Expressions of The Divine

Pen
"Cold!"

The pronouncement is attended by a white plume of breath. Pen is walking backwards, so she can look at Nicholas: "Do you want to wait inside," and she gestures, flamboyant and perhaps on that bright moonstone edge of tipsy where one's flamboyant gestures get a little more languid, toward Arianna's house. "I can pop back home and get the car or the bike?"

The afternoon was a shocking bright, the air with this quality of being cupped and brittle, of being perfectly empty; they have stayed late, later than late, because good company, but now it is nearing the witching hour and the streets are empty, most people already home and in bed or preparing for bed.

Nick
It is indeed cold tonight; colder than it has been, at least.  It takes him a little by surprise when they step outside Arianna's house, given that he is still a little flushed with wine.  It takes him by surprise enough that he considers letting Pen go back to get the car.

Instead, he drops his arm around Pen's shoulders, pulling her into his side with a gloved hand.  "Let's walk.  It's not that far."

He rather appreciates having her there to keep the wind from cutting through his altogether too thin down jacket, though.  "I'm glad to have Ari living so close."

Pen
"It is nice; but I do wish she lived a little further, for practice's sake. I want to test the boundaries of an easy opening Door and this is so near."

Pen slips her arm around Nicholas's waist. Fits herself neatly into his side, by his side, at his side and under his arm; as casual as any sword, but loving as a sword cannot be; this sneak of a glance, thief it would be, take the moon from his eyes the shadow from his hair then give them back again. The threadbare green coat is not one with buttons or zippers, being mostly decorative, and her skin reacts to the cold with immediate dismay: the biting edge of it scrapes goose bumps up her arms, though they're encased in fabric.

She 'sneakily' looks over her shoulders and Nick's arm at Ari's house, then assesses the street. This is cool, and even, and practiced, and keen-eyed if it can help being keen-eyed.

"I'm homesick for magnolia blossoms and dogwood," Pen admits, quietly.

"What did you think of Silas?" Casual.

[Totally casual.]

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

Nick
[Is it, though?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]

Nick
[Contesting.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[-_- Yes.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Pen
It is not a casual question.

Nick
Pen admits to homesickness, and there is this glance down at her, though not very far for they are almost of a height.  In the years she has known him, Nick has never quite admitted to homesickness for Arizona: he has been gone from there for a long time, at this point, only returning once or twice a year at most (though perhaps more often now that it is at least geographically closer.)

"Me too," he says.  "Though it's a little strange to be homesick for a place that isn't my home."

Then again, what is?  What is home to someone who remembers a dozen lifetimes, little flashes of familiarity with sights he has never seen or places he's never been?

Then: Silas.  "Well, I've only really met him twice," he says, and his voice sounds a little careful, here.  "Why, what do you think of him?"

Pen
"I don't," and the comma hangs; it's an awkward hang, because that is not the complete sentence, but she isn't certain how she wants to end it.

"He is very glib," she says, and winces. "He is very glib and I think he is probably a very good runner. Don't you?"

Nick
Silas's glibness: this Nicholas has not personally witnessed.  He has barely been in the man's presence long enough to exchange greetings, and if Silas has a predatory streak, well, it has never been directed at Nick.  Like most men, he is less conscious of these things than would perhaps be desired, in spite of his insight into others.

"I'm not sure," he says, and this is honest.  There is a pause before he says, "Ari has told me a little about him.  It sounds like he did some things to hurt her before, and she blames herself for what seems to me to have been a reasonable reaction.  She seems happy with him now, though."

Pen
"He did." Pen stops; it is abrupt. Her voice is not ominous; it is clear, it is even; it is a sheathed weapon, and a hand rests upon it. "Did he."

Pen makes a discontented noise, not quite agreement, when Nick says Ari seems happy with Silas now. "I don't like the way he is in a room," Pen says, finally, "and I think he is rude. Buying a strange Mage a drink, then absconding so they cannot reciprocate; it is craven." Brood.

Nick
Pen's voice is a sheathed weapon, and his ears are sharp.  He does not hasten to clarify, precisely, but adds because he feels he should - "Well, not anything I'm necessarily concerned about now.  The kinds of things teenagers do that hurt each other."  And maybe he is inclined to be generous with Silas, here.

Except, well.  "Maybe he didn't mean to leave," he says, because he is trying to be fair.  They take turns at this, sometimes.  "Do you think there's cause for concern?"

Pen
Pen can be ungenerous. She is only human, and human nature - though she believes in its brightnesses - is full of hypocrisy and inconsistencies. She thinks about Silas and the bridge of her nose wrinkles and she shivers because it is very cold and a sharp wind just kicked up bringing with it snow, sleet, wet snow, driving snow, and the air is about to turn gray as static on an old television set, as livid with movement. "What do you think causes concern?"

Nick
Wind that carries snow and moisture in it always seems to cut deeper than dryer winds; they seem to bite down harder and linger more in the space between clothing and skin.  This wind kicks up and Pen shivers, and there is a responding tremor in Nick, who rubs his hand and arm over Pen's shoulders and back.  It warms him too.

He considers her question.  "I've never heard Ari mention him before," he says.  "And now here he is.  I think that's really it, for me.  I just don't want to see her hurt."

Pen
"You're a good friend," Pen says, though of course: she knew that. Here, the faint knowing curl of her mouth; of course he is a good friend. He is Nicholas Augusto Hyde, and he is beloved. "And Ari has a very romantic heart."

Nick
Ari is typically not the sort one would think to have a romantic heart: she, after all, strikes one as somewhat pragmatic upon first meeting, and as preoccupied with her cloud-castles.  They both know better though; they have known her for a long time and even had they not, sometimes the truth is there between all the context.  "I know," he says.

"I think I'd like to spend more time around him, at the very least.  To be fair to him."

Pen
"If you are fair to him, then I should be unfair yes?" Pen says, with this bright flash of a grin; she is only half serious. "Because that is the only balanced thing to do, yes?"

Nick
Pen flashes that smile toward him and he laughs, then.  "I don't think having a protective friend ever hurt anyone," he says, with a squeeze of her shoulders.  "What were you all talking about before I got there?  All Ari would tell me was that there were a lot of long titles."

Pen
Pen makes a sound in her throat (it is not a huff; she does not huff; or when she does, it is not like this; and yet still, perhaps it is kin to it; a furrow of concentration, that's what it is; a deepening) when Nicholas says having a protective friend hasn't hurt anyone. Her shoulders rise into his hands; it isn't a shrug, it's just a reaction, a rolling; and then she bumps his hip with her own, swaying closer.
Did he stop too, when she stopped? Pen is ready to walk on; this is not just because the sleet is whipping into a frenzy, although that might have something to do with it. This threadbare green coat she is wearing: it doesn't close. She should get rid of the coat, but she won't. Pen doesn't like throwing things away when they can still be useful, just like she often makes food to freeze for later, saves plastic baggies and washes them.

"After Silvanus came," she will continue to call him that, on accident, because he is Marked so, and it will take a while for her to school herself away from his too obvious myth, "Ari told us to introduce ourselves, properly, so that is what we were doing. They mentioned his parentage, and how some people would want to know it, and I had asked why he was in Denver - "

Pen tips her head back and stares at the sky. Maybe she is going to invoke something; call down lightning. She can seem quite forbidding, though under the street lights her cheeks shine and she is squinting against the weather. The street lights make her eyelashes embers around coal, ruddy; draw light from her like a thin line of gold leaf around an icon's head.

"So I asked if it was because he was trying to avoid his parentage and its shadow, and he said that it was in part, but also that he was a master gardener who specialized in labyrinths and orchids and 'lost causes,'" she sounds - not doubtful? But curious, perhaps. Hunters do not grow things; they are brought grain-tribute. Maybe he is in conflict with more than just his parentage. "I was asking him about making a labyrinth and who to talk to about it and so on. I would like a labyrinth to walk. I wonder if he means a maze?"

Nick
He had stopped, when she stopped, but now he too is quite eager to walk on because sleet is beginning to catch in and weigh down his hair, and soon enough ice will crown him or it will begin to melt once it touches his scalp and then it will run down his neck and into the collar of his coat.  He rubs his hand over Pen's shoulders to warm them, and maybe some of the friction leaks through his jacket and into him too.

Pen's visage is forbidding here, like a storm, like a lake goddess, and as the street lights limn her cheekbones she looks particularly statuesque.  Nick can't help but think this as he looks at her.
"Lost causes," he echoes then.  "That's...interesting."  He smiles then, a thing edged with shadow and here sometimes shadows can be playful, and he says, "I could try to grow you a labyrinth in our backyard."

What she has said about Silas could largely go unremarked upon; he is still digesting it.  She might think he means to leave it at that, to sit on it for a while, except that he says, "Does it ever upset you to hear others talk about their parentage that way?"

Pen
[A totally useless and just for 'how am I gonna mood/atmosphere' this Charisma + Expression roll.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Pen
[Forgot the specialty! So 7.]

Pen
Pen looks swiftly at Nicholas when he says he could try and grow a labyrinth in their backyard; and see here, the dart of the Look (vibrant) is accompanied by such a smile. It's an arch challenge which cannot quite be aloof, but it's more too, because Pen has a certain presence (is a certain kind of lure, bait, trap).

How can anyone Looked at like that and then given such a smile (to keep, to guard, to buckle on, a sign of the quest, a token to tuck against the heart, a promise and a hope, a compulsion; that thing one takes, and irrevocably their life is changed) not go ahead and give in? Many don't, of course, but they still tell stories of grails, of shining swords taken from still lakes, of treasure beneath rivers, of the glittering of crystal under the hill.

"You could, couldn't you."

They walk and they walk and the sleet has become snow now; big fat drops of it, and Pen glances at Nicholas's hair, because she has always liked when it is full of snow and she can shake the snow-crown ice-crown free. She lifts her arm as if she is going to right now, but there is still snow so she doesn't; anyway, lifting her arm means she is not walking as close and that means there is more cold and she shudders.

A spell of silence, and here is their fence, and here is Nicholas's question.

Pen blinks at him. "Upset, in what sense?"

Nick
How can anyone be given such a smile and not give in?  Nicholas cannot.  He never could.
He joked with one of Denver's apprentices once about how Pen terrified him, too, when they first met and probably for a little while after.  And she did terrify him.  But he never could keep himself from giving in.  He has half-resolved by the time she speaks to start growing a labyrinth, once Spring comes in earnest.

They're so close to their fence, and he's cold and she's cold, but he can't help this either, slowing to a stop with her and leaning down to catch her mouth with his own when she looks up at him.  It doesn't have to last long, and some of his snow-crown inadvertently tumbles into her hair where it settles, and as he pulls away he smiles and reaches up to brush it away.

They walk.  And here is their fence, and Pen's returning question.  "Upset like...I don't know.  I only wondered because of the way it sounded as though he was talking like it was a weight he'd like to shrug off.  I think it..."  Beat.  "I don't know.  If I were a Hermetic, I think it would be offputting for me."

Pen
It doesn't have to last long, but it can and Pen is surprised but, well, something in her always leaps to a response; she keeps Nicholas kissing her by dint of kissing him when he'd pull back for wisdom's sake, and it doesn't banish the cold but for a little while she doesn't pay it mind.

(And it is late, but people stay up to catch television programs or because work ran long or because something happened on the internet. For Bob and Marianne Kidd, they are fresh from a Skype date with their college-bound offspring, and it is Bob who is by the window regarding the flurry who spies Nicholas and Pen by their fence.

He shakes his head. "Marianne, those new neighbors are at it again."

"I told you not to look in their windows," Marianne says, but she comes up curiously beside Bob. He's already answering her with tolerant amusement:

"They're outside, like a couple of fools. They're gonna catch their death." He pauses. "Not a bad way to catch your death."

"Aw, look at that," Marianne says. And then, "At least it isn't like that time they were,"

"Kiddo," Bob sounds scandalized and grumpy, but maybe a little amused, because Kiddo (in a Hepburn sort of way) is his nickname for his wife.)

Pen laughs and lifts her hands to bat the snow-fall away from her hair once they've pulled apart and up the walkway and to the door, which is locked (and warded, probably). Pen takes her key out, and the laughter has faded, and she is thinking about his question.

"I do have a number of thoughts about how the -- other Hermetics -- how they treat lineage and legacy."

Which she will tell Nicholas once they're inside.

Nick
He too is laughing in his way as he moves with her up the front walkway, his steps quick now that the door is in sight and now that it's occurring to him how cold he really is.  He doesn't see Bob and Marianne there in the window: an oversight, for Nicholas.

She gets a nod as she mentions lineage and legacy, and shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waits for the front door to open.  Before he steps inside he bows his head at the threshold, dragging his fingers through his curls to dredge away snow and ice specks and cast them to the porch.  Then through the door, his hair wet and tangled.

There is this hopeful glance spared toward the fireplace.  She knows it by now.

He reaches down to extricate his feet from their boots, glancing up at Pen.  "I'd like to hear your thoughts.  Do you want tea or do you want more wine?"

Pen
[Enochian, help out?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[Okay, let's conjure fire. Vulgar without witnesses base diff 7, -3 for Enochian, diff 4.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 6) ( success x 2 )

Pen
"No. I want hot chocolate," Pen says, "Or honey. Ooh, spiced wine. Do we still have any clotted cream? Honey and clotted cream, which we can eat with a spoon or our fingers."

"And I want to hear your thoughts, too. Because you have a reaction to it, don't you?"

Pen does not yet struggle with her boots as she should. She absorbs Nicholas's hopeful glance and then reaches out to traipse her fingers up his arm and over his shoulders and up the back of his neck and then she goes to the fire place, breathes a word into it.

The word catches gold after she speaks it, becomes livid and bright and Fire; a little rill of it, which then she tends with the poker. Their fireplace's poker is held by a little metallic knight and there is a stack of wood just nearby. A spark grows dizzy, meanders up and out toward Pen; another spark does, and another, and then the fire has caught well and truly. Pen drips; a bead of water on her earlobe, a sheen on her cheekbones, her hair sodden witch-weed clumps.

Nick
"I think we still have some back there," Nick says, with a glance spared toward the kitchen.  Pen's thoughts about what they should drink have drawn amusement from him, the way dark fabric will soak in the warmth of the sun.  "So honey, clotted cream and spiced wine?"

She has gone to the hearth, and Nick as he unzips his jacket and hangs it over the knob at the end of the banister cannot help but watch her Work.  He has seen this many times, at this point, and yet it never becomes mundane.  There's that thought, isn't there, that if magick were commonplace it would no longer have meaning?  But it's not true, or at least it has not become his truth.

"I have a reaction," he says, though sometimes, mark, he shares his own reactions to lessen the pressure of drawing out someone else's; he does this with select people.  He does it with Pen the most often.

Then he wanders into the kitchen to either make hot chocolate or spice wine or whatever she has decided.

Pen
[Eh, for fun. The struggle is real: GET OFF, ICY BOOTS. Strength.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 9) ( success x 1 )

Pen
[Boots resist!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 6) ( success x 1 )

Pen
[GET OFF.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Pen
[No!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 4) ( botch x 1 )

Pen
Penelope is ambivalent about what to drink, but is not ambivalent about clotted cream and honey, so it is likely they are going to have spiced wine; she doesn't bring up the hot chocolate again. She crawls over to the couch and sets her back against it, bracing for the great boot struggle of '16.

It is a struggle, too. They resist her at first, though she unlaces (savagely, sharply, swiftly, neatly), and pulls and pulls and pulls and oh suddenly the boots come off like a bar of soap slipping away through sudsy hands and Pen flings them one after the other toward the stairs and the foyer. She could get up to move them. She could also just use a spell to put them away without moving.

She does neither of them, but - and she has had such wine at Ari's, and it is still in her system - closes her eyes for a moment and feels the golden edge of fire lapping at her. Her mouth curves; it is gracious.

The firelight is an adornment; is an adoration; she is in adoration of firelight and firelight is in adoration of the ways in which it can re-cast the human figure, the nuance it can pluck (harp-music, a scattered descent) out of their hair, and Pen lifts her arms up and over her head, stretching luxuriously.

Nick
It takes a little while for Nick to re-emerge because spiced wine takes a little while.  It is not water but that doesn't mean watching it will make it boil any faster.  The warm scent of it wafts out into the main room to mingle with the smell of woodsmoke, and precedes Nick slightly.

Somehow, he has managed this all together: a bowl cradled in one arm, two spoons held by his pinky and a mug in either hand.  Nick has gotten to be a master over the years of making a single trip, though they really ought to invest in a serving tray or something of the sort.  He hasn't dropped anything yet, but there is always time for him to disasterously trip over his feet and send hot wine and clotted cream and himself all over their floor.

He doesn't, not tonight at least.

He hands Pen, luxuriously stretched out on the couch, her mug first, dips his arm down so she can take the bowl, and then wanders around so he can sit next to her and soak in the firelight.  He takes his time in getting settled, in stretching his feet and slightly damp socks out to let the dry heat embrace his toes.  He balances his mug on the top of one thigh, lets his other hand drift over to Pen and whatever part of Pen it happens to rest on - her hip, in this case.  "So.  Your thoughts?"

Pen
"Where is your clotted cream?" Pen inquires, with an air of innocence, for surely this is only enough for one singular Pen, not a Pen and her Crow. She sets her mug down on a little side table, takes the bowl and rests it on the curve of her stomach.

He settles; she watches him settle and then reaches (all imperious elegance) for a spoon. "My thoughts," she says, and she scoops up some of the clotted cream; is one of those people who will eat such things with the curved part of the spoon up, so it forms a little cave on her tongue, and she sucks clotted cream from it thoughtfully. Licks her lips.

"It is complicated. I understand very well wanting to go away from a place where you have this particular kind of pressure put on you, all the time. I understand wanting to break the mould that has been cast for you, of longing for it even. But I also, it's just, 'oh, poor me, I have every advantage, let me flee it.' I just... feel like you can acknowledge the privilege of being born so, without needing to let it shape you in ways you don't want. You can do whatever the Hell you want."

"Of course, I also think the legacy stuff is..." Pen glances over her shoulder, and over her other shoulder, and around: very conscious, very alert.

"It's entrenched bullshit. It's just broken. But I'm coming from the perspective of someone who took a lot of abuse because she wasn't part of that world. Not just the families, the magical lineages which have time and time again been full of Wonder - and and I don't want it to sound like I don't think that is important, in its way, it's just that its way is not - " A wave of her spoon. She pauses; this curl of a grin which matches a curl of toes.

Toes which are very cold, and which she has (in the course of this discussion) squirmed underneath Nicholas's shirt and pressed against his side or back.

Nick
See what a soul of generosity Nick is: Pen squirms her very cold toes under his shirt and against his side, and the initial shock of having her icy feet pressed against the warmth of his torso startles him for a moment.  After he has recovered from that trilling of his nerves, he presses his hand to her toes through the fabric, holding them against his skin on one side and cupping them in his palm on the other, to help them warm more quickly.

This little snick upward of the corner of his mouth at all that she says suggests that he agrees with her.  He does not need to look over his shoulder; legacies are not nearly so entrenched within the Chakravanti, at least not in the United States.  At least, not this sort of legacy.

Past lives, and the memory of: that is theirs.

He takes his spoon and digs out a mound of the clotted cream and honey.  They use a spoon in the same way; it is a small detail that neither of them may have ever noticed about each other.  "It's important, and I also have sympathy for people who want to escape it.  It must be difficult to know that kind of pressure," and this, reflective, because Nick before he was Nick perhaps knew that too and perhaps he is speaking from a sort of experience, an old intuitive sort of memory.

"But whenever I hear people complain about it it's just...it always seems to be with the assumption that everyone else is the same way, even though the supposed rarity of those lineages is part of what gives them power."  A glance flicked then in Pen's direction.  "I wondered if that might be part of what rubbed you the wrong way about Silas."

Pen
"Plus why tell people you're running from it if you really want to be free of it," Pen says, grouchily. "Why bring it up at all? I don't bring up things I don't want to have to talk about," and perhaps there is a touch of caution here, because Nicholas often finds out about those things anyway, and then there is a discussion. He might correctly interpret the look she gives him over the bowl of cream which she has edged up her ribs and then onto her chest so there is a shorter distance between her mouth and the cream and honey. Maybe she also wants to make Nicholas reach for it. The look is one of memory.

"To be fair Ari did prod us both into the full introductions. I don't know what his natural inclination would have been. Maybe he just felt self conscious. Do you mean you think Silas rubbed me the wrong way because - " cream, spoon, mouth, "Mm! This is so good! - because he assumed everybody else was like that too? Oh no."

"I just - " - and she flushes. "I don't like the way he enters a room. I am not a good friend at all." She sounds resigned.

NickThe smile that Nick gives her when she says that she doesn't bring up the things she doesn't want to talk about is several things: rueful and apologetic, perhaps, and also maybe a little knowing.  Nick often doesn't bring up the things he doesn't want to talk about either, and yet they have a way of drawing these things out of one another.

That is one potential use of Mind that his natural gifts will never give him, the benefit of talking without talking.

"I wondered that," he says, and he does indeed reach for a little more of the cream.  Pen is enjoying it and so his bites are small.

Pen flushes, and this bloom of color draws his eyes back to her, and Nick stifles a little laughter as he has sometimes in the past.  "Pen," he says, and gently rubs her toes through his shirt, "you are excellent in many things, and friendship is one of those things.  I mean," there is this thoughtful glance down at his hand, "friends of yours didn't seem too thrilled with me, and I know it's only because they want the best for you.  Because they're good friends, even if," a glance in her direction, playful now, "they're wrong.  Ari's happiness is all that matters, but you're allowed to be concerned for her."

Pen"Who didn't seem too thrilled with you?" Pen says, wide-eyed. "Who told you they weren't? I'll duel them! Unless you mean Aidan; he doesn't count in this, Nicholas. He is a brother, not a friend."
Beat. "Do you think I am wrong?"

Nick"Well, no one told me," Nick says.  "I just...you know.  Always got the impression that Rob didn't think well of me when it came to you, and I don't think Lysander did either."  Hermetics.  He can't recall all of them.  Though of course there was also Aidan, who is indeed brother-not-friend.

Regarding whether she's wrong, he glances toward her again, with this small quirk of his mouth.  "I think first impressions are important.  I think you have good instincts, and if you're concerned about something then it's with good cause based on what you know at the time.  But we don't know much about him yet."

Pen
[Ooo, is this an intimidating scowl!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Pen
Mention of their former cabal mate and her former friend draws a scowl, a scrape of hardening intensity. The firelight washes the color out of her left eye; makes it quartz-bright, smoke; contours her in shadow. The scowl smooths away as Nicholas continues on and she rests the spoon on her tongue again, licking slowly and thoughtfully (Elementary, my dear Watson-style), and then she sets the bowl of cream back on her stomach/near her hips, so Nicholas can have more.

"But do you think I am wrong?" she asks. "Or are you completely reserved in your judgment?"

Nick
Nick helps himself to another spoonful of cream, smoothing the curve of the spoon along his tongue.  "The impressions I have are more from what Ari told me than anything that I've gotten from Silas," he says.  "He seems as though he...well, I get the impression he probably likes a conquest."  The spoon rests on his lower lip as he gazes into the fire, thoughtful.

"But Ari...I'm not sure she wants the sort of thing we have, either.  I don't think you're wrong, but I want to...let them be happy however they're happy."

Pen
[Let's willpower this, actually.]

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

Pen
Pen wants to say something unproductive, something that she knows is perhaps petty; she does not like that she wants to say it, but she wants to say it. Time to exercise her restraint, and her restraint is frisky and ready to perform, a world-class act of reserve and control. Do not act according to your impulse (rash), your passion (daring), your first-flush whole-hearted wish (ardent), so she reaches over her head and feels around until she finds the mug of spiced wine which sends steam up against her palm and she pulls it around so she can take a sip.

"But what sort of thing do we have, Nicholas?"

"Your heart was not conquered? Have I not sieged it; seized it; am I a poor Flambeau? We are supposed to be very good at love, you know. War and love, all those stereotypes."

She crinkles her nose. "I may have just made that up."

Nick
This, he laughs at, sudden and clear and ringing and all too brief, a single note or maybe two.  "Well, I meant monogamy, or something steady.  Not to imply that I haven't been well and truly conquered."

He leaves the rest of the cream for her, taking his mug back up after he has set his spoon aside.  It may, of course, merely be that Pen is possessive of her friends, but pointing out such things rarely goes well, and Nick sees little harm in it.  He takes a careful sip of his wine.  "Do you plan to talk about any of it with Ari?"

Pen
"Not until I've seen Silas for more of fifteen minutes together," Pen says, eyeing the cream and honey but not yet taking another spoonful of it. "If her heart is all moon-dazzled and brightness-limned, and he's the maestro who sets the tempo of her pulse, and it's been so long, and he's good to her in bed, and all he's done is walk into a room, it would be ridiculous of me to take her aside. What should I say? Bah."

Nick
"They've known each other a long time, so she might not even hear you if you did," Nick says, then.  There is another brush of his palm over her toes, well-warmed now beneath his shirt and no longer sending a rill of bright ice up through his bones.  There is a playful squeeze of the littlest toe, which halts as another thought occurs to him.  "I wonder if she'll want him to join the cabal."

His eyes flick from some nonspecific point in space over to Pen, then.  "If that's the case, consider this my official petition for us to find another non-Hermetic."

Pen
First, Pen curls her toes again. They are well-warmed, and it is quite nice.

And then Pen chokes on her spiced wine, has to put the mug down on the side table again. Her abdominal muscles work as she coughs, quietly, pulling herself up to a less languorous and indecorous recline.

Her voice is hoarse, clotted water-weeds, moon reflection on the edge of a lake stone-troubled, thin veneer, when she says, "Let's not begin choosing people based on their Tradition." Clear throat, clear throat, and a faint smile. It's more in the eyes than it is on the mouth. "But don't tell me you're tired of the Order of Hermes, Nicholas."

Nick
"Never," he says, and this is so sincere he could cross his heart upon it, even if there is a smile playing around the corners of his eyes and mouth.  "You all lend me some respectability."  When it comes to certain circles, he might not even be joking.  "Though in seriousness, I do hope we never choose people based on Tradition."

Pen
"I don't think we're in danger of that," Pen says, with a smile: this blooming thing, somehow half-a-secret, somehow almost private. Her lashes flirt downward; okay, she is going to eat the rest of the cream. She is going to do it with her finger, because the spoon is too far away now. "I hope to be more settled before we talk about anybody else joining, though. You know when you joined the last cabal, we talked about it for weeks. It was quite the production, your heart was weighed on a scale against a feather; did you feel it?"

Nick
He laughs then, at that, and he scoots closer to her now and tilts his head in; it comes to rest partially against the back of the couch and partially against her shoulder.  Some of his curls spiral outward, brushing her cheek if she turns her head.  "I had no idea, though I suppose in retrospect that shouldn't surprise me.  I debated joining for weeks.  All it might mean."

There is a shift of the muscles in his cheek against her shoulder as he smiles, and this too is something of a private thing.  "Though I would hope anyone who joins one would think it through that way, I suppose."

Pen
[TIME TO TRICK YOU HAHA. I WILL DO IT. SO WELL.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Nick
[A good effort, but...]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
"Back before I was initiated, I was almost part of a cabal - I say almost, but really, it was a half-a-second sort of almost - that was much more loosely formed than the one you and I were a part of. Are a part of. And I think we're rather loose, especially compared to the [Cool Name of First Hermetic Cabal. It's probably in Ancient Greek anyway!"

"And it means something awesome, that is also a pun for Brat Pack somehow, because Magic], and others we've known. They just all happened to live in the same apartment building, and one of them turned me on to an open room. I think there's a place for that kind of community."

"Nicholas, you have something - "

"Just a little, right there - "

Pen tugs on one of his curls, resting her cheek briefly (lightly) against his head, and she gestures to his face. She is absolutely going to smear the last of the cream on his face as soon as he straightens to check. It's just one of those inevitable truths that Nicholas, a mixture of catching that tone in her voice, that particular nuance, and knowing her as he does cannot help but be aware of, in spite of her very respectable poker face.

Pen
ooc: weird, reposting that

Pen
"Back before I was initiated, I was almost part of a cabal - I say almost, but really, it was a half-a-second sort of almost - that was much more loosely formed than the one you and I were a part of. Are a part of. And I think we're rather loose, especially compared to the [Cool Name of First Hermetic Cabal. It's probably in Ancient Greek anyway! And it means something awesome, that is also a pun for Brat Pack somehow, because Magic], and others we've known. They just all happened to live in the same apartment building, and one of them turned me on to an open room. I think there's a place for that kind of community."

"Nicholas, you have something - "

"Just a little, right there - "

Pen tugs on one of his curls, resting her cheek briefly (lightly) against his head, and she gestures to his face. She is absolutely going to smear the last of the cream on his face as soon as he straightens to check. It's just one of those inevitable truths that Nicholas, a mixture of catching that tone in her voice, that particular nuance, and knowing her as he does cannot help but be aware of, in spite of her very respectable poker face.

Nick
[I AM TOTALLY FOOLED.  YOU FOOLED ME.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Pen
[O_<]

Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (3, 3, 3, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )

Nick
"A Disparate cabal?  Like the sort Anna had in New York?"  He says this because his sister has since moved to San Francisco, and he has no idea of what sort of cabal she keeps out there if any.  Anna, whenever he speaks with her, always seems to be talking to a different person and running in different circles.

Then, he has something, right there -

And Nick turns his head toward her, wide eyed and without a hint of expectation, and he emits this very convincing squawk of surprise as she smears the last of the cream on his face.  And then as he reaches up to swipe it off with his thumb, there is this furtive look to the side.  This hesitation.  He finally says, "I joined the Hollow Ones for a little while, at first."  A rueful smile.  "Back when I was young and morbid but hadn't found my way to the Chakravanti just yet.  There was a lot of T.S. Eliot."

Nick
[Tooootally Hollow Ones.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Pen
[O_O]

Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 2, 3, 8) ( success x 1 )

Pen
[I'm not like O_O;;;;;;omfgnuhuh that's totally hey man we all have our youthful indiscretions that's cool that's cool.]

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

Nick
[Youthful indiscretions, huh?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
Pen shakes her head: No, not like Anna's community, and then is full pleased because she tricked him. He joined the Hollow Ones. Pen believes him. "Oh." He can read, in the sliver of silence which follows, falls hard between them hits the ground with a point, her shock.

"Well," she begins, earnestly. And continues, earnestly. "The modernists were very skilled poets, and one cannot read T. S. Eliot too often. I have great sympathy for the Hollow Ones who identify their Arts with modernism, even though I think it is a shame that they often seem to choose to cling to the disdain for what might have come before -- might have, I say, that's an important phrase here, because really isn't the idealized past which might never have been as powerful if not more so than, you know something you'll bring forward and create in all of its wonder… Where was I? Ah yes.
"I believe it is just such a shame they're so disdainful, for after all Eliot transcended despair and said he was feeling towards a new form. I think it is very valuable to look at the past for inspiration, but without nostalgia or romanticism, so useful to move from High to Low Art, back and forth, a constant conversation. It is not a poor way to look at the world, except … well, I suppose the alienation was what was attractive. I've only once met anybody who seemed to truly to take power from alienation, so I am glad you did not stay morbid. I can't really imagine you as a Hollow One, I can't imagine you so constantly tearing at other people's choices. But… Did you, ah, did you like… what made you decide to not stay Hollow?"

Pen: is being honest, of course, even though she is not the hugest fan of the Hollow Ones she has met. Maybe it's no real surprise: being an asshole to a Hermetic is a competitive sport to some disaffected rebels, that's how you get Merit Badge: Cool Grade A Maverick ;) ;) Pen cares about everybody in the abstract, the specific if they'll let her, but that doesn't mean she is a doormat.

Nick
Nick can read Pen's shock in her silence, and he too has known enough of the Hollow Ones to understand how a Hermetic must react to them because of how they often react to the Hermetics.  Unabashed mockery of Traditionalists is indeed often a way in which they obtain their merit badges, are sworn into the fold.

"I made friends with a Hermetic and it was all over," he says, with this little sigh of regret, and then, "I had my tattoo removed the next week.  Miles had to use Life to get rid of the scar."

Maybe Nicholas had an entire story planned, some way to compound upon this particular joke.  But see, Pen has swallowed the hook so thoroughly, and in the face of her earnestness he can't help but smile, or maybe it is that he chooses to smile.  And here, he laughs once at the question she finishes with, and catches one of her hands in his.  His voice is warm.  "I was never Hollow, Pen.  Though," this amused glimmer here, in his eyes and in a flash of teeth, "I'm pleased to know that even terrible past life choices wouldn't change anything."

A beat.  "Who did you know who seemed to take power from alienation?"

Pen
[You!! +7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )

Nick
[Nooo +5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( botch x 1 )

Pen
[WAP. Dex and Ath.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Nick
[Flaily dodgeyness!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Pen
Pen's eyes are, indeed, wide as he spools out more details; there is not the faintest hint of suspicion, just the kind of (gullible) disbelief that is actually belief at something one would have thought improbable. He catches one of her hands; then confesses, and with a smile, and -

Pen pulls her hand back and his cheek must leave her shoulder if it still rests there for she leans back too and reaches, fluid, for a pillow, the pillow just there, and brings it arcing through the air to catch his shoulder and the side of his face. Reflexive, flail-y dodge does somewhat disturb the unerring path toward his face, but still the pillow catches grazes. The bowl of cream (empty bowl, now) unsettles and slides toward the back of the couch; Pen keeps the pillow in hand, and maybe she's going to use it again.

"You handsome smoke-tongued serpent-throat," she says, in tones of disgust, and maybe embarrassment. "You tricked me!"

Nick
Nick pulls his cheek away from her shoulder, perhaps anticipating the pillow-violence soon to be visited upon him.  It's likely that this has happened before, though he's careful to never trick her too often: it would cast too much doubt on his truths.

He laughs again as the pillow collides with his face, his valiant effort to get out of the way not enough to fully interrupt its course.  Pen still has the pillow in hand and so his next reflex is to bring his hand up to shield his face against further onslaught.  "But you knew me too well anyway," he says, and his voice is still warm despite the humor that curls beneath it: indeed, like smoke.  "You said you couldn't imagine me as Hollow."

Pen
Pen holds the pillow in reserve for a moment; the potential onslaught is a possibility of the sort that can be felt: precipice moment - Nicholas is wise to keep his hand up. The grey-eyed Enchantress stares at Nicholas for a beat - it is not fair, see, how his laughter strikes a spark into her eyes, almost curls her mouth (almost). So she removes the bowl from her hip, sets it down on the couch, and curls up against the couch's arm, pillow held against her stomach. She looks down her nose, the long stretch of her thigh knee calf leg, the point of her toe, at Nicholas, and settles her elbow on the couch's arm. Will, in a moment, quite delicately take up her wine glass and sip from it.

Nick
Nick leans forward onto his hands once it becomes evident that she is not going to immediately apply the pillow to his face a second time.  He is leaned in toward her, dangerously, tempting fate now especially since his smile is still carried there in the pull of skin around his eyes.  He trusts in the wine glass, see - she isn't going to hit him again while she is sipping wine.  He places his faith in it.
"In all seriousness, I was never part of a cabal before I joined with all of you.  I'm interested in hearing about the one you almost joined."

Pen
"Why did you join with us?" Pen asks, and there is a vibrant thread in her voice -- all just-woken curiosity, still rising from its bed and stretching. She props her head on her index finger and thumb, holding the wine glass nonchalantly in front of her mouth; it is a chalice, the way Pen holds it, a symbol. The expression in her eyes: perhaps it is only curious; perhaps it is shot-through with light, still, reflected from his amusement; or perhaps that contained hint of radiance, caught-light in dapple-dark water, is just the effect Nicholas is on her. "There's not much to tell about the one I almost joined. I didn't know what I was doing, or what was happening, back then."

Nick
There is a thoughtful hum as Pen asks him why he joined with them, and his downward trajectory finishes with him sliding into the spot between her legs and the couch, and he rests his chin on the top of her thigh.  His legs come unfolded and instead he leans his shins against the arm of the couch, his feet hanging suspended.

"I was very impressed with all of you," he says, and Nick too can have his periods of naked honesty.  "You felt...very competent, and worked together as a team and I saw a place for myself in that.  I felt like I belonged somewhere."  A beat, another smile.  "I wanted to get to know you better too.  That didn't hurt."

Pen
Her smile is sudden. "You are my love poems, Crow, all I ever want to write. Your evening hair, your sly smoke smile, the Echo you leave behind, the grace of you, a bell un-rung," Pen says, and, "You unseat my heart; I would have come for yours whether you were part of our cabal or not. Did you think any one thing about our Traditions which changed after you Worked with us?"

Nick
Pen's love-poetry keeps his smile in place, though it becomes a more thoughtful thing, bereft of its slyness.  He traces her kneecap with his fingertips, taking a moment to turn her question over in his mind.  "I think I was surprised at the diversity of belief within the Order of Hermes," he says then.  "You and Robin and Ari all believed such different things and worked in such different ways.  I mean, it seems obvious to me now that of course the Order isn't a monolith, but I remember it being very surprising to me then."

There are perhaps other things too: surprise at how easily Liz fell, that she wasn't better protected.  He does not say anything of this; he cannot.  "And Thane...I don't think I expected...I don't know.  The joyfulness with which he approached it, I guess, even though it was Thane."

Pen
A sip of wine; her throat works. She is careful; she holds it on her tongue, and thinks of Bacchus, bacchanals, of Spring; of Nicholas's hair; of some other things, that are distant and far-off - her gaze grows distant, anyway, prophet's gaze: the once and future. With lips wet she says, "Did you and your sisters never consider forming a cabal?"

Nick
Nick looks toward his wine glass, still there on the end table and filtering firelight through the glass, how it struggles to shine through the dark bloodiness of the wine itself.  He rises on an elbow and leans for his glass, seizing it around the stem and taking a swallow or two before he answers her.
"It was something I thought about, but we weren't really in the same place at any point after Awakening.  Besides, I'm not sure whether Viv ever would have agreed to Work with either of us."

Pen
Up on his elbow, wine to his lips, and Pen sets her back against the couch arm instead of her side; her spine is curved; she drapes her leg over Nick's shoulder and back; her wine glass -- no, mug wasn't it? It still seems a chalice in her hands -- clinks when she reaches over her head to set it down on the end table again. The wine that's left shivers; it is dark; it could be a scrying glass. Pen says, "Are you really not sure, or do you think she would not have and not want to say so?"

Nick
"I don't think she would have, but I never asked and I don't think Anna did either."  There is this glance up to her as he slides his mug back onto the table, giving it a nudge or two with a fingertip.  Pen has met Vivienne; Pen knows his sister is not given to sparing others.  "Besides, all three of us Work pretty differently for the most part.  I think we all want different things."

Pen
Pen, it must be said, deliberately makes it difficult for Nicholas to slide his mug back onto the coffee table, corralling him with her thigh; what? No; there's nothing to see over there; you didn't want to lean again, did you?

But her expression does not show the intention; her eyes are guileless and ready to meet Nick's own when he glances up to her.

"House Quaesitor does have a mission which does not lend itself to looking without the Order, or working without the Order, I mean at least not in a, well, I don't know. It sounds as if you might not have wanted to work with Vivienne like that anyway."

Nick
Nick does indeed glance up to her as he finds his arms are simply not long enough and he finds her eyes guileless.  It makes it difficult for him to tease her or acknowledge that she is making it difficult for him because: what if she just isn't aware?  He doesn't want to ask her to move.

So instead he keeps his mug in hand, taking another swallow of the warmed wine.  He rests it on her thigh instead of the table, his fingers locked firmly around the handle.  His brow furrows at what she says.  "I...well, I suppose not," he says, as though this is occurring to him for the first time.  A beat.  "She can be difficult."

Pen
So: Pen has her (let's say) right leg over Nicholas's left shoulder; he rests his mug there, on her thigh, when he cannot for whatever reason (Pen, Pen, Pen) reach the coffee table. Her left leg is curled up resting against the couch's back, but she thoughtfully shifts (presses down on Nicholas's shoulder) so that she can stretch it out between Nick and the couch. The pillow she'd had against her stomach is a casualty; it falls to the floor.

"I find it difficult to believe there is a one of you who can't be difficult," Pen says, arching her eyebrows. "Did you two fight often when you were children?"

Nick
There are some people who, when prompted to consider conflict with a sibling, would have to think back and back and back and re-imagine a thousand small childhood slights.  Nick's relationship with Vivienne is like that and also not; this is reflected in the way his gaze wanders as he lets his cheek fall back against Pen's thigh once more.  "A little," he says.  "I think all three of us fought a lot, honestly.  Just normal kid stuff."

Though what anyone considers 'normal kid stuff,' this is always telling.  "Did you and your siblings?"

Pen
"Oh yes. But I was often one of the authority figures, as the oldest girl," Pen says, answers. And then, because of course, "Like what?"

Nick
Nick nods at her answer: it's a sensible one.  Authority with himself and his sisters would have been less clear cut, of course: they are all the same age as each other.  "You know.  We would steal each others' stuff, or Anna would threaten to beat me up and then do it and Viv would get upset with us both.  Sometimes we'd call each other names or Anna or I would tease her too much."

There is a stillness as he considers, because sometimes insightfulness is unpleasant too.  "She'd try to take care of the two of us a lot, when Mom wasn't feeling up to it.  Kind of like what you used to do for Aidan and Mary Margaret, I guess."

Pen
"Mm," neutral sound. She reaches out for Nicholas's hair; winds up tracing the line of his nose with her fingertip, instead. Her expression is expectant, though for once her eyes are gone hooded and her regard is through the veil of lashes (and wine, too; wine is a veil, of sorts). "Mmm?"

Nick
Wine is indeed a veil; Nick's eyes too are a little foggy, though it has had the added benefit of making his tongue a bit looser.  It does this to him, most of the time.  The short hum she makes, twice (though different intonation) draws his eyes from the hand tracing his nose to her face.  "Make dinner.  Bring her homework in and make us sit down to do homework with her.  She'd set the alarm clock so we'd all get up in the morning when Mom had to work overnights."

Then, thoughtful, "I know it was hard on her.  I didn't always know what to do to make it better though."

Pen
Pen's finger wants to contemplate the shape of Nicholas's mouth; pay it all due reverence, the curve of the lower lip just there; that he is speaking does not stop her. This is gentle, of course, and care-full.

"Did she ever tell you why she decided to choose the Order of Hermes?"

Nick
There is a silence here, then, and it is in more than a pause in speech or breath; he becomes still, his eyes unfocused though they might be aimed somewhere roughly in the direction of the firelight.  See: Pen's question is well-phrased.  There are ways she could have asked in which Nicholas would have known how to answer.

Instead he says, "No.  I've never asked."  There is lingering embarrassment here, perhaps some uncomfortable self-awareness, the way it will spring into relief at a question or a comment: salient and sharp.

Pen
"You didn't want to know?" Pen asks, and she: slips further down on the couch, easing herself beneath Nicholas, insinuating herself so, with what begins as subtlety, but cannot remain so: not when she keeps her leg hooked on his shoulder, not when: well. She is not a shadow; she is too too solid flesh, which will not thaw and resolve into a dew any time soon. "I'm sorry," she says, finding his shoulder bone. "I don't mean to make you uncomfortable."

Nick
"I just think I..."  Beat.  "I know April.  I guess I've just always assumed.  Or didn't think to ask."  Pen is sliding down, but it indeed does not go unnoticed for long, because her flesh is solid beneath his own and he has to lift himself up a little to accommodate her.

"I don't mind," he says, and this too is a quiet thing.  "I know you only want to know.  Besides, I...maybe I should ask her."

Pen
Pen's ribcage expands; her muscles stretch, and it feels good; it feels good to have her breath constrained; it is good to feel the ridge of bone beneath Nicholas's shirt and skin and muscle and blood; the movement of it; good to feel the golden edge, lapping, of the orange fire; the sweet way wine moves. How nice to have an accommodating friend.

"When you were little..." Pen hmms. "When you were little, did you," and Pen hmms again, propping herself on her elbows. She is giving Nicholas one of those looks that seems to see him and to not see him at the same time, a piece of intensity.

Nick
Once he has assured himself that she is done moving, Nick settles again.  It is good to feel the pull of her muscles beneath his own as she draws in breath, and good to feel the heat of the fire on his back and her skin beneath the hand that he trails up under the tail of her shirt and rests against her flank.  He is familiar with this look, the intensity of it, if only because he has seen it a few times before.
"Did I what?" he prompts, after a moment.  Then, "Do you think your siblings would get it, now, if you told them?  You as a mage?"

Pen
A sword-fall sweep of her lashes, up and down; he can feel the jolt go through her, of physical reaction, surprise: "Would get what now, if I told them? As a mage?" Sliver of pause. "I was just thinking, I was going to ask, whether when you were younger you three thought of yourselves as a unit, if you were that kind of close, working together or drawing together or..."

Nick
Pen's muscles seize and he can indeed tell that he has surprised her; perhaps a part of him knew that this question would.  She does not talk about her siblings, after all.  He answers her first, though; this trailing thought makes his brow furrow, makes him look back past whatever sundering may have happened in adolescence.  Who knows: maybe he can see it.  "Maybe we were a kind of unit," he says.  "It's hard to...I mean, we were all so different, and in some ways we...what we had was each other.  I don't know if it would've been that way, if we'd grown up differently."

This break in his thought too is brief.  Sometimes they trade this way.  "I just wondered if you thought they would understand you better, or if they would understand your...I don't know.  If they would understand your life as a Hermetic."

Pen
"I do not believe so," Pen says (aloof). Perhaps this is proof that she is indeed part of a proud house, and no member goes without its pride (quiet surety [arrogance...]). Pen lets her back hit the couch cushions; instead of propping herself up on her elbows, at a slender slant, she circles her head with her arms, casting her gaze up at the ceiling. "If Mary Awakened, she'd want to know why I wasn't in the Chorus. If Aidan, I don't know. Charles, too. They know what they know about me; it probably isn't untrue."

Nick
"Have you ever thought about telling them?"  Nick has lowered his head again to let his chin rest against her, and his eyes have this tendency to take on the characteristics of whatever light happens to strike them.  Now, in the firelight, they are deep burnished things, dappled with bright and with shadow.

Pen
"That's why I think Mary would want to know why I wasn't in the Chorus," Pen says, rueful; rise and fall of her chest again. His chin digs her; she doesn't mind it and sweeps one arm around his shoulders and then the other ah hah, gotcha.

"I was just wondering," let's bring this conversation back to you, Mr. Hyde, "if there was a reason you thought about asking your sisters to be in a cabal, even if you never did ask them. The thought of Working with any of my brothers or sisters is difficult for me. I wouldn't like it."

Pang, of course, because she might have liked Working with one of her siblings, once upon a time: but Fate intervened, and Choice.

Nick
There is a thoughtful, pleased sort of hum as her arms sweep around his shoulders and hold him in place.  It's a contented noise: it would be difficult to find him more content than he is at the moment, curled up with Pen in front of the fire, sleepy with wine.  Can he sense that pang within her, and is that what draws his eyes up to hers as she stops speaking?  Perhaps.

"I just wondered if maybe...well, it is really strange that all three of us Awakened together," he says.  "I think when things converge that way, it's natural to wonder.  Besides, for a little while they were the only magi I knew, or knew well.  I kept pretty much to myself for a while."

Pen
"Is it?" Pen sounds reflective; she rests her chin on the crown of Nicholas's head. He can't see her eyes that way: perhaps it is by design; then, perhaps she just wants him to fit into her, perfectly and as much as he can. "I never did," and from reflective, to musing: Pen never kept to herself, even while she was Keeping to Herself, Disparate and ready to stay that way. "Did you wonder if it was fate, perhaps? If you were fated to be braided together, into some strong rope?"

Nick
"One karmic theory is that we tend to stay bonded to the same people, life after life," Nick says, "and we encounter the same scenario over and over again until we learn to move past it.  It doesn't tell us where we're going, it only tells us where we've been.  I'm not sure whether that's something I believe, but I have wondered that."

Hesitation, here.  Discussion of fate, it makes him reluctant: Fate intervenes, and he has known people to whom the Wheel of Fate was a breaking wheel, a rack.

Pen
[Ack, ack. Are you hesitating? Why? O_O]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (4, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Nick
[I am hesitating!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Pen
[-_-]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (2, 2, 2, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Nick
[Ugh, tiebreak]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Nick
[Nicholas is contemplative, thoughtful: he isn't sure whether this is something he believes, but he is entertaining the idea.  He finds it interesting to think about, in this casual sort of way; he may have heard it from a Traditionmate.  His expression is faraway, as it often is, and: peaceful, almost.]

Pen
Pen pulls back curls her index finger under Nicholas's chin wants to see his face measure the sweep of his shoulders his back and, whatever she sees, aren't her gray eyes the color of the sea untarnished under pale skies, aren't they sometimes a suggestion of twilight rather than light or dark; aren't they clear? Whatever she sees, Penelope sighs beneath Nicholas and her arms loosen she instead compasses his back and side and hips with her hands. "What's another karmic theory?" Beat. "Do you think it's important to know where we're going, where we've been?"

Nick
Her eyes are the color of sword light, silver-threaded, and Nick does hold her gaze once she has lifted his chin to regard his face.  "I think it's important," he says.  "We have to know who we've been to know where we're going.  We can't ever wholly divorce our selves from what's behind us.  I do believe that."

A pause.  "That's another karmic theory, that at some point our lives will balance out in one way or another, that your past becomes your future because one way or another the Wheel rights itself."

Pen
"What is fate supposed to do, then? What is its purpose, Nicholai?"

Nick
Mark this: for one of their kind, a simple "I don't know," even one that is this thoughtful and quiet sort of thing, can be something of magnitude.  It is this way because he means it, because he is willing to acknowledge this uncertainty rather than offer some theory or other.  Pen's questions are well articulated though, and they deserve a response, but maybe she'd still think that's all the answer he's going to give based on the way his cheek comes back down to rest against her breastbone.

"I don't know if Fate is...well.  I don't know if I think it's something pre-destined or predetermined.  I think it's just the way we conceptualize this idea of balance, and connectedness.  It's the idea that everything that happens provokes a reaction, even if it happens lifetimes and lifetimes from now.  We could maybe nudge or influence the shape those reactions take, but they still will happen."

Pen
He says he doesn't know and, look, perhaps Pen's love for Nicholas is something like water; it is under the surface, it is always always there, but sometimes he'll say something and it is as if he has scratched a line in the sand dug a furrow and the water will come up and up, will well, will bleed; will cover; perhaps it is like that. She presses her lips to his hair; maybe he won't feel it; when she wraps a leg around him, he will.

"What do you believe is the difference between destiny and fate?"

Nick
This, here, another contented hum as Pen's leg wraps around him, and he wiggles to settle in further because maybe he too wants to fit into and against her as perfectly as he can.  His arms have gone to either side of her and they meet, loose, just above her head, steeple over her.

"Destiny strikes me as something that is unalterable.  Fate is...more vague than that.  More like what I was describing.  I know," and a little smile here, one she can't see but perhaps can feel in how his cheek lifts there against the fabric of her shirt, "that it's mostly semantics, but I still see a difference."  Pen will understand semantics; she is Hermetic, after all.

Pen
"Mmmmmmmm." Pen inhales; exhales. On the exhale, when her voice is almost airless, she says, "So when you tend the Wheel, Nickolay, what is that? You're part of Fate's lubrication system?"
Ah, yes, Romantic metaphor: how truly it doth striketh.

Nick
Romantic metaphor indeed: there is this soundless little laugh that escapes him, that is there more in breath and in the way this flicker of humor seizes up in his chest.  Her question is serious though, so it doesn't linger.  "I suppose that's a good way to think of it," he says.  "Or as a way of...ensuring that balance is maintained.  That nothing is ever tilted too far in one direction or another."

Pen
"Does that mean you would do terrible things -- you would become an unhappy death, a bad death -- if, oh I don't know, I think the Wheel metaphor perhaps imperfect but it is your holy idea, and all metaphor is imperfect if you begin to take it apart. But does that mean you might do terrible things, to keep balance?"

Nick
[Where is this going, Pen?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[>.> You don't get to know everything.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Nick
[But maybe I do!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]

Pen
[I, but, argh.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

Pen
Pen is in a dreamy mood and an inquiring one: thoughtfulness plus ardence plus arousal plus a pang-strike of some dark thought which is attached to Nick by the slenderest of threads. She isn't asking him because she is leading him into a trap, but because it is striking her right now that such a philosophy could lend itself as easily to doing terrible things as to doing good things; she is dissatisfied with the Wheel metaphor, because she is a poet. There's something earnest about what she hopes from Nicholas here: engagement, if not some remark that would ease her mind, some hint at how often such a turn might happen. She is interested in ideals, even if they are far-off ideals, and she likes to hear Nicholas talk to her. Where IS this going? That's entirely up to Nicholas: isn't it.

Pen
Bonus: it also strikes her that something someone said to her, once upon a time, might not be so outlandish, and she is thinking about that. About something she heard, something someone said.

Nick
Pen's choice of words, this series of questions, has Nick raising his head again.  His hands lower from above her head, not away from her but more to either side so that he can lift himself a little on his elbows and seek out her eyes with his own.  He is quiet for a moment in his regard of her.  "I have seen some people do terrible things to keep balance," he says.  "I have...well, not me.  The person I was before now did some terrible things with the belief that she was keeping balance.  I would hope that...I don't know.  That 'balance,' the striving toward it, wouldn't require terrible things."

A beat.  "Define 'terrible things.'"

Pen
When Nicholas lifts himself on his elbows, Penelope is not looking at him. Her gaze is slanted to the side, and thoughtful; but he casts a shadow, and her eyes are drawn back to his. He is quiet for a moment; she is quiet for that moment, too, and still though she wants to curl back into him. "I know terrible things must sometimes be done," Pen says, quietly. "But what I mean is..." She drags one hand over her face, measures her own throat. "Like say that everybody was building sandcastles, that's all there was: these sand castles built, rising and rising toward the moon. You'd come along and dig a pit and push the sand castles in. Because that would be more balanced."

Nick
He might want to curl back into her too, but he doesn't; not yet.  He is watching her hand as it passes over her face, all the way down to her throat.  "At the risk of beleaguering the metaphor," he says, and there is this little smile here though it has more of wistfulness in it than sly, "I would only need to do that if someone else had stopped the tide."

Pen
"The sand castles could be built in a sandbox," Pen says, with the flash of a grin; both dimples flash. "Or a desert. Maybe everybody's really fast and really good at making sand castles. You shouldn't assume."

Nick
Pen's dimples flash, and Nick's smile widens just a little, reflects amusement now and affection both, because he has always found her dimples endearing.  "You're right," he says.  "But, in that case, I don't think I'd feel the need to play Godzilla unless there's a problem with the sandcastles.  I mean, are sandcastles going to inherit the earth?  Are they being built over other things or over each other?  Do they begin a sandcastle war of nations?  All very important theoretical questions," he says, quite sagely.

Though note that he is serious, too.  "It's only out of balance when you start to see consequences.  And if you see consequences, I suppose you'd have to evaluate them and think about whether whatever action you might take needs to be done.  I'm not sure most terrible things would be justifiable."

Pen
Pen stretches both arms up above her head again, framing her head with them: inhale and inhale and exhale short and quick. His wide smile found its echo, not in another flash of a grin, but in a certain knowing intent in her eyes; it passes. Her hands are graceful: she braces them one against the other; executes a mini-stretch. Tightens her leg 'round him, shifts so the other one can hold him too, or at least: begins to shift with that intention.

He is serious, too. So is she. Does she ever stop, really?

"So in a way is it -- fate lubrication, I suppose -- about avoiding consequences, then? About maintaining a status quo, forever?"

Nick
"I have wondered that," he says, and he has shifted his own weight so that Pen can move however she will, and if that involves holding him there well so much the better.  "I'm not sure it's that so much as...making sure that the Wheel keeps turning, so to speak."  A beat.  "Think about it.  If the Fallen have their way, if Fallen souls just pass on with that taint still in them, eventually that's how everything ends, in the long run.  I think the ultimate goal is just...to nurture what's good in the world.  Nothing else needs the help."

Pen
"I wonder if that's true," Pen says, and she does smile at Nicholas: and it is dreamy and wistful; it is the sort of smile that wants to be a hand, resting against his cheek; that wants to be a kiss but isn't. "Or if it's just something we're taught and we're taught, that what's good in the world is under siege, and so it is."

Nick
She smiles at him and he smiles back and here his head lowers again, and he slides his hands up from her elbows and across her forearms so that he can slide his fingers through hers where her hands rest above her head.  They link; they tangle.  "I don't think it would change what I would do, even if it's not true," he says.  Then, "What do you think?"

Pen
"About you?" Pen says. Her fingers stretch first under his: it's a luxury; it's a luxurious gesture; then the tangle. "Mm... I think you have worked to be good; I don't think you'd change what you might do either. I think you are better than the surety of daybreak."

Nick
Better than the surety of daybreak, she says, and here he smiles again (did he stop?)  He lifts his head, though the way he is just now he can't really see the whole of her face, would have to let go of her hands or lean back or lift himself another way, and he's perfectly comfortable where he is.  "What do you think about whether it's just something we've been taught?  Do you think things need to be protected, or tended?"

Pen
"Of course I do," Pen says, solemnly. "Or do I? 'Need' is such a pointed little word. Does anything need to happen? Perhaps only if one wants something else to happen, afterward. Do I need you? I think I do; but what do I need you for?" Playful, maybe, this inflection cutting through the solemnity, this rake of fondness. "Need. What is need, anyway? Nicholas, I do believe in ... belief, and in hope, and those things are I - " slow smile, this time, dreamier " - believe - constantly assailed."

Nick
Pen's playful tone results in this affectionate squeeze of her hands, this gentle pulse.  "I'm glad I have you with me, to help build them where we find them."  He lifts his head again, and his smile here has turned a little arch.  "So is there a way you'd describe the Wheel instead?  A more perfect metaphor?"

Pen
"You're going to make me work for my laurels, aren't you," Pen says. The timbre of her voice is smoky; air is diffuse. She squeezes his hands back, but also stretches (that luxury, again, that languid air someone somewhere longed to paint into Dido or Medea) beneath a stretched out Nicholas, and she sounds still playful: more suggestive. "Gyroscope," solemnly.

Nick
Nick waggles his eyebrows at her: occasionally his face is quite expressive, when he has a mind to make it so.  (Or perhaps it's when he isn't trying to make the effort to keep it composed.  With someone who is accustomed to masking, who knows, really?)

They remain lofted when she makes her suggestion.  "Gyroscope?  How so?"

Pen
"A gyroscope - " and Pen frees her left hand from Nick's. She tilts her head back and then turns it to the side, without ever once lifting it, so she is at an angle where she can see what her hand is doing. What her hand is doing is trying to sketch out the idea of a gyroscope's movement, three tweaks and another one. A spiral. She looks from her hand to Nicholas whatever of Nicholas she can see, her eyebrows raised as if to say look see how good that demonstration is. " - is a wheel that has more range of movement; how the circles move is not prescribed. Things come around and go sideways,"and Pen lets her hand drop back, but only to find Nicholas's hand and draw a circle on the back of it. Or the palm of it. Or the wrist of it: what can she reach? First clockwise, and then - then her breath clicks in her chest on an inhale and she draws a counterclockwise circle on the side of his neck. "They still move. They balance. I don't know," a quick smile. "If you have to ask about the metaphor, it is not very good."

Nick
"Not true.  I just liked hearing your explanation," Nick says, and he'd remained very still while she scribed her circles over his skin.  The smile he returns to her is affectionate, thoughtful.  "I like thinking of it that way, actually.  I think the point is to think of the Wheel as the cycle of everything, but I think you're right in that sometimes things move around and intersect and go sideways.  Time, even, is like that."

Pen
"Ah?" Pen blows her bangs away from her eyes; lets their gaze find the ceiling, because that's easiest; then she curls her fingers into her palm (the hand that had been scribing a circle on Nicholas's neck, see) and uses the second knuckle to scritch the side of Nicholas's jaw and cheek, feeling for stubble, see, for a need-to-shave: scritch, scritch, scritch. Pen wants a certain sound; a certain sort of abrasiveness. "How does Time go sideways?"

Nick
She runs her knuckle along his jaw and cheek, and there is a raspy sound that she can hear, faint, as her skin catches against the fine stubble that lines his jaw.  She has to rub against the grain to find it, the slight prickle of hair just beginning to emerge like budding blades of grass in spring.  "Time isn't linear.  You could change one event and change everything.  I think maybe there are multiple threads that exist at one time, all the possibilities of what could have been or will be.  They all exist at once.  Thinking of it as just a singular Wheel doesn't seem to account for that."

Pen
Pen's mouth sets itself in a reserved (demure, even) line and her eyes at first stay open, stay on the ceiling, stay on the warp and weft of the plaster. Pen is clear-eyed; even though she tools herself to reading, to small things. Her eyesight has always been remarkably sharp. Can listening actually be a feeling in the air? Because she is listening; intently, whole-heartedly. "We rely so much on the face of a clock," Pen says, after a moment's thought. "Perhaps the shape is an old binding, an old and powerful binding, meant to keep Time in one order." Her eyes slide shut.

Nick
Perhaps this is a comforting thing to Nick, this idea that they are one possible reality: that somewhere out there, there exists a reality in which Liz did not Fall, in which their cabal did not collapse, in which Pen's brother is alive and well.  (The other side, of course, is that there are darker possibilities; these too must exist, that somewhere out there is a reality in which they did not meet, in which they could not have met because Nicholas died at fourteen, or in which they fell after Liz one by one.  These, too, must be possibilities, if they can be imagined.)

He looks up at her, notes the cast of her mouth and the reflection of the firelight in her eyes as though it had somehow become trapped just below the surface.  "Maybe," he says.  "Can you imagine it if it didn't, though, and just went every which way?"

Pen
"We would be haunted," Pen says, and then, with emphasis, "Inhabited," and of course he can feel her shudder: it is full-body, and her body is beneath his.

Nick
This full-body shudder stirs something within him, and it is then that he lowers his hands, pulling them from above her head so that he can wrap them around her instead, sliding one of them flat beneath the small of her back and leaving the other arm up alongside her.  "Yes," he says.  "I feel like you could...you could lose yourself in the what if.  But I still think it all exists out there somewhere, even if we have to Work to see it."

Pen
"When did you begin thinking that it was so?" Pen asks, softly. Shifts some, perhaps, to allow him to - make it easier for him to - get his arm beneath her back. Her eyes; she'd closed them. They stay closed now. Darkness and Nicholas's voice and the feel of fire, lapping at one side of her. It's not a bad moment.

Nick
Nick has had to shift too, to remain comfortable in this new position.  He rests his head instead against Pen's shoulder, nestles his head into the side of her neck.  "I..."  Thoughtfulness.  "Jonas challenged me a lot about my understanding of it when I first met him," Nick says.  "He and I talked about it a lot."

A beat.  "It just didn't make sense to me that he could be so convinced of this idea of one destiny, these points at which all past events would culminate or lead up to, and still manipulate it.  He'd argue that you could go back and forth, and that what happened was necessarily the way it is because it could be no other way, but that was never helpful to me."

Pen
"I think I understand that," Pen says, and her voice is still soft. "Perhaps if - " and then, stone-skip, from perhaps if to (folded time) -  "So you began to consider the 'what if everything' theory? Because - why?"

Nick
"Well, I thought that if it wasn't linear then there had to be multiple threads," Nick says. "And if there were multiple threads, how would that happen, and wouldn't they be infinite?  And I...it just made sense for it to all be one thing.  I don't know if there was a specific moment, or event, that made me think that.  I..."  And here he sighs and turns his head just a little, pressing his nose and mouth into her collarbone before he tilts his head back to speak again.  "No, that's a lie.  After Liz for a little while I really wanted to see if...I don't know.  I thought that there must have been a way for it to have been avoided, so I started to think about it more."

He swallows and his throat does not click, but his voice is soft, softer than before.  "Perhaps if what?"

Pen
Pen reaches around Nicholas's shoulders to coil one of his curls around her index finger, around, around, a ring: a ring more gleaming, more shadow vibrant, than any other she is wearing; a ring she opens her mouth to bite, but can't quite reach. So curl again, repeat, as if his hair were a beguilement, a love-knot, a meditation stone. "How do you explain the paradox backlash that comes from messing around with Time? Where one change changes everything, but these multiple threads are always in existence, side by side. I believe... that sometimes people will just make the same choice, no matter what happens around them, because that choice is at the heart of who they are. I don't mean Liz necessarily, just ... all people, any people."

Nick
Nick blinks, then, at this: he has never experienced Paradox from using Time magick.  Sight, after all, or looking ahead or forward or past, does not generally bring down Paradox upon one's head; it is one of the less dangerous of the Spheres that he knows.  There is silence as he considers the question, as his head tilts up in thought and perhaps Pen's chin is buried in a nest of his curls.  "I mean, I suppose it just makes sense that it would happen because people believe you can't do it," he says.  "We're attached to the idea of one way that things happened.  We're afraid of change and I think we don't...want to believe in another way things could've been, that it could've been different.  I know I'd have trouble believing it on some level, if I tried to change it."

The hand underneath the small of her back is trapped by the weight of them both, but there is a slow sweep of his thumb across the hollow of her spine, the shallow dip in the center of her back.  "I suppose that some people might always make the same choice.  But so many things shape the heart of who we are, and those could also be changed."

Pen
Pen makes a small noise when Nick tilts his head up, a thoughtful angle; his curls tickle her, see, and so her throat must respond. She ceases playing with the one; lets her hand rest atop his head instead, until a whim has her hand traveling to the back of his neck.

"If you tried to change it, you'd try to change it - now you'd be trying to change it - because you lived through what happened. If it were changed, you wouldn't go back to change it. Isn't that the catch with time travel? In all the books, anyway."

Her back arcs just a very little; responsive, immanent pleasure: see.

Solemn: "And I don't know. Many things shape us, yes, shape who we become, shape who we have been, but we are ourselves essentially and in the end and in the beginning and all through the middle, too. It's like language, you know? How language will be shaped by culture and necessity, but what language is being used for or what it is worn by: that has a perfect heart." 

Nick
"I suppose that is the catch," he says, thoughtful.  "I mean, I suppose you'd maybe be able to have some way to stay omniscient, to know what you did and to know what was before, but..."

And he trails off, though his jaw tilts as Pen's hand wanders down the back of his neck, this subtle lean into her hand.

This thoughtful noise at what she says next.  It's clear that it has him thinking, though whether he disagrees or whether he is merely trying to figure out how to frame a reply is unclear.  "Do you think that can ever change?  That perfect heart, or...the essential self."

Pen
"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...."

This drawn-out siren sing-song thing, latched in her resonant chest no key kept locked-away. The sweep of her lashes trembles; she opens her eyes, just enough to regard the ceiling again then the top of Nicholas's curls the burnished gleam of his cheekbone maybe something the firelight finds and transforms. WIth her eyes half-closed, everything is blurrier than she is used to.

"I don't know for certain, but I feel sure that certain things are immutable. For instance, mutability," she smiles, delight tucked away at the corners (vibrant) like an ace up the sleeve; the edge of it is just audible in her voice, see, that lucky card. "You can use it however you wish put it in whatever new sentence you want let it inhabit anything, anything at all, but it will still mean ... protean, shifting, some relative of those, if you dig deep enough."

Nick
This is Nick's turn to hum, though his is necessarily shorter, softer, located somewhere more in his throat just below his Adam's apple.  "Is that idea what's at the core of Enochian?  That certain words and ideas can't mean anything other than what they are?"  And perhaps that is why Pen can use it in the way she does; she is a poet.

Pen
"Enochian is a January language," Pen murmurs, see, into the shell of Nicholas's ear, though she need shift his head to do so.

"But you might say so. You might," and there's this helpless presentiment of laughter in her voice, see, "say just the opposite, too, and struggle to understand what was true. There is always something true though. Enochian is a language of connotation and symbol and it is the most muddled most clear mess in all the worlds."

"What do you believe, Nicholas? Do you think there's always some essential spark that is essential and, in its essence, only and always what it is?"

Nick
She needs to shift his head, and his head easily tilts to the side toward her as though he had some sense of what she would do, as though they fit together, and can she hear his breath hitch, just so?  There is laughter in her voice and there is a smile in his; they know each other well and so she doesn't need to see it to know it's there.  "What's true doesn't change just because we struggle to understand the truth of it," he says.  "Truth is like that.  Immutable.  Poetically so."

There is another sweep of his thumb over her spine, over each small knob and swell of muscle.  "I think there must be," he says.  "But I suppose what I don't know is whether we...whether we are always that, or whether what is essentially us changes.  Whether we transform or are constant."

Pen
A hitch in Nicholas's breath: she'd devour him like a flame devours air if she could. Why, then, he says: what's true doesn't change just [and she bites his ear, harmlessly; gently] because we struggle to understand [and she kisses the wound, instead, smoothing her hand around and over to his collar] the truth of it. Truth is like that. Immutable. [And her thighs tighten; and she cants herself so.] Poetically so.

A lock of her hair gets stuck under hr shoulder; she shuts her eyes again. There's a stitch between her brows. "We are, and we aren't. It's both. I think it's both, because as you said, there's a lot that goes into us: who we are, what we are, a lot of surface and external, but there must be something at the core, a spark, which is us. Even as we transform. I: I think the point is - no, not the point. But you know I believe in striving for perfection, right? I guess perfection has come to mean ascension, but I don't know. We become perfected, and by being perfected we change, but we are still essentially that thing that we are. I think. That's part of perfection - that's part of being something divine."

Nick
"Mmm," and again this thoughtful sound, low in his throat, the stroke of a bow on cello strings, this single resonant note.  It might be a little pensive, that, if only because that is so often how Nicholas is.

His arms are tight around her, had tightened in response to the kiss on his ear, to her cant, and he has lifted his head enough to see that little point of tension between her brows.  He lifts one of his hands to her face, his thumb to her cheekbone, and he runs his thumb over that sharp angle as though it were wet clay he could smooth, could define.  "I believe that...I don't know.  That divinity is contained within each thing, that it's intrinsic.  Do you think something has to be without flaw to be perfect?"

Pen
Pen inhales. Her lashes flutter, but she doesn't open her eyes. She begins to say one thing; it is clear she begins to say one thing; the word sticks in her throat, because she lightning-quick changes what she was going to say ("I - " it's in the musing way she pronounces that syllable; a match-head, scraped) " - Does something have to be the same to be different?" This pleased-with-herself curl of a grin.

Nick
Nick hasn't yet lowered his head back down; he watches this flicker of her eyelids, the way her eyelashes flutter like moth's wings, and he is so fond: of course she can't see it.  He has laid his head back against her collarbone by the time she replies to him.  "No," he says.  "That's the essence of...what you were talking about, that by being perfected we change."  A beat.  "But you were going to say yes, weren't you."

It's not accusatory; there's a smile there in his voice still, something that somehow finds a way to course through him as he lowers his hand from her cheek so that his thumb can trace the curve of her ear instead.  "Am I losing you, Pen?  Should we go to bed?"

Pen
She was going to say yes, wasn't she.

Pen shakes her head once and then again and then thrice. He can feel it; he is in the way of it. And she pushes herself against him again, just to feel what might happen; how loosed she might be; how, past tense of a verb, lost.

"Perhaps we should go to bed, but no. I was going to say that it is a silly question, just like whether something has to be the same to be different. The caterpillar is not an imperfect butterfly the butterfly was still once a caterpillar the caterpillar as a butterfly is not perfect, you know? If... mm, if we are in the midst of an alchemical process, if we are becoming what we were once, and it's right, then the flaw is just a part of the process, it is intrinsic and inseparable from what is divine."

Her eyes half open again; if he moves, they'll open all the way.

Nick
It's likely in this that she doesn't consider how loosed he might be, or whether he could be lost; it becomes a possibility here, evidenced in the quiet before he replies, in the manner in which he deliberately focuses and gathers his thoughts.  And he does listen to what she says.

"I believe that," he says.  "Though I suppose I've been thinking of it as more of a sort of...completion.  Wholeness.  I don't know."  He has not yet moved away from her; perhaps he doesn't intend to just yet, stayed by her but no.  And ordinarily he might have stopped here; he chooses to push on, because he has been choosing to push himself.  "Interconnectedness, when you're fully aware of your place and part in everything and that it's no less divine than you, and so you can only be as divine as the rest of it."

Pen
"Why do you believe that?" Pen says, curious. She combs her fingers through his hair, slowly, paying mind to how the shadows (seen through her low lashes, still) gleam on his curls, paying mind to the cool coarse (?) silk of them; she opens her eyes all the way regardless of Nicholas, turns her head to glance at the fire - who knows for what reason.

Nick
Who knows for what reason, but he notices her gaze drifts somewhere past his head, somewhere out in that direction, focused on something he cannot see.  "I've seen it," he says, "in how we...the way the things we do impact other things, how becoming more for me means embracing more of what I see around me and accepting it as part of...I don't know.  When I think about life and death and everything after and in between, I know that it all exists as one, I..."

His smile is rueful.  "You explain these things better than I do, I think."

Pen
"You're just dazzled by my clever tongue," Pen says, solemnly. "Did you ever think about joining the Celestial Chorus?"

Nick
It isn't the first time that Nick has been asked about the Chorus, and about his relationship to the Chorus, though typically it's in the context of people reacting to his resonance.  Regardless, he laughs, once, a more muddied and drawn out version of that note he'd emitted earlier, from somewhere in his throat.  "People have asked me that," he says.  "But I've never...no, not really.  I admire the way they...the search for unity, but my impression has always been that they pick the parts of life that they like.  They hide from darkness thinking they can escape it, and not realizing that it's essential to understanding."

He tastes something coppery, some trace of something sweet and bitter and animal, and realizes he has bitten the inside of his cheek.  "Or maybe that's just the ones that I've known."

Pen
Maybe that's just the ones I've known: a stone skipped across a lake's flat surface, that; her breath stops (catches [caught]); her fingers tighten in his hair; she turns away from the fire. She releases his hair; she presses her mouth to the crown of his head; to his brow. Pen pushes (loose me [lost me]) against him again, and her skin is firelight-flushed, she metal warmed and if she is a sword if some part of her is a sword it is a sword that has drunk deep of somebody else's warmth: this time to shift so she is no longer beneath him. Nicholas be forgiven, the way she moves in an arc, for taking a moment to realize that she wants to be on her side; still wants to hold him against her with a leg, maybe, but no longer on her back. The better to kiss his eyes shut: like so.

"Tell me why you and I are divine. Right now. Tell me why this touch is divine. Right now." This curl of a grin again: something dreamy, and almost but not quite wry. "Tell me why this couch is, and the wooden floor, and the fire. Tell me why those things, these things, are all divine with one another. Completion. Wholeness. Whatever it is you said earlier. Tell me, Nicholas."  

Nick
Her kisses fall upon him as a warm rain falls: the crown of his head, his brow, both of his eyelids.  His eyes are shut and so he cannot see her as she speaks to him, can hear the way she smiles and how it has something of a sigh in it.  They've shifted, readjusted, and Nick takes a moment here to settle and throw one leg over her other, to tuck his face in against her collar where it was before.  It wells up in him, his answer, this deep ineffable thing and yet she is asking him to somehow give it shape.

"The things we have surrounded ourselves with we've chosen to make a part of us and this experience of us, together," he says.  "That wooden floor was once a tree and now it's here to be a part of us and our home, and we've walked that wooden floor and we've hallowed it with our footsteps.  We look into that fire and it burns like every fire there ever was and will be and we can see eternity in it, like all of those who have come before us and all who will come after.  It's in our hearts and our blood and in everything that breathes."

"You and I, we're...two separate stories, whole and perfect on our own, and somehow made more whole and perfect by the act of sharing, of coming together to make something new.  Our lives could have converged in thousands of ways, and we could know thousands of other people and we could have made thousands of other choices, and somehow we're still here together, and I never imagined someone would touch or look at me the way you do.  I make you want to spin cities from gold: you make me want to shape and purify the earth just so you can."

He exhales.  "All of these things touch something divine in me, and I think they touch something divine in you too.  Something infinite, something that can't be fully defined or it'd lose its mystery, and yet we still get to touch it - " and he catches a lock of her hair between his fingers, spins threads of burnished silk through them, very carefully - "and give it shape."

His eyes are half-hidden in the shadow his body and hair throw in front of him, faced away from the firelight as he is.  "Is that...does that make it clear how I feel?"

Pen
Her eyes stay open as he speaks against her collar. During the adjustment period: at first she'd tucked her arm beneath her jaw and neck but Nicholas wants to be at her collar, so she circled him with that arm instead, and her fingers find their home in his hair. Pen listens, and notices these seven things: the vibration of his voice as it slips under her skin, the warm edge of his breath as he shapes an explanation out of it, the shape of his mouth, the angle of his nose, the livingness of her skin, the thump of her heart, the care in his fingers. As she listens (intent, suspended), she strokes his arm and hip, the top of his thigh: she loves him so and if she were a river he'd be her bed.

She does not speak immediately. If he looks at her, he'll see this particular kind of smile, one that does touch her mouth, but only just. He'll see this particular look - and she does ache to hear him - in her eyes, and she is generous with her moods, but whatever she feels, she feels so strongly that it is perhaps difficult to see contained as it is.

"Very eloquent, Nicholai." Her lashes go low; she is studying some part of him that is not his face. The only-just-there smile becomes more of a reality; it curves up, sweet.

Nick
His eyes are still shut, and rather than open them he instead reaches his free hand up and over, letting the backs of his fingers fall across her jawline.  They trace its length, and because he is used to his own face it is always a surprise to him how smooth, without the scrape of hair rough as a cat's tongue, and this is the sort of thing one will notice more with their eyes closed.

His smile too is only just there, though it's followed by this short little laugh, a puff of air through his nostrils, as she calls him eloquent.

When he opens his eyes again it's only to find hers.  "What are you thinking?"

Pen
"I am thinking of how strongly you interest," and see, here her eyes lift and their glances can mingle, "me and how strangely surprise me; even when I should not be surprised; I should be fore-warned and fore-armed. I never am. I'm thinking that it is interesting, that the divinity you feel in everything comes from the infinite and from connection. Infinite connection."

Nick
"I...yes," Nick says, as though perhaps this had not occurred to him before now, or that this is the first time he has heard it spoken aloud clarified in such a way.  (That too may not be so surprising: it is likely the first time he has spoken these sorts of thoughts aloud to anyone.)  "Which I...I mean, I suppose that's how I see the Wheel.  Fostering that."

Pen
Sometimes Pen tells Nicholas that she wants him to kiss her or that she wants to kiss him. Sometimes Pen gives warning. Sometimes Pen does not.

She doesn't kiss him immediately, but it is in her thoughts. She watches, instead, watchful, alert, in case he has more to say, but she only watches for half-a-second; sometimes her ardent heart is an impatient one, and though she is mostly in control of herself, mostly reserved, that is only mostly. So Pen kisses Nicholas and they've been supping on wine and cream and honey so that's what the kiss tastes like.

At the break: "Did you always feel this way about what is divine; before you Awakened, I mean?"

Nick
She can feel his breath along her cheek, this slow exhale as her lips meet his, this filtering out: and it's at the bottom of a breath when we're at our most open, when the body and mind and soul merge as an empty vessel.

When she breaks away from him, or he breaks away from her, who knows, there is this thoughtful little sigh (a drawing in of air once more) as he considers the question and hmms again.  "I think maybe I..."  There is a little stitch there now, between his eyebrows.  "I think so.  But I didn't feel connected, was the difference.  And I didn't have the words, or the understanding of what I was looking for."

Pen
"So you might say," Pen says, after another silent space: and this is sly. 'Sly,' anyway, a witch's trick, "that you came to it, as you transformed, by alchemical processes - moved from one state to the next; you might say you came closer to divinity, even if it was all around after all."

A dimple is in evidence, perhaps, and she is teasing him: she likes to tease him for how much he teases her (harrumf, Hollow One).

Nick
The dimple is evidence, and Nick is a patient man but he can't help the impulse that seizes him to lean in and kiss that little point on her cheek, even as he is smiling at her response, how sly she is.  "I love how you can surprise me too," he says.  "I suppose you might say that."

Pen
"What else do you suppose?"

Nick
Another thoughtful hum, his eyes drift away, as though pulled over his shoulder to dance in the flames that are burning low now in the hearth.  "For now, I've run out of supposes," he says, and his smile is a quick thing, bright as the gleam of sunlight in a crow's eye.  "For once."

He runs his thumb over the curl of hair that is still wrapped in his fingers, casts a contemplative glance down to the gleam.  He releases it, and instead his hand slides down her arm to catch hers, wherever it has gone next.  "But I know I want you.  And I suppose that," another flicker of humor here, "we should probably go upstairs before we scandalize our poor neighbors again.  I heard them talking the other day."

Pen
Pen opens her hand so he can twine his fingers with hers if he wishes and glances down the slope of her shoulder to see how it looks when they do. That almost smile is back: it is a secret thing, how sweet it is, how private: as water is to thirst, that smile, see? As sage is to smoke, as silver is to moon, as echo is to sound.

"Do you want our bed?" And she is still sly, how she eases out of her place between couch and Nicholas: flattens herself against her husband's shape, suspends herself over his body, "I like our couch; I like our bed; I like this bed," and she means his bones. Pen kisses Nicholas then and kisses him again and once more and so on until one thing or another happens. Maybe they go upstairs, to their bed. Maybe they don't.

Either way: it is connection, isn't it, infinite - an expression of (she has never been more [ardent] worshipful than when Nicholas inspires her, understand) the divine.