cool bar

Serafíne
Hole in the wall of holes in the wall.  The entrance is from the middle of a long alley behind some shallow galleries and the space is strange and there's a red door and a purple light above it that is intuitively menacing but a strange scroll-worked sign above that says simply: cool bar.  Then something like a bank big bank vault door and a long stairway down-down-down and: oh hello.


Bar and stage as likely to host impromptu walking productions of MacBeth written back into street slang as it is to have a band, but tonight there's a band.  Not much notice.  Folks who got the invitation late this afternoon only saw: pop-up show, @coolbar with a link to the location and a minute later come here are new stuff  thanks, auto-correct.


Pen
Here is Pen - come through the ominous purple haze, come through the big bank vault door and the long stairway, the echoing stairway, the stairway which echoes (it does echo, echoes and contains, a tunnel) like some kind of nautilus, and: oh hello.

Here is Pen, who came because she wanted to hear the band and see the band members, in an artist's smock doubling as a tunic. The effect is airy and winsome John Williams Waterhouse, some Spring-witch, cobalt blue embroidery at the edges of the collar which is a split that goes down to her sternum the laces left loose like that, and her hips are banded by a belt of braided leather.

Here is Pen - but where is Dan; where is Sera? Pen sweeps the place with a glance, aspiring (the soldier) to alertness, and if she sees either of them: she beelines. Or she joins the small crowd at the bar, ordering a ginger rye from the bartender.

Serafíne
Bright and warm and windy the next morning.  The snow mounded up so high yesterday now has a bright, granular crust and everything, everywhere is a paean to gravity, a lesson in watersheds.  Easy to get out and back on the road home, even at the immoderately early hour of ten-or-so a.m.  And she's curled up in the passenger's seat, knees drawn up, forehead against the glass, sunglasses yes, dark and huge, against the glare.  He doesn't imagine she's slept.  Doesn't imagine she's slept much, anyway.  He knows how much acid she took two days ago.  How long it takes to come down.

Well, hey!  Dan and Dee and Rick are setting-up on the small stage and there's something easy and companionable about it all, some return-to-rhythm, something necessary and organic that passes between them as they go about the work in an unfamiliar space.  Been forever since they 'played-out' after all.  Sera is sitting on the stage while the others work.  She wanted to wear her Easter dress again but it seemed that the skirt would be an impediment to the on-off she tends to do with her guitar, so she is back to one of her standards: a pair of tiny denim cut-offs and fishnets and filmy, lacy black bra beneath a ripped, worn, studded, shorn leather jacket.

Her legs are swinging, swinging, swinging and she sits while her friends work, and she has a beer and a shot and she's talking very companionably with an attractive young rather-earnest looking black guy sporting a pair of hipster glasses, worn jeans, and a distressed t-shirt which features a line drawing of an enormous sheep eating a tiny laser-eyed monster.

Sera waves and beams when she sees Pen making-a-beeline.  Her hair is worn differently than it often is, and when she turns to say something to Tre about who-Pen-is it becomes obvious why: she is wearing a crown.

"Hey!"  That smile.  "You came!"

Silas
Silas' pants are too loose for a true hipster, but other than that?  There is the stubble, the hair swept just so, the button down shirt (with sleeves rolled up to approximately the elbow, displaying tattoos on his arms) tucked into denim that moves well with him rather than constricting his movements, the bow tie that coordinates, contrasts, something.  It doesn't match, no, where would be the fun in that?

He drinks his whiskey neat, at least tonight, and of course he's here for the band.  Why else could he be?  But there are things that mark him out as different [as primal, as Other], and there are things that Echo from him, literal representations of the Ars Vitae with which he is so familiar.  His skin is warm to the touch on the occasion it's brushed - a sunlit glade full of riotous growth.  There is no jewellery but for one thin gold band on his right ring finger, and a paler bit of skin of a similar width on the middle finger next to it.

Sitting with drink in hand, his back is to the bar; his eyes on the assembled are a vivid blue, clear and vibrant, and observant.  He sees Pen enter, sees so much.

Serafíne
Awareness!

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

Silas
Same!

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne
Then, well.  This moment when she lifts her chin and looks and looks and oh: everything in that moment is sharp, heightened, intimate, surreal.  "Check that guy out."  So she says to Pen, a lift of her chin toward Silas.  "He feels like someone you'd know."

Pen
[?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Pen
Sera beams and it is Sera and it is that smile and Pen smiles back: a flash of a thing, burnished like a piece of silver, see, tarnished until suddenly: a rill of brightness, catching the day, and of course her entire expression is lit up by it and by Sera and by the prospect of music made by somebody fashioned and crafted by someones that she knows here on this particular night with snow a rim outside a créme brulee shell to be cracked get to the sweet within. "Of course!" - that rill of brightness in her voice, too: steadiness. "I feel as if I have been longing to hear you play, that it is exactly what I want to feel in my collar and my rib cage - Sera, I am very excited," and the flash of a smile and its left-over remnant pleasure becomes this curl of a grin. "Hello," to Tre. "I'm Pen."

And she might have said more, but there by the stage is Serafíne, observant, lifting her chin and Pen does check that guy out, turning so her back is to the stage and she can give that guy an assessing look (a weapon must be ready, always; she tries to be always ready).

"I don't, though. He seems as if he should have antlers, doesn't he?"

And if Silas meets Pen's eyes, she lofts her eyebrows and cants her head.

Pen
ooc: Er, make that the fancier and more Pen-like: "He seems as if he should wear a crown of antlers upon his brow, doesn't he?"

Grace
[Awareness!]

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

Grace
There's an invitation. Grace responds to that invitation, not so much because she enjoys going to bars for music, but because of the sender. Sera could make just about anything worth it.

The swirl of different in this place doesn't surprise much. She still blinks as she steps in the door, this be-winged thing, at everyone else's oddness. She wears her coat-of-many-colors -- red, with strips of LED lights sewn in. If it looks a little worn, perhaps it's just because she wears it everywhere in winter.

A bee-line, she travels, straight to Pen, head down, like she is trying to forget the rest of the crowd is here.

Silas
Eyes are met, yes, and a brow raised in return; questioning, perhaps, from the bit of the bar closest the stage.  Silas is not terribly far from where Sera and Pen met, and so after acknowledging their presence (and feeling their Presence) he takes up his drink, signals the bartender for two drinks of the women's choice to be added to his tab, and makes his way to where they stand.  Why not?  There is music, and there is quarry here, even if he chooses not to hunt, and there are people of interest.

Silas is brazen, he is bald, and when he moves towards where Pen assesses and Sera prepares his gait is sure, and nigh predatory.  It is not rushed but measured just right to give Sera chance to give answer before he's close enough to hail them.

"Hello," he says and his deep voice is familiar to Grace.  There's a slight accent there, as the Other carries itself from impression to reality; it's English, maybe, if you listen to it sideways, but the kind of upper class English that one hears in places that commoners aren't often about.  "I feel that you two may be people I should know.  I'm called Silas."

Grace
Silas is Arianna's friend. So is Pen. It remains to be seen if Grace will be able to associate with either of them once it comes out that she'd much rather punch Arianna in the face than give her prejudices credit by being nice.

For now, though...

"You don't know Pen? Really?" Grace makes a 'huh' face. Lets them introduce themselves. "Hey, Pen."

Serafíne
"You know we're loud," Sera-to-Pen, "right?"  And there is a moment there of introduction: Tre to Pen and Pen to Tre, perhaps.  Sera tells Pen that Tre is, you know, cool, which is code enough for Tre to understand that Pen, like Sera, is magickal.  And to Pen's comment about crowns and antlers, all Sera has to add is: "Don't look now, he's coming this way."

With a neat wink.  They can be all archaic together.

And: a twirl of Sera's fingers at Grace as she is bee-lining and this glance at Tre that includes a neat little smirk and this particular NPC might well shake hands with Pen and even Silas and also: Grace if she gets here soon enough but he also has a feeling that it is time to take his leave.  He's gonna go chat up the bartender/manager and work the crowd and he has enough easy, unselfconscious charm that he can really work a crowd.

"Serafíne.  Hey.  Everyone calls me Sera."

Nick
Here is Nick, who was likely gently persuaded into coming and ultimately came because he wanted to hear the band play.  He is come separate from Pen, though he went back to the house to change before coming out because he couldn't stand to be in his work clothes any longer.  He is wearing a collarless chambray shirt and a pair of dark brown khakis and boots: the effect is a simple one, contrasting neatly with Pen.

It will also let him blend in here, which is just as well.  Nick has the sort of air about him that could be a buzzkill in a place like this.

Nick gathers his bearings for a moment after he has stepped in the door into the haze and red and purple lights.  Pen is easy enough for him to see, and so is Sera, and there is Grace.  He lifts a hand to all of them, and he stops at the bar first, because damned if he is going to be at a loud concert without a drink in hand.

Pen
They can all be archaic together, and here come to roost two bird-things (winged quake herald of change dark crow reverent portent) in the cool bar as well. The cool bar really is cool; look how many cool people have come to it (because of Sera - core of gravity; center of the circle). Silas has Pen's attention, as a stranger and a stranger who feels as he does, but when Grace cuts through the crowd she is welcomed with a warm look. She offers the man-who-should-wear-an-antlered-crown her hand. Her wrist is clasped in a metal bracelet; there are rings on every finger, including above the knuckle of her thumb, and she says -

"Silas. From Silvanus, I take it?" with easy good humor, and in the middle of the question this perplexed look for Grace, which winds past Grace to rest on Sera: the question continues. Why should Pen know Silas and not Sera, hmm?

Grace
She waves back at Sera, the twinkle of fingers, a quirk of a lip. But she doesn't understand the weird look Pen gives her. Some people are easier to read than others.

"Hey, Nick too. We're freaking flocking."

Silas
"Yes, actually.  My mother is ever interested in the esoteric."  Grace is there and she waves her fingers, so Silas gives a nod of his head; it could be a bow but that it isn't at all, and while he may sound like it, look like it, he isn't quite that archaic.  Any hand offered is shaken, displaying his tattoo-sleeved right forearm - it is cloaked in symbols of Horned Gods and Hunts, lending still more credence to the thought that perhaps there ought to be horns on his person.  As stated, he is warm to the touch in a way that might be considered feverish, were it not so vigorous a sign of life.

"It's a pleasure to meet you both.  And to see you again, Grace - I hope all is well."

Serafíne
Grace says that we are freaking flocking and Sera favors the Virtual Adept (sorry: Grace, Sera has not adjusted to the name change.) with a neat liiittle smirk.  Grace and her propensity for commenting on the coincidences of mages-coming-together.  Well: no coincidence tonight.  It's the first time Sera's band has played out in...

...months.  Nine or more.  She has a shot and a beer and when Siles orders another one of whatever the women are drinking to be put on his tab, hell, she gets another round.  Of shots, not beer.  Stranahan's Colorado whiskey: goes down a treat.   She tosses it back like a pro.  Eyes Silas' tattooes when he outstretches his hand to be shaken.  Notes the warmth and goes, "Oh, your hands are warm!"  And she remembers: others with warm hands.  The passing wonder of it.

"I hope you brought your earplugs," Sera says this mostly to Grace, in a way that is teasing-serious, and reaches out to ruffle Grace's hair.   Whom Dan pauses in his  work doling out cords and setting up drums and amps and whatnot to greet with a grin framed by his blond beard.

Nick
When Nick appears behind all of them, it's without emitting a sound; a more forceful presence than his would be likely to startle other people.  Lucky he's not like that.

"Hello everyone," he says, and when he finally settles on a place to enter the little circle of Willworkers here it's next to Pen.  He has a whiskey and soda in hand.  Dan, where he is setting up amps and doling out cards, gets a wave.

Nicholas, curly-headed and solemn, offers a moment's quiet regard for the other man present: he had not arrived in time to catch his name.  "Hello.  I'm Nick."

Grace
Grace shrugs at Silas. He can hope all is well all he wants. She isn't going to explain why it isn't right now. But she leans into Sera's ruffling fingers, pulls out -- yes -- a pair of earplugs connected to each other by a wire from her coat pocket. Smirks.

"They are loud," she explains. Gives Nick a wave.

There's goodness to this. Coming together, waving at people, the meeting, the parting. Grace, for her part, is simply present. If her eyes go darting to some light fixture or other rather than a person, it's just the way she is.

Silas
"Silas," he says for Nick's benefit, offering a hand as well; there are Manners to this one, and they are deeper and stronger than just a handshake might seem.  And Grace's shrug is taken in stride - already he's come to realize that Grace tends towards the terse, at least with him, and that her reactions are not always what he would consider apropos.  Or polite.  Still, he reserves obvious judgement, and attempts to include her as much as the others, until it seems she'd rather be left alone.

"I've not been in Denver long, though if you are the Nick and Pen of whom I've heard, we have a friend in common."  He's not as secretive as his Housemate in some ways - in this way.  He doesn't much mind the assembled knowing who he knows.

Pen
Pen's gray as gloaming eyes gleam when Silas blames his name on his mother's love of esoterica, but she does not discuss it (or the fact that she believes likely his mother was inspired by the mien of him, the clear and present godhood in his shadow; what will Margot make of this one?). Only seems friendly enough, inquisitive but questions will keep.

She executes a small double take when Grace actually pulls out earplugs; her eyes gone wide. She measures their proximity to the stage (the scant few inches, since Sera was and perhaps is sitting still on the edge of the stage, her band busy about her), then finds the speakers.

"Should we move if we hope to preserve our eardrums then?"

There is a Nicholas; Pen reaches for and takes his drink because she has yet to order one of her own and she wants to drink something.

Pen is sharp enough to: "Oh, you are Ari's childhood friend. Sera, have you met Ari yet?"

Grace
[Manip + Subt = Ari? Oh no, I have no probs with her.]

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

Grace
Never let it be said that Grace has manners. Perish the thought. It's a rare day she remembers to thank people for gifts, and has a tendency to look at people oddly when they thank her -- because property is a bit distasteful when it comes right down to it. What are manners, except for the customs and rituals of tribes who've never claimed her?

"Well, we can," she says, to Pen. "I'm just not a huge fan of loud music, myself."

She tries not to let it show on her face the distaste in her when Ari's name is brought up. She licks her lip, snakelike, tilts her gaze to the side. Not paying attention anymore.

Nick
[Oh?  Perception + Empathy.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Silas
[You think so, do you.  How droll.  Per+Emp]

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

Grace
[Yeah, okay, so it's obvious that Grace's demeanor changed when Ari was brought up, you two. Grace looks like she's trying not to react to something that smells bad over there..]

Serafíne
"Tre always has extras," Sera assures Pen: of earplugs.  If she is intent on preserving her hearing.  "Dee too."  Because hearing loss is a problem for musicians.  Or at least: musicians who are not disciples of life.

They are indeed very close to the stage.  Sera is still sitting there, letting her legs swing and swing and swing.  She is excited, wired.  Perhaps she is on some-small-thing other than alcohol, in addition to alcohol, but the darkness in cool bar is deep enough that there will be no good view of her pupils.

Gives Nick a quick, chasing grin.  Shakes her head no to Pen: she has never heard of Ari and she takes no part in the examination of Grace who is trying-not-to-let-things show.  That shake jostles a few of the curls pinned up amidst the glories of her crown but the whole of the mass is well-secured.

Then Dan is there with a hand on her shoulder because everything's set up and they need five minutes to go over the set list, don't they?  In the past they've always done covers, or covers of their own shit that Sera-and-Dan have sold to other artists, stitched together by Sera's irrepressible and slowly raveling charm.  Tonight though -

"We'll be out in a few!  So glad you guys came - "

Nick
His drink is commandeered; Nick allows this with hardly a sideways glance.  This is the way of things.  It frees up his hand to shake Silas's, and there is this glimmer of recognition there as the man says his name that Nick doesn't bother to hide.  "Ari's mentioned you," he says.

His hand falls back to his side, and Nicholas is an insightful man and it's not difficult to notice the way in which Grace's gaze slants sidelong, how there is this slight wrinkling of her nose.  Nick marks it; for now, he says nothing.  His hazel eyes are for Sera, who is swing swing swinging her legs, and there is this crinkle of amusement at the corners of his eyes.  "I didn't realize you were in the band, Sera.  Thanks for inviting us."

Pen
Nick didn't realize she was in the band; that brings out Pen's dimples, for whatever reason, a mischievous glint.

Then: "I am glad too! Break the bone and chase the echoes down," Pen says, earnest and whole-hearted and here a quick flash of a smile again that winds up not being quick at all; flash bomb, the way it just dazzles (lake-light, shield-light) for a moment but there's the blinding blot after effect. That lingers; in the place of this metaphor, it becomes diffuse. Dan gets a tilt of her chin, a pleased hello acknowledgment; then courtesy: "I am for the bar."

It is an invitation, sure, because there are people now crowding in, and their area is a coveted one; funny how a crowd will eddy, will whorl like a river against a stone-strewn shore.

She hands back to Nicholas his drink; it has been considerably depelted. "It is good to meet you, Silvanus." Pause; "I meant to say Silas," and she sounds perplexed: because she did. (When one is marked, such things often happen. Especially if one is speaking to someone myth-seeped as Penelope.) "In some other venue, I shall want most dearly to ask you questions!"

And she is for the bar, so.

Silas
Silas marks the same shift in expression that Nick does, and he too lets it lie; he is the new addition, after all, and Arianna is more than capable of fighting her own battles when they're worth fighting.  And sometimes when they aren't.  More interesting is that Pen has labeled him a childhood friend, and that Nick's eyes sparkle recognition at his name.  The way he sips his drink, finishing it, is casual, as are his posture and eyes.

"Yes, she and I know each other of old.  If you'll pardon me - I promised my roommates I would remind them to be here for the show.  Break legs, Sera."

He says this with sincerity, in the way of far older performance arts than this - and with pleasantries traded, he makes his way for the door - where he'll be able to make his call in more favorable conditions.

Serafíne
This is a ridiculously small venue and those invitations went out to maybe one out of five people on Sera's normal invite-people-to-shit contact list (which is of course, managed by Dan-not-Sera) and the other magi may well have five-ten-fifteen minutes or more of conversation before the quartet come out of - er - the back office and the hallway down to the bathrooms with their instruments and plug in to check a few levels and channels and whatnot but they already tried out the space on Monday when the bar was closed and figured (most) of that shit out.  Dan and Sera with guitars, Dee with her bass, Rick on the drums.  And this is new work and it is collective work, brawny and rhythm-section forward.  Great big and (yes) loud as promised though the wave of noise has been modulated for the space, you see.  It is also: loud as in, full, driving.  The wall of instrumental sound and Sera's and sometimes Sera-and-Dee's or even Sera-and-Dee-and-Dan's voices a melodic cloud above it, floating through a river of noise.



(Er: thank you all for coming!  I gotta sleep!)

Grace
Grace huffs at Nick. Didn't realize Sera was in the band? Wait until the first time she does literal magic with that voice of hers. It is something.

Pen departs for the bar, and Silas departs for his roomates. "Want to follow Pen?" she asks Nick. "It's about to get loud right here. Might be better at the bar, eh?

She hefts her weight back and forth, clearly ready to move if he is. Clearly ready to wait with him if he isn't.

Nick
((Good night, Liz!))

Nick
Does Nick want to follow Pen.  Does Nick want to retreat out of the growing crowd that is probably going to start jostling and pushing and spilling booze everywhere in the next fifteen minutes.  "Yeah, let's move," he says to Grace, as he begins to disentangle himself from a few college age kids who have pushed forward.  Sera: she'd gotten a wave and a smile before she'd gone backstage; Nick is the hugging sort but they just aren't all that familiar with each other yet.

He has his drink back, and he takes a swallow from it as he weaves back through the throng so he can reach Pen at the bar.  There is a glance spared backward for Grace; Nick is of the Leave No (Wo)man Behind variety.

He exhales as they come up next to Pen then.  "How have you been, Grace?  I haven't seen you in a bit," he says.

Serafíne
(Needed a transcript!)

Grace
She doesn't want to leave him alone either, and so walks with him through the crowd to the bar, eventually shrugging at him as she did with Silas. "I've been."

Been out to see Alex. Been wondering what to do next. Been arguing with people and been fed up.

She asks the bartender for a rum and coke, because at least it has a little caffeine, and there's just a little time yet before ordering will be made difficult over the braying of guitars and drums.

Nick
A quirk of Nick's mouth here, at that.  "I don't think people take the time often enough to just be."  He takes another swallow from his glass, which Pen mostly drained of its water and smoke and fire, and so he tosses back the rest.  He might as well get another one before the band starts to play.

"It sounds as though it doesn't sit well with you, though."  Is this the best place for this conversation?  Well, no, in all likelihood, and yet here they are.  It's Nick's way.

Grace
No, indeed. Simply existing does not sit well with Grace. She isn't, really, simply existing at the moment. There are things to be done. There are always things to do. And yet, with recent events being what they are, the right things to do are still up in the air.

Should she try to put together a new Ginger? Would anyone accept it if she did, knowing what happened with the first? Should her office remain abandoned as it is, its contents distributed in secret to some new place? Or is that just the fear talking?

Can't say she hasn't put thought into it. But for now, a shrug. Again. Her shoulders must be tired by now.

"I can never just be. Feels wrong."

Nick
This throaty, thoughtful noise.  He has stepped up to the bar next to Pen, set his glass down, and there is this casual brush of his fingertips between the Hermetic's shoulderblades as they arrive there next to her.  "Why is that, do you think?"

Pen
Pen does not seem to be particularly affected one way or another by the crowd. She is only made alert by it; she is constantly looking around, not rapidly, not nervously, but because there is so much to see. Because Pen is: clear-eyed.

The counter space Pen took (which is to say, arrived at and stayed with such confidence that it is clearly going to belong to Pen and her friends for now) is toward the end, but with a good view of the stage. Just two feet over, and hanging bottles and glasses would refract Sera's band a foam-lacery of light in the middle of dark dark darkness.

The promise of the ginger & rye is fulfilled and when Nicholas and Grace arrive, the bartender and Pen are just working out that Silas has already paid for that drink, that his tab is still open, that he had not specified closing it at any time, and here: Pen is often torn between letting people buy her things and refusing to let people buy her things.

Frugality wins out; she lets Silas's gesture pass.

Okay, now she has her drink, the cost of it has been determined, Nicholas's fingertips whisper between her shoulderblades, and Pen casts him a (lure) smile when she hands him her drink, turns back to them both and listens. What are they talking about? Time to jump back in.

Grace
"I don't know," Grace says, eyes on the bartender coming with her drink, for which she pays with enough cash to leave a decent-sized tip. Doesn't think to thank the woman.

"Feels like I'm missing out on something, I guess."

She tips the rum and coke, sipping at it.

Nick
Nicholas has a second whiskey and soda, which will not be pilfered by Pen as she now has her own drink.  He takes a sip of hers when she offers it, and then after making a pleased noise slides it back over to her.  Silas appears to have left them to make his phone call, but it's just as well; before long the entire place will just be noise.

After that, he glances over at Grace, and sweeps his eyes over her.  This thoughtful thing.  "You sound like you're feeling pretty discouraged about something."

Grace
"Well, the second there is something in my life to be couraged about, I'll tell you," she says, sips at her drink some more.

She sighs, looks up to the stage. Sera, okay, maybe she is something to be couraged about, eh? A little smile. There are still the wild ones here in Denver.

Nick
Grace says this, and there is this arch to Nicholas's eyebrows, subtle but present, as he leans into the bar next to Pen and takes a swallow from his glass.  There's no one on the stage yet, though perhaps there will be soon, and he too follows Grace's eyes for a moment.

"So there's nothing in your life to be couraged about, at the moment?"  He leans leans just to the side, bumping Pen's hip with his own, and eventually comes to rest there.  The bar is crowded; it's not like he needs an excuse.

Grace
She side-eyes Nick. "No."

Isn't that basically what she just said?

"Look, why talk about me? Sera's going to be playing soon, just..." You know, stop?

"It's a mood. It'll pass. Or it won't."

Pen
There are conversations one does not jump right back into. This seems to be one of them. Pen listens, of course. A sympathetic and compassionate ear, and she keeps a weather eye out (assessing [vigilance]), and she is not as impulsive and heedless (headlong, forward-flung) as she was once.

Pen sways when Nick bumps into her; hooks her foot around his ankle and begins to lean back against the bar counter. Her hair is loose and getting long (she'll cut it when it gets past the small of her back; another week and a half, maybe), so the tail end curls tangle over it all hooks and thorns. She should cut her bangs, too. They're too long, swept to the side almost like layers instead of bangs.

Pen blows them out of her eyes. They go whisking up, fwoof! Then flop again.

"What's her band's name, anyway? Does it have one?" Pen asks.

Nick
Grace says this, and Nicholas shrugs, taking another swallow from his tumbler.  "Sorry," he says, and might've said more or offered a change of topic of his own, but here's Pen asking about band names.  He casts another look over his shoulder at the stage, which has an air of waiting about it, between its silence and the hum of the gathered crowd.

At which point he looks over to Grace again, interested in the answer.

Grace
He's a consummate therapist, isn't he? Wants to help people even if they don't necessarily feel it at the moment. Grace knows about duties, the way they drive you. She just nods at him, says: "No worries."

"I don't know, to be honest. Band name, I mean. It's just Sera's band, I guess?"

She cares so much, pays so much attention to the posters and the billing, doesn't she? Not here for the music, is Grace.

Pen
"I wish I could play an instrument," Pen says. "I wouldn't mind if I wasn't a great musician," and see, she is presuming that Serafíne (enthralling, liminal) is going to be great. "But I'd like to know enough to carry a tune. Perhaps I should try to pick something up."

"Do you ever listen to that atonal stuff? Noise music? There's one of your people back in New England I remember meeting who messes about with noise music. Nietzsche's Schrodinger is the name they go by?"

There are weirder things than a Virtual Adept in New England and a Virtual Adept in Denver (Mercurial Elite: welcome to a new age) knowing one another.

Grace
"God exists in a superposition of dead and alive?" Grace says, snorts -- she finds that to be hilarious. "Never heard the name, but they sound fun."

"I've been told my taste in music is terrible though. I... don't really. I mean, I'm here for Sera more than I am to hear her sing?"

Nick
There are stranger things; Nicholas has encountered here in Denver someone who may have known one of his past incarnations, and besides, Awakened communities are small.  It's not hard to find a gu who knows a guy.

He listens to the two of them, sipping quietly at his drink in the pause between breaths.  "So you've heard her play a lot before, then?"

Grace
"A few times," she says. "She sings a lot outside of the band too. Works with it, you know."

Grace slips up onto a barstool, takes the earplugs out of her coat again, fiddles with them absentmindedly while she waits.

She remembers -- lullabies to help her sleep, when sleep wasn't possible. Sera's songs as a balm against the world. As she told Pen not too long ago, the strongest bonds between her and her friends were always forged in pain.

Nick
The hum of the crowd has grown, and Nick glances over his shoulder to note some stirring behind and backstage; perhaps it won't be long before they step on.  They can be heard back there now, tuning their instruments.  Every once in a while the note from a guitar drifts out, thrumming and discordant until it stabilizes into harmony.

"I've known people who used music to Work before.  It's interesting to me.  I'm looking forward to seeing her."

Pen
There's time yet for a little more conversation, but not much more of it.

This is around when the band returns, having set up: Serafíne in a crown, metal and red and beauty, and then all the rest of them: their sizzling charisma, their noise and their loudness. Somebody does the opening patter; maybe it is Sera, with that smile of hers, as she looks around.

But then they play.

--

And for a time, in this moment, in just this present instant, there's much to be 'couraged about: music. companions, drink, survival, even a reason for survival: that lovely cloud of sound thrown up above the rest.

Pen quite literally wears a pair of rose tinted sunglasses sometimes, though.

You Might [incomplete]

Kiara Woolfe
[Just cuz! Awareness.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Kiara Woolfe
The last occasion Nicholas Hyde had to hear from the Verbena known as Kiara Woolfe was through the medium of a certain feathered spirit they both knew. One that had arrived, demanding his attention and battering at his window, in the wee small hours of the morning to deliver a simple message: the mission had been successful and Alexander had been retrieved.

Few people had seen Kiara since in the days that followed. Grace was among the few and perhaps that was intentional. As successful as their retrieval mission had been, it also hadn't been without cost - for the brunette, that cost had been personal as well as magickal. Reality had not gifted her with a physical disguise without taking its retribution in return.

When Nicholas does hear from her, it's the invitation to join her at a tiny café buried in LoDo called Little Owl Coffee. A traditional Italian-run establishment hidden inside the so-called SugarCube building on its first floor, the establishment tucked away with its limestone floors and speckled marble walls. It's late enough in the day that traffic is spilling out into the streets and most respectable office workers are pushing toward the last handful of hours before liberation frees them from their office blocks and corner cubicles.

Unsurprisingly, the café the brunette has chosen is nearly empty, she's situated herself at one of its few tables; stirring a teaspoon around a cup of steaming (black) coffee and scrolling through something idly on a phone. As ever with the Verbena, she was dressed in absolutes. Black jacket and boots; silver adorning her lobes, fingers and neck and a bold red shade of lipstick painted over her mouth.

Her eyes were lined with black pencil and her long hair left out; casting her appearance, as ever, into something shy of wild. Some sprite of nature unleashed on an unsuspecting population. Glimpsing her now, she seemed the least likely creature to ever have been capable of infiltrating somewhere as sterile as a Union lab.

Nicholas Hyde
[Awareness, too.  Why not.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

Kiara Woolfe
The sense that Nicholas gets that tells him the Verbena is close is: a surge of rejuvenating energy, coupled with a low pulsing, as if his heart were beating loudly in his ears. It's the sensation of Spring; of the rebirth of a cycle; the regeneration of hope and life.

It was also, depending on whether or not he'd been introduced to the city's current Chantry, the same sense that its Node gave off; the hot springs thrived with the same energy. Being in Kiara Woolfe's near proximity was setting foot into nature; breathing in the first sweet scents after a storm.

Life, by any other name.

Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas had texted Kiara once, in the gloaming light of first dawn, to let her know that her message had been received.  That was all: to say more would have been to defeat the purpose of sending Crow.  Word had gotten around, so perhaps Kiara can extrapolate from that, enough to know that Nick and his wife did indeed pass the word along.

When he hears from her again, he gladly accepts her invitation.  He is in fact one of the professionals currently filtering out of buildings, back out into the streets and re-entering daily life.  Nicholas hasn't been in Denver for very long, and things like coffee shops and SugarCubes are things he is still in the process of discovering.  Each person he encounters in Denver brings him something new.

Kiara can feel his approach before she can see him, and Nicholas: he's the quiet hush of first Spring dawning, he is the hallowed hills and barrows of a distant country, or the deepest reaches of untouched wood; he is Old Roads and a whisper of things that are secret, and sacred.  He absolutely does not feel as though he belongs in a city at rush hour, and yet here he is.

His cheeks are red because he walked here, his curls windblown.  He notices Kiara, too, before he sees her; it's evident in how quickly his eyes are drawn.  "Hey," he says, and there's this friendly sort of regard for the Verbena as he steps over to her, unbuttoning his grey overcoat as he does.  Beneath it he is wearing a striped blue buttondown and light grey dress pants; tasteful if unremarkable professional clothes.  There is a hospital badge clipped to the lapel of his shirt, which he unclips and stows in a pocket as an afterthought.  "I'll be right back, I'm going to get some coffee."

And minutes later, he will return, a steaming (black, with cinnamon) cup in his own hand.  He sets it down first before he seats himself at the table, and he has spared a look for her.  "I'm glad things went all right," is the first thing he says after.

Kiara Woolfe
She does feel him, before she sees him.

That much is evident in the way her fingertips pause in their scrolling and she inclines her face, just so, to regard the doorway just before he steps through it; bringing a small gust of crisp air and that solemnity of his; that sense of ancient, untouched fields of verdant green earth. There's a pause where the brunette's dark eyes slip over him and then away, back to her phone's screen.

Hey, he greets and Kiara tips her chin up and properly regards him with a subtle tick of her mouth upward at one corner. "Hey, yourself." He unclips a hospital badge from his shirt and stows it away and the pagan's eyes observe this wordlessly.

Kiara didn't wear any visible indications of her profession, her attire was, if anything, on the alternatively chic side. The dark jacket disguised only a silk blouse beneath and her silver necklaces seemed a collection of meaningless charms but for a few that bore indicators of her beliefs, if nothing else. A figure in submission with their hands outstretched above them, a pendant star.

A small hunk of quartz carved into a scrying adornment.

When he returns and settles in at the table, it seems as if Kiara has readied herself for him, or at the very least, made concessions for their conversation by setting her phone down and instead cradling her coffee between her palms, her eyes on the pedestrian traffic weaving by the windows. They return to him after a beat and she offers the first true smile she has.

"I am too, for Alexander's sake, if nothing else." A hesitation, a hint of apology somewhere, contained in her voice. "I wasn't sure that night what could be trusted to send word." A curl of her mouth. "I figured if anyone would understand, you might."

Nicholas Hyde
He doesn't touch his coffee yet, either to fold his hands around it or to lift it to drink.  Nick has settled into his chair, and his movements are silent too; it has been observed about him that he has an almost spectral quality as he moves through the world around him.  He does throw a shadow, which, sometimes, could be the only indication short of touching him that he does in fact have a physical mass.

Nick is less at ease here than he was the other times they met.  Like her, perhaps, this sort of environment was not made for him, and he even looks a little out of place here, like some fey creature in a maze of metal and glass.

What Kiara says makes him smile, though the expression is evidenced mostly by a crinkling of skin at the corners of his eyes and mouth.  His tells are more often than not subtle things.  "I was happy to get the visit.  I was hard to wake up though, I'm pretty sure Crow had a laugh at my expense."  It wouldn't be the first time.

"How is Alexander holding up?"

Kiara Woolfe
Kiara Woolfe certainly feels as if she belongs, like him, outside of these cages built of glass and steel.

Certainly, like their expedition to speak to the spirits before Alexander's rescue, she'd seemed far more in her element surrounded by rolling hills and old, towering trees. Not so much that the Verbena wasn't present or in the moment but that she seemed too vibrant a creature to enjoy the city limitations for long stretches. Kalen likened the brunette to a Lynx, a wild, prowling predator.

Beguiling and deceptively docile for its relative size and appearance but - a wild thing none the less.

The likeness was not so far from the truth. Certainly Kiara could offer turns of her eyes or a sharp, edged smile that seemed to suggest at some caged desire to react; to flex her baser instincts in response to opinions or thoughtless actions (Woolfe by name and by nature, perhaps).

Still, she seems content enough now, to sit across from Nicholas with her legs crossed neatly at the knee and ankle; considering his question. How was Alexander holding up? There's a flicker that crosses her face; a sense of some uncertain feeling toward the Orphan.

"Okay, I think." She sets her cup down. "They hadn't begun to do anything physical to him other than repair his knee, the conditioning was entirely psychological so far as we've been able to deduce." She keeps her voice soft, private. Her dark eyes venturing toward the counter idly, keeping a tab on the barista's proximity to them. "You haven't met Alexander but he was already - cautious, about who he trusted. About - being what he was.

I don't know if what he went through is going to push him in the right direction, or - " She skims her fingertips along the edge of her cup. "I know he changed, while they had him. He's gotten stronger. To go through a Seeking while in that situation, I can't even imagine what it must have been like."

Return Path

Ari
Things have been happening lately, and the Silver Bough has not necessarily been in lockstep over them.  They have not always gone shoulder-to-shoulder into the night.  Arianna has been working through the particulars of securing a place of her own, through the appropriate shell entities, with the appropriately Hermetic levels of concern.  Houses cannot simply be purchased at Smart and Final and plunked down wherever there is space.  It requires a damnable amount of paperwork, all traceable by unsavory sorts, and therefore a requisite amount of patience and forethought.

Nick and Pen have been, you know, saving the universe.  Or some Disparate.  equally risky, and with variable rewards.  Which may be more straightforward than mortgages.

They have been missing each other for a few evenings, and it leaves a sort of hollowness to her heart.  Even though they are just recently re-united, Nicholas and Pen are the family of her heart, if not her flesh, and also of her mind, if not always being of-a-mind.

It is late afternoon, and the snow has been coming down for days, and Spring does not at all seem to have sprung -- not efficiently, not effectively -- but rather ushered in a sense of disbelieving restlessness, of thwarted becoming. It is in keeping with the mood she brought home from her encounter with the Mercurial Elite (Elitist).  It is something she has tried to actively put from her mind, so that now -- as she stands, darkening the doorway to Nick's study, with an unopened bottle of champagne in one hand (he should recognize it readily) and two plastic coupes (it was all she could find on short order [it is the only appropriate shape]), stems of which tangled in her fingers, leaning a shoulder into his doorjamb, all lazy and unimpatient and carefully unexpectant -- now she seems to be just Ari, as she always is, mouth quirked as if he caught her halfway through a smile, barefooted and watching him with a tangle of fondness and mischief and mirth wrapped into the green of her eyes.

Even idle, she is anything but idle. The stars, you see, they stand still for no one.

Nick
It's unusual, how diligent Nicholas has been in his magickal studies.  Ari would not have recalled him as such: frequently, even before he went overseas and returned heartsick and weary, even before he fired a graven bullet into their onetime cabalmate, he was more given to exploring, to trial and error, to it'll-come-to-me-when-it-comes.  These days, there are more books (borrowed, though) in his study related to things of a magickal nature than there used to be.  These days he is at once more somber and also beginning to unburden his heart, this seeming paradox.

So she'll find him, scion of Air and Darkness, in his study which is bounded on one side by falling snow.  The black of his hair is thrown against that backdrop, and maybe it'll strike anyone who looks why dark ebony and driven white are things paired together in fable.

There is a book in his lap and he is seated in a low-backed armchair, his legs crossed beneath him.  More circles, more collections of Umbral lore.  Maybe in some ways marrying and cabaling with Hermetics has been good for him.  That's the purpose of a multi-Tradition cabal when you think about it, isn't it?  The thing that Rob was getting at all those years ago?  (Was it?)

As Ari appears in his doorway, Nick looks up from his reading, his hazel eyes bleary from too long peering at hand-written ink.  Such books as they read frequently haven't been reproduced by printing press (though that does happen sometimes.)  More often it's a collection of lore passed down by mouth and scribed here, going back and back and back to the first magi, whoever they were.  There is this delay in how his expression shifts (his thoughts are still trapped on the page, even if he has looked up) until he notices the champagne in her hand, and the two plastic goblets there tangled in her fingers.

"You saw my gift, I see," he says.  And then, "We don't have to drink it.  I had just imagined you might break it over the headboard of your bed."

Ari
"Hah!"

Something he has said, it pleases her. It teases something warmer than the wry and twisted smiles out of her.  There is an element of surprise to it, as she has been genuinely taken aback by some suggestion. The arm carrying the coupes crosses her middle, her ankles cross as she leans more into the doorjamb, as if she could become some languid grace against it, gild it in silver: stay.

"Oh, Nicholas," fondness here, and also amusement, and marks of a life lived long before theirs became entangled, all of it wrapped around the syllables of his name, all of it to make his name more resonant and shining.  "That maiden voyage came long ago for me, but I will drink with you in celebration all the same.  To revelry, of one sort or another."

She holds the neck of that bottle with practiced ease.  It is one of the many privileges about her; this comfortable acquaintance with insouciance; this certainty whilst seeming cavalier.  The bottle is in no sort of danger.

She is, also, well acquainted with the peculiar struggles of studying from no-longer primary documents, but ones whose serifs and ligatures have evaded the execution of more automated means.  The things that sit in the place-between -- not resonant with history, not modern in their ease.  She is trained to read them as easily as he might mark the flow of water.  So this regard, careful and not entirely intrusive, this little look from across the room brings a sort of sotto frown to her brown and a bowing of her lips and --

"My library will be here soon. Once I am certain that my home will be secure.  I do not know that it touches upon your interests, but you will be welcome to it." Her voice is kept low at this, as if secrets pass between them; as if it is a thing she will not announce loudly or loft to the trees that steeple above, or shout into the snowfall.  Her Library will be here, at least a corner of it.  It will be open to him.  It will also be, at least, more beautifully lettered, more reliably scribed.

Nick
"Ari," shock in the syllables of how her name is pronounced, here, as though he is disbelieving, when she tells him that the maiden voyage came long ago.  Of course he is not; Ari is slightly older than he is, and for all that he might sometimes be mistaken for one Nick is no Chorister and certainly no monk, nor does he expect it of others.

Of course, he had not known for certain why she'd been absent, though he'd suspected: thus, the champagne.  Ari's response here though confirms what up until now had been his suspicions.  "I meant to assume less a maiden voyage than new beginnings.  'Childhood friend,' huh?"

And here he shuts the book and beckons her forward into his study.  Much of the furniture that was Nicholas's alone before he became part of the unit Mars and Hyde has an air of salvage, of old ruins that were beautiful once reclaimed and put to new purpose.  One of the bookshelves in his corner is an old canoe, sawed off at the bottom and carefully hollowed in places for shelves to rest; his desk is an old pitted solid thing that he has been meaning to sand down and restain forever but has not.  A carpet, whorled with black and grey and green, covers the floor (and the burnt circle beneath.)  Photos are placed in a collage of color and form on the walls; some are framed and some are not.

"A lot of things touch upon my interests," he says, because there is still a bit of the Disparate in Nick.  He never forsook the more shamanic understanding he carries of magic when he was initiated into his Tradition, and he still borrows now where it makes sense.  "I've been...well, I've been interested in exploring True Names, lately.  Pen talks about them so often."

Ari
'Childhood friend,' huh?

"There may be a bit more to that story..."  She seems more comfortable with it now than she had at wing night, this intersection of her past and present, of Nick and Pen and this childhood friend.  His reaction deepens her amusement, it creases at the corners of her eyes and keeps a lightness to her step when he bids her enter.  She has a way of seeming very much at home wherever she is bound by books, or symbols, or languages and Nick's study, with its unorthodox shelves and rescued things, is no exception.

"Names are important," she agrees, and in agreeing with him on this, she is also of a mind with with Pen.  Here, this echo could bring forward a note of frustration from the week before: it doesn't, but that experience does guide her toward caution.  "Even in lore beyond our own, in faery stories, among the deepest things that man has known, they are important."

Ari finds a place to settle, and nestles the bottle in against her hip. Canted just so, caught between the arm of some chair and the sweep of her skirt.  The coupes still dangle, in mock danger, from her fingers.

"What do you think about them?  How does Naming fit into your estimate of things?"

Nick
"I like stories."  Nick leans over to carefully, carefully tip the book onto his desk with a meaty, weighty thunk.  The pages, brittle and no longer bone white but yellowed now, rustle as they settle.  His hands find his ankles, crossed beneath him, and tuck them in farther.  It is unintentional but there is something youthful about it, something of a child sitting at the feet of a grandmother or wise school librarian.

Ari has found another armchair to settle in, or perhaps Nick's desk chair, this massive wheeled thing of cracked red leather, probably a castoff from the office of some New England executive to whom it had outlived its usefulness.  It is still sturdy, and there is still a faint fragrance that arises from it when touched.

"I believe a Name is the essence of that thing," Nick says.  "And that knowing the essence or nature of a thing gives you power over it.  There's power in the Naming."

Ari
"And what sort of story would you like today?" she asks, finding some flat and certain place to set the coupes, glancing only halfly over at him because she is busy with her task -- because she is busy being clever, and not yet ready to give the whole of a thing away.  (Not yet ready to Name it, Ari?)

It is this desk chair she has alit upon, calling up the scent of worn leather and passing time; it is a fitting thing to have heavy in the air around her when they speak of Names and also of Silas.  It pleases her.  So much of the circumstance around her conversations with Nick pleases Ari; perhaps this is what Rob had been aiming at, all those years ago, on the shore, in the moonlight, drinking rum and, hah!, also in his short clothes.

Ari has a certain effect on people.  Some times they end up sitting in the sand in their underpants.  Stranger things had surely happened. Out of context, it is an amusing thought.

"Can Names be bestowed on things?  On even things that are not in keeping with the Name itself?" she asks.  It is a thing she has considered, and come back to, within her own studies. What controls the truth of a thing, essense, intent, Name, Will?  Murky waters.  These questions are sent off into the stillness of his study (hallowed ground), whilst her quick and nimble fingers begin to unravel the foil obscuring the cage and cork.

Nick
The surface Ari finds upon which to set the coupes appears to have once been a sewing table, probably from some factory; the bottom is heavy, iron-wrought and dark as sin.  Wood panels have been set into the top to provide a more appropriate living surface than the original would have.  His study does not necessarily follow a theme in terms of design or color, and to the casual eye it would appear hodgepodge.

Nick has tilted himself just slightly to face her where she has perched upon his desk chair.  Nick's frame, which is slim but not necessarily spare, appears slight when he seats himself in it, as though he were a young prince who'd just climbed into a throne as yet too large.  Ari, the chair dwarfs.  "Tell me a story about separation and reunion," he says, because: this is the place where all stories begin, back at the beginning.

She speaks of murky waters, and his eyes drift to the side somewhat; he will revisit these concepts she puts before him soon, perhaps in his own mind or perhaps in books he acquires.

"I think they can be bestowed on things," he says.  "We have new concepts emerging all the time.  How else would we find words for them?  As for things not in keeping with the Name...I guess part of the essence of a thing is in how it dresses itself and presents itself, around its core.  So why not."

Ari
He answers and the words give her pause, as they often do, as they have so many times before. There is a small and thoughtful sound that perches, just so, hung on some decisive place within the staves, like a bird on a wire, though not quite like a crow on a limb -- this sound and then, with a twist of her hands, a pop!  So practiced: just like that the cork comes away in one hand, the gas curling away from the mouth of the bottle she holds in the other, all in an instant without struggle or calamity.

And to think, some people are anxious about popping champagne corks.  Some people manage to put out their eyes.  Not Ari.  She pours the first coupe and hands it to him, with steady hands, surface prickling with bubbles, all lively, active in its revelry. Once he takes it, she pours another for herself and encourages the bottle to rest somewhere between them, where he might be able to take it up as his basin shallows and he becomes in danger of running aground on the empty shores of his celebratory cup.

"Then let us Name this 'A Happy Tale', in hopes that it grows toward that more than any other essence.  And I will tell you of a separation and also of a reunion.  And you can say whether the essence and the art of it are in alignment..."

While he decides upon his answer, though this is Nicholas, whose soul is polished and made brighter by the consumption of stories, who is less the Morrigu at times than a voracious reader of lives and knower of secrets -- or, perhas, that is precisely what the Morrigu demands -- while he gathers up his answer she arranges herself in the vast country of the over-large chair, legs drawn up and tucked in beside her so that she is canted over one arm, leaned into the wing-back of his edge.  She looks impossibly comfortable in it; the red calls out the green in her eyes.  It is like Nick and the snow, the contrast of it; the lack of contrast between Ari and the warmth of rich colors and rich textures is equally striking. She belongs.

Nick
This pop of the champagne cork, and there is a reflexive twitch from the Chakravanti. It's true that Ari makes popping the cork look easy, tugs it away from the bottlemouth without shattering one of his windows or giving him a black eye.  Had Nick pulled the cork it would not have been so gracefully done, and both of them may in fact have been in mortal peril.

He takes the glass from her, waits until she has poured for herself, and then holds his glass out toward her.  There is this air of devilry there, amusement as he waits for her to tip her glass against his before he drinks.

"So tell me a happy tale, then," he says, and settles back into his chair.  Perhaps at times secrets are what is demanded; Old Gods, after all, are shadowy things, with so much of what they were lost to time.  It leaves the mage to chisel him or herself out some space within it, to retain what makes them who they are: and if it pleases his Avatar too, so much the better.

Ari
For the truly impressive and celebratory opening of bottles, there is sabreing.  Ari's is more expediant, and less wasteful, but it gives up a lot of panache.  Someday, maybe, someone would open a bottle of champagne with a sword at Ari's wedding -- maybe the impressive and terrifying Paolo Giametti himself -- but that is getting ahead of the story she wishes to tell. Or has found herself telling, despite her better judgement.

"I've told you a bit about this childhood friend before," she says, it is a way of introduction. There is a careful way that she does not speak his name, or give away his features -- this friend is almost anonymous, even in the intimate retellings or allusions she has shared with Nick. Perhaps it is a thing that sticks in his craw, to worry at, to get into the meat of later.  Perhaps it isn't.  But he remains diffuse and unclear all the same.  "His family, like mine, is infamous in certain circles.  His mother and my father are of a House and therefore occupation and so we were often cast together, at school, at conclave.  He was a steady, if not a permanent, fixture in my childhood."

So this, this is how a happy story begins: familiarity, common ground. The details remain diffuse; she does not fill in the margins for him.  Neither does she watch Nick's expression as she shares.  Ari's attention is for the tiny bubbles streaming toward the plane of the liquid in her glass.  As if she could scry the past in it; as if it would make it simpler to speak of.

"When he came to conclave, we spent our time together.  I was a better student then, but still not overly fond of long hot afternoons in classrooms.  We had adventures, and snuck out late in the evening -- we did the sort of things troubling Apprentices do, with all the privilege of being heirs to ancient names.  But when the War came, he went to stay with his Aunt and Uncle.  My mother and I went to another Chantry, where it would be safer.

"I remember looking after them as they left, his mother like a Fury, the aegis of her Will around them, my father's wrapped tightly around me as we broke off in another direction.  I was not awake, but I was aware enough to mark it.  I didn't think we'd see each other again.

"This was the first separation, and it was terrible."

She pauses, takes a small sip of her champagne, and glances over to Nick.  In case he has questions, or promptings.  She is not quite sure how offerings to his Old Gods go.

Nick
Ari's eyes are for the little bubbles that stream up from the bottom of the coupe, effervescent.  Nick's eyes are for her.  It's not intense, this way in which he watches her; his eyes are not seeking hers out to grab and root them the moment she glances in his direction.  Instead he notices the sweep of her hair, the way she stares into her own glass, the cast of her features and the lines of her hand and arm and the ease of which she sits in his office chair.  It's careful attention, casually intimate.

He sips from his glass and listens, and if Ari were to look over at him at any point (which it has been stated she's not) she'd find him expressionless save for this reflective look.  The diffuseness here he does not mind; Nick is never so interested in the details as in the root of what is being said and shared.  These are the things that have meaning.

"So the War caused your paths to diverge the first time.  When did you meet again?"

Ari
Arianna is used to being watched.  Nick is different, though.  She is unused to being seen.  It had surprised her about Kestrel, even after all the years that they had known each other.  She wonders, quietly, if Nick knows that this is part of how he won her over on the whole multi-Traditional cabal thing.  Which hadn't worked out as anyone had foreseen.  So there is a mild sort of pricking to the sense of being watched so completely, even if it is in apparent abstraction.

"In our late teens.  He had Awakened and I had not, so we were reunited but only in part.  Our studies were separate and he had," there is a small sound; even after all these years the thought provokes a sort of mild irritation in her, "Garnered the attention of many followers."

She twists the stem of the glass in her fingers, it swirls the liquid, the bubbles continue to rise.

"I was a foolish girl," she tells him. With a little roll of her eyes for her past-Self.  "So were close again, very much so, and it was good for awhile.  But he was foolish, and I am quick to anger, and that does not bode well.  It went as it had to go." This last phrase is roughly translated from another tongue. She says it first in German, then struggles a bit with the English sentiment. It resolves the story the same either way:  "So we were separated again; and it was bitter."

Nick
Here's a thing about Nicholas: he is perhaps too modest to ever imagine that he, personally, in any way shape or form had any influence on whether Ari joined their multi-Traditional cabal.  This is not low self esteem, precisely; it is simply that when Nick thinks back on that time, he has a hard time imagining that then or now other people give him much thought at all.  If they do, it is frequently in the context of what he can do for them.  He, too, is not entirely used to being seen.

There is understanding there for the things Ari says: many followers, she was a foolish girl, they were close again.  He's good at piecing together the unsaid parts of the story, and yet at the same time he wants to hear her say them.

He has tucked his feet up and under him on the chair; they are bare and his toes are visible, pink and bare, where they poke out from under him.  He takes another swallow from his glass.  "What foolish thing did he do that angered you, back then?"

Ari
Nick asks, and Ari takes a moment before she answers.  Her gaze catches on the silver band around her finger, but only momentarily.  He asks so easily and she endeavours to answer equally easily, as if these things were distantly in the past.  They are; but hurt has a way of shallowing up the depths so quickly.

"I found him kissing another girl in the hallway between classes."  It sounds so pedestrian. So normal for teenagers and high school. "It wasn't more than a few days after we had..."  She didn't finish the sentence with words, but rather looked over to the champagne bottle, then to Nick, with a mirthless sort of wry quirk to her mouth and an uncharacteristic flatness in her eyes.  He was bright; he could easily finish that thought.

"I responded as you might imagine.  He claimed innocence in one manner or another. I did not believe him, neither would back down.  We spent years angry at or avoiding one another --" No. Ari's expression walks that back a little. "I spent years angry or avoidant.  He found calmer waters in which to set sail."

Nick
It sounds pedestrian and normal for teenagers, and yet Nick well remembers that time.  That he spent much of late middle school skipping classes and devouring attention from whoever would give it to him, that often as not those people were older than he was because that is so often how these things go.  Ari is unlikely to know these specifics, but enough to realize that he perhaps understands on some level.  Mundane and part of the teenage years: those things can still hurt, and they don't always stay distant.

"It sounds like you're blaming yourself a little for the outcome," Nick says, with a sip from his glass.  It's an observation that is perhaps not welcome, and could potentially derail her story.  Nonetheless, it's not within Nick to let such an observation go unspoken.

Ari
"That's because I am," she tells him evenly. Even with a bit of self-deprecating smirk to it. Which is not an expression Ari wears very often amongst her closest of friends.  "He tried to apologize many times over, but I continued to hold it against him.  I think, at some point, the initial insult is overcome by years of ingracious treatment.  Wouldn't you agree?"

But she shrugs a little at this, too, as if it is of little consequence in the greater whole. Which is patently untrue; but convenient short-hand.

"I am a terribly jealous woman, as it turns out," said easily, and not quite with the appropriate aire of self-awareness.  "There is a reason there have been no others.  Love is neither gentle nor kind to me.  I cannot open myself time and time again to that; there cannot be many who hold such tyranny over my heart."

It is, perhaps, the first time in a very very long time Ari has used the word Love in such a serious context.  To mean something different than the love she has for Nick and Pen, for Rob even, and Thane.  Different than filial love.  Not a stand in for lust or physical attraction.  It may be something of a revelation to Nick how apt his gift was, how momentous this reunion may truly be.

Nick
"I think when we feel betrayed we feel betrayed," Nick says.  There is thoughtfulness here, for both what Ari says now and for what she says after, for how she describes the hold this unknown man has over her.  Nick has not met Silas; he has not seen Silas and Ari together, and all he does is accept what Ari says for what it is.

"Ari, I know you very well.  I think that you don't trust very easily, and you don't allow people close to you very easily.  And trust is a difficult thing even for people who do it often.  I think it - well, it makes sense to me that you would expect the same loyalty of others that you give to them."

He, too, now, is watching the bubbles as they filter up from the bottom of his glass.  "Which isn't to say that I'm not glad you've reunited with this person, because I am.  But I'm asking you as your friend to be gentle with yourself."

Ari
"To be gentle, or to be cautious?" she asks him, and it is clear from her tone that one is nearly as impossible to her as the other.  It is also clear that his sentiment is unusual, unfamiliar.  This isn't a matter of language, how impossible his request seems to be for her to parse; it is deeper, almost cultural in its foreign nature.

Nick
There are times - ah, yes.  Nick is talking to a Hermetic, and at times he forgets this, forgets how deeply ingrained it is in them to be unforgiving of themselves, even the people they were in the past.  Of course, it isn't just Hermetics: many people are like this, and it is something Nick is good at noticing.

So he only smiles, and gives a little swirl of his glass to send the bubbles cascading up and around into a light foam.  "I choose my words carefully too," he tells her.  "You should think on it."

But here, that could have some sting if he left it, so he moves past.  "So that was the last time you saw your friend, and now you just ran into him again."  Prompting, here, for where the story left off.

Ari
A point to the Chakravanti. Ari lifts her glass a little in recognition of it, and the smile she offers spreads a little more completely into her eyes.

"Ah, no.  Were that the last time, we would likely not be celebrating with champagne and stories."  This, then, finally brings some sort of mischief and laughter back to her. "The last time we saw each other was..."

A quick counting on fingers: six... seven... eight. No, her brow creases, then recants.

"About eight years ago.  We were still young, but not as young as all of that.  I was recently Awakened, so we were nearer one another in standing again.  I was Indifferent and he was Charming, of which I naturally did not approve.  But then he was unexpectedly candid and apologetic, and I was uncharacteristically willing to listen -- and we worked a few things out."

This, then, is where her gaze lingers a little too long on that ring.  Where it is now on her ring finger and not encircling the middle one.  It is more significant now than it has been for the bulk of her friendship with Nick.

"We decided then that when we were together, corporeally in time and space, then we would be monogamous with one another.  And when we were separated by circumstance or distance, that we would lay no claim to one another.  So here we are, both in Denver, and time does not seem to have dulled our oaths to one another."

Surely this is the sort of agreement that only Hermetics could concoct.

"And that is your story of separations and reunions, and it is happy in the ending. Is it not?"

Nick
It is perhaps not the sort of ending that Nick had expected to the story, though it explains Arianna's ring.  Truth be told, Nick had never thought much of the ring or its significance to her, or where she wore it; he has never been the sort of man who placed a heavy amount of significance on weddings or rings, and indeed until he married Pen had expected that he would never marry at all himself.

Ari offers her explanation of the agreement, and Nick seems to accept this in stride.  Is it the sort of agreement he would have concocted himself?  Perhaps and perhaps not.  They have never had much of a discussion around Nick's view on relationships or...well, anything in that arena.  For as long as she has known him he has been with Pen, and happily so, and like many married couples whoever they were before does not come up in conversation.

"It is," he says, "and I would call any ending in which you're happy a happy ending.  It does sound like you're happy to have reunited with him."

Ari
Nobody has given overmuch thought to Arianna's ring.  It is perfect in that way. Hermetics have rings; it is a very Hermetic thing to do.  They stand in for constellations and planets, hold gems of magical properties, stand in for string tied around fingers as reminders.  No one thinks twice about Hermetics and their rings, though the plainness of the thin, silver-hued band is probably what is most striking about it.  It is her string-around-finger reminder; it is echoed in Silas's own.  His might feel more heavy than hers when they are parted; hers is surely more weighty when they are together.

"I am happy.  Unsure of how this agreement of ours fits for longer than a week or a two at a time, but happy nonetheless."  She shifts a little in the chair; the weight of story-telling is passed. And she has not fallen into wistful things like telling him how they spoke to one another in poetry-- no, verily, and she can quoth the stanzas still if he required proof--or other sacchrine, ridiculous things.  Ari is quite pleased with herself about that as it is one thing to Name oneself foolish and quite another to prove it so handily.

Ari shallows out her coupe and sets it somewhere on a flat near to her. Some place where it is not endangered.  Some place safe from the capriciousness of her moods and movements.

"Have I earned a story in return?" she asks, and it is a dangerous question to answer unqualified.  Nick knows; he is raven-haired and quick-witted and watchful.  She might ask him for anything; she might ask him for nothing; and either way, Ari would find something priceless and rare in the reply.

Nick
Nick swallows the remainder of the champagne in his own glass, and this he also sets aside on the wrought iron-and-wood table next to his chair.  His own movements are not so capricious, but it is easier to do this than to keep an empty glass in hand, and one glass of champagne is precisely the amount of champagne that he wants.  For now, at least.

Ari voices uncertainty, and to this Nick nods; the understanding he reflects back here is a different thing, less personal identification with what she is saying and closer to a sort of practiced empathy: this is also how I would feel if, regardless of whether he would.  "I'm glad," he says, and means it.  "It sounds like you've both talked things through and worked things out before, and I think you'll do it here."

Her question doesn't catch him off guard, precisely, but there is this shift in his expression as she asks after a story of his own, a half-lashed look that suggests that it is a thing most people don't ask after when he offers a listening ear.  She might ask him for anything, and Nick is quick-witted and watchful.  "Of course you have," he says.  "We're friends.  You can ask for any story you'd like."

Warpaths and Whispers [Harv ST]

crow
[Preparing Spirit Sight before I leave home.  Base diff 4, -1 taking time.  WP.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 3) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

crow
The day's first pink dawning will find Nicholas Hyde at a river.

Which, if we're being honest, is not much of a river, at least not of the like he could have found farther east: Denver is a country of mountains and plains, of vast woods and sprawling red wastes.  He's waited for a Saturday to do this, being one of those Magi still bound to whatever wheel-within-a-wheel that Sleepers keep, not his own timetable, and so he came early and he came ready, and as he is arriving the sun is beginning to shaft through the trees and down into the swirling waters of a small creek still flush with snowmelt.

Nick has not been here before.  Since arriving in Denver he's worked in woods and he's worked in caves and he's worked on the floodplains of the creek that rolls through town.  Coming here was deliberate; rivers were roads in the ancient times and so too now, because the earth remembers, and sometimes they are a natural conduit into other places.

He has stopped here, and for the past day he's had water but little else.  His body protested that at first, as it does every time he does it, and now it has settled into a sort of acceptance.  He is taking a drink from his water bottle as he comes up near the water.  He has a yew staff in hand, some knobbed but not especially ornate thing that could look like a walking stick to anyone else who is crazy enough to be out here at this hour.  (No one is.)

He's Looking, though incidentally.  Nick, see, has been looking for ways Through and Across, and his mentor left before she could share this with him and so he's left to explore on his own much like he did as a Disparate.

When he comes up to the banks, he settles back on his haunches.  This is mainly to gather his bearings, to center, to extend his senses out around him, and to acclimate to the quiet.  He'll meditate, before long.

Warpaths and Whispers
There is a difference out here, certainly but it shows mostly in Nick's thinking and capacity for thought. Namely in this: The River and the Wood and the Land, are anything but quiet.

The River is a charger. Eager and young, if the diminutive rapids (he could wade into it, chest deep and still hold his feet, if he so wished, though the cold might be something to be concerned about there) are any indication. But what few things jut from it's dark waters, the occasional log from a submerged tree, or jutting rock where the rush goes a touch shallow, are all assaulted regularly, effortlessly by the pushing waters. Erosion would soon dislodge or erase them all, given time.

The River is indeed a road and upon such things, life can be found. It is the source for nourishment, within the Forestry, as often times as Nick reaches for his pre-fabricated canteen of water, so to do the early risers of the Forestry begin their day with a sip from the riverbanks. He spies them occasionally, in shadow and in the silhouette. Squirrels and foxes and perhaps a few birds, found small puddles splashed over to wade in.

In a tree nearby, along the banks, far enough to avoid Erosion for another few years (barring floods) but close enough to present prime real estate for the smallest of the denizens of the wood, a red breasted robin clucks at the air, greeting the sun with it's song before pausing...to stare, with one head-tilted eye at the sudden intrusion of Mr. Hyde.

The sounds are plentiful. A rhythm, a heartbeat to it all. Easy to be drawn into the wake of it. Easier still to get lost.

The small rural city nearby, visible from the slight elevation he was on, a landmark testament to the world he'd left behind. The sun was iluminating it's fabrications. Cracks and squares and venues and lanes that did not exist in Nature.

Except perhaps for this river. Communal, busy and comforting.



* * * * *

His stomach has ceased it's rumbling complaints. His blood is light in his veins. His eyes scan surroundings, in search of more. Beyond what is present. The rhythm of the wood greets him, not fondly and not harshly. It is simply a observant as he is of it. Living and patient and-

The sun cuts through the trees and illuminates an odd assortment of branches and harsh foliage. The resilient ever-green casts shadows aplenty and is the permanent home of much. That within it's branches, spaced barely a helmet's visor apart in some places, the ghostly presence of something watchful (Yellow eyes with flaring pupils...) barely outlined, like it was only half there, tells of how appropriate a Home it really is. Nick is watched.

Mostly by more than just what he can spy at this moment.

crow
Nick is watched; he does not know by what.

It is a disconcerting feeling.  Nicholas is an observer.  He's had to struggle to push himself magickally beyond using Sights, if only because he finds new ways of perceiving the world to be fascinating.  He likes to pass through it, pick up new details, note the way blood curdles in the diseased or how buildings unwind themselves or realities layered atop one another even in the center of the city.

He has been afraid to touch the world and change it because he's been afraid to do something wrong; he's been afraid to hurt rather than help.  This is changing, or beginning to change.

Regardless: he is an outsider here, in a sense, and that something else has marked his presence does not sit well with him.  It's both the above and a prickle of whatever survival instinct he retains from his long long ago ancestors, back when humanity was young and had to worry more about things that stalked them in the night.

Nicholas does not slide into a meditative fugue, just yet.  His eyes cast about for the other presence that is there, to discern how inclined it is to speak with him, or whether he will bother it, or whether it will trouble him.

Warpaths and Whispers
The other presence:

The towering evergreen in which the presence resides is not overly secretive about hiding it's occupant, so much as it is dense with obscurity. The branches make it difficult to spy or see anything from anywhere but below. It's where Nick's senses may drag him eventually, drawn through grass and around the wet shores of the River that inevitably try to dig a bit of cool discomfort at his socks or shoes, with their cold waters and damp suggestions.

Below the Ever-green, the presence is visible. Terribly so in the bloom of his adjusted sight: Feathers like some mantle, drip and droop over a branch, weaving by some imagined movement that didn't translate for the thing looked as still as a statue. Like some gown or cape, they bristled and bushed in their fluidity, puffing outward in undulating smoothness. An orb of feathers, vast and long, the very head was a hood of long, trim lines, and bulbous eyes, sunk back into deep sockets, swirling browns and vague yellows denoting the mask of that regarded him from above.

The shift of those odd feathers, so watery in appearance, traveled like a cloak as the 'creature' on the branch high in the pine, turned effortlessly, head shifting in an all too awkward (For Nick at least, in it's unfamiliarity) to regard the Spirit-seer. The head, righted itself and all at once, the image seemed to clarify; an Owl, long, almost sinuous brows perked to either side, stared downward at him. With a frankness that seemed entirely direct. Entirely unapologetic.

Half in, half out. Or maybe that was simply Nick, and the Owl was a touch curious as to the intrusion.

crow
The air is crisp and damp here, and the river is young and so miniscule droplets of water hang in the air and are drawn into him as he breathes.  They mist around him and settle in the winding dark curls of his hair and in his bones, and lend an otherworldly sort of chill to the place near the water.

He catches sight of some Presence below an evergreen, and his eyes fixate on that, because he too is both curious and wary.

It's the first time he's seen an Owl spirit.  Owls, as creatures, are rare: not always out only at night, but they are shy and reclusive and catching a glimpse of one is either a gift to a hiker or else a sign that the creature is sick or injured.  Perhaps the spirits are the same, and so he watches it with a respect that borders on reverence.

To Nick, see, these things are a fragment of divinity, at least insofar as he can understand it.  He carries that with him wherever he goes.

He doesn't move at first, as the spirit itself clarifies and tilts its head at him.  His own gaze is steady.  After a few moments, if it hasn't left, he does rise enough to shift the scant few feet left between him and the water, lets the icy waters cascade up and around his toes.  Half in, half out; and so he reacclimates.  And then he says, simply, "Hello."

[Spirit 2, so we can talk!  Base diff 5, -1 for focus, -1 for taking time.  WP.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Warpaths and Whispers
"....You are here but not..."

Direct. Without subterfuge or suggestion. The Owl's voice seems to carry across the worlds, from the realm of Spirit, sifting and translating through the barrier between realms, for Nick's own ears and translation to understand. Perhaps it might have been different, those words, the structure, syntax and interpretation, were the Man himself on the other side but for this moment, with the haze of sight warping and distilling his surroundings as they were, that is what is spoken.

The Owl's head cranes to one side, once again that awkward sense it might pop off at any moment, so abstract from a human's own ability. The eyes blink, click almost into place and back again, feathers undulating as the possible body beneath the shroud of black and brown flight-tips shifted the Raptor around on the branch. It leaned forward suddenly, head lower in the air than it's own feet on the branch were.

"Scared then to pay proper greeting, little mouse?" Talons cracking wood, releasing grip and re-positioning. The Owl moves a few small inches along the branch, further outward from the trunk. It's eyes never swivel or detour from Nick. It's head moves in increments to compensate easily.

crow
Here but not, says the Owl, and perhaps it hasn't ever encountered something or someone like Nick before.  Magi that know how to see past the Veil are rare enough; those that can touch and move through the worlds beyond are rarer, and ones like Nick himself to whom it does (or will) come naturally as breathing are rarer still.

And Nicholas, he has only been initiated as a Chakravanti slightly longer now than the time that he was Disparate.  By the time he'd been initiated after two and a half years, he'd had plenty of time to explore on his own, and to come into his own understanding of magick based upon books he'd read and legends he'd heard.

They say of Owls that they are death, that the narrow bars of light around their eyes and down their heads are made of human fingerbones.  That's what they say.

It speaks of proper greetings, and Nicholas is slightly abashed though who knows how that will look to the spirit.  "I apologize," he says.  "I haven't met one like you before.  I'm unsure of what you consider proper."  He can pay them homage in other magick that he does, in taking on an aspect of the world: an owl's wisdom and insight, for example.  How that applies here, on the other hand - well, it's different.

Warpaths and Whispers
"...Being more than wisps and scurrying. More than eyes from someplace I am unfamiliar, would be a start..."

The taloned feet ratchet sharply, cloak of feathers pluming outward, wings made visible in the motion, an expanse and length that defied the Owl's body, at least as far as Nick could see from this side of the Veil. It is a moment of bustling motion that settles rather swiftly. A brief animation that turned back into a stillness, unheard of in city living. Those eyes, had yet to track elsewhere, however, except upon Nick.

"Never met me. No I would remember such a strange thing as you...." A mane of feathers sprouts beneath it's neck, head shaking and rattling from side to swift side, to push them back into place. "Where are you?

To Nick's left, from the waters, the splash of something can be heard. Singular, momentary, but deep enough that whatever had slipped, fallen or dove in, was heavy. A glance would reveal little more than some ghostly shimmering atop the rapids that struggled against vanishing aid the shapeless waters. An odd dent and lethargy for the water to return to it's natural shape and rush.

crow
This sudden movement, of wings arcing out like spreading night, and then just as suddenly repose.  Nick doesn't startle, but this is difficult; as fascinated as he has always been with worlds beyond and even though he has, at this point, years of experience, he is still wise enough to know that it always carries risks.  Spirits are not human, and they carry their own wants and desires, and they can be dangerous.

"I am flesh and blood and bone," he says to it.  Its curiosity: this he understands.  And then, "I have died and been reborn and I remember what it's like to not be flesh and blood, and so I'm able to see past and to speak with you."

This splash, to his left, and briefly his eyes dart from the owl and in that direction; whatever it was, it was heavy, and there is nothing visible in the waters now.  And here this choice: to step out and away, or to remain.

When he died and was reborn, it was in a river, and his heart was not faint then, and so now he remains.

crow
[Perception + Awareness, +specialization]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]

Warpaths and Whispers
(....Annddd...)

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 3, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Warpaths and Whispers
Nick's attention drifts. Wanders, even and there is a brief flash below the waves of the water. Like something sifting amid the currents. Dark, yet luminous, an abstract contradiction-

-Then a brand new sensation. Nothing so invasive as pain and yet the distinct and reflexive understanding of something not quite tangible passing through his skull. The ghostly presence cutting swathes through his brain and leaving behind the threat that such harm might have done him had the talons of the Owl actually been real enough to find purchase, would have undoubtedly left behind.

Instead, it is a brief joining of worlds, imperfect and barely registered. An echo, like a memory, that will stay with the Magi, even as his attention flinches, jolts, startles, or snaps back toward their meeting in time to find the Owl's expressive wing-span, curling outward. It is all shadow and silence (the solid, tangible kind) winging through the branches, as if they were not there. As if it were more solid than the tree it called home and chose whether it's flight would be impeded by those long brown limbs with their verdant green nettles.

A moment, talons like scythes, settling on the branch again, making it creak in protest as it settled and stilled once more.

"...Not even a body to pluck at. Just a voice and some eyes. You are no flesh and blood that I am familiar with, little Twice-born. Perhaps you left more of yourself behind in the rebirth than you thought..."

crow
This is a brand new sensation, and it is entirely uncomfortable, however brief it is.  Of something else passing through him, of some sort of Joining, and he has no words for this.

Nicholas, who is hallowed like the yawning barrows which are the final resting places of kings and thanes, like church yards overgrown and overtaken by the wild and like forests untouched by human hands and unvisited by the age of metal and glass: Nicholas brings this with him wherever he goes.  People can tell that he is not wholly of this world, though they can never completely express what it is about him that lends him that sort of eerie presence.

And so, he knows he is different, or that he is not typical flesh and blood.  Still, the owl's commentary is new, even if its curiosity about him is not.

"It's our way to die and be reborn many times, and each time we leave parts of ourselves behind so that other things can take their place."  This is a truth.  He does not speak it easily, though the words come through him unbidden, and not with conviction which can be cold and forceful, but with a sort of peace.  "What did you do, just now?"

Warpaths and Whispers
"...I plucked at the socket of your eyes, like many little mice before you. Had I found purchase, I would have feasted. It was not so. You are more Twice-born than mouse, it would seem..."


It came across like reading a menu. Like someone who might be perusing options. Almost dismissively casual, relaxed. There was no offense meant or intended because it was not seen as an insult. Animal kingdom laws and rules. The Owl that did not catch the mouse was not frustrated or angry. Simply hungry.

Feathers ruffled anew. The Owl preened, gently beneath it's cloak of feathers, head vanishing for a moment before reappearing with startling swiftness. It's attention seems to swivel, shift in place, stealing it's gaze back from the Young Mage to scan it's surroundings with a renewed interest. During this moment, Nicholas is made aware of the suddenly flush of....something else. That same presence sensation that bothered him before, except in further multitude.

It huddles in the trees around, above his reach and as yet invisible, even with the rise of the sun. Perhaps invisible because of the rising sun. The Spirit realm was not as the real world, afterall.

The Owl's shape seemed to elongate for a moment, stretching into the branches like some looming shadow. At once larger without having grown. The head swivels round to regard Nick again, large eyes, luminous and broad, like some eclipse. Light and dark all at once.

"...I think next time we meet, will be a lesson, Twice-born. Be sure to have some flesh for me, that I can pluck at. Yours or anothers, it makes no difference..."

There is the sudden rush of wind around Nick, here in the real....the physical world...and with it comes the unmistakable clareon of bird-song. Not a chirp, or a warble..

...But a Caw.

"...Yes yes, Bright-thief. Slumber calls and He is yours..."

The Owl stretches it's wings, seemingly ignorant or at once, finished with Nick, regardless of the Magi's own thoughts or intentions. With one buffetting flap, that Nick cannot feel on this side of the Veil, it slips out into the yawning dawn, at once a shadow in his sight. After a second or more, not even that.

Leaving him to contemplate the Forest, the River and the sudden all too tangible silence that seemed to grip him and the scenery.

Another brief caw, this time from the opposite direction as the first, ruptures the air. Distant, deeper and off the path of the River, into the wood itself.

crow
It's a not so subtle reminder that the path he wanders is full of sinkholes and fraught with danger at the edges should he wander off.  Animal kingdom laws and rules.  Nick is not Verbena, for all that he might carry some of their trappings; he is less a union of man and beast than some of the Magi he has worked with from that Tradition.  It is something of a paradigm shift for him, to be regarded as meat.

Yet he adjusts rapidly.  A gift of his is that he has remained so open, even in the face of having officially dedicated himself to one following and one path.  "Next time I will have an offering for you," he tells the Owl, even as its shining eyes fix on him before it departs, leaving only a swirling wind in its wake.

Deeper into the wood, a caw.

And this, he knows, and perhaps he even senses that he is being called.  Nick straightens then, and with only a brief pause as he lifts his hand to his breastbone to calm his beating heart (yes, still in the end flesh and blood, for all that), he steps out of the water.  It pools around the soles of his boots as he steps to the river rock at the banks, and then out farther into the grass and soil.

He lifts his pack off the ground, and into the woods he goes.

Warpaths and Whispers
"Careless..."

It's the first word that greets him into the wood. A drifting song that chaps the air and tsks with that 'You've been naughty' parental suggestion. It comes in clicks and bounces, not centred on any one region, tree or location. It's almost as if it's spoken in the smallest of bits and pieces, one from a dozen mouths in a dozen locations. All at once and without precision.

"...You should be more careful who you interact with. Not all of us have a feel for the sort of new naivety you bring with you this far from home."

The caws are generous but without physical counterparts now. The wood is shadowed, the dawn slowly gaining height into day, trapping the rays above the canopy of skeletal limbs. Spring was taking off but not fully formed, leaving shafts of light still enough room to make their way through and illuminate his path. The clearing ahead is filled with dead and rotting wood, uncovered from the snow melt. The smell of rot is fresher here. Cleaner than any polluted city could hope to be. Loam and age in the proper cycles.

"Why so far this time? We could have chatted in the streets and on the wires with much more ease..."

crow
It is far from the first time he has encountered the Murder, or a Murder.  (Are they all one?  Are they all fragments of one, different manifestations of the same concept or idea or Word?  Nicholas is never sure.)  When he was a Disparate, he'd make a habit of stealing from Traditionalist nodes with Crow when he grew thirsty; he has shared this with Pen, how very different he used to be back then.

Being in a Tradition has transformed him, in some ways, or perhaps the Chakravanti specifically have changed him.  Responsibility and duty will do that.

Still, in some ways he remains careless, and far too naive for his own good in this brave new world.  "It was unexpected," he admits to Crow.

His eyes have grown unfocused now, his gaze diffuse as he steps farther into the wood, an easy thing to do given that he cannot quite pinpoint where any of the individual crows are.  "I came out here to meet new things.  And to look for a way through.  It's easier, out here."  The smell of rot is fresher here, the end of a cycle.

Warpaths and Whispers
"...Far easier. You should see what it's like up the Mountain."

The flap of wings somewhere nearby. A shadow dances. There are many of them now. Shadows and shades and spectres of inky darkness with the rising day orb. Shafts of light illuminate patches but make the areas they do not touch, that much darker. Still, diffuse light slowly blends with the backgrounds under the canopy and the air with it's freshness, delivering a natural, even comfortable breath with each inhale. Nick might almost feel the pollutants drifting free of his lungs every time he breathed out.

"...Dive off a peak and land in the Paleolithic..."

Nattering laughter. Crow's knowledge of human speech was far less esoteric and abstract than the Owl's. A familiarity with the way the 'Bright-thief' often interacts with both sides of the mortal line. Stealing in cities and...Being, out here in the wilderness.

"...Why do you want to come through? Eager to be snatched up and turned into bones so quickly?"

crow
The Paleolithic, says Crow, and Nick is a mage who is skilled in understanding Time as it relates to Fate, as it can be threaded out and unspooled and spooled back on itself.  He understands that past and present and future are One, and exist within the same space as each other, and perhaps this is how it is so easy to go back simply by plunging off the side of a Mountain.

"Eager to see what else I can see, and to understand," Nick says, but there is a smile here because he knows the sensible thing is to stay safely on the other side.  Perhaps Pen has rubbed off on him.

"I found an Old Road, once.  I want to find another."  He is an echo of them, here, with hair dark as their wings and eyes of shifting amber, shafts of light limning his cheekbones and arms and turning light brown skin into a study of curve and line and shadow.  He could be a painting of some fey creature, something at once somber and otherworldly and yet, like them, with hidden depths.

He exhales, again.  "Are there other things out here I should be careful of?"

Warpaths and Whispers
"Always. All of them."

The Crow sounds dismissive. Or protective. Or maybe just some road-side sign-post pointing the way toward Doom (omni-directional) and safety (back the way you came). It is an answer and not an answer. Nick is finally catching glimpses of them though. A Murder. There are not enough of them present to constitute the almost communal, vastly dominating presence required to attch 'The' to their grouping. Sizeable, in the dozens perhaps...

They light on branches, carrying that same ghostly half-presence the Owl had. Feathers drip, as if made of ink and yet there are no plops or even droplets visible when they finally fall, as if in separating from each Crow, the substance seemed to just evaporate in an instant. Unable to existence beyond their origin.

"...Old Roads are rare. Crafted like a wall or a building. Those have doors. Windows. Entries meant for going in and out. Easily monitored and watched, though so long as the building remains whole. Once it begins to die. Fall apart. Erode...new doors and windows are made by time and fate. Cracks through which anything can sneak and slip. Not many of those are left for long though. Age or Reason eventually comes along to break it all down."

A tree branch overhead lights with one of the Murder. Black beady eyes and a twitchy sort of regard settling on Nick just below the branch, with it's skeletal limbs and little to no foliage. The droplets off the beak vanish as they fall, stainless and invisible.

"...Out here though...well, different story, but then...you don't know what you're looking for out here do you? Because this isn't streets and wires we're talking in. This is a circle you're trying to walk...A circle you're only half familiar with..."

crow
All of them.  Well, he had known this on some level.  Even Crow: it is wise to be wary, if only because they lie and they trick and what's fun for them sometimes isn't too fun for a mage.

Their feathers are drifting down to earth like ash, like soot, though they don't linger there in the grass and amongst the branches.  He stands in their center, aware that he is surrounded, until one of the Murder comes to settle in front of him.  Close enough to reach out and touch, were he so inclined (and he could, see: he has learned to do this.)

"How else do we learn?"  The question is both rhetorical and also not.  Nick has spent this lifetime teaching himself, for the most part.

Safety: back the way he came.  It's not the option he chooses.

Warpaths and Whispers
"Discomfort."

The Crow caws loudly. There's a second that erupts into the same manic screech, followed by a third...fourth...fifth. Soon enough the entire murder is parraoting down at Nick from the branches overhead. A cacophony of sensory echoes that waft and drift, insubstantial enough to be indistinct and difficult to pick apart. Not an orchestra but a party filled with conversations, none of which you can take part in...not yet. Strange and filled with flapping wings and bobbing heads and clacking beaks-

"...Why didn't you swipe at the Owl when it attacked?" It's asked. Several times from multiple crows. Laid over and overlayed. On top of one another, like each was fighting to be the one to get answered. Like each was shuffling and pushing at one another.

Nick caught a beak flash out of the corner of his eye, peck at the body of another of the Murder. Feathers bloomed, blood speckled. Red and black drifting to the ground below with ethereal, mournful ease.

crow
They're shuffling, and the Murder is just at this moment like water before it reaches the boiling point, shoving and jostling as they are, this rattling and disturbance with the potential to erupt into chaos.  There is blood, this symphony of red and black as they clamor and peck at each other.  Nick is certainly no stranger to this, knows the secrets of the body and has seen more deaths than he cares to count and happening in a variety of ways, and yet there will always be a part of him that startles at the sight.

Magi: they are human too, even the ones with one foot in this world and one foot in the next.

"It didn't hurt me," he says.  This too, which he does not say: if it had attacked him, he is not sure what he would have done.  His skill with weapons is tenuous at best; Nicholas simply avoids getting into fights.  A pause; he considers.  "I wasn't even aware that I had been attacked, at first.  Well, not entirely."

Warpaths and Whispers
"False!"

A body falls out of the trees some ways ahead of Nick. The tumbling shape of a Crow, it's eyes plucked out, blood splatter painting the air as it drops and lands...vanishing with a Thump! that Nick can feel and hear even if there's no body on the ground where it was meant to strike.

"...You didn't know it would hurt until after it had been done. You didn't know it would attack. You didn't know-"

Those last three words. Trickling, tripping, drifting through the remaining murder. Some are speckled in blood now. Beaks, feathers, breasts, bodies. Droplets from their neighbours. One is missing an eye, sealed shut by congealed red but still cawing.

You didn't know

"...Mice run. Deer flee. Wolves fight. Anything with jaws and teeth and power, reacts. Why didn't you swipe at the Owl? Weak, simple, small, ineffectual as it might have been. Why didn't you swipe at the Owl?"

Another body, to his left this time, tumbles off it's perch, leaking red in mid-flight, from breast and under wing. It too doesn't see the forest ground. Nick blinks or the world blinks or the veil blinks and the bird just...isn't there anymore.

Still, they caw.

crow
Nicholas maintains his composure, even as a body spirals out of the branches and to the ground in a cloud of feathers, and dissipates.  What happens to spirits when they die?  There is no Shadowland for such things.

It names him false.  It is rare for anything to name Nick as false: not because he never is, but because it's so rare for something to see through him.

Another body tumbles, and they caw, and here is the brutality of this world past the streets and wires, naked and stark (ah, but it's brutal there, too: just a different sort.)  Nick tries on different answers in his mind: that he is man not beast, that he can understand when to fight or not fight and can choose not to lash out.  What he says first is, "I have no desire to cause pain where it's not needed," because he does believe that such things can feel pain.

It is not the truth, though, or at least not the whole truth, and it has already named him false once.  "...And I don't know what I would have done, if it had been worse."

Warpaths and Whispers
"....You don't belong here."

Whispers in the branches. Soft words whispered underneath the tone of the lead Crow, bloodied as the rest, dripping now in truth, the drops making it to the ground but failing to appear in the real world Nicholas is currently a part of.

"Pain is a truth here. It has a shape and a form. You can shake hands with it, even. You will, at that, if ever you climb out of that soft little shell of yours and see what sort of world exists in that bleak little Concrete Box with its Dying and Sick you populate day in and day out and day in and day out and day in and day out-"

And the words continue, cycling through the forestry with slow reverberating build. The Murder, some of them half-murdered themselves, are cawing it Day in Day out Day in Day out over and over and over again.

"...But you don't belong here. Not like this. You're as good as a meal to the first little shadow..."

The wings flap. The murder ascends. One after the other after the other. Into the branches and out of 'sight', leaving behind that first. The obvious one so close he might be able to touch it.

"...Go back to the City. Talk to the Murders there. They're far more pleasant. Far more civilized. Far less concerned for you..."

The last hops along the branch, backward to the one behind it, further into the dark, single beady eye clicking and blinking. Once. Twice. A third time.

Then it's gone.

crow
These whispered words: he's heard their like before.  There is some part of him that knows this is true, that he is not Kiara or Thane and remains firmly grounded in the trappings of Man.  Nick is a healer, and perhaps as of now his definition of what that entails is still a narrow thing, comfortable with experiencing the pain of others along with them and with his own but not with dealing it out.

The murder ascends, taking flight and arcing up through the branches and leaving him with its parting words, that perhaps he ought to go back to the city.

And it's true on some level, isn't it?  He belongs there-not-here.  And yet.

He remains there in the clearing after they leave, and there is this long slow exhale as he shifts his pack on his shoulder.  Against the soft little shell of his, the flesh that encases that which is infinite within him.

And, troubled, he begins the trek back to the car and the Concrete Box and day in and day out and day in and day out.  Ad infinitum, until something chooses to stop it.