and forms, even leans in a little close. He finds it enthralling and... and a little frightening. His brows even quip in a momentary flash of fear before his lips rise in delight.
That is... until Claudia exhibits blood. Aidan's expressive shifts and suddenly his attention isn't on the magic that had been on hand, or the bump at his side, but Claudia... He curls his arm in on one of his sleeves and holds up the knitted sleeve towards Claudia in an offer. "Here." There's a worried smile that presents itself on his face, as if giving a hand to a scared puppy. "You can use mine."
"Elijah." There's almost a quiet scold to him, but it's playful. "Everything is pretty in the same way. It's pretty because it is. It's even prettier because it's Claudia's."
Claudia Cole
Aidan associates her with electricity. It isn't precisely accurate, but then, it isn't the worst thing he could associate her with either. She has been friends with electricity. And wind. And fire. Elements are a part of nature, and so is she (for all that she dresses and speaks like a city girl.) All of it, though, starts with darkness. Even light.
That's why she finds it beautiful. Because it's the beginning. The center. The source.
Is it cold?
"It is, yes." She already has the tissue to her nose by the time she looks up and sees Aidan offering her his sweater. It's a sweet gesture, but she shakes her head. "I'm alright. Sometimes I push too hard." (Would that the universe was a different place. More accepting of their kind of magick.) "It's only blood. Blood has magick, you know." By the time she pulls the tissue away, the blood seems to have stopped. There's still a bit of it on her mouth, so she licks the crimson smear from her lip slowly (as though she means to take it back into herself.)
That last thing though... that gets a smile. (It's even prettier because it's Claudia's.)
"Most people think it's frightening."
Elijah Poirot
Most people think it's frightening.
"So? I have a friend who said that people are scared of things that they can't quite grasp... in a nutshell. She said it a little more eloquently."
He turns his attention to Aidan, taking note of the statement and he keeps causal, confident, engaged in the conversation and what precisely was going on around them, "see? I don't think that's true. Saying that everything's pretty in the same way kinda seems like, while emphasizing a universal connection to the world, also kind of ignores the uniqueness of it."
Aidan Smith
Aidan laughs warmly. "Frightening? I don't think it's scary at all. What's so scary about darkness?" The truth is, of course, that he knows how it can be scary. He can remember his moment in solitary, when he felt the weight of the dark, and the screams of the people before. He can remember those but he chooses not to let it show. Claudia's darkness isn't that darkness, and it isn't the fault of the dark, is it?
Aidan's smile only grows. "Everything can be pretty in the same way and be special. Everything is pretty for being special. That makes it pretty in the same way." Whether that makes sense or not? That's perhaps questionable...
Claudia Cole
"Mm." Claudia makes a little hum of agreement with Elijah. She can feel the thudding pulse of a headache behind her eyes, and there's a slight twitch in the muscles there - a bit heaviness in the eyelids that makes her look tired. She doesn't complain though. It could be much worse.
"Fear of the unknown is really fear of the self. We invest in it our own demons. Those things that lurk in our darkest imagination."
She settles her purse on her shoulder and continues to walk, smiling a little at the way the two friends debate the finer points of beauty. "You two are arguing semantics."
After that she gets quiet, walking the garden path as she nurses her headache and takes in the scenery and the life around her. Perhaps afterwards, they make their way to the Japanese Garden, with its picturesque pool and neatly pruned bonsai trees. Or maybe they wander back into the greenhouse.
Either way, when the gardens close, Claudia takes her leave.
[Alas, it is bedtime for me. You guys can continue if you want. Just assume Claudia is wandering ahead looking at flowers or something. ;) Thanks for the scene!]
Aidan Smith
[I think Heather needs some sleep too]
There were calls made- actual phone calls, too, and not text messages. People were invited, plans were made- botanical gardens. Specifically, the ones on York Street, because they had bromeliads and an entire section devoted to the drylands and he wasn't sure when he started actually liking plants, but it was probably around the same time that he figured out that nature wasn't trying to kill him and it could actually be enjoyed.
You couldn't show up to Colorado and not try to ditch a little of your inner city boy. (Or swamp-admirer, because it was hard to enjoy parts of Louisiana without being about knee deep in you-don't-want-to-think-about-it.)
And thus: plans were made- meet me by the bright yellow things that are inside... I don't know what those are... yeah, that sounds about right, I'm googling it... huh, Larry Johnston. Okay, meet by those. And he was there, standing tall and comfortable in a pair of jeans that had seen better days and a shirt with three quarter length sleeves that buttoned halfway down. And a vest, because he needed somewhere to put his pocketwatch. He took the bus here, walked the rest of the way because he figured he'd need the exercise.
"Why the Hell is it called Larry Johnston," he half muttered to himself, scrolling through page after page on his phone to find the reasoning as to whythis particular orchid sounded like it was an investment banker.
Claudia Cole
The truth is, Claudia could use an excuse to get out of Boulder now and then. Not that she really needed one, but Denver was always better explored with a friend. So when Elijah calls, she considers his invitation for a moment before agreeing to meet him. It helps that he suggests the Botanic Garden.
Perhaps he'll be expecting something different when she walks into the Greenhouse Complex. Someone a little more wild. (Someone who reminds him of a wood nymph.) Instead, the girl who walks through the glass doors into the visitor center resembles someone much more cosmopolitan. She's wearing calf-high leather boots (the heels give her small frame a bit of extra height) and a pair of maroon swede shorts with a black cotton halter top. There's a small, very expensive purse hanging over one shoulder.
Claudia pauses inside, scanning the space with an alert gaze until her eyes land on the aforementioned yellow flowers and, by extension, Elijah. He gets a small smile from her as she approaches.
"I approve of your choice of meeting place."
Aidan Smith
[perc + awareness - spec intuition]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Elijah Poirot
It's very Audrey Hepburn, really. Or at least he thinks so, always thought of Audrey Hepburn as cosmopolitain but really should have thought of her not as a style icon but as a woman who did remarkable things with her life. But he isn't thinking of the cultural implications of Audrey Hepburn, he's more taking in the Dryad-turned-fashionista who came along to take in bottled nature.
"It was either here or aquarium, but they don't have mermaids today," almost a bit of lamentation around the edges. Elijah had a particular fondness for mermaids, and one he didn't seem particularly keen on disguising, "but drought resistant gardens and tropical badassery won out today."
He grins, bright and pleased. Thumbs looped through his belt loops.
Aidan Smith
Aidan was not known for his practical clothing choices because...well...he didn't have any idea what was practical. Human sensibilities seemed a little strange to him; why did he think that, he often wondered, but regardless of the why, it was still there. Humans were an odd animal, one that he connected the least with. But plants! Plants he understood.
Trees were timeless. When they spoke, they spoke in long speech, with a sense of time that most humans couldn't understand. Aidan loved them for that. They saw more than he would ever see, remembered times long before, and had a way of talking that was almost mesmerizing. The flowers and plants too spoke differently than humans, though they were less timeless. They didn't live nearly as long, but they had a way of speaking in a softness, in a slowness that lifted and dropped just as the rising and fall of petals might. They were most cheery when the sun was out, and spoke tiredly when it no longer shined.
Aidan didn't mind.
But we've forgotten Aidan's attire. He was not practical. He liked long sleeves and sweaters, and he liked to wear his own. Aidan knitted, and this one he knitted a bit more loosely with a baby blue thread intertwined with the pastel yellow so often found in baby blankets; Aidan didn't understand the concept of babies having colors. Colors were for everyone. His jeans were simple, and a bit tighter than the long sleeve that dangled off his frame, threatening to fall to the floor. A necklace sporting some raven talisman hung from his neck, a homage to a very particular friend, and a particular mentor.
Aidan laughed as he kneed next to some plants, the bright cheery cascading out from him. He was listening to them, the flowers and the bees that whizzed by. He was listening to the bugs that skittered on the ground, preparing for the cold coming their way. He laughed because he heard them all at once, and he found them all beautiful; he could never imagine a quiet world.
Did he come because of summons? Maybe, or maybe he came because the world had a tendency to throw him in the path of others. He was there nonetheless, and he felt them tingle at the edge of the skitters, snifflers, chitters, and whispers. Aidan lifted his head, tuning out the sounds that came in because if he didn't, he'd be unable to focus so well.
Claudia Cole
[Per+Awareness]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
Claudia Cole
"Nothing to do with being afraid of water?" The subtle curl of Claudia's smile speaks of shared secrets. Secrets she ought not to know, really, but... one never knows what they'll find when reading someone's fate. There have been times when she's seen far worse things.
She steps toward the orchids and reaches out as though to run the tips of her fingers over the bright yellow flowers, but her hand stops just centimeters away, hovering in the air. She feels instead the energy coming from them. The delicate heat and humidity in the greenhouse air. For a moment she closes her eyes - breathes the place in.
"There's someone else here," she says, without turning to look in the direction of Aidan's resonance. "Perhaps we should buy our tickets and go find them."
Elijah invited her there, so perhaps he intends to pay, but if so he'll find himself beaten to the punch when she steps up to the welcome counter and opens her purse. "Two, please." She smiles at the old woman behind the desk, who offers a pleasant greeting in reply. It isn't long before Claudia is making her way toward the entrance to the Rock Alpine Garden. When she pushes the door aside, she and Elijah are hit with a gust of warm air from the summer evening.
And there is Aidan, kneeling down beside a collection of tiny wildflowers.
Elijah Poirot
[Per+aware- do I notice people?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah Poirot
"Possibly," he kept that grin on his face, "probably... Okay, yeah. Until I can figure out how to deal with the whole I can't breathe underwater thing aquariums could take a little more doing."
He's headed up, going for his wallet, but she's beaten him to the punch, brows raise for a second before heading on towards the entrance, "I'll get the next one?" presumptuous thing, isn't he? Assuming there will be a next time. He paused for a second, inhaling and feeling the sensation of something almost charming. Something spry and full of life.
"I think I might know who that is," he said, expression brightens and he takes a few steps inward, called out, "Marco!"
Waits to hear if Aidan calls back Polo. Probably not, but he tries.
Aidan Smith
Curling, rolling, flying through the air like a soft glow on a summers eve, enticing children and adults alike into something beautiful. It danced and shimmered, it pulsed with a sense of joy that few could rival. That was Aidan. A small sprite that danced among the flowers, unknowing that the winter would bring them to slumber, others to their deaths...or perhaps he understood it in a way that made it beautiful. Death was never the end.
A beating of wings turned his focus away. He didn't catch the source. The moment his focus was entangled, it was pulled from one thing to the next and the sounds came rushing in. Some spoke over the others because they were, by nature, much louder, and others grew louder because they sat so near; sometimes he couldn't tell which was which.
But in the distance (though it's not so very far off), he can hear Elijah, and feel the push of their resonance against his own. He hears the word, and some part of him knows the answer...though he doesn't recall exactly why. "Polo!" He raises an arm quickly as if to flag them down. Where had he learned that game?
He rose slowly and turned towards the two of them, moving into a slow jog, his lips curling into a bright smile. Aidan was always so happy to meet people, or well...anything for that matter. "I didn't get lost this time." He said with a bit of pride. "I don't think anyway. I don't really remember if I meant to come here, but I think I did."
Claudia Cole
She's small, Claudia. Short enough that even in heels Aidan exceeds her height. Her body frame is petite and delicate, her face soft and heart-shaped. She looks younger than she actually is. (She and Aidan have that in common.)
She's beautiful the way that faeries are beautiful. Ageless and a little untouchable. But the way she feels is something altogether more chilling. Shadows, cold and primordial. The infinite abyss of darkness.
She watches Aidan approach with soft, clear eyes. There's a hint of amusement at the manner in which he and Elijah greet each other. "Perhaps it was fated," she offers. There's a glance thrown between the two men before she begins to walk along the stone path, surveying the garden with a slow sweep of her gaze.
"I haven't been here in a long time. I should come more. It's beautiful."
Elijah Poirot
His suspicions are confirmed the minute he hears Polo- he isn't entirely sure where Aidan learned the game but for a brief moment Elijah was pleased that the young man actually caught the reference. Considers it a win for integrating into the rest of society when you can pick up the basic childhood references that one makes. He takes a second to just breathe in the warm air, feel the rush of being around two creatures that he assumes are more like fae than human beings-
That was the thing with Claudia, that shadow, that cold- something born of winter because there could not be an endless summer. Aidan is that endless summer creature. And there he is, hapless mortal, just set to enjoy their company.
"Claudia, this is Aidan," he says, takes a step to continue along the path, nods a little so Aidan can come along and enjoy the scenery. "Aidan- Claudia?"
Introductions sufficiently made, he (oddly enough) seems content to listen for a minute. Doesn't feel the need to fill up the silence.
Aidan Smith
Aidan rarely dislikes the feelings of others. Resonances of people are different, and none are wrong, though he has experience with something that has never felt just right. That is not these moments and these two of course, so he takes the sensation of both in stride, reveling in the difference between himself and Claudia. "Maybe!" He says to Claudia, flashing her a bright smile and stepping in line with her, reaching out to wrap his arm around hers momentarily. "Your name is pretty. But it misses something I think. Claw. Di. Ah. You didn't pick it did you? I met someone else who picked her name...and it fit her better." He doesn't see this as an insult at all, though others might. It's just that, the way it rolls off the tongue isn't write for her.
He uncurls his arm and steps back in line with Elijah, wrapping around his this time. He was an affectionate creature who found the warmth of others enticing. Being so close to other beings...what would the world be like if he couldn't?
"Yup! You Should! They like visitors here. They were made for that. That's what some of them say." Did they really Aidan? Sometimes even Granna wondered. "They really like it when people ooooo and aww over them. " He stepped away from Elijah, pressing past them slowly. "Some of them like it more because they're only here for a season. It makes them happy to be loved."
Claudia Cole
Aidan attempts to grab Claudia's arm, but when he steps in close she pulls back, fixing him with a chilling stare that is instantly less gentle than the look she first greeted him with. One might imagine that many people think they can grasp onto her. People who look at her and see someone childlike and nonthreatening. (She has had a lifetime of it, in fact.) Aidan doesn't seem to pick up on the nonverbal warning, so when he's finished speaking, she says:
"If you touch me again without my permission, I will hurt you."
It's soft, the way she speaks. Quiet but... resonant. It is the only warning on that matter he is likely to get. The issue of her name isn't addressed.
She glances at Elijah then, but whatever she's thinking isn't clear. She goes quiet after that, stepping out ahead of the two men to pace the length of the walkway. After a while she bends to trail her fingers over a patch of flowers, watching as a honeybee lands on one to collect its nectar.
Elijah Poirot
[Manip+sub: I am totally pretending that this isn't awkward]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Elijah Poirot
[Also: int+science- do I have any idea what those flowers are?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Elijah Poirot
Things move pretty quickly, and he takes the opportunity to... use proximity as a deterrent. Or, at the very least, to stand between Aidan and Claudia so Aidan wouldn't be tempted to be in her space and... uh... there would be a body in the way should things become problematic. It's diplomacy by space allocation. Everyone gets their own bubble, life is good, yes?
He looks down the way, down at one of those flowers that a bee landed on and he tries to think of something, and all he gets is "-I think those are... uh.. zone ten? Maybe pushing a nine? So if you ever get the sudden urge to move to the tip of Florida you could conceivably plant them. Does it say what they are?"
He turns to Aidan, "I guess you're right about the whole showy nature of it? There's no way they could grow outside of here."
Aidan Smith
[perc + emp - hey! Are you ok Claudia? What's up?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )
Claudia Cole
[Hmm. How difficult to read is she today? Manip+Subterfuge]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Aidan Smith
Aidan doesn't seem perturbed by her backlash to his affection. He doesn't shun or cry, he doesn't whimper or look shocked at her reaction; Aidan acts as if it's completely natural and expected, as if her reaction was something he was very familiar with. In truth he finds it odd that someone would hate to be touched. Sure there were spirits that didn't do well when they came together; power cords or electrical wires weren't very friendly much of the time, unless they had a healthy distance between one and the other. When one of them violated the space of the other, they got angry and they fought. Electricity wasn't a very docile spirit, and neither were all the smaller ones that were a part of it. He still liked them though, he just learned to keep a specific amount of space between them and him.
Claudia, he decided, must be part electrical spirit, or maybe she was raised by them, or maybe she was very good friends...or maybe ...well maybe she had a spark in her that was so close to electricity that she might as well be just like them. He doesn't know the reason, but Aidan lets out a small laugh, his cheeks growing a little pink. He scratches at his neck and at the back of his head.
"I didn't see your spark." He says warmly to her. "I get lost a lot." He continued on, as if it made complete sense to everyone what he was talking about. "I'm not very good at finding my way back. Especially when the wind comes by. We start talking and I forget where I was going." Distraction at his finest. Someone might have thought he was afflicted with ADHD (if not with a multitude of other illnesses) if only because he had a hard time focusing on one thing (the world never stopped moving).
"When I was at the ward, I had this one socket that I talked to a lot. We were really good friends and then I touched him and he got really angry at me." Aidan laughs again warmly. Because Aidan doesn't really mean to upset anyone, and he actually hates to do it.
His laugh softened and he curled his face behind his arm, still lingering at his neck. Aidan peeked at her. "Are you still mad? Are we still friends?" And truly...truly he felt worry that maybe she was still angry.
Elijah draws his attention and Aidan, hiding his face mostly behind his sleeve still, glances to Eli and smiles softly. "I just listen."
Claudia Cole
[Prime 2 / Forces 2 - vulgar (oh Claudia, you should really care more about Paradox) diff 6 -1 (practiced) -1 (resonance) and it's probably about late enough in the evening that her cyclical magic is at neutral]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Claudia Cole
[Paradox]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Claudia Cole
[*sigh* really dice? Stamina]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Claudia Cole
"The plaque says it's a Pasqueflower." Claudia touches the tip of a petal with her finger, mindful not to disturb the bee. When she stands up, she turns to regard Aidan. At first she's quiet, taking him in without much reaction. Then she exhales, and some of the tension melts out of her shoulders.
"Friendship is something you earn. It isn't the place you start from, it's the place you end up. But no..." her voice softens. "I'm not still angry."
She glances around, searching for other visitors, but it's late enough in the evening that the three of them are alone on the trail. "Do you want to see something pretty?"
Claudia's heels scrape lightly against the pavement as she steps closer to Aidan and Elijah. She stands so that their bodies block the view from the nearby greenhouse. Then she draws a tiny knife from her purse and pierces the flesh on her palm. Once the blood begins to well at the wound, she slips the blade away again. When she's ready, she places her hands together in a sphere, fingers spread and not-quite-touching. Like she means to conjure something between them. And in fact, that's precisely what she does. Concentrating on the empty space and the drop of blood in her palm, she focuses... draws forth the energy in her being and makes a tiny shadow with it.
It grows between her hands, flickering and dancing. Claudia uncovers it so they can see, smiling softly (pleased with how pretty it is - with the way is slides along her skin like liquid.)
She feels the pain when it hits. The little snap behind her skull like being struck with a rubber band. A drop of blood starts to run from her nose, but she doesn't reach up to wipe it away until it gets to her mouth. Then, reluctantly, she lets the dancing shadow disperse back into the air and reaches into her purse for a tissue.
Aidan Smith
[OH SHIT I forgot - nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Elijah Poirot
[Prime 1: Oooh, how'd you do that? (watching the weaving, doobiedoo)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Elijah Poirot
He observes, at first there is tension, the desire to open his mouth and smooth things over or do anything to make this not a disaster but... he doesn't need to, things do go on without him pushing on them. And truth be told there is relief, just the barest hints at the edges.
It's all forgotten in moments of beauty, moments of something conjured into reality by will and intention alone. Brows raise, words spoken almost by instinct and instead take to the realm of intention. A request, to see past the veneer and on to the actual working. All he sees is the hints and movements of shadow moving elegantly across her palm, over her fingers. Something that is beautiful, "is it cold?" he asks. The first thing he asks, and there is light and life on his features.
Considers shadow something to be solid, something with intention (thinks of Kiara, briefly, spinning, jumping, elated and the cosmos coming apart. The truths in the spaces between the stars.)
"It's a different sort of lovely," he says, bumps Aidan with his him to remind him of his own presence. Not floating off into space, the movement is one that definitely relays a familiarity between the two. A comfort.
Aidan Smith
Friendship is earned
Aidan blinks in confusion. "I'm everyone's friend." He says with a raise of his cheer. "I'll be your friend. Promise." Aidan uncovered his face and held up his hand, palm facing her and a bright smile appearing suddenly. "I'll remember you're friends with the children of electricity." That is how he will forever associate her, no matter how she might normally feel - it's better for him this way.
What she offers is beautiful and, like Elijah, he is fixated on the way the dark emerges and forms, even leans in a little close. He finds it enthralling and... and a little frightening. His brows even quip in a momentary flash of fear before his lips rise in delight.
That is... until Claudia exhibits blood. Aidan's expressive shifts and suddenly his attention isn't on the magic that had been on hand, or the bump at his side, but Claudia... He curls his arm in on one of his sleeves and holds up the knitted sleeve towards Claudia in an offer. "Here." There's a worried smile that presents itself on his face, as if giving a hand to a scared puppy. "You can use mine."
"Elijah." There's almost a quiet scold to him, but it's playful. "Everything is pretty in the same way. It's pretty because it is. It's even prettier because it's Claudia's."
Claudia Cole
Aidan associates her with electricity. It isn't precisely accurate, but then, it isn't the worst thing he could associate her with either. She has been friends with electricity. And wind. And fire. Elements are a part of nature, and so is she (for all that she dresses and speaks like a city girl.) All of it, though, starts with darkness. Even light.
That's why she finds it beautiful. Because it's the beginning. The center. The source.
Is it cold?
"It is, yes." She already has the tissue to her nose by the time she looks up and sees Aidan offering her his sweater. It's a sweet gesture, but she shakes her head. "I'm alright. Sometimes I push too hard." (Would that the universe was a different place. More accepting of their kind of magick.) "It's only blood. Blood has magick, you know." By the time she pulls the tissue away, the blood seems to have stopped. There's still a bit of it on her mouth, so she licks the crimson smear from her lip slowly (as though she means to take it back into herself.)
That last thing though... that gets a smile. (It's even prettier because it's Claudia's.)
"Most people think it's frightening."
Elijah Poirot
Most people think it's frightening.
"So? I have a friend who said that people are scared of things that they can't quite grasp... in a nutshell. She said it a little more eloquently."
He turns his attention to Aidan, taking note of the statement and he keeps causal, confident, engaged in the conversation and what precisely was going on around them, "see? I don't think that's true. Saying that everything's pretty in the same way kinda seems like, while emphasizing a universal connection to the world, also kind of ignores the uniqueness of it."
Aidan Smith
Aidan laughs warmly. "Frightening? I don't think it's scary at all. What's so scary about darkness?" The truth is, of course, that he knows how it can be scary. He can remember his moment in solitary, when he felt the weight of the dark, and the screams of the people before. He can remember those but he chooses not to let it show. Claudia's darkness isn't that darkness, and it isn't the fault of the dark, is it?
Aidan's smile only grows. "Everything can be pretty in the same way and be special. Everything is pretty for being special. That makes it pretty in the same way." Whether that makes sense or not? That's perhaps questionable...
Claudia Cole
"Mm." Claudia makes a little hum of agreement with Elijah. She can feel the thudding pulse of a headache behind her eyes, and there's a slight twitch in the muscles there - a bit heaviness in the eyelids that makes her look tired. She doesn't complain though. It could be much worse.
"Fear of the unknown is really fear of the self. We invest in it our own demons. Those things that lurk in our darkest imagination."
She settles her purse on her shoulder and continues to walk, smiling a little at the way the two friends debate the finer points of beauty. "You two are arguing semantics."
After that she gets quiet, walking the garden path as she nurses her headache and takes in the scenery and the life around her. Perhaps afterwards, they make their way to the Japanese Garden, with its picturesque pool and neatly pruned bonsai trees. Or maybe they wander back into the greenhouse.
Either way, when the gardens close, Claudia takes her leave.
[Alas, it is bedtime for me. You guys can continue if you want. Just assume Claudia is wandering ahead looking at flowers or something. ;) Thanks for the scene!]
Aidan Smith
[I think Heather needs some sleep too]
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
[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!)
[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!)
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