The leaves are turning, and so are the fields. It's primeval alchemy, this transformation of greens and yellows to gold as the year ages. The Veil draws thin closer to the end of the year: see the earth is drawing down and the world prepares for the coming night.
In the old days the harvest was a sort of last hurrah - a vigil - before the coming of winter. It is harvest time; it is a time for drinking and feasting and reflecting.
It is likely the first time any of them have had to breathe since early this summer. It was a summer of exhilaration, a time where several of them had a chance to establish themselves as no-longer-apprentices; it was a gauntlet, a rite of passage. It was a summer of shed tears and lost innocence, perhaps, for some. Difficult choices always look easier from the outside.
So here they are, our gathered: Robin Anton, with his sharp tongue and piercing wit, and Thane Owens charming and the blood that flows in his veins is red red red, Penelope Mercury Mars in all of her ardor and brilliance and brash courage, and Elizabeth Courtright who is caregiver to them all, the heart of them. Nicholas Hyde is a newcomer. Nicholas Hyde knows he's a newcomer: but it's been hard for him to remain aloof at the end of everything. He is on his third month since initiation into the Chakravanti. He is on his thirteenth week in their company: count them.
---
They are drinking 'round a bonfire. Liz's house, see, and it hemmed in by wood and old stone fence, the dividing line between brutal nature and man's enlightenment the way a church of old might have been. Here one way of life and there: another.
Someone brought cider. Someone else brought cider of the more alcoholic variety. Liz brought caramel apples and popcorn dusted with spice and cookies dusted with a different kind of spice, shaped as grinning pumpkins: a bit early for Halloween, but not so early as to look overeager.
Liz is seated on a stump by the fireplace next to Thane. And here we find them.
Nick has arrived late to their little gathering. He was invited not as an afterthought, but he showed up as though he thinks he was one. His hands are wrapped around the neck of a bottle of maple whiskey when he appears, wringing it though there's a smile there for each of them as he appears wreathed by firelight and shadow and holds out his offering.
apples
Thane and Robin and Penelope Mars
Thane had a goat called Lightning, for its coat was the color of lightning, and its reflexes were sharp and quick. Lightning had a black patch around one of its eyes. Today he has brought goat meat to the bonfire: little gobbets of it on long skewers, spiced in a Syrian style and accompanied by some sort of vegetable good for roasting. The meat may've been bloody ere it was cooked and burnt and burning. Next week he will give Nick a medallion carved of horn or hoof of a goat, along with a lightning-coloured twist of fur, braided just so, and tell him to live life without fear, and ask him if he'd like to learn how to make maple jerky from scratch.
Thane is on the broad tree stump beside Liz and his feet bare and be-grimed and his trousers cuffed up to the middle of his athletic (well-moulded, let us say) and hairy calves and his shirt is a long-sleeved hunter green and he is licking juice from his fingers in a brief swallow of silence from him when Nick appears and
Robin and Penelope Mars and Thane
Meanwhile, Robin is lounging in an adirondack chair, every inch the Young Lord of the Manor. His dark hair is rather wild because Fall will have its way; the winds will come and the winds will go, and they do enjoy a good rake. There is a skewer sticking out of the ground beside him, and it once had goat meat and vegetables, and now he has a plate cradled in the palm of his hand (his fingers should seem weighed down by such dark, heavy rings as he wears; rings with stones the color of a raven's heart, of blood gone bad, of the blood moon during fire season, of a secret only the sea doesn't know but what's name cannot be spoken aloud), on which rests a bright orange Ichabod Crane's nightmare colored pumpkin and some spice-dusted popcorn. He is eating slowly; he always eats slowly, and calmly, and measuredly. He has brought some gourmet thing: some mouth-watering piece of decadence, and booze. Of course he brought booze. He brought cider, and he brought some home brew, and he is fighting with Penelope when Nick appears and
Penelope Mars and Thane and Robin
Penelope Mars is on her knees beside an impressive pile of autumn leaves, which are scattered across her lap meaningfully: she was plaiting them together, and already Liz has a crown of them which is the one Thane helped her with and there is a moth on her knee crawling up her thigh and it is about to fly away there it goes. Penelope Mars is a study in glamour, a Pre-Raphaelite painting come to life: her clear eyes an uncertain color in this light, but she is moved by her argument, and her hair a mess of curls clipped pin by pin by pin by other pin so it all falls down one side and the other side and ear are left bare and her bangs are long enough to tuck behind her ears and when she takes a handful of leaves her rings glint and gleam in the firelight silver and when she leans forward the necklace which slithers along her collar shivers like water under the touch of light and her eyes are less uncertain a color once the light bleeds into them and they become bright polished silver and there's a bottle of (alcohic, thank you) cider in the leaves beside her and her boots are off and she brought glasses without stems (she made them: actually. They are gifts, one for each, some crude etching: a symbol) for the alcohol to go into and she is fighting with Robin and Nick appears and
Robin
Casts a speaking glance toward Liz, deigning to just so quirk his eyebrow, inviting her to his side without so much as a word, and
Pen
Says, " - asked you to, Robin. You needn't lift so much as a finger, or even an eyebrow. Pray, do not lift the eyebrow! Do not go to such heavy, wearying trouble - "
(Robin: "I do not lift my eyebrow. The preposterous nature of your request acts as a - " finger snap " - buoyant element and the eyebrow raises itself."
Pen: " - because nobody asked you to, and I certainly do not need to take the time to prove you wrong again. Aren't you tired of it, Songrobin?"
Robin: "No, because the leaves are not - "
Pen: "They are! And if you don't want to wear them - "
Robin: "Oooh, big bad Flambeau going to lift her wand and - "
Pen: "You really think I can't? Because - ")
- and Pen does not glance at anyone for help or affirmation. She stretches: deliberately. The leaves in her lap scatter: fall, gold-stroked, death-touched: they're dry, they're waste, but aren't they pretty? And - mid-sentence, really, she catches sight of Nicholas and smiles at him: a match-strike smile, a look-the-moon-just-fell-in-my-cup-smile, there's-a-star-burning-out-in-my-smile, happy (simply) to see him and -
Thane
has licked his fingers and wiped them on his shirt and said "Robin Robin Robin Robin Robin this shouldn't be your season but it is look ho tally hey we have attracted Nicholas Hyde hey Nick come take a seat wait fuck don't take a seat what's that in your hand is it"
Robin
"Whisky?"
Pen
"Whisky?"
Robin & Pen: Side-long looks
Thane
"for us to share" and Thane bounces up and clasps Nick's hand and then says "Oh shit I'll be right back" and crash-crash-crash-crash CRASH-CRASH-CRASH away gallumph.
Nicholas Hyde
"Ohmygosh I wasn't sure you'd come," are the words that eject from Elizabeth Courtright's mouth, accompanied by a little clapping of her hands. Moments before her attention had been torn between Thane and Robin and Pen: the skewer empty of meat in her hands (and when Thane had first told her about his goat Lightning she had been horrified, only to later concede that indeed Lightning was delicious.)
It is Liz's home, and Liz has seen Pen and Robin come to blows (or fire) more than once already. ("Nobody needs to prove anything, you two! Just settle," and an aside to Thane: "God, Hermetics.")
Nick receives Liz's enthusiasm with a wan smile, and like a cat greeting strangers he shies away from the sudden attention even as he basks in it. And Pen, well, he catches her eyes but he doesn't hold them for too long; his smile now is involuntary and quickly torn away from him in the chaos. Nick Hyde had chosen the whiskey in part because to him it is novelty: maple-flavored anything is novelty that he has not quite grown accustomed to, similar to the changing winds of autumn and red yellow gold leaves scattered across the horizon like splatters of paint on a canvas.
And Liz: "Oh, is that whiskey - " even as the others "whisky? whisky? for us to share - "
"It's for everyone," he says in response to the chorus. One of his hands leaves the bottle long enough to clasp Thane's hand and release as the Verbena goes crashing back into Liz's house.
"Don't you dare bring the good crystal outside, Thane!" Liz calls after him, and then there is a despairing shake of her head as she rips a chunk of Lighting from the skewer with her teeth. "Have a seat, Nicky. Thane butchered a goat and I made all kinds of stuff," and a careless wave toward the platters and plates.
And so: Nick sits on one of the stumps, taking in their festivities and leaf crowns. "Are you all celebrating a holiday?"
apples
Thane does not bother to reply to or does not hear in order to reply to Liz's admonishment.
Robin has a steady glance, doesn't he? A subtle one, too. He considers Nick, but nods. A lock of hair falls, so. His own greeting was implied, after the question of whisky.
"We're just enjoying one another's company, in style," Pen says, and she is (now, more prone to) smiling. Dimples, long ones, make a brief and rakish appearance, and then she looks curiously after Thane. He can still be heard crashing: he is not quiet. His footfalls count. "It's the season of mists and gold and fervent celebration; I guess we can call it a celebration of fall. Or of the cider mill being open."
"The cider mill," Robin says. "Hear, hear. I'll celebrate that. And you'll learn that Thane is quick to butcher an animal whenever there is pot luck, so be best prepared," to Nick. Because Robin is sharp, even as Robin is calm and serene and watchful, he leaves that there. No, almost: a side-long glance at Pen; maybe because of the way she lifts one particularly large leaf, crimson-laced, and eyes him through it.
Nicholas Hyde
Liz, her eyes are on her home because she can hear Thane crashing around inside. "He's going to wake up - " - the puppy, who has so recently exhausted himself to the point of sleep, where he was kenneled inside with a warm blanket.
Moments later, a forlorn howling bears the truth of that statement out. It's still reedy and high, a baby's cry though puppies grow up fast.
Nick sets the whiskey bottle down between his boots (mud-spattered things they are: he carried the river with him here) and reaches for one of the skewers, without any apparent hesitation or squeamishness. He did not ever meet Thane's goat and does not know that its name was Lightning or the color of its fur or that its reflexes were lightning-quick.
"This is my third fall here and I haven't been to the cider mill yet," he says, and eyes the meat on the skewer before he takes a thoughtful (delicate, almost) bite of the meat. "Does Thane keep a lot of animals or something?" Perhaps he shouldn't be surprised: Verbena will be Verbena.
"Just don't meet any of Thane's pets," Liz says, with a sniff. And another bite from her skewer.
apples
"He'll put him back to sleep," Pen says, to reassure Liz. Speaking of cider, she lifts a bottle and drinks. The air has a sharp snap to it, but the fire beats that back, so the cider has a snap to it too; cold and pear-bright, something different and local. She hands the bottle to Robin, who takes a drink, and then hands it over to Nicholas, and meanwhile has been answering, "He has horses. He probably won't feed us them."
"He keeps a lot of company, Thane," Pen says, fond. "And has kept a familiar too, but Ash was lost right before we met you."
Elsewhere: the puppy quiets.
Crash, crash, crash, as Thane circles back.
Nicholas Hyde
"What was Ash?" Nick asks, even as he spares a glance back to the house, the crying puppy and then later: silence. He takes the bottle from Robin, lowering his skewer so that he can take a swallow or two from it, allow its brightness to roll over his tongue.
Liz, having finished her skewer, finally makes her way over to Robin as she was gestured to do moments earlier before the Chakravanti's arrival. She seats herself without any particular ceremony on the length of wood log next to his adirondack chair and crosses one leg over the other, waving a hand as smoke drifts in her direction. There are people at a bonfire who smoke tends to follow; Liz, poor unfortunate, is one such.
She lifts her eyes to Thane as he comes crashing back, and never has it become more clear than now that her yard could use a good rake, probably hasn't been raked or properly maintained other than the occasional mowing since she has had the house. His feet find every stick on his path back to them.
"It looks like you all are going to have a party in the spare bedroom," Liz says, with a judicious glance toward the large bottle of whiskey.
Nick, with a cheek full of goat meat, extends an arm to hand the whiskey bottle over to Thane. "So how long have you all been together as a cabal, anyway?"
apples
"A rooster. He was as black as pitch, and very somber and valiant," Pen says. She is fascinated by familiars, although she does not quite know what she thinks of them; so there is some reserve in her tone, coupled with a musing.
Thane is one of those Verbena who wield curses easily, and as often as he judges necessary. He may be suffering a backlash now: and so the noise, so the clamor. The crackle of the liquid gold flame as it devours kindling, chews on the log and cracks a branch pops it snaps it and anyway the fire might be trying to help him out. The wind flicks up, leisurely: a spray of gold sparks, of ember-dazzle goes skidding, a suggestion of falling stars or creating something.
He tosses some a plastic bag of red cups on the ground and then flops into the pile of leaves beside Pen. Time to start helping with the garlands and the crowns!
Pen abandons the leaves in order to reclaim her cider from Nicholas, and then to open the plastic bag of cups and offer one to Liz first, then to Rob, the cider bottle between her knees.
Robin says, "This cabal was formed, oh, a year ago now."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick, too, has some fascination with the idea of familiars; the way in which he is looking at Pen just now is clear-eyed, and curious. Something somber there too: perhaps he is wondering just what happens to a mage when a familiar dies, and can surmise from what he already knows that it isn't good. "I'm sorry Thane lost him," he says, and it is too thoughtfully said to be an empty expression of sympathy.
Liz reaches out to take one of the cups from Pen once it is offered, and wraps both of her hands around it. "First it was Penny and Rob and Thane. I joined them a little while after that, when they were chasing down some vampires."
Nick says nothing at first, but there is this subtle little arch to his brows. "You all have done a lot around here, it seems like."
And they had found him on his own: what does he think he would have done, alone?
Nick takes one of the red cups when it is offered and carefully pulls off the foil wrapping on the top of the whiskey bottle. This he stuffs in a pocket (rather than casting it away on the ground) and leans over to pour it first into Liz's cup, and then around the circle.
apples
Thane, though he has picked up the last threads of the conversation about his familiar, doesn't do anything with them; he lets them dissipate, and braids, and then says while Robin and Liz are explaining the cabal's history such as it is "Pen can I braid your hair I have an idea you might even say," and he grin grin grins, "that I was leaved with a great one, wait shit, that's a fucking terrible pun it's barely a pun at all," and Pen says, "Sure," trustingly, and then, "Does it feel crowded, being a spirit Mage, Nicholas?" She keeps calling him Nicholas instead of Nick. Sometimes Nick, but mostly Nicholas. "I imagine you might feel crowded in with allies when you need them, should you need them.
"And enemies," the Tytalan says. "We haven't done as much as we would like around here." He is firm on this, Robin. It is not false modesty; it is nothing approaching modestly at all: a simple statement of a fact. "It is nice to have reliable friends, striving toward common ends."
Thane says, "Robin you haven't ever been without a cabal isn't that true?"
Robin, blasé, "More or less."
Nicholas Hyde
"I don't always see them," Nick says, pouring whiskey into the cup for himself last. He has a generous hand: he has a little catching up to do, and alcohol is a time- and tradition-honored gift (or curse, depending on one's temperance) to introverts in a group of people they would desperately like to impress. "It only feels crowded when I'm trying to pay attention to them and other people all at once."
"I knew another spirit mage, once," Liz says, taking a careful whiff of the whiskey in her cup. "She was another Chorister and she - ohhh, this smells like pancakes - she said she'd see angels, or some other touch of the Divine, whenever she used her Sight. Is that what you see?"
"No," Nick says. "It's...well, I think some of it depends on interpretation."
To which Liz makes a thoughtful noise, turning a pair of brown eyes over to Robin and Thane. They're friendly things, golden retriever eyes; and now she finally takes a swallow from the red cup. She looks about to say something, or to ask something; Nick beats her to it. "What would you like to do yet together that you haven't done?"
Nicholas Hyde
[Nick init! +6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Nicholas Hyde
[Liz init! +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
apples
Rob! +5
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
apples
Thane! +6
apples
Pen +7!
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
apples
Ahem. THANE. +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
apples
Pen
Rob
Nick
Thane
Liz
Nicholas Hyde
[Liz: Rob I have a question for you!]
apples
Thane: maneuver Pen between knees so can braid her hair; make her keep her head still.
Nicholas Hyde
[Nick: I too have a question for you, Rob.]
apples
Rob: Naw. Not the time to let the Chakravanti direct the conversation. Get my question in first.
Pen: Drink whisky! Fuck yeah!! Loftily prepare to make Rob answer Liz's question.
apples
Pen does not give Thane any difficulty in positioning, and is as still as a sapling and holds herself as he moves her. When he touches her head and tilts it one way, she goes with it. When he winds up pulling on her hair, she goes with it. She twists her mouth to the side, contemplative of Liz (and more contemplative of this: Divinity; sight), but doesn't say anything right now. Only breathes the whisky in; then tastes it, slowly: savor; her eyes drop shut for one moment. The firelight drags blue fire flashing from one of her rings; the red cup crinkles. Her eyes open again.
Robin says, before Liz or Nick (please, fools; are you Hermetics?) can do much more than start inhaling, "Have you ever thought about being part of a cabal, Nick?"
He says it mildly, even; not as though it's an invitation. It isn't, quite. But they've already talked about Nicholas, and inviting him.
"Oh," a smile, slow. "We forgot to toast. Do the honors?" Rob: he holds his drink up, serene.
Nicholas Hyde
Nick is not used to having his questions pre-empted; the slight widening of his eyes as he opens his mouth and then closes it again betrays him in this. Or perhaps it is only the subject matter of the question, something that he recognizes as a lead-in.
Something that he perhaps recognizes as the beginning of an end: or perhaps only as a beginning. An end to transience (perhaps temporary, but most things are), to passing in and out of other people's lives and leaving little behind, taking with him what he will. When his mouth shuts again it's with a click, and he takes a swallow of his whiskey. There is a second swallow, and this one he allows to linger on his tongue, which still tastes faintly of crispness, of pear. "I, um...well, no, I never really used to," he says.
He could say more, except what Rob said: it isn't quite an invitation, and Nick is loathe to say too much lest he have misinterpreted.
"You're pretty much like an honorary member of this one," Liz says, and the smile she offers Nick is kind. And then: "Ohmygosh you're right. Bad luck. What should we toast?"
Rob is holding his drink up and so Nick does too (and Liz, after she has taken a sip, bad luck or not.) "To reliable friends, then," Nick says, and tips his drink ever so slightly toward Rob.
apples
Next round
+5, Rob
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
apples
+6 Thane
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
apples
+7 Pen
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Nicholas Hyde
[+6, Nick]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Nicholas Hyde
[+5, Liz]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Nicholas Hyde
Order:
Pen - 14
Rob - 13
Thane - 9
Nick - 8
Liz - 6
Nicholas Hyde
[Liz: This whiskey is delicious.]
Nicholas Hyde
[Nick: Rob I have questions for you too. I STILL HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.]
apples
[Thane: Oh, shit, where's my cup--stop moving Pen! Right I am toasting too!]
[Rob: Immediate question back. No time to break in, not ever. Are all Chakravanti slow witted, or just this one?]
[Pen: Why do I keep winning inits when I don't need to really save people from one another yet! Whisky! Holding my action!]
apples
The past couple months have been busy, but Nick has been a subject of discussion on more than one occasion. Pen bites the inside of her lip, and Thane must adjust her head again, and she lifts her cup as well. Adds, "And to clarity among those friends."
It isn't pointed. Pen is too earnest for that; she means things too sincerely. She means it. Clarity among friends would be nice.
Robin ticks a glance toward Pen, and it is as fond as his glances ever are, which is to say it's wry and amused and distant, but there might be warmth if you look very hard. He's not a cruel man, Robin. Only a Tytalan.
"Reliable friends and clarity," he echoes. Beat. "And cleverness."
Thane is trying quite hard to realize his vision in Pen's hair look at him tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth bare toes curling and oh wait shit glass cup whatever thing whisky right he gropes around lifts it up says, "Shit am I supposed to add something too I guess I can add something let's see reliable friends and clarity and cleverness and, fuck, good bedfellows," and he grins, bright.
Nicholas Hyde
It would never occur to Nicholas that he has been a subject of discussion; in Nick's mind when he is not around it is unlikely that other people think of him much at all. And so: he believes Liz and her kind words, and he is clever enough to pick up on Pen's request for clarity and piece things together, and yet does not believe this would be a conversation that was already had.
So when Thane adds his piece Nick just tips his glass to him, and there are traces of amusement there lingering around his eyes and mouth.
"Oh Thane," Liz sighs, but it's the sort of exasperation that is fond too: because Thane is enchanting, see, even if he is incorrigible. "I guess it's my turn. Ummm...to reliable friends and clarity and cleverness and good bedfellows - thanks Thane - and to, um, to good food and company."
And she too lifts her glass. "I guess that's two things. Oh well."
And they drink.
apples
[Init again. Rob! +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
apples
[Rob: Uh oh.]
apples
[Thane +6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
apples
[Pen +7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
Nicholas Hyde
[Nick +6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Nicholas Hyde
[Nick +6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Nicholas Hyde
[Liz +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
apples
Pen: 15
Liz: 13
Thane: 11
Nick: 9
Rob: 8 -_-
apples
Rob: Oh cool, everybody's drinking as far as I know nobody needs to be interrupted, eat some of the cookie on the plate in my hand.
Nicholas Hyde
Nick: Questions! So many!
apples
Thane: Hair masterpiece? Will roll for it, maybe? Hmm.
Nicholas Hyde
Liz: Booze and cookies. I'm so happy.
apples
Pen: Throw Rob to the dogs - ask Nick if he has any questions! Unleash, unleash. Unless hair gets pulled out or something by a botch.
leaves
[Thane: Hair masterpiece! Dex, we suppose. I cannot remember if Thane is Dex 3 or Dex 4. Dex 3 it will be, for now.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
leaves
[Thane: -_- No, bettar.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
leaves
And they drink.
And Rob transfers his cup to the chair's wooden arm, and picks up a cookie from the plate. He takes a bite, so his mouth is full and he is too slow witted (just now) to direct the flow of conversation even if he wanted to.
Thane drinks hastily, but with gusto. Hearty, hale: he's a man of the earth, the loam beneath the leaf-litter he and Pen are enthroned by, look at his knee there, poking out denim-glad, look at the curl of his toes, look at the hair on his calves, the lack of care. Pen in front of him is a straight-backed Titania, attended by a satyr: both of them are moodily lit by the gloam-light and the fire-amber, and Pen tries to keep her head still as she raises her cup with both hands and takes a careful sip, see how her eyebrows arc imperious, see how her lashes sink and quiver because she's casting her glance down at the cup, and there is such a nonchalant ritual about the offhand care of it.
She carefully sets the cup down on her thigh and Thane huffs as he loses one of the leaves and he tentatively holds his hands away from Pen's hair, watching it for a moment before shaking his head and going back to it. He resettles so his weight is on the other ass-cheek and he turns Pen's head again.
Pen says, "I would like to play a question game. Nicholas, Nick, why don't you begin? You get three questions to level at one or all."
Robin chews more hastily, then swallows but alas for Robin.
Nick and Liz
Three questions. And Nick gets to level one at each of them: with permission, even. He looks over to Pen, attended as she is by Thane who is handling her hair with such focus. His fingers have tangled up in each other where he has seated himself on a stump, and for a half-second he looks down at them before letting his hands release each other and settle across his knees.
And here: he smiles. "All right. I like question games." Perhaps because it hasn't occurred to him yet that the questions will probably come back around. Oh, but only three questions. Not enough to ask one for each person.
Liz, meanwhile, is looking sidelong at Robin, but only long enough to pause before she leans down and lifts his glass to hand it up to him. "You're going to choke," and this, while Nick is thinking.
It's only ceremony, for Robin at least: for Robin he already had one in mind. "Well, I guess for everyone since we were just talking about cabals, what sorts of things do you want to do with the cabal that you haven't done yet? What vision do you have for it? And, um...what Tradition do you think you would have picked, if you had to pick one other than your own?"
There is a little smile at the end, a slightly self-conscious thing, before he drinks from his whiskey glass.
leaves
[Eh. Robin and Pen glare down to see who answers first. Thane abstains. So Robin, WP]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
leaves
[Pen, WP]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
leaves
There's a brief spell of silence (everything in this light is a spell; this is witch-light) following Nick's questions, put to the group, and Thane hums thoughtfully, mouth curling into the beginning of a smile, and Pen casts her gaze toward Robin (without moving her head; stillness. An artist's model). Robin accepts the cup from Liz with a grateful, albeit faint, smile; and then he catches Pen's glance. Silence, a brief spell of it, and Robin lifts his sardonic eyebrows, his expression neutral and serene, and there's certainly a clash there. A spell. In silence. And Pen's eyes roll away from Robin, settle on Nick again; her dimples reappear, suggested by the ardent quirk of her mouth. She does smile more often when Nick's around. "Well."
"I would choose to be a Disparate if I were not with the Order of Hermes, but if I had to choose another Tradition, maybe the Verbena."
(Thane: "Really!! Really?! Penny!! Yay, Penny! Liz??"
Rob: "What? That isn't true."
Pen: "It is true; I just said it, Songrobin. And - ")
" - the vision we have, Nick, is of a cabal which is adaptable, inclusive, functional," a rill of laughter on the word: a kiss of brightness. "I mean: we want a group of friends, of people who have a care for one another, and are not bogged down with old conflicts; old hates; old mistakes; old patterns. We want to be good to one another, to be strong with one another, and to be a shield for those who need it, a sword for those who must meet it. We want to be friends who happen to do great things because they choose to do those great things; we want to learn everything and to be one another's bulwarks."
Beat. "Did I miss anything, Robby? He's very modest," she says, without an ounce of sarcasm, "but he's always talking about people from different walks of life coming together to work together."
Thane sighs, and rests his forehead against Pen's shoulder blade. He says, "All of that's right really Nicholas we want to innovate you know we want to figure things out we want to be helpful, fuck Pen you should tell him the way we talked about last Mabon, remember, the way you talked about for Evil,"
"I don't remember," she says, and Thane,
"Eh, it doesn't matter, but it's like Nicky the vision is a perfect alliance is sharing and shit while respecting secrets and there's a lot of stuff we haven't done yet but just you wait sometimes we have meetings legit ones and those are good we want to explore the old ancient houses we want to map the ley lines we want to get our own Node we want tons of shit. We wanna, all of that," a hand wave. "And I want personally for us," he grins, "to go on a horseback ride by the beach, all the way up to Maine maybe even into Canada. There's some crazy shit up there!! We want to live. If I weren't a Verbena which I find hard to imagine I was a Verbena last time around too if I weren't a Verbena maybe I'd be a Euthanatos. Chakravanti. I'd have hated that though."
Nick and Liz
[Nick: Hm. How persuasive can I be with Liz to do my work for me? Manip + Empathy.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Nick and Liz
The difficulty with question games is that it always provokes more questions, and now Nick is realizing: he used up all three of his questions at the beginning. It's a terrible thing, to only have three questions when one desires a wealth of them.
So he takes another drink from his whiskey glass. "You're both very eloquent." He looks to Liz, to Rob, and they are seated next to each other so it's a natural thing, this prompting-without-prompting. He doesn't even have to say anything for Liz to feel the cue; she is much more easily swayed by such things, by social pressure, than Robin is. (Rob, after all, is only Tytalan.)
"I feel like Pen said it best," Liz says. "She always does, it's kind of not fair." There is a smile though: there is no resentment in that, see. "I see it like...well, sometimes other people have to see someone else like them to feel important and noticed and like they matter, right? When you bring different people together and they work together well, other people see that. It's inspiring to them."
Her cheeks are made round now by her smile; they glow in the firelight, the swell of them near her eyes highlighted like a pair of twin crescent moons. "Besides, I just really like everybody here. Ummm...I think I would've been...oh, I don't know. Maybe an Etherite, so I could go swashbuckle. That would've been fun."
Nick looks then, to Rob. And Liz looks over then too, and gives him a nudge with her elbow. "You didn't say anything, Robby."
leaves
You're both very eloquent. Pen holds her fist up, facing back. Thane was already on top if it: they fist bump. Twinkle fingers. Pen casts Liz a pleased look, and Thane leaves off with her hair, says something lost between them while Liz is speaking and Nicholas is deftly manipulating Liz and Robin is observing. Robin is observant. There is a fine dusting of orange sprinkles on his shirt, which he is brushing off.
"Perhaps the Akashic Brotherhood. Pen and Thane did an admirable job of speaking to our vision." Beat. "I would like to see us grow," and Robin, dark-eyed, watches Nicholas over Liz's head. "And I think we could make a good cabal house of Spindrift Brewery."
Nick and Liz
Nick, too, is observant: as Robin makes his reply Nick is still watching him, though the comment about growth, he does not quite know what to do with. It's evident because he looks away then, looks back to the fire, turns his face to the dry heat of it.
"I feel like I ought to object on principle to using a brewery as our cabal house," Liz says, "but I refuse to be the Chorister killjoy." She says this even as she is swallowing a mouthful of whiskey, and tossing it back with a little too much enthusiasm: her eyes widen in dismay as a trickle runs around the corner of her mouth, and she lifts a hand to catch it.
Her eyes are wide; maybe no one saw.
"I guess the Dreamspeakers or the Verbena would have gotten me eventually if the Chakravanti hadn't," Nick volunteers, and the good nature in his tone is measured is dry as the grass and leaves around the firebed, stops short of levity. "Picking a brewery as a cabal house is pretty old school, isn't it? I like it."
leaves
"To breweries," Thane says, beaming because he did catch Liz's faux pas alas it came just after she spoke everybody caught it and Thane likes it when people really get into the moment like that he finds it encouraging and he adjusts a leaf in Pen's new braided leaf-crown before flopping back legs sprawled his weight resting on his hands well one hand while he takes a deep draught of cup and then ahhs loudly puts the cup down and says, "Me next. Liz, how many Chorister killjoys do you know are those cookies actually store bought and uh let's see let's see let's see Nick what would you like to see this cabal do that we haven't as far as you know?"
Nick and Liz
Are those cookies store bought. Liz flicks this guilty caught-out sort of look toward Thane, and finally she says, "Well, those were. But you were all coming over and it took way longer than I thought it would to pop all that popcorn. But normally I make all the cookies I bring!"
There is a sigh then, a breathy thing that in anyone else might have been exaggerated for effect, but: with Liz it is not, particularly when she has had a few drinks. "I don't actually know that many Chorister killjoys. But I don't really hang around the right crowd for that. It's just a stereotype, you know? But, like, deserved in some places I bet."
Nick listens, glad to let Liz talk because it gives him some time to consider his answer: because he knows he is being evaluated here by at least one person. And he isn't sure what he thinks of that, and the push-pull of his heart cannot tell him. He reaches up and winds one of his curls around a finger, giving it a thoughtful tug. "I guess I...it would be good to see the Traditions trying to do more things to help people. That was one reason I stayed Disparate for so long, I think. It still feels so fractured."
leaves
"I knew it! Pay up!" Thane says, pointing a triumphant finger at Rob, who beetles his brows most forbiddingly, and waves a regal hand as if to say money is no matter. Pen's face lights up, like she's going to laugh; but a swift under-the-lashes glance at Liz stops her, because she is considerate of other people's feelings, see.
Thane cocks his head at Nick and seems to expect more definitely more because that wasn't much of an answer not really it was a partial answer it was an echo he knows it and so he says, "That was an echo, man. I mean if that's all, that's cool, but," and Thane is just warm and exuberant and Thane also waves his hand around all expressive, "it doesn't have to be big picture stuff it can be more marshmallow smores or more group hangs or it can be more attention to the Shadowlands. We're slight on Spirit but you know that."
Nick and Liz
Liz: her feelings are often tender, and so perhaps it is fortunate now that Pen is considerate of her feelings. To Thane though she only sniffs, lifts her nose as she takes another swallow from her red cup. "Well, maybe no cookies for you next time then, Thane. At least Rob appreciated them." Then, almost plaintive, "I at least went to the good bakery!"
This exchange Nick watches with a little smile, holding his cup in both hands which he holds loosely between his knees. Thane's attention is back on him now and there is: only a brief flutter of his eyelashes, like an uneasy ruffling of wings, of dark feathers. "I...well, I guess when you put it that way, this is...I like it. I'm glad you invited me. I think it's good to...to really know the people you're working with. Having friends who work well together."
leaves
"I bet they're wonderful cookies, Liz," Pen says, though she hasn't had one yet; she gets to her feet and leans over the cookie platter, choosing carefully, brooding just like a muse, see, leaf-crown woven through her hair, the Maenad-messy virago braid already unraveling.
At the same time Thane is saying: "Well we better hurry up with this round so you can ask another three questions Nicko. Who's next?"
"I'll go," Rob says, "Unless Liz would rather."
Nick and Liz
"You can go, Rob, for defending the cookies," Liz says, quite graciously.
And Nick, taking his cue from Pen, thinks that perhaps he also ought to take one; he half-rises, looks over at Pen at the platter, sits again. Stirs his feet with a crackle of dry leaves. Then finally gets up and wanders over to the platter, all shadow and bronze in the firelight. He is wearing a heavy dark sweater; nevertheless, he shivers once or twice after he has stepped away from the fire's embrace, surprised by how cold it has gotten in the brief time since he sat down.
He takes one of the cookies and transfers it to his mouth, his eyes now on Rob.
leaves
"What are you frightened of?" Rob asks, serene he is. A pause. Direct the question, Robin. "Pen."
Pen looks at Rob, and it is a measuring look. "Ennui," she says, at last. "And hopelessness."
"Nick," Rob says. Another pause. "You look cold; you should have more of this rather tolerable whisky you brought." He smiles, and it is a sharp smile; a shadow smile, and it does touch his eyes. They crinkle.
"Oh, Kestrel," Pen says, because she can't help herself. She rests her hand on Nick's shoulder and leans, a friendly (ardent) pressure.
"Liz. Who here is your favourite; if none, why?"
Nick and Liz
[Be cool.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
leaves
[Rob: Who's cool? Seeing through somebody? Like a boss?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
Nick and Liz
Nick, Rob says, and Nick fills his mouth with cookie. His eyes have a sort of calm regard as he watches the Tytalan, the sort of thing he often strives for but does not always succeed at though he is beginning to do so with more regularity. It's not a mask, but it is: open, without fear of what might come next. It is accepting.
He shares Rob's smile. "I'm still not used to how it gets so cold so fast," he says, and this is almost apologetic, New Englanders: perhaps he feels sorry that they have grown up in such a tempermental place. He lifts his cup to take a swallow from it.
Then Pen leans on him, and it is ordinarily a moment he might make a comment or share a glance but he does not, and the cup lingers there in front of his face. He's just going to drink a little more.
Or a lot more. He, shy though he may be, is not generally shy around women and Pen terrifies him. (Everyone here terrifies Nick. He wants them to like him, see: wants it like the moon wants the stars in the night sky.)
Liz, throwing her hands up in the air once Robin has asked her his question, provides a welcome distraction. "Robin! That's a terrible question to ask me! You know I can't pick a favorite!" And Liz draws in a very deep audible breath. "Sometimes Pen is my favorite like when she's speaking pure poetry and truth, and sometimes Thane is my favorite when he reminds us to love life even when it's hard to love, and sometimes you're my favorite when you're secretly nice and trying not to show it."
She stops: looks over at Nick, who has lowered his cup but still has it carefully positioned in front of his mouth. "And Nicky," and there is a tinge of apology in her tone, which then brightens see like a fire kindled, "I don't know you very well yet but I really like how we get to know you a little better every time you're around. It's like the slowest present-unwrapping ever."
Nick lowers his cup then, his eyebrows and mouth chased with amusement. "Thanks, Liz," and his tone is warm.
smoke
Rob (serene [tranquil]) notices whatever Nicholas Augusto Hyde tries to tuck away out of sight but this isn't to say he's obvious about the noticing. He rests an elbow on the arm of his chair, leans his head on two fingers, forehead creasing in amusement at Liz's reaction. He looks at whoever Liz is talking about, but not only. He is a watchful beast, Robin Anton.
Pen doesn't linger overlong at Nicholas's side; she leans, a presence, and then sometimes Pen is my favorite and Pen puts a hand over her breastbone - touched - and then remembers to nibble on the cookie she has taken from the platter. Circles the fire in order to sit again, covertly dunks the cookie in what's left of her whiskey. Maybe nobody noticed the sacrilege; maybe it will be delicious.
Thane beams, holding both hands up. He doesn't say anything; lets his hands lower again; elbows on his knees, hands hanging down except for the one that has his red cup. He drums his feet on the ground; idle movement. He does like being alive. He likes the pain of it as much as the pleasure: he could flourish anywhere, couldn't he?
Everybody listens to Liz. Pen has her elbow on her knees; she's watching Nick's face; her thumb is under her chin, fingers just curved over her mouth. Cup is by her feet. "Here, here," she says, suddenly;
"Herehere," Thane echoes Pen. Thane is flopped back again, and he looks up at the sky and the stars; the firelight bronzes him. His eyes half-shut, and he smiles fondly. Liz is beloved, after all.
Robin, well. He makes a half-gesture with his cup; as close to an echo as he'll get. Then, "Nick," and he can't really help the ironic inflection, can he? (Of course he can.) "What are you afraid of?"
smoke
"No. Wait. Let me rephrase. What gives you pause?"
Nick and Liz
Liz, she watches the expressions: first the warmth on Nick's face, then the flight of Pen's hand to her breastbone, and the toast. She, too, smiles, because it's nice to make your friends smile simply by speaking the truth. And she lifts her cup to them before she takes a drink.
Pen's sacrilege did not go unnoticed, but Liz seems inclined to experiment. She leans behind Robin and takes a cookie from the platter, and then half-turns away from Rob, from the firelight even, and dunks the cookie in the whiskey in the darkness where neither God nor Robin can judge her. She is evidently pleased enough to dunk it again.
Nick is still standing where Pen left him other than a step or two closer to the fire when Rob says his name again. And here: his eyes turn toward the other man, and they are dark in the light of the fire, considering Rob and what Rob has seen and what Rob knows or believes he knows. There is a word on his lips (they begin to shape it) until Rob rephrases his question, and then his mouth closes again: he has to think.
"Allegiances," he says, "and setting down roots." A beat, and he smiles; there might even be a tinge of apology in it. "I was a Disparate for a long time."
smoke
"Musta been strange," Thane says. "Improvising all the time."
"Why don't you go next Li - " Rob pauses, mid-name. "Liz."
Then he glares at Pen, who doesn't notice Rob is glaring at her, because she was still looking at Nick. Still, a Tytalan glaring at you has a certain feel, and both of her eyebrows arc, elegantly, and she turns her head toward him, and he shakes his head and Pen's eyebrows drop and her expression is bemused. Rob mimics dunking a cookie in his whisky cup, so she knows. Pen dunks what's left of her cookie, and offers it to Rob.
"No," he says, and Pen shrugs.
Nick and Liz
"It was fun," Nick says. "I think you try things you wouldn't otherwise, magickally at least, when you don't have other people telling you how to do it a certain way." His teeth are bright in the darkness, in the light of the fire that glances off of them. "But there are more important things."
His eyes are drawn then to the exchange between Rob and Pen, and they linger on that elegant arch of her brows, and he looks down into his cup before he can be caught looking anywhere else. It is unfortunately empty.
Liz is oblivious to Rob's attempts at shame, and has finished the cookie. When he suggests that she go next she hmms and shrugs her shoulders up around her ears in thought. "Thane," she says, "where did you learn to raise animals? Was it all - oh, crap, I guess I can't ask that if....okay, okay." Her shoulders lower so that she can give a considering look to the remaining three. Her eyes narrow, a little, in this intentionally-too-serious sort of way.
"Ummm...Rob. What do you think you would see in something like the Mirror of Erised? You know, like from Harry Potter. And, ummm...Nick. I'm going to cheat. Do the Chakravanti really kill you when they initiate you, and what was it like?"
"It's ritualized, but yes," Nick says. And then hesitates. He is in the process of walking back toward the stump where he was seated before to retrieve the whiskey bottle; it gives him a moment to gather his thoughts. "It was desperate, and dark, and lonely. Until it wasn't." He sloshes more whiskey into his cup. "I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was."
Liz's expression is: somewhat bemused, but she nods and looks first toward Thane and then to Rob.
leaves
[Go go Rob manipulation!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Nick and Liz
[Nick: Hm.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
Nick and Liz
[Liz: Huh what]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
leaves
[Thane: ?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
leaves
[Pen: ?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
leaves
[Rob v. Thane]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
leaves
[Thane v. Rob]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
leaves
[Rob or bust.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
leaves
[No man, Thane.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
leaves
"I shouldn't answer you because you tricked Nick out of two answers," Rob says, rather dryly. The question had him casting his glance up, beyond the fire-glow and the smoke, into the stars; what do you get to see in the stars? "Nick, you should be more aware. What do you think, Pen - "
whose eyes sharpen; leap, luminous; a measure
" - would I see a world where we need not suffer the outrageous fortune of Harry Potter references?"
Pen's expression has laughter in it, though she doesn't laugh. "No."
"You're right. I would probably see a library of books I hadn't read, and me, a Master, and Lizzie with a tray of home made cookies in a corner and a very good bourbon by my elbow."
He would like those things, but of course it isn't what he thinks he'd see in a mirror that would show him his heart's desire; or it almost is, but not quite. Not quite. Only Nick is sharp-eyed and astute enough to see through how easy the Tytalan is, how careful the screen of his serenity.
"My turn my turn my turn," Thane says, and, "um," puffs his cheeks out, squinting his eyes sooty lashes tangling, scratching his neck thoughtful thought, "um, so I guess I learned when I was young my mother's boss's cousin had a farm and I helped out on it a lot and I helped out at the farmer's market too and then got to know all the farmers and they'd let me do things here and there and I liked animals I liked the smell of them I liked watching them go about their lives and sneaking after them to see what was going on. I liked going into the woods and finding nests and all of that. So I learned on the job."
Nick and Liz
"Awww," Liz says, and reaches over to pat Rob's elbow perhaps in place of the very good bourbon. "Well, I'll make you cookies anytime, Robby."
We have said that noticing does not always equate to noticing aloud, or commenting on. Nicholas is sharp-eyed, and he has suspected for some time that Rob's serenity is a screen because there are always things beneath still waters, aren't there? And now he knows.
To Rob's chiding, he only smiles.
Liz, for her part, seems delighted with this new knowledge that Thane grew up near a farm. She is leaned forward on her elbows, smiling. "That's so neat. So you were always a baby Verbena."
She looks down into her empty red cup, and then back up at the rest of them. "Whose turn now? Pen? Is it Pen's turn? It is Pen's turn."
leaves
Thane makes an exasperated sound, but fond. "I was not a baby Verbena or not because of animals or farms we don't grow on farms we grow on farms in the proper uh tense or something like we grow things on the farms not we the things are grown on farms. Right?" Pause; and beam. "It is Pen's turn; Pen, ask something hard, ask Nick something hard, then Rob, then - "
Pen clears her throat. "I can ask my own questions; there will be another round, Thane. Liz, what was the first really Wonderful thing you did with your magick, after you'd Awakened?"
Pen will mete the questions out, question by question, and let it never be said she isn't a good shield-maiden; she stands up again, and circles the bottle Nick brought with her thumb and forefinger, then makes the rounds of empty cups: re-filling, slowly and careful.
Nick and Liz
Pen is refilling empty cups, and Nick is catching up quickly to the rest of them given how much he poured himself not so long ago. It was a large bottle: he had brought it with the idea that five people would be drinking it in mind.
Nicholas is not a stranger to party logic.
Still, he lifts the cup to his mouth as Thane suggests that Pen ask him a hard question, though he should perhaps be doing the opposite.
Liz hmms, and she leans farther forward on her elbows (with a slight sway, dangerous) and furrows her brows and narrows her eyes and scrunches up her face at Pen as though deep in thought or consternation. "A Wonderful thing. Well, the Chorus didn't take very long to pick me up, so I was kind of always working with them. And...this was like, sometime after I became an initiate...it was getting close to Christmas, okay? And I had this idea that I wanted the Sleepers to experience what we did. So I worked and I worked and I made these dancing lights, this Prime, that hovered around that tree out front - you know, the big pine. Thousands of them, for people to look at when they came by."
A beat. "It was so pretty, I wish I had been able to make it stay longer. Maybe I'll do it again this Christmas."
leaves
"Robin Anton," Pen says. Liz's cup is refilled, and Thane's, and Rob has waved his hand to show that he still has plenty left and Nicholas is still drinking, although if he holds his cup out, she refills it. After she kneels on the ground by Nick, but on the other side of a stump or a chair or a log, and this she leans on, arms folded, a rest for her imperious chin: she wants to let the brisk chill touch her; only let the firelight gild her. "Why won't you ever seek a new Master?"
Rob's eyebrows beetle together, and he takes a judicious sip of his drink. A beat. And then, "Because I'll not be a failure, Pen, and because my Master is a challenge I will not find elsewhere. He is powerful, and astute, and knows things most of our teachers no longer care to know; I would be a fool to seek elsewhere when he has what I want."
"But Rob you could- " Thane begins.
"Do whatever I will, because I am a Hermetic of House Tytalus," Rob says, wry.
"Nicholas Hyde," Pen says. "What are you proud of?"
Nick and Liz
[Nick manip roll!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
leaves
[Pen: ?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (4, 5, 5, 5, 7) ( success x 5 )
leaves
[Thane: ?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Nick and Liz
[Liz: Oh okay.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
leaves
[Rob: WITH WP, because I'm vetting this dude.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Nick and Liz
Liz watches this exchange between Rob and Thane, and she takes a drink, and with Liz it is always difficult to tell whether she is empty-headed and whether a thought has sunk in or whether she simply accepts things exactly the way they are.
Nick watches it, too. Mark that his eyes had been on Pen not so long ago, kneeling near him but on the other side of a stump or chair or log, and they do their best not to linger. There is a part of Nick that remains untouchable and aloof because there is a part of him that desperately wants to be, and we often become those things in the end: regardless of other wants, regardless of what would -
"It sounds as though you could be happier," he says quietly, with a glance toward Rob. But that is all. He'd held out his cup for Pen, and now he takes a swallow from it.
Pen's question tugs his gaze back in her direction. "Ohh, that's a good question, Pen," Liz says, with this little approving nod.
Perhaps it is because she has seen Nick hesitate. "I, um..." Another swallow. "I...uh...I'm proud of the company I keep. I like...I'm always surrounded by people I admire," he says, and alcohol has this paradoxical effect of loosening his tongue and at the same time makes him more reserved because he is aware of his loosened tongue. "And, um, of...of both of my sisters. They're both doing some pretty important things where they're at, even though it was hard for them to get there." A beat. "Me, too, I guess."
Pen notices, and she alone: this last is an afterthought, because Nick is aware enough to know that he ought to say something about himself.
leaves
"And now it's your turn to ask questions again," Pen says.
"Make them good ones, Nicky," Thane says, like a little boy who wants a good story. He is flopped on his back in the leaves, scratching his stomach.
Nick and Liz
[Wits to remember any of the questions I had earlier? +2, tipsiness and so much going on.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )
Nick and Liz
Unfortunately Nicholas has gone and forgotten many of the questions that sprang into his mind earlier. The conversation up until now has been long and winding, and many of them have disclosed things Nick didn't know about them before, and he has been watching Rob and watching Pen. Maybe, too, he is thinking about the question he just answered, and how he ought to have answered instead.
"Thane," he says, after a moment's thought. "What drew you to working with hexes?"
Then he looks between the other three, lingers on Pen for a moment, lingers on Rob; more thought. "And, um, Rob. If you hadn't Awakened, what do you think you would have done instead? As a profession, I mean."
A beat. "And, um. Pen. When you talk about doing great things, what are the great things?"
leaves
"Bruce Wayne," Rob says.
"Lex Luthor," Pen and Thane say at the exact same time.
"A rich philanthropist who is not bent on world domination," Rob amends. "I might have been a journalist, I suppose, or a professor of the arts."
"Oh what drew me um hm um hm hm hm hm hm hm well Nicky hexes are effective," Thane says, drumming his fingers on his abdomen, "and life is bloody and visceral and as above so below and what goes around does come around it felt natural and looking at the curse-lines the blessings on people that's one'a the first things I ever could do so I got into the practice. There are a lot of shit heads, too."
Pen has drunk deeply and quickly of her last cup, and has poured herself still more; her head may or may not be spinning now, for at least one moment, the gold-foil flick of the fire turning, a gyre, widening.
"You should tell me. You should tell me what great thing you'd want to do with us, and I will tell you that it will be on the list."
Slender pause; Pen, she runs her hand over her forehead, through her hair, and one of the leaves which Thane so carefully braided escapes; falls on her shoulder, gold, and stays there caught by a fold of cloth and her skin; but she looks Nick in the eye anyway; a quiet moment.
"I believe great actions are these: build, learn, explore, care. When we met, when you met us all, the end of that whole mess, that coming together - that was a great thing."
Nick and Liz
"Rob would look awful bald," Liz scoffs as her other two cabalmates suggest Lex Luthor. "I could see you being a professor though."
Both she and Nick listen as the others provide their answers. "You wouldn't have made a bad Chakravanti, even if it wouldn't have made you happy," Nick says to Thane, and there is a small smile here for him.
Liz is in the process of eating another cookie (and dunking it into her whiskey: such profane practices have a habit of becoming ritual, don't they?) Her eyes: draw up to Pen as the Flambeau suggests that Nick name a great thing, as she looks Nick in the eyes, and she smiles to herself.
Nick holds her eyes when she looks into them, even though they threaten to flick on the gold leaf that lit upon her shoulder moments ago. It stays there still, burnished by firelight. He holds them, and yet his own are startled: see the whites there around the corners. "I, um. I'd like to..."
And see if he hesitates it is because Great Things are for the Penelopes of the world. And yet. "I'd...I want us to remember where we came from, and that Awakening is a responsibility even if we didn't choose it. I'd want us to be aware of our power and influence and use it for the right reasons."
leaves
Rob, who cannot look at Liz because even when he's not looking at Liz he can see what she's doing, the terrible thing she's doing, because the ladies of their cabal are terrible people, Rob says, "What are the right reasons?"
Thane had smiled at Nick because he knows that Nick meant it as a compliment and waved his hand, in a very good impression of Robin Being Lordly.
Nick and Liz
Liz finishes the cookie after having soaked it in whiskey; the last bite she pops into her mouth after a moment's hesitation and a sidelong glance toward Rob. Perhaps she had been thinking about offering him some, trying to talk him into trying it: but that, we can assume, would not go over well.
Nick, for his part, is also hesitating, though for different reasons: there is no thinking-twice here, simply consideration of the question posed. "The right reasons would be to...to use it to make other peoples' lives better, not just for personal gain. I think," a beat, and he looks back down into his cup now, thoughtfully spinning it in his hands, "I'd like a world where everyone had the potential for Awakening, or self-realization or whatever you want to call it. I...I don't think that's how things are now and I have no idea how to get there, but I would like them to be that way."
apples
"Why don't you think so?" Pen asks and before Rob or Thane can say anything else; and maybe it is a break in the question game but his comment shivers across her expression like shadow on water; there's something silver-limned about it, something lake-quiet, something of the moon's brightness even, and also there has been quite a bit of booze for Penelope Mercury at this point. A flake of ash from the fire, something, causes her to shake her head suddenly; raise her palm and rub it up along her cheekbone. The gold leaf finally falls.
Nick and Liz
Pen questions him and there is something of the moon in her expression something of Nick reflected back at him, and perhaps he wonders whether she is challenging him. He does not think so: but perhaps he wonders. Her voice had drawn his eyes, and for a moment there is only a smile. "Taking another turn, Ms. Mars?"
It could be the alcohol making him bold again, or perhaps he's finally starting to relax: finding one's voice does that sometimes. Still, after a beat he makes a reply, "There's a lot of suffering, and for...pointless reasons. I think a lot of people don't get the tools they need, or the guidance, that some of us got."
apples
Taking another turn, Ms. Mars?
Pen wiggles her eyebrows. Says, "Is that okay, Mr. Hyde?" and the beat is done, and he makes his reply, and Robin asks Liz to hand him another bottle of home brew.
Thane whistles, long and low, and says, "Penny if you're going again can I have one of your questions? You've got one more if we're counting is that okay Mr. Hyde."
"I think I can. What does everyone think?"
"Ha," Rob says. "You've used up your turn."
And see, the perceptive can see that Pen used it up like that on purpose; she gives Rob an arch smile, a secret thing, and glances at Nick in that like-she's-going-to-a-share-a-look-way rather than the she-is-just-going-to-look-to-look way, but one can beget the other.
Thane fist bumps and then points at Nick, "Do you want to be a teacher you know guiding people through life hands-on in an Awakened sense do you envision a school for yourself some day you talking about riddles or uh secret things? What do you think we'd be good at? And Liz, who do you think will be the best at karaoke if I brought out a karaoke machine right now? Which I'm not going to but hypothetically."
Nick and Liz
Robin asks Liz to hand him another bottle of beer, and she does so; the second she takes for herself, now that her whiskey is gone. Liz is the sort of drunk who flushes at the cheeks and see they've gone florescent, brilliant, as she cracks the top off of her bottle with care.
The Chorister looks up only once or twice at the exchange between Pen and Nick, between Pen and Thane between Rob and Pen, and she smiles again to herself as she takes a swallow from the bottle. A contented thing.
The perceptive would notice that Pen used up her turn on purpose and see here there is a glance up at her, this half-lashed thing that betrays his amusement and, too, that he is perceptive enough to have noticed. But perhaps she already knew this about him: people suspect Nick of slyness, of a certain shadowiness (as an apprentice will one day say of him later) even when he hasn't yet done anything to merit it. It comes perhaps with his watchfulness, with his quiet manner.
Thane's finger pointing in his direction tugs his eyes away, and as Thane suggests he should be a teacher he for a moment seems only bemused. "I haven't done anything to earn the right to have other people listen to me yet, so I...I don't know. Maybe if I ever figure things out. I guess we...I think as a group we'd be good at getting information and...acting as diplomats, maybe."
Thane's question pulls a laugh out of Liz, almost a snort as she takes another swallow of her beer and has to stop herself from spilling it. "Ummm. I think either you or Pen would win a karaoke contest. Showmanship is so important." A beat. "The two of you should have a karaoke-off so I can decide for sure."
apples
Pen has an expressive (artist's model, Pre-Raphaelite stunner) face, and she makes one at Liz's suggestion -- laughing, her hands brought together in a quick clap, "You are giving me and Thane too much credit."
"It's your turn to ask questions, Lizzyfer," Thane says helpfully, smiling a rather dreamy smile and folding his arms back behind his head. The ground is hard, but soft enough for his head.
"A question for everyone," Rob says, his eyes on Nicholas. He is watchful, too, Rob; he is ready to stir the shadows up, perhaps. "What have you waited for and are still waiting for?"
Nick and Liz
"Ohhh, Robby, going deep, I see," Liz says, and she says this before it can sink in for Nick that Rob is watching him when he asks, that he has not perhaps been as difficult to read as he often hopes (or, frankly, often is.) Liz presses a forefinger to her lips as though deep in thought, and there are certain gestures she makes that can be difficult to tell whether she is sincere or only playing at gravity. "And out of turn, too."
(Sometimes pretend at a thing often enough and it is this way: it is you, it becomes you.)
"I'm waiting for...a chance to really make a difference for someone or something. Like in this big way, that I can look at and say - this was something that changed the world for the better, and I'm glad I got to be a part of it. Maybe that'll be us, one day." Liz smiles then, a dreamy sort of thing that belongs with Thane's, and after a moment reaches over and pats Rob's elbow. "You should answer, too, once everyone's gone."
"Courage," says Nick, and if there is a smile here some half-private thing it is perhaps because he is keenly aware of the irony: both ironies.
apples
[Rob: I see into your SOUL, Nick Hyde.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Nick and Liz
[No you don't. I don't like it.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Nick and Liz
[The first thing Robin Anton will be able to tell is that Nicholas is not lying: this is however a carefully selected answer, poetic even, something he believes to be at the root of the things he has waited for and is still waiting for. Robin knows, too, that Nick is very practiced at giving answers like this. He is not used to being questioned, or being asked what he wants. In fact, it is hard for him to tell what he wants because he is often afraid to want those things.]
leaves
Rob does ask difficult questions. For Thane this one is particularly difficult, because he may have waited for things, and perhaps he is waiting, but none of those things are expressible. So.
Thane blink blink blinks into the fire, having flopped over onto his side, propped himself up on his elbow, and look his arm is such a nice carved shape, Thane wears athleticism like a secret. He blink blink blinks into the fire and then rubs a hand over his face. He is a considering Thane. A considering Thane finally says, "My Tradition means I wait for the Right Time for something -- I am waiting for the next season, the next shift of weather. But but but! I'm self aware enough to, fuck, think I'm pretty much an in the moment guy, I guess I'm waiting for the battle, maybe, I'm waiting for the time of prophecies and heroes, sure, maybe I'm waiting for that, but I'm kinda just living in the meantime. I'm waiting for people to get their acts together, man."
Pen's lashes are low, and she is turning her cup over and over in her hand and her eyelids are shadowed and the arches of her eyebrows are delicate ones and her mouth is pressed together the lower lip firm until Thane is done speaking and then her mouth twists and her lashes cease catching firelight and she flicks a look Rob-wards. Half-blinks; it is the light, that's all. The twist of her mouth becomes a sweet thing, not quite a smile.
"I don't know. There are big things you could say I have been waiting for, and I wait for: good deeds, the answers to all our - my - hopes. But I guess what I've waited for, been waiting for, whatever, I guess belonging. Knowing that I really belong where I choose to be."
Nick and Liz
"Are you still waiting for that, Penny?" The smile that Liz offers the Flambeau is a kind one: it's not especially aware see she takes other people at their word and does not think about in what other sense Pen might mean this, but she does think of the here and now. Liz, too, often lives in the moment and more than one would expect from a member of the Chorus; sometimes she too can wear a secret even if she isn't especially good at keeping them.
Thane, he had earned a considering look from her, one of the few she is wont to offer. The battle, prophecies and heroes: maybe she wonders.
Nicholas has said nothing because he is watching the others; he is listening to Thane and watching him blink blink blink into the fire and Thane could be a carving, some god or hero in repose. And: he is listening to Pen and his eyes are lingering on the slant of the firelight against her eyelashes and the sweet bow of her mouth. She says what she says and his hand steals up to the back of his head, twists into his curls and tugs. His gaze is somewhere on the ground between his toes and the fire's edge, now.
Liz glances over at Rob, now. "Are you going to finish your turn?"
leaves
"Yeah," Pen tells Liz, simply, and she takes a sip of whatever drink she's got now: maybe a bottle of cider; apples on her tongue, lending her cheeks a mild flush; it could be amatory, she could be a relic, and see, Rob is the only other member of the Order here tonight to know, perhaps, just what she means. Of course he knows.
"You're two questions down when you begin yours," Rob tells Liz, serenely and with a faint smirk. "But yes, I will finish. Nick, what do you think the best way for a group to make a decision is? Liz, what's the meanest thing you've ever done to Thane?"
Nick and Liz
"Rob, that isn't even fair!" There is a little frown there to counter his smirk, but the sort of frown that indignant though it may be is resigned. Liz knows the rules, and she knows that the rules of such games matter to some people.
So in the end she gives her hand a little wave as he goes on to ask his questions. His question for her startles her so much that she almost cuts in before Nick can make his reply: see the little furrow there in her brow, see the blink blink. She opens her mouth and shuts it, but manages to refrain long enough to allow Nick to speak.
And the Chakravanti is watching Rob, and there is a curve to his mouth that stops short of a smile much like Pen's did, could be amused could be bemused is neither. "I'm still kind of new to the group thing, so I'm more inclined to listen to what other people think is the best way, for right now. I guess weighing what each person wants against what's best for the group is probably the way I would choose, though."
And now that he has spoken Liz has turned her head toward the Verbena there by the fire, and she says, "I don't know if I've ever done anything mean to Thane. Thane, have I ever been mean to you?"
Nick listens to her ask that, and his eyes flick toward Rob, and here: the smile actualizes as he scuffs a foot into the dirt.
leaves
"Don't answer that, Thane. The question is an exercise for Liz in self-awareness, and it won't do any good if she has help," Rob is very quick to say.
Thane opens his mouth; shuts it with an audible snap.
Nick and Liz
Liz's head snaps toward Rob then, and her eyes fix on him (with only a moment's delay: she is as drunk as the rest of them) and for a moment there is lightning in their depths. It is quick, violent, gone again.
"Well, maybe you need an exercise in self-awareness, because trying to teach your friends lessons makes you a jerk," she says, though it is without any particular heat, and: she has not refused to answer. She folds her arms and gnaws on her lip, catching it between her front teeth.
"I guess I've said your magick is weird once or twice. That's kind of mean, isn't it? Is that what you mean, Rob?" A look flicked from him to Thane, and back.
leaves
Rob seems unruffled by Liz's ire. He says, "If you think that's when you've been meanest to Thane, Cookie, then I guess that's when you've been meanest. Who gets the next three questions?"
Thane shrugs. "I like being wounded," a waggle of thick eyebrows, "It makes the blood flow."
Nick and Liz
"It's my tu - " Liz begins, before Nick glances toward her and her jaw clicks shut again. It has only just dawned on her that she used her third question. Her arms fold again, now, and her eyebrows lower almost comically over her eyes, like gathering stormclouds.
"I guess it's Nick's turn, then," she says. "But Thane, you should answer my question if it's going to count as a question!"
Nicholas has been watching, quiet, turning his cup in his hands. If there was any discomfort there as Rob and Liz bickered, he betrays none; he may have glanced once or twice toward Pen as the uninvolved party, perhaps watching her response to determine whether he ought to have been uncomfortable. Insightfulness in groups is a particularly tricky thing: it is why the insightful often avoid them, when they are also sensitive to others' moods.
"I'll keep thinking of questions," Nick says, and here there is another smile, a friendly thing, though: it is likely he already has his questions in mind.
leaves
Rob smiles at Nick. An easy smile, tranquil; lines around his eyes.
Thane makes a show of unclicking his jaw, rubbing it and stretching it and making very dramatic stretchy faces and then he says in one breath, "Oh I don't think it's mean just kind of wrong some people are squeamish I don't hold it against you it's part of your charm the world would be lesser if there weren't many interesting facets of magick."
Pen does not seem to find the bickering unusual; her expression is, perhaps, a bit watchful; and see, Nick, she is looking bright-eyed from one to the other, though quiet, quiet, quietly; and she is pulling another leaf from the leaf crown braided into her hair; giving this one to the fire.
Nick and Liz
"Well, but I asked if I had ever done anything mean," Liz says, and her tone verges on querulous; sometimes self-reflection or self-awareness, if this is what Rob had truly intended, comes in stages. There are people who find it easier than others. "In your opinion."
Pen's watchfulness draws his eyes, and soon too does the gold leaf given to fire. Nick twists a curl around his finger and lets it spring back. Perhaps he would've liked a leaf crown: too late now that they are all drunk.
"Rob," Nick says after a moment, "how do you see your role in the group, out of curiosity?"
leaves
"What I said," Thane says. He shakes leaves out of his hair, then tosses a handful at Liz. "Just squeamishness."
The leaves fall: red and orange.
Nick twisting a curl around his finger draws Pen's gaze; she opens her mouth to say -
But Robin speaks. An answer. See. "Hmm. I'm the intelligent advisor, of course, and the alarm clock. I get people moving in a direction."
Nick and Liz
Liz reaches out to catch one of the leaves as it floats through the air and down, and only air passes through her fingertips. The leaves fall, one by one, and soon enough they will blanket the earth as the long night falls. For a little while, at least.
Nick's eyes are drawn toward Rob when the other man answers his question, he offers a smile here. "I've always slept through my alarm clocks," he says. And he leans forward with his chin on his fist, his gaze sweeping to each of the other three in turn. A thoughtful thing.
"Thane and Liz," he says, "can you see yourselves working magick together, like...jointly, between the two of you, and what do you think it would look like if you did?"
And, as though he had used Mind and Life to conjure them (he didn't), ridges and valleys form across Liz's forehead once more as her eyebrows draw down and then up. "Umm. I guess you and I could sing together, right Thane? We could do something like that."
leaves
"Think of me as version 2.0," Rob says, dryly, to Nick. "Better, stronger, faster."
Thane: "Yes yes. Any ritual we came up with would probably involve singing or invocations or something there's really a lot the Chorus has in common with the Verbena you know similar trappings aren't hard to find to make the rote palatable to both so we could certainly -- do even I mean geez let's not pretend like we've never Worked together, Liz, for the added juice! -- polish up somebody's luck, or our own luck, or sing until we found Quintessence, you know that kind of shit. It'd probably look kinda serious." Thane beams: first at Liz, and then at Nick.
Nick and Liz
"Well, I think Nicky meant on our own together, not like with everyone else," Liz says, with a glance toward Nick as though for confirmation: and here Nick shrugs.
"But I think there's lots of stuff we could find but probably singing is the most likely. But I bet you'd use like candles and stuff, right Thane? You do lots of things that don't, um, don't make me squeamish." And here Liz brightens, points over toward Thane and says, "You'll have to hear him sing sometime. There was this one time we found a lute, and he played it really beautifully like some old-timey bard."
"I want to hear more about things you've all done in the past," Nick says, and then adds with a rueful smile, "But I used up two questions asking you that." He leans down to heft up the bottle of whiskey, adds a little more to his cup (much less, this time) and holds it up to offer to everyone else. Then he takes a swallow from his cup. "Who's next?"
leaves
"Sure," to candles, and then: he laughs. "I could play a lute now. We could sing along. Damn, I really should conjure up a karaoke machine--maybe I can coax the puppy into howling out a tune."
"Don't I get a question, Nicholas?" Pen says, and her eyes gleam, quicksilver, mercury.
"He's not cheating like Liz," Robin says. "Don't tease him."
Pen crinkles her nose at Robin, but decides to stretch up and stroll casually behind his chair. Robin reacts to this by scrunching down the tiniest bit, as if he thinks Pen is going to drop something down his back. She does circle his neck and shoulders with one arm.
And then she forcibly ruffles his hair with her other hand.
Rob tries for dignity throughout. He looks like a muppet by the end.
"Flambeau," he says, loftily.
Meanwhile: "It's me," Thane is saying. "I'm next. Nick, can you see yourself working magick together jointly with... any of us? Who do you think would win in a fight, me or Rob? And what's your favourite song to dance to?"
Nick and Liz
Pen's eyes gleam, and when Nick's find them they are not unsure but are somewhat sheepish, and the perceptive could notice that beneath that: tinged with regret, perhaps. Nicholas thinks he probably could have gotten away with cheating, and were the moment not passed he would consider it now.
Maybe. "Decorum is more important for newcomers," Nick tells Rob, and the sidelong glance he gives him is a sage one. As Pen circles Rob's neck and shoulders, there is only quiet observance, and a smile as Robin bears the tousling with grace and surprising tolerance.
As Thane speaks and as he takes another drink, Nick eyes the ground again, though this time it is with a thoughtfulness, an intent, and soon enough he moves down onto the ground. This is not enough: he inches himself closer to the fire, wiggles there bit by bit until the dry heat is soaking through his sweater, melting into his bones, and he stretches out on his side and lifts himself on an elbow.
"I think I could Work with anyone here," he says. "But I...it would be difficult since I don't think any of you really practice the Arts that I know well, and vice-versa. I don't sing, but," and he tilts his head thoughtfully, tips his chin up toward the sky and stars, "I learned magick using a lot of the same tools the Verbenae use, and...wood and metal and stone, which Hermetics use I think," and here a glance toward Pen and Rob for confirmation. "I guess we'd...I'd have to Work more with all of you to know for sure. But I think I could."
A beat. "I think you would probably win a fight. Sorry, Rob. And, uh...well, I don't dance very much. I usually just move around with whatever's on."
leaves
"Oh man," Thane says, "no no no. We've got to go dancing. Fuck; everybody who wants some music, raise their hands. I will bring some music right now I can just go get my truck or I can get my guitar but only if people promise to move do you guys promise to move it's firelight firelight requires movement in tithe."
"That's an interesting turn of phrase," Pen says. "I'd move if you brought your guitar," and she gives a smoulderful beguileful glance Liz-wards, as if to say, you too would move wouldn't you Chorister? Lure, lure. Tempt, tempt. Cult of personality, nascent.
Rob is as the serene Persian cat who's expression does not change when its fur is floofed, though he takes a measured sip of his drink. The firelight catches on the large black stone of his ring. The blackest stone there is. It absorbs the light.
"My turn again - isn't it?" Penelope says. "Songrobin Solomon - don't you want to invite Nicholas to join our cabal?"
"Do you mean to ask a question of me with that moniker?" Rob says, dryly. He sounds for a moment much like his mentor might - dry as a bone; as an old page. He gives the Flambeau a quick look (go on, interpret it), then to Liz and Thane. "I think I might." He still sounds dry. "He seems clever, like he'll get along well with us and like he'll help plug the gaps in our collective library of knowledge."
"Liz - do you think it would be better if he were more than an 'honorary' member?"
"Thane - do you agree with Rob?"
Nick and Liz
"I would dance if you brought out your guitar, Thane," says Liz, who does not appear to need much beguiling to agree. "Do you want me to go get it for you?"
Nicholas, meanwhile, ducks his head and takes another swallow from his cup. If he is dancing, he plans to be too drunk to remember it. This is until Pen speaks again: asks about his induction into the cabal, and he coughs and lowers his cup.
"I think Nick would be a great cabalmate," Liz says, and even though the corners of her mouth pull up her eyes are somehow solemn. "He seems loyal, and like his heart is in the right place."
Nick, who does not know what to do with the outpouring of compliments, tugs on a curl and glances toward Thane.
leaves
"I agree with Robin on that subject, yeah, I mean, Nick does seem smart, he seems like he knows which side of the moon is dark and how to swing a scythe and when to put the ax down, man, he's been pretty good with us, not everybody's so good at fucking working things out sharing enough but not everything," Thane grins, "I know you kept some cards close to your chest, eh, tucked up your sleeve, but that's good," the grin fades, and Thane is serious; he'd wear blood like skin, capiche? "Because sometimes it's best to have a secret weapon tucked away, not a weapon like a gun man just - yeah I agree. We could use his perspective I think probably and he seems pretty decent and I know everybody likes things about him and that's kinda important good energy the sort of tension that rises off'a bodies when they're and yeah like that. Liz you should definitely get my guitar."
Nick and Liz
"I, um. Thanks, everyone," Nick says, yanking almost too hard on another curl. He looks over toward Pen now, and lowers his hand to rest on his knee. "Are you, uh, are you in agreement, Pen?"
Liz, who apparently either knows it is a foregone conclusion or cannot handle the tension, leaps up from her seat and beelines for the front yard. She will return before long with the guitar, but for now: it is only the four of them there in front of the fire.
leaves
"Only on important points do I ever agree with Rob," Pen says, her grey eyes warm and a certain luminous curl of her mouth: see, there; it isn't mirthful; it is serious. "I sort-of think you're an important point, Nicholas Hyde. If you want to be part of a cabal, you should think about ours. I'd like to have you. We all would."
"Two more questions," Rob, at his driest. He's drinking way too much alcohol for the dry to be allowed. Thane has crawled for the cookies. Poked his head up over the log the cookie platter is settled on; he steals it. The whole platter.
And you'd never think he's being watchful.
Nick and Liz
"I'd like to be part of your cabal," Nick says, and his cup has lowered now, is held in both hands against the ground and perhaps he is wishing he were not lying on the ground for this moment. His expression, too, is solemn; his mouth settles just so naturally, and just now his eyes are dark in the firelight. He is looking at Pen at first, and gradually this shifts to include Robin and Thane as well.
"Is there some sort of process I need to go through to be initiated?" A little quirk of his mouth, now. "Something other than dancing?"
leaves
"Let's see how good you are at dancing," Thane says. "Then we'll let you know what else you've gotta go through, finish up with, y'know, stamp the blood brotherhood, all of that."
"You should sleep on it; consider it. We like to hang out and have fun, but we're quite serious about oaths that bind - all of that," Rob says. "We do an official swearing in."
Pen smiles at Nick; it's one of her slightly Mysterious smiles, not because she is occulted, but because she isn't saying anything; because she is so lovely, smiling like that: an easy invitation
Nick and Liz
"I can sleep on it," Nick says, "but I'm pretty sure of my decision."
With Pen smiling like that, how can he help but smile back: this easy return, this moon bright reflection drawn out of him. He drains the rest of his cup and pushes himself to his feet, sways for only a moment. A moment later and it will become apparent that he glimpsed Liz returning, saw her shadow falling into the ring of firelight, Liz there with Thane's guitar.
Liz holds the instrument out toward Thane even before she is close enough for him to take it (and thankfully even drunk she has the sense to steer herself away from the fire: she is clumsy enough to trip and spill into it, flesh and instrument and all.) A hand at the base and a hand at the neck and she extends it toward the Verbena.
Nick brushes away the seat of his pants and watches as Thane takes the instrument. "I'm not even sure how you dance without a drum beat. Someone show me?"
It's a fourth question, a break in decorum: but perhaps they will forgive him, tonight.
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