All of the things that shine

senobnaws
a saturday and Nick's wife is gone on mysterious errands and Nick is at his leisure to work in the garden dying now autumn not dying but preparing to be fallow there is a wild brown rabbit which nibbles and nibbles and Nick is at his leisure to go on errands there is a pop-up market not too far from their home hosted in the courtyard of a derelict building empty store fronts except for a church a smoke shop a record store with questionable hours and a breakfast place which seems to be rarely open but enjoys a bustling hipster surgence come sundays there's that nice courtyard with a little creek over stones and the pop-up market has all sorts of knick-knacks and then of course there's their perferred grocery store and a nearby park too the park is very nice and it has water and the water sings songs like come to me come to me come to me and the only thing which is certain besides death and taxes whoever said that didn't know but the third thing which is certain is that Nick's keys have been filched are missing not where he put them and though after a protracted search he'll find them sticking out of the garbage disposal.

crow
It's autumn now and so the time for gardening is drawing to a close.  Nick has just finished turning the compost heap, which has yet to produce any real compost but will by the spring.  He is pruning the mums and the ivy which has burst over the backyard, ground cover will hold the soil in place during the bitter winter and looks nice besides.  They're coming up on their first year here in the house, aren't they?

Nonetheless, he eventually finishes what he is doing in the garden and goes upstairs to shower and prepares to go on errands because maybe there's something he can find Pen in that little pop up market.  He is dressed and his hair drying by the time he begins looking for his keys, which are nowhere to be found.  Not for lack of looking: he searches the little keyhook by the front door first, and then he looks around the shoe rack in case they may have fallen.  He searches under the end table and in its drawers.  He searches his coat pockets even though he cannot recall having worn his jacket just yet.  He looks in their bedroom, rifles through the pockets of yesterday's pants and the soil-stained carpenter jeans he was wearing while working outside.  He flattens himself out on the floor and looks under their bed and finds only a lone dust bunny.

Eventually his search does indeed lead him to the kitchen, where the keys are: there, sticking out of the garbage disposal.  Nick blinks at them for a moment as he stands at the sink, and then reaches to grab the tip of one of the keys and flip them up into his hand.

crow
[Alertness?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

senobnaws
and the key is cold when he pinches it between his fingers and as he flips them up into his hand it appears that somehow someway some mechanism some trick some uncanny knack of ill-luck the garbage disposal catches and turns on and grinds his key chain not the keys chomping it an unholy groan of a noise until look there's the switch for the garbage disposal still switched to off but a switch on and off again will turn the garbage disposal into silence and hush-a-bye and go on put your fingers in there Nick check to see if it's broken why don't you

crow
Check to see if it's broken.  Nick's face screws up in to displeasure, and later puzzlement, at the unholy scream of the disposal against his keychain and he is quick to flick the switch and shut it off on off again.  It must be broken.

Best not to stick his fingers in if it's catching; Nick crouches down and opens the cabinet below the sink and peers in at the underside of the disposal, at its motor, as though that would possibly tell him anything.

senobnaws
the motor looks very much like a motor and it does not turn on again at its own whim although there are bits of key chain fluff if nick's key chain was fluffy if it is metal there is nothing it is fine and it is good and he has his keys and the house is safe and silent and something is dripping upstairs drip drop drip-drip drop drop drip

crow
Nick's brow is furrowed as he inspects the underside; he had a metal keychain and so there is nothing, it appears to be fine.  He raises himself and winces as his knee pops, and he gives his leg a shake before -

oh.  There is a noise upstairs, something drip drip dripping.  The ridges and valleys across his forehead deepen, a tectonic shifting, as he pads his way up the stairs to go and investigate.

senobnaws
He will remember of course that time his wife fell asleep while reading and the entire hall was flooded; this is not that bad. But the drip drop, drip drip drip drop drop, drop drip, that sound it is coming from the bathroom, and when he looks inside he will see the sink is full of silver-light water so full that the water trembles above the edge of the sink and each drop sends another two or three or four-five-six drops splishing over the side running to the floor where there s another tiny puddle and it seems as if the faucet just wasn't turned off enough and then look somebody pulled the tab so the sink wouldn't drain oops.

crow
There are tiny puddles and there is a noise of dismay from him, here; Pen is not home to banish all the water away.  He doesn't know how the sink got clogged; he is too dismayed at first to do anything but question how the hell two things could go wrong at once.  Terrible luck, isn't it?

Even for magi sometimes the mundane is so ingrained in them, is so human, that they don't examine such things straightaway.  Instead he only strides over to the sink and lifts up the tab so that the sink will drain all the water away before it becomes a flood.

senobnaws
There is a truly terrifying slurp as the drain is lifted as it gapes a vortex mouth slurps on the water a drowning gasp sound and if Nick doesn't hold the tab the entire time the drain will keep closing so nothing drains but turning off the faucet would stop the drip for now anyway and where did Nick put his keys is he still holding them are they in his pocket they are not in his pocket where are they?

crow
Nick doesn't think to turn off the tap just yet; after a moment he does, after he realizes the tab is sliding closed again.  He turns the faucet off; he holds the tab closed long enough to allow the water to drain.  His keys are in his pocket except - where are they?  Once the sink has closed and he reaches for them he realizes they are gone.

He breathes a curse and there is still damp on his fingers and he is standing in water and so it is easy because this is a gate a door:

[Spirit 1, diff 4, -1 for instrument.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 9) ( success x 3 )

senobnaws
Nick on a gate at a door Nick on a threshold Nick in the water river-dark Banshee's young gentleman Nick looks through and sideways and he can still see the bathroom but the bathroom has that cast it gets when he is looking at the spirit world (one day he'll show it to Pen, right?) that lick of vibrance here and there while other things are faded and more wan especially in a building and sometimes there are eerie shades those who should be gone and utterly gone wheeled away and sometimes there are mischievous spirits gamboling interesting grotesqueries phantasms and right now the room Nick is in it is empty, it is utterly empty, right maybe right?

crow
[Alertness?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

crow
Right now the room appears to be utterly empty.  There is an uneasiness that stirs in his stomach as he slides his hand again into his pocket, balls it up around what should be his keys but there are no keys there.  He looks around the bathroom, which because it is their home always carries a certain vibrance for him, looks brighter, the towels fluffier and the shower curtain carries a certain romantic gauziness, a glow.  It is not an eerie place to him, and nevertheless he cannot help but feel very alone just now.

senobnaws
There are things he notices, sharp-eyed, bright-eyed, he notices three shadows bird-shadows winged-shadows that are not in themselves a spirit but an echo echo of presence and intention slipping still slow and delayed out of the room across his shoes the tiles the water and one of them has something dangling they might be keys and he can hear this human sound, this childish laughter, this laughter that might be mistaken for a child's, coming from: oh, somewhere - downstairs; downstairs, he thinks, then no: the bed room.

crow
He notices: bird-shadows, dark wings, and his uneasiness carries down into his legs which stir him away from the water.  They carry him to the bedroom, and he is reaching beneath his shirt out of habit and finding that he left his bags in their bedroom as he often does when he is only running to the store or otherwise about some non-magick business.  He is not Pen, who carries her weapons on her.

"Hello?"

senobnaws
[stealthy stealth]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

crow
[Alertness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

senobnaws
he definitely sees the stealthsome creature which is creeping up on him he sees its winged shadows whisking eddying around his feet like leaves pale flags he sees also the mischief they have done unlatching one of the curtains the pole looks like it will crash should anyone tweak the curtains which are askew and it would indeed fall if anybody did do that fall right on their head and the creature well this is what it looks like a handsome man's face where a bird's face should be the handsome man's face being somewhat grecian clay figure fine in mien and nick might recognize his own eyebrows and its body is that of a mockingbird iridescent blue feathers and darkness and a star at its breast and instead of clawed talons it is walking on human arms and around the left is a little bracelet of something resembling coke tabs and its wings are very long and very pretty and it is stealthily creeping up on him walking on those hands about to launch itself and fly at his hair as it leaves the room entirely it does not think it can be seen he does not think he can be seen

crow
Nick does recognize his own eyebrows in this creature of air and darkness, sees something of himself in the sweep of its wings.  His mouth is a thin line as he notices the curtains, and he lets out a hard sigh through his nostrils.  And the creature does not think it can be seen.  He is frustrated and weary enough from the disposal and the sink to nearly call after it, to let it know that he knows it's there; at the last moment he bites his tongue.

Rather than follow it right away, Nick walks down the stairs; he opens the garage and reaches in to retrieve a watering can.  As he closes the door, he listens.

senobnaws
He can hear that same sound; distant, muted laughing - this time it is coming from the kitchen again; it is followed by the sound of the garbage disposal, catching on something metal, like keys.

crow
It is laughing and he can hear that his keys have probably gone back down into the garbage disposal; perhaps it is inclined to repeat its tricks.  Nick wanders into the half bathroom downstairs and begins to fill the watering can, glancing out every now and again toward the kitchen.

senobnaws
The garbage disposal gives one truly terrible grind-sound of suffering and then noise stops; this probably means the garbage disposal is broken.

The spirit does not reappear, and the laughter has faded. There is another little spirit in the shadow corner of the house: something like a snail, but not; instead of a snail's tail it has a spider's many-segmented legs and it pushes itself forward in quick bursts, rolls over, explodes into a little spray of fur and runs out away from the light and the water.

crow
The laughter has faded, and Nick's brows are one long line so tightly are they pulled together as he steps into the kitchen to look at the poor garbage disposal.  There is a full watering can in his hand, and he cannot tell where the thing has gone cannot tell what else it was in the house.  He glances down into the disposal to see if he can tell where his keys have gone.

senobnaws
His keys are down, caught up and mangled in the blades; he can certainly see the glint of them. There is no spirit. The kitchen is empty. There is no drip drip, drop drip, drip drip drip drop drip-drip drop. There is no laughter; there is only silence; the weight of the watering can in his hand. Maybe there is a drip, drop; but it only comes from the can itself.

crow
There are a few spare drips from the can, though they fell on the floorboards on the pathway from the bathroom to here; Nick glances 'round the kitchen.  And he sees nothing.

There is a sigh and then he sets the watering can down on the kitchen counter and retrieves a pair of tongs from one of the drawers.  He leans down over the disposal, and he can see the glint of his keys there.  He reaches down into the disposal for them, passing the tongs close to the blades almost gingerly.

senobnaws
The keys are, unfortunately, quite caught in the mangle of blades, and do not seem to want to pull free with any ease; it is an arduous, fifteen-or-so minute piece of work to get them out just using tongs, but it is possible. They do not look great, the keys, but they are still keys; they hold their essential shape.

crow
The keys are still keys, though it is somewhat likely that he will have to get them remade: keys are delicate things, see, and a burr where there isn't supposed to be a burr, an errant nick, can make them much harder to turn in the lock.  He has to work and wiggle them about to free them from the disposal, and as he holds them up he lets out a little sigh and tucks them back into his pocket.

Nick leans against the counter and watches, and listens.  Perhaps it's gone.

crow
[Are you gone, spirit?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

senobnaws
He is alone in the kitchen.

It is possible the spirit, having had its fun, having laid its pranks, having messed up this and that, has had enough and has flitted elsewhere; it is also possible it is in another room, waiting, sleeping: when something like this decides to take residence, it can be difficult to uproot.

crow
It can indeed be difficult to uproot, and he has no idea what might have drawn it here.  Nick sighs and wanders back up toward their bedroom so that he can fix the curtains, before Pen ends up bringing the rod down on her head later tonight.  He texts his wife as he ascends the staircase:

New friend in the house, pulling some pranks.  Text when you get home before you come in.

senobnaws
But does he look where he's going as he ascends the staircase? There is a sense of air currents, moving; a sense, too, a back-of-throat tickle an impending cold a sense of what is it: some Thing. There is no other sign of the spirit; there is, however, one of Pen's necklaces on the floor, a glittering bit of dazzle, easy to trip on; go falling, head-long, heedless.

Pen texts back:

?

Bad friend?

Do you need me to come home?

crow
[Do I notice it?  +1, distracted.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

crow
Pen's necklace, with its dazzling workmanship, is on the stair and it would be easy to trip, to have it roll underfoot and send him pitching back down the stairs from whence he came.  It is only the stirring air currents that draw Nick's eyes away from his phone and to the necklace.  He stops, and he lowers his phone and for a moment absorbs this, what's in front of him.

Then he leans down and carefully hooks the necklace through a finger and lifts it off the ground, carrying it with him back upstairs.  When he texts Pen back he stops and leans against the wall in order to do so.

Not a good friend.  Not sure if it's bad necessarily.  I'm okay.

senobnaws
There's a wire loose in the necklace; if he is not careful, it will prick him; draw blood. The wire has never been loose before; Nicholas has taken this necklace from Pen's neck before; has clasped it, too; it knows his hand. This is the first time it has betrayed it.

Once again there is no sign of the spirit. Perhaps that was its last mischief, truly: that necklace, left as it went on its way - elsewhere? Or nearby.

Pen's text reads:

Should I come home?

crow
Nick is not easily fooled into thinking it is gone; he has to hold the necklace carefully, and after a moment moves the necklace around so that he will be less likely to snag his skin on the wire.  He texts back one-handed, tapping out buttons with his thumb.

Maybe.  You won't be able to see it though.

senobnaws
Her text is concise:

Ugh.

And there is no sound from below, no sudden re-animation of the garbage disposal, no garage door opening, no regular door slamming, no flood from a faucet, no car turned on. Only the usual house sounds.

And wind outside, wind howling: hard.

crow
Nick's return text, too, is concise: a frowning emoji.  And then he tucks his phone away in his pocket because the house is gone quiet again, without any sound other than the occasional creak of floorboards or the shifting of an old house as it settles.

Save the wind.  And now he is not really planning to go out on his errands, after all.  The day's plans have changed.  He isn't even really sure precisely what it is he's dealing with, yet.

senobnaws
He has seen it; that's something. He's seen it and he's seen its shadows and he knows that it can manipulate things on this side of the gauntlet; he does not know where it is. How pleasant their house is; it has a certain smell, their house, in autumn; when his wife goes on cooking baking binges of lonely homesickness; it has a smell, anyway; outside one of the neighbors honks very rudely which must mean both sets of neighbors happened to want to go somewhere at the same time.

crow
He has seen the Irvings and the Kidds both at the end of their respective driveways, honking at each other when they are each trying to turn in a separate direction.  Old roads are often also narrow ones.  Nick likes the Irvings and he likes the Kidds; he likes them both separately.  Very much separately.

Nick walks to the spare bedroom which overlooks the front of the house and glances out the window, expecting to see the wind tearing at the branches and also Paul Irving's mustache bristling in range.  He pauses with a hand on the windowsill and peers out.  The necklace he still keeps hanging from a finger, as it has not yet occurred to him to walk into their bedroom to put it away again.

senobnaws
the necklace glimmers and gleams, luminous and milky in its radiance, and outside the wind is bending trees back has sent a sign or three skidding across the cul de sac it has sent a wash of brown leaves ragged leaves whisking through the gutters it is making wind chimes clamor one against the other it is

well outside nicholas can see a shadow a shade a ghost a mourning woman a woman all in white faceless with three little shadows clustered at her ankles a matryoshka line of possible children and each of them bearing some hideous mark one with a noose the other dripping blood which doesn't ever pool in a larger pool than just behind its ankle the other one leaving ash soot flecks of it as if it were burned the other trailing water and a final one difficult to tell it seems sleepy maybe drifting and the mourning woman tall tall tall she has blood drenching her robes wet and they are walking and walking and of course nobody sees them and what else can he see he can see a frog spirit bright eyed and cold somnolent autumn's coming and frog song is at its peak and he can see little moth spirits white diaphanous coming together creating a shape the shape might almost be a rune he can see the spirit of a house that was burned down superimposed over another house and he can see raven hanging out further down the road because raven hangs out quite often doesn't he and

of course the irvings and the kidds peeling away and he can see a dog with a leash running away from its owner its owner being a ten year old kid who is chasing the dog down while his parents stroll behind unconcerned in spite of the traffic

crow
Nicholas can see a mourning woman of the sort that would have left him wide-eyed and nightmarish during his first few months awake, the first few months when he kept his visions to himself.  These were the things that sent him chasing after anti-psychotics, after alcohol, and in his darker moments after a noose; in the end he took none of them, but he thought about them more than he likes to think about now.

Nick can see a lot of things when he looks out the window.  He breathes out, a slow exhale, and then begins to walk back to his study.  Midway his feet carry him to their bedroom instead so that he can set the necklace there on the dresser, each of the stones arrayed out like dewdrops.

He moves to his study next, and he kicks up the corner of the rug that lies over the ring scribed in the wood below: and of course without any idea of what the creature is it will be difficult to call to it, won't it?  Far more difficult to summon it.  He could ask Raven, he could, and he might pay for the answer even if they are friends.  He lights candles with a long wick.  It will grow dark soon enough and and inside his study it looks like a temple, like a churchyard.

crow
[Spirit 1 + Corr 2 - can we find our friend anywhere around the house that I can't see?  Base diff 5, -1 for instrument, -1 taking time.  WP.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

senobnaws
He can find the mockingbird with a man's Grecian face a man's muscled arms instead of talons he can find it indeed nestled in Pen's jewelry box one of her jewelry boxes folded up with his three shadows under a pall a mystery a secret no spirit here not doing anything nope but of course Nick is a magick-wielder he can find it he finds it he sees it.

crow
He can find the spirit there; unfortunately, figuring out what to do with the spirit once it is there is more difficult.  There is no way to trap it, see: he lacks the knowledge of how to do such a thing, how to bind pattern to circle so that nothing can move through.  He lacks the knowledge of how to target this creature specifically.

He could ask another spirit to eat it.  More bargains, more borrowing.  He discards the idea as he moves back toward the bedroom and leans on the dresser next to the jewelry box.  "Hello there."

crow
[Charisma + Empathy?  Trying not to spook you, yo.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

senobnaws
the creature goes very still when it becomes evident that nick can see it is seeing it and look it cranes its head up his head up stares at nick but just in case doesn't move maybe nick is just testing the silence sometimes humans do that sometimes even shamans do that and it is funny it doesn't mean anything anyway nick finds himself examined, sharply, shrewdly, though its eyes wander to the glittering necklace

crow
Nick can see its eyes wandering to the necklace; Nick's hand moves in that direction too, and he hooks it again around his finger (carefully, see; he remembers the barb.)  "If you're going to wear peoples' necklaces you ought to put them back where you found them," Nick tells it.  The stones glint in the light of the bedroom; now the smell of warm beeswax is beginning to join the other smells mingling in the house.

senobnaws
"you can see me so you must give me your eyes," the spirit says, testingly, because it wants to see whether nick can hear it too; it lifts itself flies up and flies closer and closer to his face and it doesn't have a beak with that man's face instead but a man's mouth can still bite out an eye

crow
Nick is quick to draw his face back, and most of his body in fact, and so the necklace recoils along with him too.  "It seems maybe you ought to just get better at hiding," he says.  "What will you give me, for the use of my home?"

senobnaws
"I won't eat your eyes when you are sleeping," the spirit says, tries. It circles Nick's head once, and twice, and three times, and its three bird-winged shadows lazily follow; then it flits behind him and lands atop the tall mirror Pen sometimes draws out and looks down at Nicholas.

crow
"I would hope not.  You've already been a very poor mannered guest," Nick says, gesturing with the hand that is holding the necklace.  "Why should you want my eyes?"

senobnaws
"Because they see me," the spirit says. "Maybe you are the guest. This is my home now, and these things are going to be mine. I will have them all."

crow
"Mmm," Nick says, and his eyes sweep up to the spirit perched on top of the mirror with something akin to amusement.  "And how are you going to accomplish that?"

senobnaws
"I'm going to nest in them, and frustrate you, and when enough things go wrong you witches will move and I will have everything," the spirit explains, patiently.

crow
"Do you not have a house of your own, that you should want mine?"  Nick, too, seems patient; innocent, even.  "Are you not concerned that we might be dangerous to you?"

senobnaws
"Things are less dangerous when I take their eyes out," the spirit says, feathers fluffing up and out, and see, its fingers tighten on the mirror. A crack does not quite appear, but there's a sound which resonates on both sides of the gauntlet of some thing bending. "I will take yours out and hers and you will not be dangerous. I will have this house."

crow
"I may still be dangerous without my eyes," Nick says.  "She and I are both witches, like you said.  Raven is nearby, and Owl.  I could ask them to take your wings and give them to me as payment for my eyes, even if I were blind.  Wouldn't you rather have a house that was less dangerous for you?"

senobnaws
"I would take your tongue, too," the spirit says. "I would take your tongue and leave its meat in your eye holes, and then you would talk when you tried to see," and it cracks up, highly amused by this image.

crow
The spirit cracks up and Nick, despite the stomach churning image, cannot help but smile because he shares mirth with other things.  "That doesn't sound like it would be very helpful in making me less threatening.  But we don't need our eyes.  I knew you were here, without my eyes.  I could trap you in a box, or if you took everything from us maybe our skins could come and find you while you rested.  They could wrap around you and make you soft and human.  I don't know what you would do then."

senobnaws
"I'd eat your skins," it says, and clicks its teeth together, soft. "But you want to make a deal with me, I can tell you do. You want me to go away and have nothing."

crow
"I want you to go away and leave my house in peace, yes," Nick says.  "But I don't see a reason why we couldn't find you another house instead."

senobnaws
"I want this house."

crow
"What would it take for you to want a different house, then?"

senobnaws
"This house to be less what I want," the spirit says, and it laughs again. "Or you could give me something better than a house."

crow
"What would be better to you than a house?"

senobnaws
It yawns; it yawns very big. "I can't tell you everything. You either know or you don't and I stay forever and I get all of the things that shine and all of the fire too; it is all mine."

crow
Nick sighs and pulls his phone back out of his pocket: and here, taps out another text to Pen.

It's not leaving.  It says it wants the house.

"I suppose we'll just have to live here with you, then," he says.

senobnaws
"Eventually you will leave," the spirit says, confidently, although with an air of melancholy. "They all leave. Do you agree if you don't know I stay forever and get all of the things that shine and all of the fire too that it is all mine?"

crow
"I don't agree," Nick says.  "But it sounds like you've been in other houses before, so how can you stay forever?"

crow
[Wits + Alertness]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

senobnaws
His phone vibrates or buzzes or dings. Pen's response: Too bad. :(

The spirit, meanwhile, takes this moment to go slicing through the air, tearing through it right at Nicholas's head. If he thinks it is going to crash into him, he would be forgiven; it does not crash into him. It veers past and flies into another room, its three shadows weaving together.

"Forever will tell us when we get there," it says, over its wing. Now it is preening on one of the light fixtures. "Do you agree you must give me a house of things I ask for if you keep your eyes?"

crow
For a moment Nick does think that the spirit will crash into him; he swings his head away and to the side, out of its path.  It is too much like the Owl that tried to claw at him once, might have done him harm if it hadn't been weaker than he.  "That depends on what you ask for," Nick says, once he has turned to face it once more.  "I think if you meant to take my eyes, you might have taken them already."

senobnaws
"Then I can take them?"

Nick
"You may not."  Nick folds his arms, watching the spirit preen from where it roosts.  Then he glances back down to his phone.

Heard of a creature with a man's head and a bird's body?  Hands and arms instead of claws?

senobnaws
"I don't want a different house; offer me something better."

The phone rings, or whatever ring tone Nick has set for Pen sings out, in Nick's hand. The sound of it startles the spirit creature; he looks sharp and intent toward the phone, serene mask, unreal.

Nick
His eyes on the spirit, Nick answers the phone.  "Hello?"  A beat.  "Our friend is here with me."

senobnaws
He's probably very smart to keep his eyes on the spirit. The spirit begins to creep closer. Its three-shadow birds sift up, a sound like autumn leaves re-settling.

"Is it doing anything dangerous to you, or to the house? I could certainly list off incidences of bird-creatures with human characteristics, but I'm not certain how helpful that would be. Perhaps you should take a trip to the ranch house?"

Nick
"It wants to drive us out," Nick says, and as the spirit begins to creep closer he takes a step back.  "It's been playing malicious pranks and threatening me a lot."

senobnaws
The spirit's eyes brighten up, like silver coins given a good polish. They have a malicious glint.

"I see. Can it do that much?"

Nick
[Wits + Alertness]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Nick
"I'm not sure, and I'm not sure if I want to find out," Nick says, and with another half a step back now that he has noticed the glint in the creature's eyes.

senobnaws
The creature rushes Nicholas: wings out-stretched, lovely; dripping iridescence which shivers in the air after it like a strange photo-realistic effect, a flaw in the computing software -

[Dex + Brawl. Not that it can, like, touch him, but still.]

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

senobnaws
[Shadow 1]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

senobnaws
[Shadow 2]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

senobnaws
[Shadow 3]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

senobnaws
And for Nick, it looks like all three birdish shadows are clawing at his legs, too, are clambering up his skin and enfolding him, though one of the shadows doesn't seem to be able to get any blows in.

Nick
From the other side of the phone Pen can hear a sharp oath, faint as Nick jerks the phone away from his face and flails his arms to jump away and to the side.  It takes him a moment to realize that the shadows are not doing him harm, that they are climbing up and over him.  He is sure Pen can hear his heart hammering when he finally lifts his phone back to his face.  "I don't think it can come across the Veil," he tells her.  His voice is a little reedy, still.

senobnaws
"What are you going to do?" Pen asks.

The spirit: is no longer in evidence. It whooshed through him, its shadows clawed at him, and then they went that-a-way.

Nick
"I'm not sure," Nick says, twisting his head this way and that to try to tell where the spirit has gone.  "It keeps telling me to offer it something it'll like more than the house."  He takes a tentative step toward the door, then a few more and peers out into the hallway.

senobnaws
"Ah. It wants a bribe; can you catch it and take it elsewhere?"

The spirit is not in the hallway. There is a gurgling sound coming from downstairs, from the kitchen.

Nick
"Probably not," Nick says, though there is a note of doubt there.  "I thought about trying to trap it in something, but I don't really have the strength to bind it."  He starts down the stairs, back to the kitchen.  "Unless I were to try to trap it, physically speaking, which I could do, but that might be kind of dangerous."

senobnaws
"So your options are to physically trap it, but that might be dangerous, to offer it a bribe to leave, to ignore it and hope it goes away, or to find the nearest library and see if you can't find what it is. What - "

And then! His phone beeps, its battery suddenly drained. Hark, is that a bird shadow? It is indeed.

Nick
Nick hadn't been aware of how low the battery was, and he hisses in annoyance and lowers the phone away just to - ah.  He spies the shadow there, and slips the phone back into his pocket.  Then he makes his way the rest of the way down to the kitchen.

senobnaws
All is as it should be in the kitchen, all is as he has left it.

Except the faucet is on, and the drain is plugged up.

Glug, glug. Can he spy the spirit?

Nick
Nick looks for the spirit, peers down into the sink as he steps over to it to turn off the faucet.  The furrow at his brows is a sign that his good humor is beginning to evaporate.

[Wits + Alertness]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

senobnaws
Twisting the faucet's knob does not seem to have a noticeable effect on the water pouring from the faucet. The sink is slowly filling, and the spirit: he can see its reflection in some of the glass containers of rice and grain etcetera they have out; he can see its reflection in the coffee press. There it is: wedged by a cookie jar, watching with its eyes half-lidded, and small: smaller than it has seemed before. He might wonder if this is a second one.

Nick
Nick does indeed wonder if this is a second one, as he glances at it wedged in there by the cookie jar.  "All right," he finally says, "what do you want in order to leave?"

senobnaws
"Your heart on Tuesdays," it says, helpfully, "and a bowl of new cream every day that no leaf ever touches and a handful of gold."

Nick
"I would be happy to give you a bowl of cream every day," he says.  "I will not give you my heart, now or on Tuesdays.  Do you want gold coins?"

senobnaws
"I want gold." The spirit sounds petulant. "I want all the gold in the sun and all the silver in your hair. I want the gold in the other witch's hair. I want hearts. What will you give me besides a bowl of cream?"

Nick
"If we can give you a necklace of gold spun fine as hair to wear around your neck and keep with you, and a bowl of cream, will you agree to leave our house and not return?"

senobnaws
"No. I will leave for one moon for those things. More. Another thing. Three."

Nick
Nick pauses, and the point between his brows reappears as he looks back at the creature.  "I can tell you a story of whatever kind you desire, each moon, until I've found a suitable new home for you," he says.

senobnaws
"Plus the cream, plus the necklace, and I say what is suitable?" the spirit says, and see, look at its avaricious little eyes, how bright they are; how perfect is the curl of its lip, clearly pleased at pulling one over on this sucker.

Nick
"I will find a home for you and we will both agree on whether it is suitable.  And you will not return to this house so long as she or I lay claim to it."

senobnaws
"Plus the cream and the necklace," the spirit insists, bright-eyed.

crow
The spirit's tone, its hopefulness, gives rise to a little smile in spite of Nick's frustration with the creature.  "All right," he says.  "So you'll leave the house now never to return while she and I hold it, and I will leave a bowl of cream for you daily.  In addition we will leave a necklace out for you with the cream before the moon is out.  Each moon I will tell you a story of whatever kind you desire until I have found a new home for you, and both of us will decide upon its suitability together."

senobnaws
"No you will find a home we both agree and then I will leave this house. Where will I go without a home?" And see its feathers go floof, fluff, flister, and it scowls at him like a little Caesar.

crow
"Where were you before you came here?"  It is scowling at him, and his smile is suppressed now, thin.  "If you don't agree to leave today I will agree to nothing."

senobnaws
"If you agree to nothing, I will break your pipes and steal fire," the spirit says, scowling even further. "I was in a nest before I was here. I was there. There."

crow
"So you left your nest and came straight to my house?  What brought you to my house?"

senobnaws
"My wings."

crow
"If you don't tell me what kind of house you would find to be suitable, how am I to look?"

senobnaws
"I want it to be bright and have breaking things that make noise, and people's hair to steal."

crow
Nick makes a noise low in his throat.  "What if I could get you into the metal and glass tower near the river?"

senobnaws
"I can get into metal and glass towers by rivers without you. I am bored. I like this house."

crow
"It's full of people there who wouldn't know to expect you, though," he says.  "And full of vials you could shatter, and computers and pipes and lab equipment.  It's much larger than this house."

senobnaws
"Lab equipment is boring. Why do you want me to go to the glass tower? Is it a trap?" And see, the spirit narrows its eyes, suspiciously, and picks up one hand balancing more precariously on the other and it picks at itself, scratching in a manner that is vaguely although unintentionally obscene.

crow
"I don't think I'm clever enough to trap you," Nick says.  "You've almost gotten me a few times now.  I thought it might be a place where you could have a lot of fun, since we probably won't fall for your tricks here.  We both know how to find you now."

crow
[Manipulation + Expression]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

senobnaws
"You fell for many of them," it says, in a lofty and imperious tone. "Where is your flat electronic computer now?" And it smiles, and Caligula must have looked sweet, sometimes, and so does the spirit, and it ruffles its feathers again and says, "Okay well I can go test the home but if I don't like it I'm coming back."

crow
"All right," Nick says, and leans his hip against the counter as he watches that sweet smile and perhaps he feels a little sorry for the Union members he has just loosed the thing on.  Then again: they took Alex, and they tortured him, so he doesn't feel that sorry.  "I'll be here."

senobnaws
"I will probably not like it. And I will come back for my cream. I will go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and get lots of cream," and the spirit: dive-bombs right for Nicholas, making a bird-screech of a sound: ca-caw -

[an intimidation roll for the road!]

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

crow
Perhaps to its satisfaction, Nicholas cannot keep himself from trying to duck away from it as it dives toward him, even if he knows that it cannot touch him.  It leaves him with a furrowed brow, annoyed and wondering why he cannot sometimes be more like his wife.

senobnaws
And so the spirit leaves, for now. But not without circling back one more time with Nick's keys, which it drops back in the garbage disposal. How does it leave the house? With aplomb, and a promise to return.

His phone has trouble holding a charge for the rest of the day and seems to need to be plugged in to work at all.

crow
It leaves, for now.  Nick sighs and has to use the tongs to retrieve his keys back out of the disposal, and then he fixes the mesh strainer firmly in place.  At least they don't have kids: such pranks could have been decidedly more dangerous.

And for the rest of the day he leaves his phone plugged in, and he waits, trying all the while not to seem too anxious.

Adoption Day

Caleb
Someone was having an adoption event at the 16th street mall. It was three shops down from a starbucks in front of a place that looked like it used to be an army recruiting station that was turned into a high end sandwich shop. It was flanked by a book store and a place that sold bikinis all year 'round.

Or, at least, Caleb was pretty sure those were bikinis. He wasn't completely familiar with the ins and outs of women's underwear but, frankly, very few people understood the nuance of fancy undergarments. His creator had never bothered to actually explain what the purpose of a bra was in that he would never actually have to wear one and the likelihood of encountering one within his lifetime was remarkably slim. So! No time to really think about underthings and, instead, it was time for people to either loiter or avoid the hoard of cocker spaniels and chihuahuas and pit mixes that were there.

The place smelled like dog food and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee as wave after wave of people toting pumpkin spiced everything came through. The pedestrian traffic was slowing down and then speeding up and going with their own little flow of the universe.

He'd picked up his things at the PO box, held a stack of applications in hand and stood, awkward, at the edge of the mass of barking, wiggly, dog-smelling dog things there.

Olive
[awareness, ho!]

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

Olive
Across the street from the pet salon is a clock, towering atop its verdigris pole, and beneath the clock is a flimsy metal table with flimsy metal chairs. At this table sits a girl. More about the girl and less about the clock.

She, like so many of the youths trawling the place as they kill time between brunch and going out, is dressed in a manner that either oozes effortless cool or homelessness depending upon the age and temperament of the observer. Knee-high shit-kicker boots and striped board shorts that look like men's boxers from a distance, a plaid shirt underneath an old leather jacket and braids for days. Eyes behind sunglasses in spite of the cloudiness of the afternoon. She's reading a battered paperback when along comes the boy from the bookstore.

At least, it feels like him. Hard to pinpoint which one is him when there are so many dogs and coffee drinks around but Olive kicks her boots off the opposite chair and pockets her paperback and moseys across the street to investigate anyway.

Caleb
[Awareness?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Caleb
He's got an application from that bookstore. It's printed out on marbled paper because the staff had just run out of copy paper when they had a massive staff turnover and really never ran out of copies. Two years later, they were down to the green marbling instead of the creme paper.

He's got a beat up, olive-drab jacket. Tennis shoes that have walked quite a ways but at least the jeans and the polo are clean. He's wearing a belt. He's wearing glasses. He looks like a chemical engineering major- pleasant but awkward and probably a bit like a nerd but not in the way that was chic. No, he looked more like an employee at Best Buy than someone who was chic.

But something does catch his attention and he's trying to shrug the backpack off his shoulders and put the papers away. Caleb begins meandering in the direction that he feels something. Heart not pounding in naticipation but, instead, approaching with the steady calmness that comes from the area around them. He finally manages to get the backpack off and put the papers away.

Olive
With the boots' help, the young woman is boosted up to average height. Without them she would stand as tall as the average American eighth grader. It's no wonder she has chosen thick-soled shoes for today's outing. As calm as the aura surrounding her, she still carries herself like she would not hesitate to throw a fist if the throwing were necessary.

It is not necessary now, and she seems like the sort of person who doesn't give a shit about much outside of now.

She moseys up alongside Caleb and cranes her neck, stands on tiptoe, to get a load of what's got so many people crowding the dog salon.

"That is the smallest dog I've ever seen in my life," she says as she returns her heels to the pavement.

Nick
There's a sucker born every minute, or so they say.

One sucker has found the only three-legged pit bull mix at the entire adoption event of among the horde of unwanted dogs and the scattering of senior cats and kittens.  The dog, tan and black brindle, a floppy-eared obvious coward, keeps trying to lick his chin.

He's dressed in a light blue T-shirt and chinos the color of a stormcloud and nearby there is a cream and brown heavy perl knit sweater that he set aside so as not to get dog hair all over it.  He is crouched next to the dog with his arm around it, and is in the process of taking a picture with his phone.  He does not think the picture will melt his wife's heart as she has made her dislike of pets clear, but one can hope.

Nick
[Feel free to post around me for a bit if you guys want!]

Caleb
"Do you think they're naturally that small? Or did someone grow them specifically to be that small?" he looks from Olive, who is small in her own right but not terribly so, to the dog in question. There's a long haired chihuahua who looks to be about the size of a volleyball that seems pretty damned tiny.

Caleb dumps his backpack down beside him, standing a rather unimpressive five feet eight inches tall- he's shorter than the average american male, but not by much. He reaches down to pick it up and inspect more carefully, only to realize-

"... how do I pick this up?"

Olive
"I think you're supposed to let it smell your hand first, so it knows you're not here to start a fight."

Spoken like an individual with little to no experience with domesticated animals. Her voice is mellow, the sort of deadpan typically heard in potheads and retail workers, and she does not seem like a retail worker. Pothead, then. Or millennial. That word has become so loaded.

As she stands off to the side, she finds her attention tugged towards the fellow in the blue shirt. One corner of her mouth tugs in amusement.

Caleb
He nods like what she's saying makes perfect sense. Yes, you do not want to start a fight with the small animals. They're cute, and he has a definite desire to not anger the tiny adorable thing that he is looking at. His attention moves down the way to the man in the blue shirt and-

"Oh, hey Nick! Have you seen this?"

He looks at the pit bull, notices the three legs, "huh, that one's different."

Nick
The sound of his name, and spoken by an unfamiliar voice, jerks his gaze up and away from his phone.  Whatever he'd been reading there had brought a crinkle to the skin around the corners of his eyes, some mixture of amusement and rue.

His eyes meet Caleb's, and his smile is slow to fade because that's the sort of man he is, and seconds later it re-emerges.  "Oh, hey, Caleb," he says, with only a second's hesitation before he speaks the man's name.  The diversion is all the pit bull needs in order to seize upon the chance to lick his chin, and the eye on that side squinches shut and he is quick to close his mouth.

He pats the dog's head, gently pulling it away from his face.  "I know," he says, with obvious enthusiasm for the dog's differences.  "He seems like a good dog."  A glance to Olive.  "Who's your friend?"

Olive
That one corner sneaks its buddy in and the two of them create a full-fledged grin at the phrasing of the question. Though they just met five seconds ago she does not correct him. She lifts her eyebrows and looks over to the young man whose name she does not yet know.

As much fun as playing with puppies is, she seems to be having just as much fun watching other people play with the puppies.

"Olive," she says with the ease of passing a joint, then lifts a hand to wave. "Nice to meet you... Nick?"

Caleb
"Are you adopting a dog?" he asks Nick

He seems to log this away for future reference- that this woman is named Olive and some dogs have three legs. He wonders what else has three legs, or if three legged dogs were just uncommon, kind of like people with green eyes.

"Oh! I'm Caleb, by the way," he offers a hand, confident like he had finally figured out this handshake thing.

Nick
"Nick," he confirms, when Olive asks his name.  He reaches up and strokes the dog's broad head, which seems to go a ways toward keeping it from targeting his chin.  "Nice to meet you, Olive."

He watches the two of them shake hands, and there is a little furrow that appears, momentarily, at his brows: apparently they too have just met.  Caleb seems to be meeting a lot of new people.  Caleb seems like he's new in town, in fact.

"I'd like to adopt a dog, but I don't think my wife would go for it," he says, with a pat on the animal's muscular shoulder.  "Eventually I'll wear her down."

Margot
[May as well join the club, aware + percep]

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

Olive
And shake they do, Olive's grin suppressing itself, sublimating into a close-lipped smile that even the sunglasses do nothing to dampen. Her grip is firm, her skin dry and warm, the rings on her fingers cool. Her fingernails are all painted black, but the polish is chipping.

"Hey hey," she says in receipt of Caleb's name, and when the handshake is over she pockets both hands.

To the matter of Nick's wife and her resistance:

"What's she got against dogs?"

Margot
Margot wasn't here for an adoption event, Margot was here for a pair of new shoes and a sweater that wasn't a hoodie from a university she was sitting it out from this semester (probably indefinitely, if she were to be honest with herself).  When she'd first noticed the adoption event she already had her bounty jammed into a nylon tote bag carried over one shoulder; on the way out.

She bore no interest in stopping for dogs, but could not deny the intangible wall of disturbance into which she'd suddenly walked, nor the impression and pulls-prickles-tingles-alarms in some joined place between gut-heart-brain that it caused.  Her step didn't faltered but she slowed to a stop like a car whose engine suddenly cut while going uphill.  Her head turned toward the pop-up crates and table for impulse dog adoptions, and it didn't take long at all to find the people responsible for the strange... otherworldliness, almost, that hung here.  Eyebrows hopped up when she recognized two faces in particular, hunkered down some in cautious curiosity when realizing the third person was a total stranger.

One hand on her tote bag, the other raised to gesture a small greeting as she approached.

"Hey."  Graceful as a bullfrog in her social execution, Margot looked between the three before settling upon Caleb.  "You're making friends fast," she observed, and it was hard to tell exactly how she felt about that.

Caleb
He's not too bad at this hand shaking thing. his hands are warm, once up, then down, then up and down one more time before letting go and drawing his attention back to the chihuahua. He observes it for a moment before putting his hand in. He concludes that it is safe to pick the dog up and does so.

The chihuahua vibrates, as chihuahuas are want to do, and he holds the dog much like he's holding a very large, very delicate eggplant. Both hands and a little confused.

Margot comes by and he smiles, bright and decidedly less confused. He gestures with the dog at the people, "That's Olive aaaand that's Nick and... this is a tiny dog."

Nods. Definite. He's covered all of his bases.

Nick
There is obvious pleasure, a warmth that suffuses Nick's face when he sees Margot pass into the area.  If it is also tinged with surprise, well, one never does quite get used to their kind's tendency to attract like to like when in public, which is the same no matter which city one lives in.

He straightens, though he keeps a hand on the dog's head.  It presses in against one of his legs, leans hard.  "Hi, Margot," he says.

Then, to Olive, "I don't think she has anything against them, exactly.  She just doesn't get the warm fuzzy feeling most people get around pets."  And a shrug, here: some people are just that way.  "I've never had a pet and I've always kind of wanted one, though."

Olive
"It looks like the feeling's mutual," she says, of the three-legged mutt seeking to siphon what affection it can from him.

As strange as the confluence of bodies in a public space can be, Olive seems unfazed by it. But then, Olive does not seem fazed by anything. She's swaying back and forth, like her bones prefer dancing to stillness, but her feet are planted and her attention is firm.

"Margot... is that with or without a T?"

Margot
Caleb and Nick both appeared pretty pleased to see her, and where Margot's anxious general demeanor relaxed back some in response.  She was young and nervous, couldn't be older than twenty, and was perhaps five feet tall if you gave or took an inch.  She was dressed in brown boots that laced up the ankles but didn't have terribly thick soles to offer up lift.  She wore a red-and-white checkered tunic of a dress with a chunky brown wool cardigan overtop.  Dark brown hair was worn down to her shoulders, and when she tucked it back behind her right ear it showed a glimmer of ruby streaked from the temples.

"That is a tiny dog," Margot agreed, and lifted a hand to hold a couple fingers out in front of the small canine's nose to smell.  She glanced over to Olive next and blinked big hazel eyes once before answering.  "With.  Hi Olive, nice to meet you."

And, finally, she glanced to Nick's face and down his arm to the dog whose head he'd been touching since she had spied him.  "She was nice enough to not cook Yorick."

Caleb
[skip me!]

Nick
"Maybe someone else will see him being friendly and they'll want him," Nick says, with a glance down at the dog.  There is a little furrow to his brows here: he does genuinely hope the animal finds a home, it would seem.

"She threatened to use him in some kind of ritual once," Nick says, and his voice is touched with humor as he glances over to Margot.  Then, to Olive, "I haven't seen you around before.  Did you get in recently?"

Olive
"Yeah," she says. "From Vegas. I haven't seen you around before either."

A light joke. She stops her swaying in favor of taking a few steps forward, crouching down to let the three-legged dog sniff the back of her hand.

"If I said I was looking for a place to crash, what would you guys say?"

Margot
The chihuahua trembled and sniffed at her fingertips then gave them a small nervous couple of licks.  Margot smiled and tipped her head a little as she moved her fingers to rub behind the little guy's ears instead.  Pen supposedly made empty threats about using the pet rabbit in a ritual, but Margot knew better than to believe that any such comments to be too entirely sincere.  Sure, Pen probably would use arabbit in a ritual, but not a friend's pet.

When Olive commented on needing a place to crash it drew the little bloodwitch's attention.  She looked at the woman a little more carefully now, her boots and jacket and hair and face.  There was an impression of a preacher, almost.  She gave the impression of someone who would guide an exodus across a broad body of water on faith and calm words.

What would she say?  Margot opened her mouth but closed it straight away.  She wasn't certain about sharing any acknowledgement of the chantry with someone she met five minutes ago based on a resonance.

Finally:  "I'd ask who you knew."

Caleb
"Why wouldn't somebody want him?" brows knit together, and he looks at Nick like... like something. It's a complicated emotion, the likes of which Caleb can't seem to adequately articulate for himself. Someone may not want the dog in question- the one with the three legs. THe one who was affectionate but couldn't go home with Nick because, well, reasons.

He's still holding the chihuahua, who seemed to be pretty chill once he's concluded nobody is going to drop him but is still set on vibrate because it's a chihuauha and that is just their natural state- they're either trembling or they're sleeping.

"Don't sleep at the botanical gardens," he tells Olive, "I've been informed that you are not allowed to do that."

Exasperated by that, it would seem. How dare people not let him sleep in public parks!

Nick
Caleb's question, an innocent thing, brings a little smile to Nick's face.  He can read whatever complicated emotion is there on Caleb's face, writ for him to see: Caleb might not be able to articulate it for himself, but Nick might well have been able to do so for him, were he so inclined.  "Some people are more likely to go for puppies or for the flashier dogs," he says.

"There's a place that's willing to let you crash for as long as you need," Nick says.  "It's kind of a drive, though.  A little ways out of the city.  Do you have a car?"

Another look, now, to Caleb.  "Are you...did you try sleeping in the botanical gardens?"

Margot's statement is a wise one, or was, and Nick catches her eyes now and there is a little point that has appeared between his brows.

Olive
Do you have a car?

"Nah," she says, like it's no big deal. "I have a bike."

She scritches the mutt under the chin and behind an ear, then braces herself on her knees in order to stand.

"I don't know anyone yet. It's cool." A shrug. "Soon, I will."

Margot
The answer from Olive was innocuous and caused a small stitch between Margot's heavy eyebrows.  She glanced aside to Nick, who had mentioned the 'place' outside the city, held his eye for a moment when they met, then shrugged and looked over to Caleb next.  She made a face at his comment about the botannical gardens, but didn't appear too surprised.

"They caught you, huh?"  She asked him with a small shake of her head and took her hand from the small dog he was holding, switched her posture so it was more open to the group as opposed to standing facing Caleb's front for the sake of dog-pets.

"It's a bit of a haul on a.. bike."  She almost said 'fixie', don't be so judgy Margot not everyone dressed oddly was a hipster.  She scowled, caught between a social wall and the hard place that was Paranoia, and there was muted reluctance in her voice (read: duty) when she said:  "If you need a ride I could probably help out...  I know where it is."

Boy, did she know.  It was beamed directly into her brain not so long ago.

Caleb
"Yeah, it's unfortunate because it's really beautiful and peaceful, and if you couldn't sleep by a pond with a water fall and smelling some amazing flowers, wouldn't you?" he answers both Nick and Margot's question easily enough. Listens to the rest and manages to offer some reply to them all.

Olive says she doesn't know anyone yet, so it's cool.

"Annie dropped me off out here- it's her house? But she has a hot spring and a gigantic library and-" he stops because he seems to remember that he needs to leave something out "-and she has a weird love of buying groceries."

Margot can attest. Or probably can attest. The chantry seems to have an obscenely well stocked pantry now.

Nick
"I would definitely sleep in a botanical garden if no one were going to chase me off," Nick agrees easily.  He absently gives the dog's jaws a rub at the hinge, where the heavy muscles bunch.

"Oh, so you know Annie already."

There's a glance to Olive, now, who only has her bike.  "I can drive you out there if you'd like.  It sounds like Caleb has already been."

Olive
No hesitation in her answer, no paranoia. She is quite a few years older than Margot but she can remember being nineteen. Does not know Margot is nineteen, but her youth persists in spite of the red shot through her hair, the furrow dug between her brows.

"It does," she says in agreement. "I would like that, if you're sure it's no trouble."

Margot
Botanical gardens did sound like a nice place to live, but Margot figured herself content enough where she was.  Sure, the basement and library still held some mysteries and probable hazards, and there were probably subterranean chambers that she'd yet to even discover.  But she liked the clawfoot tub in the little tile bathroom, and the muted calm colors of the old faded wallpaper in the room she'd claimed as her own.  A waterfall sounded nice, but a bed and roof and kitchen with a coffee maker were even more luxurious.

She pulled her phone from a pocket previously lost to the bulk of her cardigan and glanced down at it, checking the time and date both and figuring in future plans.

"It's not that far out by car," she assured Olive, and locked the screen on her phone before dropping it back into the pocket from whence it came.  "By bike would be another story.  Plus not so safe."

There was a pause where she looked blankly at the woman in the board-shorts-that-she-could-have-sworn-were-mens-underwear, and then realized after a beat that the conversational ball was in the middle of the fooseball table.  Her version of bumping the table was to jerk a thumb over her shoulder and blink.  "Did you, uh, mean from here?  Or another time?"

Caleb
"Oh, yeah, she's really nice she-" he looks back at the dog with the three legs, who seems to be incredibly friendly and seems to also be getting a little more love than he had been before.

"We should go. We can all talk and it won't be weird and we can show you the hot spring," he gestures from one side to the other, which makes the chihuahua look a little confused before he puts it back into a comfortable position near his chest.

"What's it like having a bike?" he asks Olive as he nonchalantly puts the chihuahua in an inside pocket.

Nick
Margot appears to be rising to the occasion, helping the newcomers find their way to the chantry.  Nick is looking down at the dog, and if he is smiling to himself, well, who doesn't like to see apprentices come into their own as experienced members of mage society?

"Are you living out there with Annie?" he asks Caleb, with a glance up to the other man.

Olive
What did she mean:

"Either. Both."

Olive makes an attempt at smothering a laugh when Caleb tucks the little dog into his jacket pocket. A fist pushed against her teeth and her teeth latched onto her lower lip, nothing so obvious as to glance to make sure no one is looking at them. Maybe people are looking at them. It doesn't matter. They are a group but there are other groups just as large as theirs, louder. It's a Sunday. Sundays bring out groups.

What's it like having a bike:

"Like being able to fly. It's amazing."

Margot
"Caleb, did you need a ride back?"  Margot glanced back over to him.  If Nick was humored or proud of how the bug-eyed little apprentice was now corralling newcomers and seeing them someplace safe, the witch-girl missed it.  The last (and first) time she'd met Caleb he was still mastering an understanding of the handshake and was happy to share that he came out of a bunker in Moab and didn't know much about the real world.  The exasperation mingled with concern was akin to watching someone puppysit for the first time.  Responsibility and how it could straddle the line so closely with guilt was not an unfamiliar concept overall, but new when directly applied to the world of Magick.

They could all go, and Margot shrugged one shoulder.  "I don't mind, I suppose, but I wasn't--," whatever she wasn't was put on hold for a moment, as she was interrupted by a chirping ringtone on her phone.  She tugged it free from its pocket again to glance at the screen before finishing her sentence.  "--planning on sticking around.  I gotta take this, but--"  She glanced to Caleb and Olive both, to Nick questioningly as well, and raised the phone to gesture out toward the double doors up the way that spilled into a parking lot.

"I'll meet you guys over there, huh?"

She smiled and waved if there were any declines-- most likely Nick, less likely Caleb, then put her phone to her ear as she turned and walked away.  They'd hear the "Hello?" of greeting, but everything else was washed away by distance, mall chatter, and a yapping dog.

Margot
[I gotta see my way out now.  Thanks for the scene guys!]

Caleb
"Don't worry, Margot, I can get a ride," he assures her, like this should put her at ease over all of this. Caleb continues on with his thought.

"Yeah, I put most of my stuff there and she has some extra rooms. I'm trying to get a job, so I don't think I should live there forever? But it's nice to have windows."

He carefully stays away from the pocket that currently has a chihuahua in it. Caleb starts to make his way back over to his backpack, eyeing the pit bull, then his backpack as if he was trying to do some math. He thinks better of it and slings it on his shoulders.

"So having a bike... it's like running? If you go fast enough it feels like you're flying, but if you let go it just stops...."

Nick
There is a wave to Margot as she makes her way away from them on her phone.  When she invites him out to the chantry he only shrugs: apparently he will be the one offering Caleb and Olive a ride if they desire to head back out that way.  He does not seem upset at the prospect.

He glances every now and again at Caleb, who - well, he's an odd one, isn't he.  Nick is skilled at interpreting context, and it's hard to tell just now what he makes of Caleb.

"Have you never ridden a bike before?  I bet someone would be willing to teach you," he says.

Olive
"How much?" she asks, with a flick of her eyebrows. She's joking. That would be a sucker's bet. Swaying a bit, like to build up the momentum to turn from one fellow to the other, she says to Caleb, "Once you get the hang of it, it's the easiest thing in the world. There's that saying, 'Like riding a bike'? ... I think that's more for picking up a skill after you haven't used it for a while, actually."

Caleb
"I think that, unless you are sitting on something, navigating, and pushing pedals, very few things are actually like riding a bike," he asserts.

Caleb starts to make the quiet getaway with the chihuahua in his pocket, "but no, I've never ridden a bicycle. There wasn't really enough space, or a real need to. I haven't been on a plane, either."

Nick
He watches Caleb begin to drift away, and he rubs the pit bull's ear for a moment.  "If you're taking off, Caleb, I'll see you around," he says.  Then, to Olive, "I can give you a ride though if you want.  I have a few hours before I was planning to be back home."

Olive
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

Wandering the stacks

Caleb
Bookstores are not, in fact, libraries. Sure, they encourage you to actually enjoy the books before you buy them but they don't actually ever really intend someone to finish the whole book before they purchase it. It doesn't seem like the best idea. It doesn't seem like a good business model but nobody would sell any books at all if they were shrink wrapped and kept on shelves like they were there just to be protected from dust, like all of them held pornographic ideas that shouldn't be given to people who aren't truly capable of understanding them.

No, who decides what we should be able to handle in our books? Who decides but those who manufacture, but those who bring out the product and sell it to the consumers, because even in information there is consumerism. There is a trade of something monetary for something intangible- the story. The idea. Something that you can't really return, and in effect reading a book in the book store was theft because you took what was truly of value and left its husk; it was peeling the banana, eating it, and then leaving the peel behind. You took its substance and left only the means that it was used to trasport the best parts to you.

Caleb, you see, had a concept of theft. You don't take something that isn't yours but information, but the words, the things that make up books don't really belong to anyone. So, he didn't seem to have a real problem with them. So there he is, forgettable but sprawled out in the aisle of some indie bookstore with aisles as thin and lacking in personal space as a piece of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. The books are in some particular order, not arranged in the traditional way but in another traditional way- this particular place decided to play with the Dewey Decimal system instead of the standard layout of a place that has the fiction dominating a place.

He's in the eight hundreds. Somewhere between 820 and 830 in a dingy drab olive Army surplus jacket and a pair of tennis shoes that look like they've seen a couple marathons and survived to tell the tale. The staff leaves him alone.

Grace
The mall is not Grace's cup of tea.

It is a temple. A bastion of hyperreality, dedicated to the gods of consumerism. As if churches weren't already bad enough, these things show off what they're really about. Money. Buying. Selling.

Of course, they do try to hide that, a little. Everywhere, there are pictures of happy, beautiful people. If only one consumes enough, one might become like them. Nice, sunlit, happy. It makes Grace want to puke.

About the only thing this place has to offer her is the bookstore, which if any other place in town were selling "Structures: Why Things Don't Fall Down", then she would have gone there. Sometimes, you have to grit your teeth and participate in the fallen world, just to get what you need.

First thing she's going to do is scan this text and upload it somewhere, because fuck having to pay for information...

Grace
[Awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Caleb
[Do I feel a people? Per+aware, -2 because arcane]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Caleb
There is a feeling of something. Something that makes him look up from the books that he may or may not (definitely not) be purchasing. A feeling that makes the wind blow without it actually blowing. A feeling that is slight, a wrongness or a rightness but nothing strong enough to be felt beyond being off. And yes, there is something off in the air. He looks up from English literature and poetry and words, words, words to feel a shift in the winds.

Ultimately, the stag concudes that the snap in the branches is not enough to warrant him looking around too far for too long. There is a spark of creativity, a spark of something that has a keen edged mind and an ear for change. Something that glides along the cutting edge like a whet stone and rolls away the layers of dust and grime to peel back into something new. Not a literal peel. Nothing painful save for the pain that comes with change, with seeing the world grow and blossom outside of yourself.

Olive
[ah, what the hell.]

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

Olive
This bookstore may as well be a library, as far as its layout is concerned. As far as its patrons are concerned, it is a little slice of heaven that smells like binding paste and leather. The occasional waft of secondhand smoke clinging to a flannel shirt or perfume on a stranger's wrist.

She is not far from the 800s herself, having sat herself down cross-legged in a corner. Small space like that almost makes the girl invisible. She is short and her braids make a curtain if she tilts her head the right way and she is reading through a stack of poetry volumes trying to decide which one she wants to take home with her and read until it falls apart.

Grace can tell she's there, still as a fasting nun and as peaceful besides. She looks up at the tennis shoes' passage and lets her nostrils flare though her physical senses are of no use here. For now the slim volume stays open.

Grace
Shit. It's happening again, isn't it? Confluence. She looks up at the ceiling, and glares at it. Universe, you can be creepy sometimes. For fuck's sake.

They aren't people she knows, the resonance isn't familiar. But it's there.

Where once she might have turned tail and fled due to the danger of Technocrats (and there is a danger) now, she wants to stay. At the very least, figure out what these people are about.

There are people here. More people than Mages. Who is who? She looks around, eyes not lingering on any one person for too long, lest they actually look back at her.

Caleb
(Do I physically notice Grace? Per+alert -2 (arcane), wearing glasses so diff 6)

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Nicholas
Nick is here looking for a present.  Nick has been trawling bookstores looking for a present for months, and none has yet happened upon him.

He is not here, as one might expect, for his wife.  If he were here for Pen it would not have taken him months.  His Hermetic sister (he has two of them see) is the one who is very difficult to buy for.

And normally he probably wouldn't be setting foot in a mall except maybe to try to find a new pair of shoes or a belt, and he probably wouldn't be looking in a bookstore in one, but: desperate times.  (One of his old mentors has told him, often, how the Technocracy has taken to building shopping malls on wellsprings and nodes, and Patricia often spoke of these things with distaste.  Perhaps he might have some bias.)  And so here we are.  The place had come recommended by people who are more knowledgeable about such things than Nicholas Hyde.

He's not there yet, but still walking down one of the aisles with his head down and his hands in his pockets, his thoughts elsewhere.  Sooner or later he'll turn into the bookstore, once he finds it.

Caleb
pokepoke

There is a person on the other side of the shelf, and he isn't meaning to poke her but the book shelves are hollowed things and double sided, so pushing a longer book back to be flush will, in turn, cause another book to be shoved backwards. He pushes again, not quite noticing the place of poking until he realizs he's prodding some be-braided person in the shoulder with a book about... uh... something.

The poking ceases. "Sorry," he whispers, and sounds like an announcer at a golf tournament.

And looking up from that poke he notices a singularly normal and unremarkable piece of wall furniture like himself... but this one is staring at the ceiling. His brows knit together and a frown comes across his face. He looks up at the ceiling, and then back at Grace-

"... what's wrong on the ceiling?"

Olive
Were Grace to have looked at her for very long she would have seen Olive looking right back at her. But Grace decides to look at the ceiling instead and Olive decides well maybe she ought to stand up but then a book comes tumbling off the shelf and bounces off the faux-leather shoulder of her jacket and onto the floor.

Sorry.

She whispers back, "No worries."

And, on knees and one hand, reaches out to rescue the book. A glance at the spine and a glance up at the place from whence it fell. Up onto her knees. She starts to shuffle-walk on her knees around the bookshelf without getting to her feet, which are clad in black Converse sneakers, because of course they are.

Grace
When looking for the weird, don't worry. The weird will come to you. Someone talks to her, asks her what is wrong with the ceiling, and it's...

"The universe. It's wrong."

Way to inspire confidence in people, Grace. Bravo.

"I was just telling it off."

Caleb
"Why do you think the universe is wrong? That seems like a bold statement," he asks this, not in an accusatory way, but rather like someone who was seeking information, like he may well have been holding a notebook instead of a lap full of English literature.

He looks back at the shelf- from the shelf to Grace and back at the shelf. He leans a little to the side, trying to get a better look through the shelf and concludes that this isn't working. Caleb then decides to scoot to the other side to get a better look at people whilst still talking to Grace.

It's not Graceful, though. He doesn't get far with his butt-scooting.

Grace
"Because. I never come here. It's slimy in malls. But every time I do, I run into somebody."

Well, yeah. It's not that uncommon to run into people in malls. Malls are typically full of people. But not Mages.

"What's your name, Mystery Man?"

Nicholas
Nick rounds a corner.  Nick passes the bookstore, in spite of the fact that the windows are lined with bookshelves and old pulp advertisements; this is how deep in thought he is.  Or how distracted by something else he is.  You decide.

Nick ends up somewhere far down the way and realizes he has no idea where the bookstore is.  He consults one of the floorplan maps available of the mall stores, and tracks his path back to the place with a fingertip.

Back he comes.

And then, finally here he is, passing through the front archway.

Caleb
"... if you didn't run into anyone at the mall, I think it would be because the mall is closed."

His brows knit together again. He scoots over again and again before finally deciding to give up on that, get to his knees, and meander to the other aisle where the woman he poked with the book was. He keeps talking to Grace.

"I'm Caleb, what's your name?"

Grace
"Grace," she says. Her mouth curves up a bit when he calls her on the absurdity of what she's saying.

"Well. I run into people all the time. But few who resonate."

She doesn't quite stop saying the absurd, but yes. There is a point to this. The average person overhearing their conversation might come to the conclusion that Grace has a few marbles missing, but she's okay with carrying that burden. She follows along as Caleb walks.

Nicholas
[Alertness?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas
There's a voice that is beginning to become familiar; many of Denver's voices are, finally.  Regardless: Nick hears Grace, and he hears Grace talking to someone he doesn't know.  By the time she and Caleb are nearing Nick he is at one of the bookshelves in the metaphysics section, arms folded as his eyes scan the titles.

He is not content with whatever he sees, apparently.

Nevertheless, he hears them and so he pokes his head over the top of the nearby shelves to look for them and determine whether Grace is in the mood to be interrupted, and for how long.  Not every social outing welcomes add-ons, after all.

Caleb
"... is everyone else inaudible?"

He... does not get what she is saying. It's clear on his face and he shifts awkwardly from one side to the next, off in his own little bubble of being vaguely oblivious and having, well, missed.

Grace
Grace notices Nick hanging out there. She doesn't understand why he might be hanging back. At the most, she attributes his reticence to something that makes sense to her. The last time they talked, she had to get away before starting a fight. Maybe he just doesn't want to poke a bear.

But Caleb, he is a mystery. A new thing to turn over and see if it is a threat.

"Inaudible to the sixth sense? Yes."

Caleb
[Do I notice Nick as a human person?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Grace
[He is not a human. He is a meat popsicle.]

Caleb
"All people resonate in their own way in both a mundane and metaphysical way, they just don't know it yet. They're just not loud enough yet," he says, muses over it and seems like a thoughtful baritone instead of a stern and dismissive one. He doesn't seem to be a dismissive sort. Caleb takes a look around again, past Grace to Nick to Grace noticing Nick.

Nick gets a smile, and a wave. Obviously, Nick and Grace know each other, so they should want to be together and talk, right? Of course right. He smiles like a pleased golden retriever.

Nicholas
Resonance.  Sixth sense.  Nick can catch those words from where he's standing.  And he does indeed remember how things left off last time with Grace; he of course knows that Grace and Pen had a conversation outside the bar, because there is little he and his wife don't share with each other.

Nonetheless, Grace's friend gives him a smile and a wave and Nick, too, smiles and waves at the two of them.  "Hello, Grace," he says, and takes a few steps so that he can find himself on the conversation's periphery.  There is a glance toward Caleb, a friendly incline of his head, a once or twice-over.

Grace
Ahh, good. Caleb is not a complete newbie. She was beginning to wonder.

"Nick. Hello. This is Caleb. I found him just now, wandering the stacks."

There is no friendly smile to greet him, not anymore. Just sticking to the facts for now, because that's how things go. There is more to discuss than just Caleb, but perhaps it's best not to do that in front of someone who might be a Technocratic plant, for all his talk about metaphysics.

Caleb
He leans forward, puts a hand on the ground, and stands up to his rather impressive height of... average. He's a couple inches over five and a half feet tall. Dark hair, dark eyes, and of an indeterminate ethnic origin.

There is a strange sort of tension, though, or rather he does notice the lack of smile from Grace.

"... you're not friends, are you?"

There's always a delay in his voice, a delay when the baritone is talking because it seems like he's taking the time to process what is going around, as though the world is full of data. As though everything is worth noticing and everything is worth latching on to.

Nicholas
"Nice to meet you, Caleb," Nick says, and he extends a hand toward the other man.  "I'm Nick Hyde."

He is not as suspicious of Technocratic plants: at least if one takes him at face value.  His regard for Caleb seems warm enough, at this point.

That is, until Caleb asks a very direct question and Nick's brows furrow in a wince.  He glances sidelong at Grace.  "We're on the same side and everything," he says, "but there's been a little tension recently, yeah.  It's nothing you have to worry about, Caleb."  When talking to people with observation skill but little tact, sometimes honesty is best.

Grace
"What Nick said," she says, because he's better at explaining things by far.

Then, she pulls out her cell phone. Types away at it for a bit.

Grace
Nick's phone alerts him however it is set to, with the following text messages.

Some shit's gone down. I need to tell you about it.

Meet me at Auraria Student Lofts, apartment 203, after the bookstore?

Caleb
There is a hand to shake! Ah, he knows what to do with this, and he reaches forward to take the hand offered and he grasps- firm and comfortable with work. His hands aren't soft. Up down. Up down. Stop. He nods once it's done, a confirmation to himself. Aha! Done right!

"Oh," he says once Nick gives his appraisal of the situation, and there is a lag in that moment before he replies, "I'm sorry that happened, I hope things get better." It's a genuine statement, devoid of all things resembling sarcasm not unlike when you're talking to a four year old. It's rare to have that lack of guile.

Grace isn't saying much, just three words and then whips out her phone.

"Oh! Where did you get that?"

Surprise, delight.

Nicholas
It's rare to have that lack of guile, and the slight curl at the corner of Nick's mouth indicates that he might appreciate it, even.  "I hope they do too," he says.

There is a vibration there in his pocket, and Nick after a moment pulls his phone out of his own pocket and glances at the screen.  He tucks it away again moments later, glancing amused between Caleb and Grace.  "I was here to get a present for my sister, actually, so I can't really stick around.  I'll hopefully see you around though, Caleb," he says.

Grace
He's getting a present for his sister, can't stick around. Sounds like an excuse, maybe, but whatever. That's not important at all. His knowing what she's discovered, that matters.

Caleb asks where she got her phone, and she says: "Online. Amazon."

Amazon has everything, and despite it being a similar interface with consumerist religious practices? At least you don't have to deal with actual people.

"It's a OnePlus Three."

Caleb
"That would be cool, I hope to see you around too, Nick Hyde," all one name. "There's some cool books here, there is probably one she'll like."

Grace tells him it's a OnePLus three... which makes Caleb's brows knit together and makes a frown cross his face.

"So... it's... a four?"

Nicholas
"Hope you both enjoy your day."  Nick waves at the two of them and then circles back around to the other end of the stacks, wandering farther into the bookstore.

Nicholas
Once Nick has left, Grace receives a reply text:

Another day, maybe.  Don't have long today.  I'll text you later and we can meet up in a couple of days.

The greatest lie

Nick
[Stamina?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )

Nick
Pen asked him for a wonder of breakfasts, a culinary delight.

Pen also asked him to get up before she usually gets up to make it.

Last night he stayed up with her later than he usually does, at first reading and then tucking himself in close to hold her while she fell asleep.  His eyelids grew heavy while he waited; he kept himself awake only by imagining skin monsters and any number of horrors Pen has described to him following one of her nightmares.

He leaves their bed long after Pen has fallen asleep so that he can read for a while in order to keep himself awake.

Somehow, he keeps himself awake.

It is almost three when he sneaks down to the kitchen, setting his feet carefully in spite of the fact that they are soundless.  Habits gained in childhood and adolescence die hard.

And so it is that when Pen wakes howeverlong later, before the dawn, she will find his spot in bed empty and cold, without any lingering warmth from his body that might indicate he had just risen.  There is a smell permeating the house, buttery and warm.

Pen
This is how Pen wakes. At once, and with only a change to her breathing to indicate that slumber has given her up; then her eyes open, and she props herself up on one elbow. Nicholas's side of the bed (there are no true sides, with how willing to sprawl and entangle Penelope is) is empty and grave-cold and Pen smooths her hand over his usual spot. Then she rolls over to her other side and closes her eyes again. It is only one moment. Pen is not by nature a morning person, though through determination she has made it so. Pen cuddles into her pillow in lieu of Nicholas and then she opens her eyes again and rises.

When she comes down the stairs, it is in a pale pink satin robe, unbelted, and beneath the robe a pair of lacy briefs she went to bed with, naught else, and her face glowing with that just-washed radiance only a just-washed face can have. The only jewelry is a ring on her left finger, and when she finds Nick she peers at him from behind the tangle of her bright hair. Her bangs are still doing strange things.

Nick
When Pen looks, she will find Nick in the kitchen.  If she had come around the corner and into the dining room first she would have seen plates laid out, with silverware to the side and small cocktail glasses accompanying.  The light was left dim; outside it is still dark.

Her husband is at the counter and taking two grapefruit halves from a pan, carefully gripping them between thumb and forefinger as he does and setting them down rather quickly.  They appear to have been broiled; atop them is a broiled dusting of cinnamon sugar.

Nick glances over his shoulder at her, and as he makes eye contact she can see his eyes are a little bleary and red.  It's to be expected, perhaps, if he woke up this early.  "Good morning," he says, even though it does not feel like a good morning to him: and there is an affectionate curl of a smile as he takes in her bangs, twisted off to the side.  "Go sit down.  I'll be in in a minute."

Pen
Penelope gazes at Nicholas for a moment; she presses her cheek against the side of the door, for she stopped there, in order to give the whole of the kitchen this sweeping look - clarity might break its heart before that look; it might fall before; and then as she gazes there's this spark-flick of a smile, more in the eyes than on the mouth, and she drifts away from the kitchen and takes in the dining room table with its unusual formality, dishes set, cocktail glasses accompanying, and she takes a candle beeswax it was once an owl but its head has melted away into the feathers takes this candle down from one of the bookshelves and lights it with a match and sets the candle near where she takes a seat and she doesn't yet speak a word. When Nick does check in the dining room, Pen has taken down a small clothbound book from a shelf and is reading a page.

Nick
Nicholas does not take long to wander into the dining room, with its unusually formal setup.  He cannot suppress a flicker of a smile when he sees the owl perched there between the plates, with a bright column of flame in place of its head.  Nick is carrying a small tray, on which he has the grapefruit and a small pitcher full of what looks like (is) mimosa, and a large plate.

Once arranged carefully on the plate (though less artfully than he might have liked), breakfast turns out to be poached egg, slivers of parmesan, and prosciutto and a biscuit, accompanied by slices of tomato and of course the grapefruit.  Nick leans down to kiss the top of her head before he seats himself.  "Good enough for a victory breakfast?"

Pen
He sets the tray down and Pen lets her hands and the book fall gently to her lap, one finger holding her place, her chin lofted as she looks over the spread; when Nick kisses the top of her head, she reaches up to catch him there, an arm (Medea [mythic], lake-lady) loose around his neck; tilts her head back, lets it fall, for a kiss on the mouth.

"Did you sleep at all?" Her tone is conspiratorial; so is the look in her eyes.

Nick
Perhaps Nick had been intending to deny having stayed up all night: even if he were so inclined, Pen is sharp enough to notice that he is still wearing yesterday's grey pants and light sweater.  He didn't even think to change before rising back out of bed last night to find ways to keep himself awake.

When he draws back after kissing her he lingers there for a moment with his hand cupped around her shoulder, and there is a returning glint of conspiracy.  "How would I have been down here to make you breakfast, if I'd slept?"  He circles around behind her chair so that he can take his seat across from her.  His smile is tinged with rue, now.  "I don't think today is going to be the day that I also go running with you."

Pen
"Of course it isn't," Pen says, looking (bemused, musing) down at the food. Her profile is a cameo's, a Renaissance lady's; her hair is still a hopeless tangle and it falls across her cheek when she takes her hand from her lap and rests her elbow on the table, her chin on her fist, cants her head. Beat. "That was another prize. This one included -- mm," and she curls her tongue behind her teeth. "What was it?" Opens her fist so she can stroke her chin, her jaw, her throat, one long fluid gesture. "It was something about lying, no? About the best lie. Nicholas, this does all look like a fine feast. Let's hope one bite doesn't strike me with yearning for this to be a habit, hmm?" Mischief, again.

Nick
He likes to watch her profile, likes to imagine her against a backdrop, a splash of lake and light or perhaps reinterpret her image as stained glass.  He is watching her now as she lets her jaw rest on her fist, though his reddened eyes and glazed expression could give the impression that he is staring at her simply for lack of anything better to stare at.  It would be the wrong impression, but.

She mentions a story about the best lie, and there is a little grin that appears, a caught-out thing, as he splashes drink into both his glass and Pen's and then reaches for his fork.  "Maybe I haven't told any big lies to tell you."  He, too, is mischievous, though his smile wavers as she mentions yearning to habit.  "We can make it a daylight-hours habit," he says.

Pen
Pen laughs, softly. The sound is a clot of candle smoke, a suggestion of brightness somewhere. "Daylight hours are still mine before they are yours," and this, this is a tease, and Pen leans forward and her robe gapes and the rose-pink of it gleams like the edge of a (strawberry) moon, luminous where the candle's light dredges such limned edges out; when she leans forward she also scoots her chair back so her naked collar is touching the table's edge and she can reach and reach for Nick's hand; cover it with hers; squeeze. Her hair threatens to trail through her plate, but she saves it with her other hand, drawing it over her head and exposing the side of her neck when she twists the ruddy mass of it; then she straightens; scoots the chair in; lifts her glass and takes a happy sip of it, eyes drifting closed as she does, and then fork: to dig in. "And that does not count as a big lie, Nicholai; it must be - shoot what must it be? Give me a moment; I'll remember."

This is what it's like when Pen is not wholly awake; she must have slept very deeply last night indeed not to be ready as soon as she pushes herself out of bed. She hums with pleasure after she takes a bite of the poached egg, hums deep in her throat, thrums, and then, "We need too to decide how to decide where we're going that is new." Firm.

Nick
She does not have to reach far; as she leans forward and her hand extends for his he scoots his chair in and forward and reaches for her, tangles his fingers in between hers and squeezes back, his thumb caressing her knuckles.  He takes up his fork and cleaves it through the poached egg, sending yolk running across his plate like a splash of sunlight, and breaks a fragment of biscuit off with his thumb and forefinger.  "Let me know when you remember," he says, and his eyes glint as he glances back at her.

He dredges the biscuit fragment through the egg yolk and pops it into his mouth.  "Where would you most like to go?  I've never really been out of the country, other than for work."

Pen
"There are so many places I'd like to go," Pen says, considering. Her lashes drift low again, shadow her cheekbones, and her gaze stays down: and pensive. "How long will you take off work for our adventure?"

Nick
"That depends on where we go," he says.  "I have a couple of weeks saved up, so we could probably go somewhere like Europe.  Or Turkey, maybe, or Korea."  Evidently there are a lot of places he would like to go, too.

Pen
"Would you use your weeks up now? Do you want to go to a city or to a country? An island, or a place bounded by rivers?" Pen smiles at Nicholas; it is once again a smile more in the eyes, for her mouth is a solemn little thing in the morning. "We could write the names of such places on scraps of paper and put them in a hat. I could hide them," Pen grins. "And the first you find, that's where we go."

Nick
"I like the hat idea," Nick says, and he too smiles and here more in the eyes: he is growing too tired for it to reach his mouth.  He will likely be in bed after breakfast is over, despite his most valiant attempts.  "I'm all right with using most of them up.  It would be worth it, to go somewhere for a little while.  Maybe just a week, depending on where we pick," and here a little tilt of his head.

"I want to go to a place bounded by rivers.  Or maybe to a place on a lake," he says.  "I'd like to see Europe.  I haven't been.  Or somewhere in the Carribean.  Or...well.  Let's just put a lot of things in the hat."

Pen
"Why don't you get a hat? I want to watch you walk away," Pen says, with such simplicity of tone, such purity of expression, that just how rogueish the remark is might take a moment or two to sink in.

"This is so delicious, Nicholas," she also says, earnest, after another few bites of breakfast, after she takes a sip of mimosa, watches the man opposite of her over the rim of her glass.

Nick
She compliments the breakfast, and the smile it earns is unusually wide for him, particularly given his exhaustion.  Past the curtains it is still dark, though they are beginning to hear the occasional bird or cricket if they listen; the days are growing shorter and it will not be dawn yet for a while.

"I'll go get a hat," he says, and his fingers trial up over her shoulder as he walks past her and around into the other room.  She'll have to twist her head around to watch him walk away, but it can be done.  He retrieves a deep purple knit cap, which he is holding in both of his hands as he returns to the room and to her.  "We'll throw things in after breakfast," he says, taking up his fork again.

Pen
Pen does twist her head to look over her shoulder, watch Nick walk away from her. But only for a moment; he disappears from sight. He disappears behind the edge of a wall, and Pen glances down at her breakfast plate, and smiles a little private smile, meant for no one, and then she pushes the tangle of her red hair out of her face and lends her will to eating more of what's in front of her. She does not begin reading the little book in her lap again, and he isn't gone so long as all that. When he returns, her gaze finds him, follows him back to his chair.

"I had a dream about you last night. You were the moon's man, and you could occupy every glint of light on anything that was the moon's color, and that's how we met. Secretly."

Nick
The cap he'd set on the table between the two of them, open like a mouth to receive whatever scraps of paper and whatever places and names they will put into it.  He wraps a slice of prosciutto around a bit of biscuit and pops it into his mouth as he redirects his eyes toward her, to hear about her dream.  He smiles at her, once he has finished chewing.  "What did we do, once we met?  Did I occupy anything of yours?"

Pen
Pen nodnodnods and scrapes her finger through some of the golden yolk parmesan flecked and sucks on it with an air so self-possessed and courteous that she could perhaps get away with the appalling manners in front of somebody's grandmother, and still be thought a very appealing girl (woman). "One time my necklace and one time the buckle of my shoes. Another time this cup I had, I left it out on the windowsill so it would glint and you could come."

Nick
Nick smiles; he does not appear offput by her manners.  Nicholas grew up in the same household as Anna Hyde, who would have done as much and worse (though in fairness she is often not thought to be a courteous young woman, you see.)  "I would have come down out of the sky to see you," he says: and indeed he must have, in her dream.

He digs his spoon into his grapefruit, wiggles it about and frees a wedge, which he transfers to his mouth.  "So I owe you a lie."

Pen
"Even if you could see me better from the sky?" Here, a quick smile, audacious, solemn. Another sip of her mimosa, and Pen rests the flat of one knee against the edge of the dining room table, bare toes curling around the chair's seat, and she leaning forward. She rests her elbow on her knee, cups her jaw in the palm of her hand. "The most outrageous."

Nick
"It's not the same as seeing you this close," he says, and his hand breaches the short distance between them to rest on her knee, to trace the shape of it with his fingertips.

Nick furrows his brows and works another wedge of grapefruit out of its casing.  "I think the most outrageous might have been one I told Rob.  He made me swear I wouldn't tell you, back when we were all cabaled together."

Pen
"That's not seeing," Pen says, glance dipping to skim the shape of Nick's fingers, the back of his hand, his wrist and his arm before finding his eyes again; there her glance sets anchor.

The power of suggestion: Nick works on his grapefruit half. Pen works on hers. Pen likes eating disgusting healthy things and doing horrifying to sane people healthy things in the morning, so she quite enjoys this grapefruit drenched in sugar Nick has provided for their feast.

Look how wide her eyes go; how clear their color, quartz-light, mercury glass; "He made you swear? How long did he believe it for?"

Nick
"Longer than he will admit to," Nick says.  "A little while after I first joined the cabal, he was curious about the Chakravanti initiation process.  We were still getting to know each other - it started a little that Christmas Eve before we had to go find you at Liz's.  I realized after I told him a little that he didn't know much."

Nicholas, who does not really enjoy doing healthy things in the morning, is still very much enjoying the grapefruit.  It isn't that healthy, after all.  "At first I didn't tell him much because I was trying to come up with a good lie to tell him, which made him persist in trying to get it out of me - you know how he does.  I eventually told him that our death rituals during initiation are presided over by a grandmaester whose location and identity we keep very quiet, for obvious reasons.  The maester was ancient and had completed the ritual death over and over to the extent that he or she was barely human anymore.  I hinted that I believed it was maybe a vampire.  Anyway, I had him convinced that there was a Chakravanti archmaester who might actually be a vampire for a solid week before I started to get worried that he might take it too much to to heart."

Pen
"I understand why he didn't want you to tell me. That's an appalling lack of information on a subject House Tytalus is, alas, too familiar with," Pen says, virtuously and very Flambeauishly. Her eyes are no longer quite as wide, but the look she gives Nick is one up from beneath her lashes, and there's a smile still playing around her mouth, balanced against a certain thoughtfulness. "What do you think the most outrageous lie you ever told me is?"

Nick
"Probably a few months ago when you believed that I'd been a Hollow One once," Nick says, and there is a flash of a smile here, a devilish curl there at the edge.  He recalls well her reaction.

Pen
"Hmf. Perhaps not that outrageous," Pen says, and then takes a very precise bite of a very precisely torn piece of biscuit, mopped up in egg, with a slice of tomato. Her chin lofts, see, and then she swallows. Says, bright-eyed, "What is the most outrageous true thing you have ever told me?"

Nick
"Hm," Nick says, his fingertips again tracing the shape of her knee.  He tilts his head and a curl flips to the other side of his forehead, where it dangles like a party ribbon.  "Probably about the poison at the Chakravanti parties.  I still can't really believe that people actually do that, myself."  He dabs up the last few bits of yolk with a piece of biscuit.

Pen
[Should I be having empathy?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (4, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 5 )

Nick
[Subterfuge!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Nick
[Nick is lying.  In fact Pen can't recall Nick telling her about this before, but she is familiar enough with the subject matter that she knows he is lying.  In fact he is half-hopeful she will catch him in the lie and get the joke, and half-hopeful that she won't.]

Pen
"Meticulous Nicholas was pretty," a melting glance - her tone a rake of pleased fondness, "ridiculous
When ridiculous Nicholas decided to lie.
But Penelope, splendidly, expectantly, and incredibly,"
A bite of her biscuit, and a sip of her mimosa.
"Unambivalently chivalrous asked Nicholas: Why?
Why, Nicholas, mischievous, with great sinfulness lie?
When Penelope lamentably falls for..."

Pen pauses; grins, this little crooked half-grin, shying toward abashed; she can't think of a good rhyming way to end it. "I mean, what a guy," and see, she takes another sip of her drink, to cool the flush that's come to her cheeks.

Nick
There is a sidelong glance toward her, a half-lashed thing, as he eats the last shred of prosciutto on his plate.  There is another smile there, caught out as he had suspected and half-hoped he might be, because he knew the lie was ridiculous even if it was convincingly told.

She finishes her rhyme and he laughs.  There's warmth in it, and he turns away from his plate so that he can place both of his hands just above her knees and look across at her.  "I don't recall my most outrageous truth being part of our bargain, anyway.  Were there other things I'm forgetting?"

Pen
"Ah. But there was another part of that win; don't you remember? Breakfast ready before I woke; the most outrageous lie you've ever told; and your tongue, all mine, for three days," and Pen: look at her, both solemn and mischievous, there across the table, his hands warm above her knee, the pink flush of her robe an afterthought. Pen rests a hand over one of his, then slides it up his wrist. Are his sleeves long? She pushes it up to expose bare skin, at least a little ways. "And among the very, very many things I plan on asking it to do for me, this: the most outrageous true thing you have ever told me."

Nick
He is wearing long sleeves, a sweater: the sleeves came down once he had finished cooking, once his hands were no longer covered in biscuit dough.  They are stretched from the time they spent around his elbows, and so it is not easy to push them aside and expose his forearm.  There is another laugh from Nick, a glance down at their joined hands.  "What do you think the most outrageous true thing I've ever told you is?  You're the better judge."

Pen
Pen's gaze goes distant, slants off to the side and upward; she is still near dreaming, and this is nothing like her usual morning ritual, which she is so strict about keeping; even the variations are just another strictly kept schedule; Pen is not naturally someone who sticks to schedules, but her will is strong. All to say: she feels close to dreaming, and she is perhaps silent longer than one would think, if she were going to follow with an answer.

"I don't know," she says, simply. "When you tell me what you think it is, perhaps I will remember because I won't agree with you."

Nick
Nick's hands curve around the sides of her knee as he waits for her response.  His gaze is expectant, and clearer than one would expect for the late-earliness of the hour, depending on how one were to choose to wrap their mind around this point in time.  "I think being Awakened with two Awakened sisters as a set of triplets is pretty outrageous," he says.  "That we all Awakened at the same time.  I don't know if I would believe things could be Fated, otherwise."

Pen
The shape of her mouth is touched by rue; concession. He has a point. Pen traces the ridge of his knuckles with her middle finger. "But you do believe things can be Fated because of that; your sisters, your tripartite Awakenings?"

Nick
"I'm not entirely sure," he says, "but I think some things might be."  He is leaning forward, partially out of a desire to be closer to her and partially because he is so tired.  "I think we're probably fated to do only things we would have chosen for ourselves anyway.  Or to...well.  I don't know."

A corner of his mouth lifts.  "Were you looking for something more outrageous than that?"

Pen
"I'm not looking for anything specific. Only an answer, which is true, to balance out the lie." Pen reaches over and tweaks Nick's chin, and then finishes off her egg, forking it onto the last of her biscuit, finishing it off with a strip of prosciutto, and: mm; salt; tart. "What's the most outrageous true thing I've ever told you?"

Nick
Nick's gaze is wandering toward the kitchen, a more directed thing than his wanderings generally are: he wants another biscuit.  He is thinking of putting butter and jam on it or maybe butter and honey or maybe just another poached egg even though there aren't any more poached eggs are there.  He would have to make them and he's not going to make them.  He's not hungry and it will not do anything to make him less tired, fresh biscuits are just that good.

"That you and Rob used to date," and here his eyes return to her and there is a quirk of his mouth.  "I'm not jealous, I just can't imagine it."

Pen
Pen's nose crinkles, and she sips the rest of her mimosa in one long and long and shouldn't she and no not breathing because one long sip, then sets it down again. "Hmmmmmmmm," she says, and it is her attempting to be neutral and aloof, while being grumpy, annoyed, and doubtful. But look how good the 'hmmm' is. Explicate the low cadence of it, the sonorous gentility of the sound. It is not a word, but it is not quite a lack of word; it is invitational, while at the same time also being a finisher; a considerate engaging snippet of aloofness. The perfect response. Pen's eyes hood, and glance cast down at her knee and-or Nick's hand.

Nick
The perfect response, but it still holds his eyes there a second too long, asks them to linger and sweep over her face.  It is aloof.  It is a topic he knows she does not especially like, and yet: she did ask him for a bit of truth, when sometimes it is better to lie.

He gives her a little smile that has a whisper of apology in it and rubs his hands over her knees.  "Do you want anything else to eat?"

Pen
"I want an apple cooked in honey and clove, sliced on a toast smeared with goat cheese, if not a sliver of the golden sun himself," Pen says, still aloofly, and see she flicks a glance up at Nick like a whip or a thorn, some delicate lash, some lovely sharpness, and: how clear the gray of her eyes. They mark how weary he is, poor Nicholas.

She brushes past his hands on her knees, only so she can run her hands up his thighs beginning at his knees, lean forward. "What's the happiest order you ever obeyed?"

Pen does not like to lie herself; she tries never to do so. Lying and misdirection are not quite the same thing.

Nick
Nick's eyelashes flutter at her request, bat against his cheeks in gentle protest because he would very much like to close them, to nestle in his blankets and maybe talk Pen into joining him.  "I'll make it for you," he says.  "If we still have goat cheese.  I think we still have goat cheese."

Will she ask him to run to the store?  He hopes they still have goat cheese.

The happiest order, she asks after, and he does not move back when she leans forward.  He could kiss her now, if this were the moment he were so inclined.  His eyebrows tilt in amusement.  "What does 'order' mean, here?  Are Mom's requests to clean my room lumped in?"

Pen
"Mmhmm."

Pen folds her arms over his lap and rests her head in the cradle she has made, and looks up at this new-perspective, different-perspective dark Nick thoughtfully. The robe's satin is gracious in how it catches the light; traps it; bends it into a current, a suggestion of movement; of glamour, of illusion; illusive, elusive; a warm glow, the roundness of her shoulders, the flex of her spine and its curve, when draped so by rose. Dawn-light, bent to a purpose.

Nick
His hands leave her knees and slide all the way up the outside of her thighs to her hips, and here they curve around and settle on her back.  The robe is satiny soft beneath his fingertips, slides against his hands like water.  It helps him imagine soft blankets.  A pile of very soft blankets.  Blankets tucked between his toes and beneath his chin.

There is a ruminative noise in the back of his throat.  "When my sixth grade civics teacher asked me to come in for an extra assignment so that I didn't have to play football.  I complained about the extra work, but it was for this honors society thing she thought I'd be good at."  He tilts his head.  "That, or when Anna told me to shut up and ask you to hang out alone."

Pen
"So definitely not when your Mom told you to clean your room then?"

Pen says, with a sly quirk of her mouth; she hides it behind her wrist - easy enough. "And not when I told you to leave the dishes for me to do?"

"Did Anna truly tell you to shut up? What would you ask me to say, if you'd won a bet and had control of my tongue for an entire three days?"

Nick
Nick has begun a slow slide forward: sooner or later he's going to be lying across her back with his cheek against the back of her shoulderblades, if he keeps going at this rate.  "No.  Though my room probably did need to be cleaned on all of the occasions."  A thoughtful pause.  "I do like when you offer to do the dishes."

Sliiiiiiiide.  His cheek finally does come to rest against the softness of her robe.  "She did tell me to shut up.  In her defense, I was nervous about spending time with you and I kept talking about it."  There is another pause.  She can hear, if she listens, the faint rasp of his eyelashes as they sweep against cloth.  "I would ask you what lie you always wish you could tell, if you could lie perfectly.  And I would ask you for stories, and for poems.  I would want to know what Working you did that you've been the happiest with."

Pen
"You were silly to be nervous; it concerns me - that I wasn't easy to approach, especially when I would have welcomed the approach," Pen says, and bent as she is, and with Nick's cheek against her shoulder blades, her voice is constrained - pressure on her diaphragm. Her voice is a tarnished version of itself; see the smoke in it, the reflective quality gone to rust; blood and ozone; the taste of lightning, licking a silver spoon; metal. "You really think dating Robin was the most outrageous thing of all outrageous things? It is more outrageous than when I told you about the swan curse, with the feathers? More outrageous than when I told you about the priest and the Thin Mints? I'll give you one of yours, in a slant-wise fashion, or at least contest the premise of part of it: I can lie perfectly. I simply haven't done it yet, but when I do, nobody will suspect it of me, since I am not that great at -- well. You know."

Nick
Nick's fingertips run down over her spine, and he tilts his head a fraction so that he can watch them curve over each ridge and dip, watch the play of light along her robe as it shifts against her skin.  "The priest with the Thin Mints was pretty outrageous.  So was the time you and that Chakravanti you knew found the talking book.  Maybe I want to change my answer," he says.

His hand stills, flattens against the hollow of her back, and he nuzzles his cheek in, presses his mouth against the sharp edge of her shoulder.  "When you can lie perfectly, what will the lie be?"

Pen
"I cannot tell you without compromising the perfection of the lie; you would know it was a lie then, and be prepared; and see through it; and it would be as gauze; the sun shining behind it, brilliant and blinding; and all you would see would be the lie, because the rest faded, and that is not the way to lie perfectly. The perfect lie is an invisible stitch which holds the entire thing together."

Pen: like the sea, she shifts; not restless, but always in motion; motion is poetry: it is the crash and the clamor, the stillness and the gleaming; it is the shadow, too, and the delicacy of salt-spray; and Pen shifting only makes her arms into a more comfortable cradle, turns her head so she - not see Nick. He is resting on her back; but she can see the general direction he is in; his forehead; his eyelashes, maybe, one eye; one eyebrow. The shadow beneath his curls.

"The talking book was not outrageous," and she is, dismissive. "It was only uncanny. Do you want to change your answer? Why'd you say that one?"

Nick
"Would it have to be a lie to me?" he asks, and his voice is beginning to sound faraway even though she shifts beneath him.  His body sways with her, and it is becoming heavy.  "I just liked the talking book story.  I can't remember what it said to you, just that I thought it was really weird and strange at the time."

Pen
"No, I meant - " Pen stops. She closes her eyes because they are what she is sharpest with, what she is extraordinarily perceptive with, and it is good to do without one's edge. Every edge becomes blunted eventually: she remembers being told that. Then, "Crow, you should make me that golden sliver of the sun now."

Nick
There is an inquiring noise, a soft thing that curls at the edge see, the way a sliver of wood will curl in flame and turn to smoke and ash.  He would like to stay exactly where he is; Pen's back is comfortable.  "What did you mean?"  His hand stirs against her back again, and she can hear a soft little exhale as he reluctantly draws himself up and away from her.

Pen
"I meant to ask why'd you say your first answer - dating Rob," Pen says, and she nestles deeper into Nick's lap. Now that he isn't resting on her back, she is cold; he is warm; and so it is. She only nestles for a moment before it becomes this fierce thing; before the ferocity dissolves; she recedes and lets him stand, sitting up and raking he fingers through her still-tangled hair, drawing the robe closed with a sharp gesture.

Nick
"Because I just thought it was funny and found it difficult to wrap my head around now," Nick says, and there is a shrug of his shoulders as he rests his fingertips on the table and pushes himself to his feet.  There is a glance down toward her once he is vertical, an searching thing, and he reaches out to catch a curl and brush it back to the correct side of her part.  "Did I upset you?"

Pen
Medusa curls in the morning, before he is usually awake to see them. They have a life of their own, crackle and hiss should a brush come near, and cling to his fingers, wrap around, constrict, tangle; it is not so easy to brush one away. "I just want to know; sometimes I am curious about how you see me." Pen smiles faintly. "Often it is clear in a way I can't reach; sometimes it seems as if you know me better than I do. But sometimes not."

Nick
"Well, I didn't always know you," he says, and when it becomes clear that the curl will snag and pull if he should shift it too far, he lets it fall back and gently sweeps a hand over her head instead.  "I see you as the bravest, most generous and most loving person I've ever known," he says.  There is a beat; there is a smile.  "Should I tell you that more often?"

Pen
"No," Pen says. "I don't need you to tell me that."

Nick
"Well, that's how I see you," he says.  He is still watching her, and gently brushes his thumb over her jaw.  There is a foot that is tilted toward the kitchen, and another that remains firmly in place.  He is awake, now, and watchful.  "Do you still want more breakfast?"

Pen
"I know it is," Pen replies. In the chair she stretches, arcing her back as if she wanted it to crack, then sinking in languor against the chair's back, crossing one leg over the next. She has long legs; there is a small scar on the back of one leg, right by her achilles tendon. Nick knows its story. "Sometimes I am curious situationally. I know how you -- you burn in my chest; and of course I do. A golden sliver of the sun, for my consumption. You furnish that dish, and I'll take my shower." Pen, she stands and wraps her arms around Nick's waist, holding him while she's telling him to go: of course. "Will you be able to make it?" A bit of mockery there, even- light-heated, light-handed, a wry curl to the tilt of her mouth.

Nick
Nick nestles his face in against her neck, against her shoulder, and in that moment she might begin to more seriously doubt that he is going to make it.  Then he says, "Yes, I can make it.  I will make it."  He sounds as though he is convincing himself.  Because he is.

When he pulls away it's after he places a kiss there on her collarbone, and it's to shuffle his way back to the kitchen so that he can peel and slice an apple, cut a slice of bread (or two) for the toaster.  The smell of honey and clove will reach her, upstairs after she steps out of the shower.  When she returns later she will find two plates laid out, and fresh toast that is just beginning to cool, smeared with goat cheese.

So she has her sliver of the sun, and Nick manages to stay up just long enough to eat it with her.  She has the sun, and soon enough he has his blankets, and curtains that make their bedroom as dark as a moonless night.