Bonfires

Pen
[Char + Esoterica (Enochian).]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 10 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[Oh my god, what?!?!]

Nick
[Pen's magnum opus is a bonfire]

Pen
[Arete. Forces. Vulgar. -3 for Enochian-roll. WP, because it would just be too tragic to botch this roll after that.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Pen
Out in the backyard Pen is lighting a fire. Late afternoon in winter and the day goes to dark like a piece of silver, much-tarnished; gray gloom already, for in January (where we lay our scene) the days are short and sharp. Nicholas is due home from work or errands soon. Pen is shivering, because it is cold. But that's what the fire is supposed to fix, and her wand is inside on the wandstand inside. So she pronounces a phrase in Enochian, which is one of the angelic languages spoken by celestial beings, and she pronounces it so perfectly and so clearly, no tripping of the tongue or awkwardness of the jaw, and she pushes with such force, that in the middle of the backyard in the middle of this rather dreary mundane street in the middle of this dreary mundane month where the ice is cold blue and gone dangerous and the snow barely remembers being a fairy tale there well in the middle of all this a Wizard speaks fire into a fire pit and holds her hands out to it. The fire is resplendent. All fires are. The fire begins a hopeless melting gold, and then as it connects to the wood it burnishes up: orange and red, barbaric colors, and Pen's pale skin grows flushed.

Nick
The sound of the car coming up the drive will reach Pen's ears shortly after she has sung the fire into existence, summoned a flame so perfect she might as well have stolen it from the gods.  The sound comes hushed: it could perhaps be the tendency of resonance to seep into whatever it touches, or it could just be the way snow itself tends to muffle, to mellow.

Either way, Nick appears in the backyard not too long after the sound of the engine has faded away in the garage, though longer than it would take to simply walk through the house and out the back door.  A heavy dark grey overcoat hugs his frame and he has in hand two mugs; steam curls from them and he hands one to Pen as he comes out to stand next to her by the fire.  He breathes in deep, woodsmoke and winter, and leans over to kiss her cheek.  "What prompted the bonfire?"

Pen
"The fire pit looked so cold," Pen replies. Her mood is one of reserved solemnity, but kiss on the cheek means a quick unbidden smile; wakes herself out of the trance the flames, and the deep satisfaction of knowing she made them herself, have beguiled her into. "Tea?" as she peers into the mug she took, leans close enough to slip her hand in the pocket of Nick's overcoat. "Oh. I met another one!"

Nick
Nick wraps an arm around her, gently pulling her into his side; this is ostensibly for her benefit, but it is likely he wilts far more in the cold than she does.  It's been years since he lived in Arizona, and yet.  "It's going to be nice to have in the summer," he says, of the fire pit, and then, "Cider."

Which is evident as soon as she breathes in the steam.  He glances over at her, questioning at first, then, "Oh, who else?"

Pen
"I don't know his name; we didn't exchange them. He felt new, just a touch of winter in the bones about him; but man, he was really sharp. Pegged where in New England I was from, just by ear." Her voice warms as she remembers, struck-through with light. "Down to the state!"

Nick
There is a way in which his brows pull together, thoughtful, but only for a moment.  So many that are new, and so few that are more experienced than Pen and himself.  Still, he is impressed.  "I still don't think I can do that."  The cider is rapidly cooling as the slight breeze sucks the heat from the mug, so he takes a long swallow.  "Where did you run into him?"

Pen
"He also guessed that I was a poet! He was like a magician," Pen says, with a bright curl of a grin, a bit of remembered wonder; firelight in her teeth. She turns to nestle into Nick, attempt the daring and potentially hazardous (for him) move of sipping her hot cider over his shoulder. Success! "Some coffee shop. Anyway, he felt new, but he acted like an old hand; cautious, you know? Warned me about going out at night."

Nick
"Another old soul, maybe," Nick says, and this is with rueful amusement, tongue-in-cheek; people have been calling him this since he was old enough to talk, would look at his somber eyes and small mouth and comment on his particular sort of gravitas long before he ever Awakened.  He does not know his father well: his father's family, on the other hand, is fond of things like homesteading and crystals.  "You'll have to introduce us, if you run into him again."

Pen
"I believe vampires were implied." Beat. "I wonder if he could guess your accent? Or if time with me," wickedness!, "has corrupted it."

Nick
Nick laughs once, twice.  "That's a distinct possibility.  My mother comments on it every six months or so like it's new.  Maybe it'll stump him."  Truth be told, they aren't something he has much of an ear for; Pen, to him, sounds like Pen.  "We both seem to keep running into people everywhere here except the chantry."

Pen
"I haven't been to the chantry," Pen says, another dangerous daring sip of cider. Does it not have whiskey in it? For shame, Nicholas. "But I bet William would take us so we could freely oh! Did I tell you about William? I never did, did I? He is adorable; he is wonderful! We nearly got locked in a wardrobe, the teal claw-footed one outside the bathroom actually, and he's just," Pen hugs Nicholas reflexively, in explanation.

Nick
There almost feels as though there is more coat and padding to Nick at the moment than there is Nick to Nick; Pen's description makes him smile as he glances sidelong at her.  They're almost of a height.  "Should I even ask how you both ended up crawling into a wardrobe?"  His own sip of cider is made far less daring as he has it in the hand opposite his occupied side.

Pen
"We were discussing making one's mark on the world, and Narnia," Pen says, which is the answer. There aren't nearly enough Mages who are content to be really, really weird; Pen is always happy when she finds one who is her kind of weird. "So I got in and he followed, and we hashed out whether or not one another was Awakened and what kind of Awakened like that."

Nick
Pen mentions what they were discussing, and there's a side glance down at her as she is pressed into his side in front of the fire, and Nick leans a few inches down and kisses her forehead.  The fire has lent his face a soft glow; he's just overcome by affection, see.  "What kind of Awakened is he, then?"

Pen
"Ooh, shall we have another riddle? Do you believe you are up to such a challenge?"

Nick
"I can see through the worst of your riddles, Miss Mars.  Though it does seem stacked in my favor when there are only ten options, doesn't it."

Pen
"Nonsense. Let me see. What is three, one, and nine at the same time?"

Nick
Nick goes quiet for a moment, turning this over in his mind.  There are a few Traditions he can eliminate right away; he's a deductive reasoner, Nick, moreso than someone who particularly excels at abstract thinking.  "I was going to say Chorus," he admits, "but I don't know what the nine would have been, so let's go with Hermetic.  Well?"

Pen
A sip of cider, judicious. This is not a dangerous sip; she lets her arm leave its place around the Chakravanti's shoulders, though she slips it between his arm and side instead, hooking like so. Then the judicious sip, and the fire is warm; the fire is even hot. It would turn them both to ash. Hermetics know that every fire is like the heart of the sun. "Yes," after a moment, let him dangle; a laugh: "What do you think the three and the one is for the Order of Hermes?"

Nick
He is obviously always very pleased with himself when he figures these things out; the Chakravanti are demanding in their own ways, but riddles and logical reasoning typically are not exercises provided to their apprentices.  "Thrice-great Hermes, I thought," he says, "and the one Order?"

Pen
"Thrice-wise," Pen says. "Also, three words in the name," and here, a quick flash of a grin; something that'd catch the firelight and flash it right on into the eyes of an enemy, break daylight in two smash. "And you do you know what the nine is, right?"

Nick
"I couldn't completely pin that one down," he admits again, and while he is smiling maybe she can pick up this: he is perhaps the slightest bit nervous.  Intimidated, even.  "I thought nine mystic Arts, or...you also have nine ranks, right?"  Right, Pen?

Pen
"We have ten. No, it is nine houses; though to be fair, one of those houses encompasses many minor houses. Still, they are folded up into Ex Miscellanea for a reason," and she sounds airy, of course, airy and serious at the same time.

Nick
His smile turns rueful, though only momentarily.  "Well, close enough.  So you found another member of the Order in town, then?"  And they locked themselves in a closet talking about Narnia.  Somehow this does not mesh with his impression of the Order from Connecticut, but, well.

Pen
"Mm." Assent.

"Do you miss having, do you want other members of your tradition to speak to and practice with?"

Nick
This was something Nick has been thinking about: that he has heard nothing of other Chakravanti in the city (though that doesn't always mean they aren't there.)  "Yes," he says, "though I think I work a lot differently than many of them."  Attributable, perhaps, to his time as a Disparate; either way Deliliah did not attempt to change him.

Nick is quiet for a handful of seconds.  Then, "It would be good to find someone who knows more than I do, in particular.  I never really know where Delilah has gone."

Pen
"If we practiced any of the same Spheres," and this, this is teasing, though there's an actual spark of genuine passion beneath, stirred see, "then we could Work together. Alas!"

Brief pause. And then, "Perhaps you'll find somebody at the chantry, or somebody who knows somebody."

Nick
"Our practices are complimentary," Nick says, with good humor.  Though: he catches that spark, too, wonders whether he ought to breathe on it.  "I would like to do that, someday," he says, but in the tone of someone who has no idea how to conceive of this.  Their magickal styles are quite different, after all.

Regarding the chantry, there is a thoughtful, "Hmm."

Pen
A side-long glance, turns her head in the end; makes her leave off fire-gazing. A beat, and she tweaks Nick's chin between forefinger and thumb.

Doesn't say anything, no whys or wistful musings or half-baked plans, no topic jumps. She just stands, arm looped through Nicholas's, content to drink her cider in the gold resplendence of the bonfire, burnished glow sun-bright as the afternoon shades into gloaming proper.

Of course, the cold is prevalent; wicks its way in at her back, and after one or two shudders, she'll worm her way under Nicholas's arm and suggest going back inside. Or he'll suggest going back inside. He'll probably suggest going back inside. Nick, do you suggest going back inside?

Nick
Nick had finished his cider some time ago, and whatever warmth it lent his body has long since been absorbed, has fed the great furnace of his heart and been reduced to cinder.  Pen tweaked his chin; the response was a look that was earnest, only a little bemused.

He tries to tolerate the cold for as long as he can, because the flames shining red and gold through the darkness, casting their brilliance onto the snow that blankets the area around the two of them, they're beautiful.  But his tolerance for the cold wears out before Pen's does, and with an air of the vanquished says, "I can't really feel my ears anymore, or my...anything.  Do you want to go in?"

And maybe even though she's cold too she'll tease him (she has been out here far longer than he has, after all), but after not too long they'll make their way inside, on to dinner and (likely for one or both of them) perhaps more Work.  They'll trail the scent of smoke in along with them and for days afterward when they pull on their coats to go back out the scent will stir from the fibers, even as white flakes pile up outside over the charred bones of the bonfire, burying them until spring.