Thicker Than Water

Nick
They are driving.

There is blood in the backseat of their car; there is blood on Nick's shirt and blood on Nick's hands.  None of the blood is his blood.  He has barely noticed it if we are being truthful: he is Chakravanti.  It is not the first time.

They are driving, and Nick is still wound like a spring, his shoulders stiff as he grips the wheel with both hands.  Kiara lives close to downtown and not so far from the Crawford Hotel and so they still have a bit of driving to do before they're home at last.  He is staring straight ahead, and he is quiet.  Twilight is beginning to fall over the city, and there are lights in many of the windows as they pass beneath the shadow of skyscrapers.  The sun is red tonight, red as Pen's hair as strawberries in summer, red as a dying star, and its light paints the horizon line.

As they finally pass the final tower, Nick releases a long breath and takes his eyes off the road only long enough to look sidelong at Pen.  "Thank you for helping me."

Penny
Pen is concerned about the blood.

Because blood is thicker than water, because blood tells, because blood stains; thankfully, she is good at getting stains out of fabric; there's a ritual for that which no laundry detergent, howsoever gentle and tough-on-stains it might paradoxically be at once, can complete with. Pen is concerned about the blood. Pen is studying Nicholas's profile, unabashed and open-eyed, this entire time, so when he glances sidelong at her she is looking directly at him, her head resting against the glass of the passenger seat, her seatbelt a nominal nod to the rules as she is angled so her back is more against the door than not and her elbow is by the window too near the lock and her wand (graceful thing, and elegantly made) is held in her left hand which is resting on her lap and she is twirling it as idly as a writer might twirl a pen. Pen: she is studying Nicholas's profile; her expression is oblique.

He thanks her. Brisk nod. They're a cabal and they're a cabal of do-gooders trying to make the world a better place and Pen is of House Flambeau of the Order of Hermes.

Thanks aren't necessary; help was the necessity.

"You can pull over; I'll drive. I'll even drive according to the speed limit."

She is lying about the speed limit, probably.

Nick
Seconds after she makes that suggestion the car begins to drift over to the shoulder and Nick's eyes are focused on the road once more, and his doing this has the air of obedience: this because he does it almost without thinking.  She had not been there to witness the cool detachment he'd exhibited when examining Andrés' mangled hand, but he's still there, in that place of seeing without seeing.

He reaches down to unbuckle his seatbelt and, with a glance spared out the side mirror to ensure that there are no cars coming, steps out to the road and around to the other side.

Once they are situated again, once he has fastened himself securely into the passenger seat, he glances once down at his hands and then up to the road ahead of them.  "This is all Andrés', by the way.  None of it's mine.  I wasn't hurt."  Pen is probably lying about the speed limit, but he is too calm right now for the speed of her driving, whether it's too fast, to even register with him much.  "There was a werewolf...wolf man?  I summoned a wolf spirit to lead it away and it said it wasn't a true werewolf."

Penny
"I trusted that you were not, my crow," Pen says. She has forgotten her seatbelt and set her wand down in the cup-holder after tossing a water bottle into the backseat. Her voice is: oh, it's ardent; of course it is. It's ardent in a way that is light on smoke, or maybe shadow on smoke: they are the same thing.

She frowns at the road unrolling before them; she was lying about the speed limit. Faster than a speeding bullet.

She has a rote for that.

"How was it... How did you become aware of the 'wolf man' who was not a true 'werewolf'? How interesting that the spirit had a definition for one which was true. I know there are shapeshifters but I do not know much lore about them."

Nick
"I don't really know the difference either," he says, though: he perhaps knows more lore than she does, even if he is not even fully aware of the fact.  It is difficult for one to spend much time in the otherworlds without picking up some knowledge of shapeshifters, who have shaped themselves that world and the language it uses.

"Andrés asked me to come have a drink with him after work, and there was a man who...he was not well.  He felt like the wild and I thought at first he was maybe one of us and was running from something, so I went to talk to him.  He started begging me to help him and then he began to turn.  Andrés tried to make him sleep and I tried to help, but something...I don't know.  He wasn't using his usual tools and the vial he was using just exploded in his hand, and then he was like you saw him."

Nick is not sure what they saw, if truth be told; he is aware of Quiet, but he frames it in terms of Jhor, the only kind he has seen.  It is so far removed from him that he found what was happening to Andrés more fascinating than frightening.  "I threw my scent into one of the bathrooms and after you fused the door I summoned the spirit."

Penny
Pen has seen Quiet before. Her house-mates are not known for their subtle hand, and while some of that reputation is conflated by propaganda, some of it is rooted in truth; she has seen Quiet before, and the Quiet which is called Jhor, too.

Pen drives and drives, and she is a muse's dream: the bloody sun sinking into a froth (blood, foam, flower) gilding her profile and when they take a curve she asks Nick to get her sunglasses from - but they're not in the glove compartment. Damn it. It's almost coincidental to just happen to find sunglasses on your head after you looked everywhere else for them, but Pen doesn't choose to risk it. Perhaps she is sobered.

"Perhaps he was under a curse. Did you have time to study him -- or that sense of 'wild' you caught? It would be good to be aware of any Curse-slingers." Beat. "Did he seem mindless after the transformation? Did he immediately try to attack you or Andrés?"

Nick
"I don't think he was in full control of his mind, no," Nick says.  "He was...he was very afraid of the transformation, though that alone doesn't mean anything.  I think he must have been cursed."

His brow is furrowed as he stares out the windshield and at the road ahead, and he too is a muse's dream: a different sort of muse.  His black hair is all atumble and the blood has stained the dark navy of his shirt, rendered it the same color as his hair to the human eye, and his hands seem to have gone to rust.  The skin around one of his eyes is tight, he is pensive; it gives him a pained sort of look.

"I wish I had been able to study him before the spirit took him away.  It didn't say to where.  I may be able to ask one of them, later."

Penny
"You can still study him. Can't you, Crow? Just look through time like it is a window, transparent; like it is a singular pane of glass which won't grow opaque even if it is as thick as a century."

Nick
"I can," he says, thoughtful.  "Though...I'm not certain whether I have the skill to tell what he is, or how he got that way.  But it would be helpful to know whether there are curse-slingers about."

He tangles one of his hands into the curls at the side of his head, disregarding the dried blood on them.  "Do you know if there's anything either of us can do to help Andrés?  I know what to do if someone is affected by Jhor, but not..."

Penny
"Have you ever seen the other shapes Quiet takes?" The horizon has gone from blood to liquid gold. Alchemy. The light hits Pen and Nick full in the face: even behind her shades, Pen squints and her pupils shrink and her clear eyes are clearer. Blood on Nick's hands and blood on Nick's shirt and none of it is his.

Nick
"No.  I was always worried that Jonas would..."  Well, he had a lot of worries when it came to Jonas: he still has many worries when it comes to Jonas, even from afar, even though he knows that his acarya-of-a-sort (he has several) is not his responsibility to shepherd.  Jonas has even told him so.  "I only thought that maybe that was what was happening because I've seen it look the same in Jhor, in a way.  The same but different."

There is another sidelong glance, and he folds his hands in his lap now.  "Have you?"

Penny
"Yes." Pause. "Quiet is something most in my House experience at one point or another, so if you don't stick to yourself you see it eventually. Even the most careful Mage cannot be careful all the time or control paradox, alas. I have written essays on it and interviewed older soldiers about it. Lysander made certain to tell us." Another pause.

"You warned me once about Jhor and how I might need one day to be there to bring you back. You may one day need to be my tether to reality, Nicholas. I hope not. I am armed with knowledge enough that I have a hope."

Pen tips her chin up, self-possessed and imperious. She takes the car around a corner, and the sun is no longer hitting them in the face.

"I hope that should I find myself caught in an illusive world of my own making I will be able to will myself free of the illusions. That is the simplest way out of Quiet, whether it takes the shape of Denial -- they used to call it Clarity, some Magi still do. I gather because you become very clear about one perspective: it crystalizes for you, chrysalises for you, and what is born of the chrysalis is madness. You don't see else, but what you see: it is the only thing. The only possible thing. Denial might be a better name for it. I think it is the most difficult to track."

Brief pause. "Where was I? Right. Whether it takes the shape of Denial, or Madness, or Jhor, it is simplest to take oneself out of that state through sheer will, but it requires awareness." Her mouth curves; no humor.

"It will compound if you leave it alone; it is best to be strong willed about it, but when it comes to Quiet, Will can be the sword you fall on. After I attained my Initiate Exemptus rank in Ars Vis, I: well. I was careless; my spell of Quiet was very minor."

"I don't know how we can help Andrés. It depends on how bad he has it. The important thing is to be aware that what you're experiencing or feeling isn't real, you know?"

Nick
Be aware that what you're experiencing or feeling isn't real.

And isn't that the crux of it?  The act of magick determines reality; sometimes it defies it outright.  The Technocracy has labeled them reality deviants for a reason.

And down that way lies Madness.

Nicholas listens to her and he is quiet, his eyes on the road ahead even though he is not driving.  This is misleading: they are not on what lies ahead at all, his gaze is diffuse, and all the light and shadow and hue he can see through the window might as well be a painting there on the windows looking in for how relevant it is to him just at this moment.  He is thinking; he is thoughtful.  "I can try to help bring that awareness back to him.  With Jhor, it's...it's the opposite of love.  Its absence.  I think with this it might be the opposite of...permanence, maybe, or constancy."

Drawing in a breath brings his eyes into clearer focus, and one of his hands drifts and finds the top of her thigh.  She'd said he might need to be her tether; this is his answer.

And now he looks over to her once more  The sun is behind her now, and her hair is a deep red gold, a shining helm.  "What made you want to write essays and interview old soldiers?"

Penny
He thinks it might be the opposite of permanence or constancy and Pen makes a neutral sound, neither agreeing or disagreeing.

"Not while I'm driving, thou rogue." Pen is teasing him, probably; the gracious curve of her mouth has disappeared, tucked away, but it was a humorless one and she is gilt and gilded and: then there can be no doubt about humor and where it might be, because she laughs at his last question, vibrant good humor in the clear sound of it.

"It was classwork; and of course I wanted to learn how to be responsible and good."

Nick
"I like the idea that we learn goodness," he says, and even though she has chastised him, with howevermuch good humor, his hand remains, though it doesn't seem inclined to wander.  See here how Nick's voice is layered like an Enochian glyph, wound around with significance upon significance because Lysander was a good teacher and sometimes perhaps he thinks back to long ago: that sometimes the way in which he knows others made him too proud, too sure that he knew what was in them.

There is a thoughtful little noise in the back of his throat now, something that is not a growl nor a hum, not bright nor gutteral.  They are well out of the shadow of skyscrapers now, and there are houses upon houses, new growth atop the bones of the old city in some places.

"I think I need to learn how to use a weapon.  I've been thinking.  If Alex had shot at me a few days ago, or if the wolf-man had attacked us, I...well, I was defenseless.  I want to be around for you."

Penny
Brief pause.

Pen does not look at Nicholas but it is deliberate, this not looking. Her fingers are on the wheel. Maybe she adjusts her grip; her breathing is steady, and her eyes are steady, and her heart is no one's business but her own, but it is steadfast at least. Pen is driving quickly, although not as quickly as she might usually.

"I know today you thought you might die," Pen says, simply. And then, "What weapon do you want to learn to use?"

Nick
Perhaps it is strange, that this is only hitting him now: after whatever they faced down together when they first met, after they joined with dozens of others in a small New England town on the coast, after Liz, after he was overseas and saw what he saw and hunted there.  Perhaps it is strange that a lone, altogether random incident in this new place would make him reflect in a way that all of that did not.

But he was alone.

"I was afraid," he says, and there are a few beats that are not steady, that are rabbit-hearted, but they find their stride.  "I don't know what I want to learn to use.  I suppose getting better at using a gun would make the most sense."

He tilts his head back against the headrest as he looks over at her now, his chin tilted up and the sunlight slicing bright across his throat, across the shadow of stubble just beginning to crop up over his skin.  Humor here as he says, "What would you suggest?  You're the weapons master here."

Penny
They're almost home. The car is not a horse; it cannot consciously pick up pace, thinking about water or sweet hay or carrots waiting for it, a cozy stall. Penelope is more than capable of speeding, though; she does, and concentrates on the road, and her eyes are in shadow behind her shades (dusk pink; rose pink; cola), and from Nicholas's vantage he can see the translucent shadow the light casts on her cheekbones, the dark shield of her curling lashes, the gray of her eyes. They are on the road.

"I would suggest - " Pen curls her tongue.

"I would suggest you learn Spheres which can influence this world, this physical world we live in and which can threaten us. Be invisible; be faster than you are now. Make fortune favor you."

She glances at him, once. A swift glance. They are passing Arianna's house. Pen honks, but Ari does not come out if she is home to the sounding of that horn.

"A gun is easy to carry and conceal, and you already have some training and need not get too near. I can teach you some basic self defense as well, if you wish. If you find yourself in close combat before you can put some distance. I am assuming you would put some distance."

Here, they are home.

Nick
Her response is something of a surprise to him, evidenced in how his head angles toward her slightly, in how his eyes seek hers though they don't catch (she is driving.)  He can see how her sunglasses cast a shadow across her skin, how some of the pink cast of the glass (plastic?) washes over her face as though it'd been painted there with watercolor.

"I am concerned about learning to kill with magick," he says, and here his voice is shadow soft, eliciting perhaps.  "Quiet is there and risk enough without having magick be the only thing I can resort to if I need to fight."

They were searching, and now he looks away and back to his hands.  They've pulled up in their driveway and so he looses his seatbelt with a click, shifts his shoulder as it slides back into place behind his head.  "Do you not want me in a fight?"

Penny
His voice is shadow soft; Pen parts her lips and inhales on a word, on a sentence, but Nick is faster. She glances at him, but it is in the moment after he's already looked down at his hands.

"I don't want me in a fight," she says, plainly. "I don't want anybody in a fight."

She kills the engine, and then runs her fingers over the wheel.

She can't leave it. "And who said anything about killing with magick? I thought -- " a pause. "Do you want to learn to use a weapon so you can kill threats, or keep yourself and others safe from them?"

Nick
"I want to learn to use a weapon to keep myself safe," he says, "but using any kind of weapon means being prepared to kill.  Magick is a lot of things but as a weapon there's no safe way to grasp it."

He has freed himself from the constraints of the seatbelt, but as Pen is running her hands over the steering wheel he does not move to open the door just yet.  His fingers come to rest on the door though, on the little ledge near the window controls.

"If things are coming down to a matter of seconds, like what just happened, I might not have time to summon or to...find another way to get away.  That's why it seems to me like a good idea."

Penny
"I understand. I've been -- " His hand is on the door. Pen is willing to have a long conversation in the car, but his body posture is like a reminder. She hadn't buckled her seatbelt so she just opens the door. Pauses. "You should take your shirt off before we get out of the car." Beat. "The Neighbors." Stage whisper. His shirt is bloody, and so are his hands. "I'll hold it."

If Nicholas falls for this ruse (it is no ruse!), she takes his shirt and precedes him to the door, opening it with a flourish. The conversation can continue once they're inside and the door is shut behind them (and the neighbor's curtains have twitched closed again).

"I've been trained in many different martial arts for just that reason. I know that if you wield a weapon you should wield it with intention and be prepared to see that intention through, and all its consequences.

"Love, I want you to be able to defend yourself. It just seems a sudden change, and I am cautious, and -- " Solemn. Grave. Quite serious a soldier, Penelope, with her measuring gaze and her hopeful mouth.

"It's only: look, when I suggest learn a Sphere that can effect the physical world, I mean in lieu of a weapon, I mean because it doesn't have to be a weapon but can bring you to the same conclusion. I'll teach you how to brawl, I'll teach you how to wield a broadsword if you want and," a bit of wickedness, yes, guilelessness, "think you could lift it. I'll help you practice with a gun; I'll help you learn how to quickdraw. Not that I'm much better than you with firearms, by the by."

"I'm just concerned."

Nick
Nicholas does indeed fall for her not-a-ruse; he looks down to his shirt (bloodstained, but not overly, see, it could be overlooked) and undoes the first few buttons before shrugging out of the rest.  He folds it in half and hands it over to Pen, and if his expression is momentarily mournful well: being a mage can be hard on a wardrobe.

He follows Pen to the door, and who knows what the neighbors are saying now because he is walking to the door shirtless in dress pants, his hands tucked away in his pockets.  He steps in after her, sparing a glance over his shoulder toward The Drakes, who are out sharing a beer on their porch chairs.  They lift bottles at him, unfazed by whatever they suppose is going on over at the Mars-Hydes' today.

As soon as they are in the door Nick steps around to the kitchen, where the water will be running; he is washing his hands.  The specks of blood that have dried there come undone, stream down over the stainless steel in pink rivulets.  "What concerns you?"  He glances up at her after he asks the question, his brows furrowed.  "I...it was just really the first time I've been alone when something like that has happened.  At least since I was a Disparate."

Penny
He glances up at her; she did not follow immediately. She splits off for the living room where she divests herself of her bag. She raises a hand to touch her braids, lingering on a pin she finds as if she'd undo it; she doesn't. She works her fingers against her scalp, beneath the pinned coronet, and then sweeps her bangs off to the side. He has looked up and found her absent; she appears in his line of vision just after, leaning against the door frame, her arms folded across her ribs. She listens, but doesn't answer immediately either (it is no longer a moment for immediacy). Her gaze goes distant and aloof.

"What I said, that's all. It seemed sudden; I understand. I only want somebody who has decided to wield a weapon to do it out of - but I know you aren't impulsive and don't have a care for casting a shadow. I just want you to stay clever, too."

"Do you want self defense lessons, along with shooting practice?"

Nick
Pen says she wants him to stay clever, and the quizzical expression he was wearing shifts, and it's a subtle thing but his eyebrows lower, there's a lift in the corners of his eyes.  It's warm, that expression.  "Pen, I have no intention of using a weapon more often just because I know how.  I just want something to rely on when cleverness isn't enough."

He rinses the soap from his hands, shakes them and flicks water droplets off of his fingertips before turning to find the towel hanging off of the side of the oven.  "I would like self defense lessons.  And I will do my best to pretend that I desperately want to get away."  He towels off his hands and his forearms, which are wet almost to the elbow, before leaving it hanging haphazard over its bar.

Penny
"Perhaps when it comes time to test you, I will surprise you. Perhaps I will wake you up for your self defense lessons. Will it not be easy to pretend you desperately want to get away then?" The good humour is real -- but there's still a stitch between her eyebrows. Pen cants her head so her temple is resting against the doorframe. Her folded arms loosen.

Nick
He turns to face her now, leaning back against the countertop, leaning on one hand.  His head is slightly tilted, and this is partially because he is exhausted but it lends something to the look he is giving her, softens it: searching is too harsh a word.  Good humor ripples there from his eyes outward as she teases him.  "I hope when the time comes you'll be merciful."

They both know how he sleeps.

There is still a stitch between her eyebrows, and so a stitch cannot help but appear between his. "What is it, Pen?"

Penny
"I won't be."

A promise.

The redhead lifts her head from the door frame when he questions her, stitch disappearing but only because she has lifted both of her eyebrows. The human face is eloquent - a moving thing. That's what paintings don't capture, although the very good ones suggest it: how in the next moment, that Fury will open her mouth and scream; in the next moment, that lady will fall to her knees and pray. That one will laugh. Cry.

Pen rubs her palm over her head, and says quietly (occulted [occluded]), "I wish I'd been there. Perhaps when I get a grasp on Ars Temporis, I will find a ritual for sensing danger, and so have advance warning. Have you ever done such a thing?"

Nick
Nicholas folds an arm across his stomach, brings one hand to grip the other elbow.  His gaze is for the floor tile just now; the stitch between his eyebrows is still very much present.  "Yes," he says, and here his voice is hesitant, there was a space between her question and his answer.  "It can be done, with care.  Otherwise you'll be seeing danger, always.  And sometimes the portents are so vague that even if you know there's danger, you don't know where it'll come from, you don't know what shape it will take."

He will say something similar to Ari a few days from now, when a vision seizes him while they are out seeking a gift for Pen.  "It turned out all right.  I don't...I know a lot of other people wouldn't have tried to save him."

Penny
"Lysander used to say it wasn't a portent if it wasn't vague. Diana said that was because he was a step up from being illiterate in the reading of portents," Pen says, and she holds out a hand.

Then: she sounds surprised. "Tried to save who; the wolf man?"

Nick
He is smiling at her as she relates what Diana had said; it is not a difficult thing to imagine Diana saying.  "I'm not as advanced as Diana by any means.  I'm sure she knows something I don't."  It's not glib, not necessarily: if he respects anything about Diana it is her knowledge in this.

When she mentions the wolf man he only nods.  "I think for some people the answer would have been to kill him."  Though: Nick comes from the perspective of his Traditionmates, always.  It skews.

Penny
"That might be the right answer." For such an ardent woman, such a fiercely opinionated Hermetic, Pen is remarkably good at being neutral; it is why she has played diplomat before between her house and members of other traditions. One of the reasons. "Why didn't you think so?"

Nick
"He was obviously not in control of himself," Nick says.  "And out of place.  I had thought he was one of the nightfolk - the true ones, not whatever Wolf said he was - and I thought if we got him back to his own kind it might make a difference."  Pen is good at being neutral; it is the kind of neutral that Nick takes no notice of, or perhaps simply does not make especial note of, because it is something he affects so often.

"Does it worry you that you weren't there?"

Penny
"Does it worry me that I wasn't there?" Pen repeats. The words sound different in her mouth than his; she tastes them, alert.

The right hand corner of her mouth lifts. She has not taken her sunglasses off yet; the kitchen is half-lit, half-sepia, a tea-stained glooming, red seeping through: from her perspective. The color of her eyes through the shades is dark from where Nicholas is standing. Were he to come close, that would change; the darkness would clear up, and the iris' look more like only a tint or two darker than the shades themselves.

"What do you think?"

Nick
"Well, I...of course," Nick says, and he has folded the arm he is gripping up along his chest, is pulling at his lower lip with his thumb and forefinger.  "I would have been worried.  Either of us could use Time to have advance warning that way.  We could...figure something out so that one of us could be called if..."

Though of course he does not have that level of skill in Correspondence.  The stitch between his brows is back, and his gaze has come to rest on the floor tiles.

Penny
"If what?"

Nick
"If something were to happen again.  If one of us is alone and there's some sort of danger."  They are a smaller cabal now and the Awakened community of Denver is a different sort of place altogether than the one they left.  "At least until we have a better sense of to what extent we can trust the others here."

Penny
Pen turns so her spine is flush against the doorframe and then sinks into a crouch, there on the threshold. Her profile is as sharp, as delicately drawn, as the edge of a communion wafer. The rose-petal skirt, the skirt of Spring diaphanous layers, puddles around her feet; she rests her forearms on her knees. She glances back through the dining room, with its many bookshelves, toward the living room; there is the soft place beside the point where jaw meets here; there is her jaw; the shell of her ear, a hook of red hair, sharp against her neck; then she lets her head thunk against the doorframe and she sinks the last inch or two to the ground, wrapping her arms around her knees.

"Between you, me, and Ari, we can figure something out. I consecrate my ring to thee. Perhaps something to carry which can be broken in an emergency and, if broken, alert the rest. Even only using consecration as a connection; it would take finesse to work out the message system but it is not I think outside our reach."

Nick
Nicholas is standing over her, and it is dark and there is only a light overhead near the window and so the shadow he casts is a short one tonight.  (They were talking about portents: hopefully this is not one of them.)  It is strange, standing over her this way and looking down at the part of her hair, the slant of her nose: so it is not long before his descent, more rapid than hers, begins as well.  He sits crosslegged with his back against the counter, adjusts so that the knob of one of the drawers is not poking into his shoulderblades.

"I think between the three of us, yes.  If I learn Life as I've been planning it might be helpful in case someone can't speak."  Or is unconscious, or...well, best not to think of all the circumstances under which that could be useful.

His shape has begun to shift within the past year, her Crow; maybe she's noticed.  He's thickened somewhat about the shoulders and chest, has less of the rangy boyishness many young men are given to.  He is looking over at her now and at the way her skirt has pooled around her there on the floor.  "I don't think it will be long before I Seek.  I can do more to help then."

Penny
"Do you mean to Seek soon?"

Her arms are wrapped around her knees; she rests her chin in the shallow valley between them and the sunglasses slip low enough on her nose that she sees him and the kitchen in their true colors (rather than rose petal, amber-light), and she is intent on Nick.

Nick
"I feel ready," he says, which isn't really all that much of an answer.  Still: a long time ago Lysander had asked him whether he would take a student one day, all the while supposing that Chakravanti did a more grim sort of preparation for that time rather than feeling any sort of joy at the prospect, and perhaps he was right; perhaps, too, this is like that.  "Mostly."

He too draws his knees up now, resting his arm across them.  And he says, "I can't fully remember what it was like, before my last one.  Can you?"

Penny
"It wasn't a year ago," Pen says, and her arms tighten around her knees, drawing them closer to her chest. The beat of her heart. "I remember."

The year has been a year of moment. It hasn't been a year since they married. It hasn't been a year since the duel which cost Pen her library. It hasn't been a year since her Seeking. It hasn't been a year since the final argument with Robin Anton Kestrel Melchior. It hasn't been a year since they moved.

"What will you do?"

Nick
"Well, I...the one before that," Nick says, his voice touched with apology for the oversight.  He, too, remembers her last one: he remembers what came before it, because all of that was a year of moment too.  A different year, different sorts of moments, different sorts of changes.  He remembers her last one, and he remembers how exhausted he was, how colossal the task of Seeking himself seemed to him then.

"I don't know what I'll do yet," he says.  "I may need...I may go out physically, like I have before.  The last time I followed a river."

Penny
Pen's gaze sweeps over his shoulders and over his chest. She lets her hands slide down her shins and circle, through her skirt, her ankles. With her right hand she reaches under her skirt and works one slipper off and then the other. The movement is heralded by tiny shifts in the way her skirt puddles; shifts in shadow. She grips her heel and squeezes, letting her knuckles press then against the arch of her foot. Her hand is under her skirt; it is hidden, like her feet. Her gaze travels from Nick's chest to his stomach to his hands. She knows the scant musculature of Nicholas's body better than she knows her own. She cherishes his bones, his clay, the fire hidden within it.

"I think I remember what it was like before the first Seeking. Just like I remember what it was like before I Awakened. I feel there are clear distinctions between one state and the next, for me. I am not wholly changed, but the quality of the air," she smiles, rue, because this is not quite right, "it is not the same on my skin."

"You may need to hold vigil, you mean. Your Avatar likes them, doesn't she? And threshold places? Perhaps you will need to go high."

"If so, how fortunate that we are surrounded by mountains that would scrape the stars from heaven."

Nick
Nicholas has not moved, has acquired an almost meditative stillness now as they recount Seekings, as she suggests threshold places.  His Avatar likes battlefields, she [they?] like old places and forgotten places, and isn't that what all of those are?  "Yes," he says now, thoughtful as he unfolds one of his legs and bends it under him, "maybe I will.  Climb one and see where it takes me."

He lifts his gaze now to regard her, the way light ripples along her skirt.  "Will you teach me soon?  Tomorrow?"

Penny
Her heart twists, suddenly: pain that isn't pain. Pen squeezes her heel harder; presses harder into her arch. Pain and pressure; she curls her toes and then splays them.

"If you ask me to," Pen says; this ardent lick of sentiment in her voice, bright fondness; a gleam moving beneath cool restraint.

Nick
There is no twist of his heart, but what she says makes him smile and here now he rocks up on the balls of his feet, crabwalks the few feet over to her before he lowers himself again.  "I think I just did," he says, and he is resting now at the edge of her skirt, where it lies like fallen petals against the tile.  "Tomorrow, then."

And today he is wearied; she can see it now that he has drawn closer, in how his expression is more telling (in how there is less restraint there: he has less to give) and in the lingering shadow the day has left behind.  "I think I'm going to call in tomorrow.  Do you think your language lessons and weapons practice will keep?"