Picnic season is upon them. This past weekend found Nicholas outside for the greater part of his waking hours and perhaps even for some of his sleeping ones too: he might have drifted outside on a night or two while they sat at a bonfire, or dozed in the grass. It's not as warm as they could have expected in New England (closer to what might be expected from the middle of spring) but it is a welcome reprieve from the late snows that have become the new normal in Denver.
Nick has been taking little sojourns with Ari for the past few weekends. Pen wanted them to spend more time together; perhaps she is pleased. She'll notice him to be more playful and more given to trickery after he spends time with Ari. She brings it out of him.
Yesterday he came home mid-morning with his forearms splattered with river mud and river mud caked in the crevasses of his boots and in reddish brown streaks on the legs of the heavy canvas pants he wears while hiking. There was a pine needle in his hair. He scrubbed specks of rock and soil from beneath his nails.
They were Out In Nature yesterday, though if Pen knows Ari at all she'd know that Nick was the instigator.
This brings them to today: Nick has returned home and the first day after a long weekend is always a gauntlet in miniature. He's returned home and he agreed to make dinner for them today (beans and vegetables and rice and marinated chicken) and so it's after that we find them, with him having drifted outside to water his plants. The water from the hose cuts a bright arc through the air on its way toward tomatoes and hydrangeas and flowers and a rose bush, and looked at a certain way it is prismatic, full of a spectrum of light.
He is not paying any especial attention. His eyes are elsewhere; sometimes even such light displays become so common that they can be taken for granted.
Pen
Nicholas is watering his garden.
Pen is seated on a low step just outside their back door, beside a potted tree which she is taking especial care of and a basil plant. On her lap is a sketch pad, in her hand a piece of charcoal. Her back is straight: good posture (graceful posture) which might strike someone as being on the borderline of languor, good posture because she knows her body, and has trained it, but: languor is a dreamy veil. In her other hand is a silver flask with the cap undone and when she sips from the flask it is certainly with a languid gesture (samite, glittering; the white hand, the white wrist), and perhaps the late light kisses the twist of silver at her wrist and dredges fire from a ruby she is wearing at her thumb and touches (gently) her wedding band.
She is sketching, and she leans down to blow charcoal dust from the page. Gentle she is, but the charcoal still leaves a fleck or two of undesired shadow. The side of her hand has become the polished silver black of hematite, charcoal in the cracks of her skin, ready to spread toward the life line love line fate line but it won't. Her index finger is charcoal too.
"Nicholas," she says. "What contest do you always lose?"
Nicholas
He'd said he might think about making her a labyrinth to walk, and if she were to look she could see its beginnings: scrub that begins here and winds around the side of the house, all the way to the back. It is not what it will be months from now, when he will have learned to speak to it and coax it into desired shape, but it is a beginning.
Pen's voice jolts him out of whatever reverie has settled upon him, and she'll find his eyes on her and strangely pale in this late light, as the reflection off of her wedding band. He sends a few more droplets of water scattering over the rosebush. It settles in among petals the color of dusk light, nestling in like pearls.
He is clearly at a loss for whatever she is seeking an answer to, leading him towards. "You always outrun me," he says, though a note of uncertainty can be detected here.
Pen
Pen shakes her head. Her hair is a messy knot at the top of her head, held in place by a comb. The comb does not glint; it is dark, but there's a ruby in it too; something as bright as Mars, were Mars to go molten; were Mars to transcribe a line of fire across the Heavens.
"No. You've outrun me before." She turns her head toward the basil plant, leaning into it: see, it gives her a mask. Basil at her cheeks, basil curling around her jaw, just over her eyebrow; a fragrant and leafy half mask. "Using base guile, but still; you have done it." She lifts the flask in mock salute. "What contest do you always lose?"
Nicholas
Base guile, is the accusation, and this accusation makes him smile as he slices a path toward a patch of flowers. They're thirsty today, the plants; they haven't had the rain that has scattered across the far midwest and the east coast. It sometimes takes him some time to realize that while it's not the desert this is still indeed a dryer climate than the one they left.
"Getting up in the morning, if that were a contest," he says. "But it's not. I..." And here, his brow furrows. What contest does he always lose at? "A contest of decision making and reflex," he says. "Whatever form that takes."
Pen
"Must you make quick decisions and have agile reflexes when you and Arianna are adventuring out in the great wilds?"
Pen plucks a basil leaf from the plant and sets it deliberately on her tongue (and as she does, she looks and likes; her eyes are gray as ash, her heart is fire), then takes another sip of her flask, so whatever drink is within it is flavored by the sharp green.
Nicholas
[How sly are we today.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Pen
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (2, 2, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Nicholas
"Sometimes," he says, and he sounds just nonchalant enough, just casual enough, that she might think that he is not giving any especial weight to her question. He did tell her that he and Ari were going out; he has not tried to hide this from her. Nor did he try to hide the mud stains.
The hose arcs over toward one of the hydrangeas opposite her, some of the droplets splattering dangerously close to her foot. Nick seems focused on what he is doing, on watering the flowers without watering Pen along with them. "You know Ari. She doesn't like to be outdoors much. We don't really do many things that would require quick decision making."
Pen
"Would you like a drink?" Pen asks, generous. She shifts (fastidiously) closer to the basil plant and tree, away from the hydrangeas and the spray of water, and holds out the flask at the same time. The charcoal she lets roll down the page, toward her waist; when she reaches up to push a wave of hair away from the plant, to unthread it, she leaves a shadow on her cheekbone.
"What do you do, if nothing that requires quick decision making? I would have thought you'd whett your wits against one another."
Nicholas
A drink, she says, and that draws his eyes back to her. He flicks the hammer back on the nozzle of the hose, almost reflexively, and lets his arm hang at his side as he crosses a few feet to her. There is a glance cast toward her drawing, whatever she has rendered upon the blank page, and his gaze lingers fond over the smudge of charcoal she has left on her cheek.
He pauses with one foot braced on the step, hand held out for the flask. "We went to look for river rocks," he says. "When we were making the talismans, she was trying to find materials that would work for me. We've been sharing our understanding of magick more."
Reflexes might be a thing he doubts but as the flask finds his hand, his lips find a spot on her cheekbone near the charcoal smudge quickly enough, and surely enough. Sometimes practice is all that matters. He straightens and takes a swallow from the flask.
Pen
[How's the sketch coming along? We're gonna do it Vampire Seduction style, a two-roll thing. Perc + Expression.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Pen
[Dex + Art + 3 die.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Pen
The sketch is rough and also very good; an atmospheric convergence of shadow, come into the shape of a (hallowed; hallowing) man with his back turned; it is poignant, see, a line of longing.
"I remember the talismans, but that was long ago," Pen says, follow it with a quick flash of a smile; shining from shook foil, light from a sword; this dark and side-long glance, coy; she was not going to give up the flask as easily as all that. Contest; she holds it high and out of his reach. Not far out of his reach: he isn't sitting; easy to take it anyway, and if he does not try hard for it she'll give it up anyway, after playing.
"Has sharing your understanding of magick more happened mostly out of doors?" Her curiosity is not quite idle, not quite more than idle; it is a borderland curiosity.
Nicholas
He reaches for the flask when she holds it up out of his reach, though this is another contest that he will likely lose despite the fact that she is sitting and he is not. Her reflexes are indeed better than his, and he is careful at the moment of the hose in his hand and the fact that the nozzle is still dripping water and that the hose itself is damp along its length and covered in specks of mulch and dirt.
"Only recently," he says, swinging his hand around as he tries to anticipate where she'll bring the flask next, though eventually he will seize hold. "It was mostly just talking, for a while. But recently she asked me more about the rocks I was using and how I selected them, so I wanted to show her." A beat. "We see things like that very differently so I think it was a struggle for her. But she tried to put it aside. Ari's a good friend."
Pen
After he truly has the flask, Pen strips another leaf from the basil plant and holds that out to Nicholas as well: Naiad; rose-haired, pomegranate-crowned. There it is in the palm of her hand; when and if he reaches for it she'll close her fist and put the leaf on her lips: c'mere.
But before that, she'll say, quite simply, "She is as fierce as daybreak after the darkest, and as true as the North star; truer. The North star makes rookie sailors feel powerful over the sea. What else have you been talking about? Are you working on any new project together?"
Nicholas
[Why no.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
Pen
[0_<]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Nicholas
He had not glanced in her direction when she drank after placing the basil leaf in her mouth earlier, and so the look he gives her at first is a little quizzical, a little amused, and quite fond. Nevertheless he leans in and down as his hand rests on top of hers, around the flask, and he draws in a breath when he kisses her and the scent of the herb fills his lungs with its greenness.
And before that he says, "She has a gift she's making for Rob, and she asked me to help her with tracking down a few of the materials for it." And if there is some shiftiness here it can perhaps be forgiven; he knows her feelings on their erstwhile cabalmate, and knows them well. "So we just did that. We've been trying to Work more together to get a better sense of how to Work together when it matters."
Pen
Wait. No. A gift for Rob? No kiss for Nicholas, or at least: quite a brief one; accompanied by a drawing away. She tangles Nicholas's ankles with her own; to keep him still, probably, knowing how coordinated he is. Licks her lips. "What kind of gift?"
Nicholas
He is indeed not quite coordinated enough to draw away from her while his ankles are tangled; at least, he is not coordinated enough to do it and avoid spraying her with the hose at the same time. His choice of lie may have been a poor one though he had thought to choose one where she might not ask questions; he sees that now.
He waves a hand. "I'm not completely sure. It was Ari's idea. Something like she made for both of us before we came out here, I think."
Pen
Pen looks at Nicholas, and steady is her wide gaze, and gray are her open eyes, dark her lashes, dark the smudge of charcoal on her cheek; that eye seems darker, too, albeit by such an infinitesimal tint. Eyes the color of a silver cup, unearthed from a barrow; treasure. She licked her lips because basil and gin and Nicholas; they stay parted now, in readiness, and she rests her knee against Nicholas's calf.
He's not sure. Ari's idea. Something like she made. He thinks.
There is just this: this sort of watchful, up-through-the-lashes, waiting look; an air of expectancy.
Nicholas
There is a choice here: if he were to cave, it will ruin whatever potential surprise he and Ari may have in mind for her. Her expression is so earnest, so expectant, that he almost cannot make eye contact with her through her lashes and keep up the lie, even if it's a lie of the kindest and most well-meaning sort. He almost cannot.
"I really don't know," he says. "I helped Ari find some metal and rock for it, that's all. Since we invited Thane out and he didn't come. Do you, ah, do you want to be included?" It now occurs to him that sending Rob a gift would be a thoughtful thing to do anyway. Wouldn't it.
Pen
[Look at me, I'm lying!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[Oh Pen.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]
Pen
Pen begins to shape a word.
But Nicholas, who is sharp-eyed, who is astute, who reads Pen like his own heart, perhaps better than, Nicholas can see her change split-second what she was going to say from one thing (dismissive [final (No)]) to another (temper [temper]).
"Yes," she says, she lies. She half-lies. "I would love to make something out of metal and rock for Rob," resist finishing the line resist she cannot resist so, "to sit on," she says, sweet as an evening air, sweet as the lap of waves against shore.
Nicholas, because he is so perceptive, can perhaps read (intuit [feel: it is a sensitivity, isn't it? Another sense, this kind of connection to another's feelings, this hyper-awareness) in the loft of Pen's chin the cant of her eyebrow the bracing of one hand against the step the bare glance toward the flask (he has it now, doesn't he) that Pen: feels a tiny bit betrayed by Ari and Nicholas. Treachery comes in attractive shapes: every story knows that. Betrayed, but nothing she wants to acknowledge or talk about: it will probably dilute before the next moment is even out.
Not betrayed. Resolution to distance.
Nicholas
Pen's heart is laid bare before him, though: he has to know her well to intuit these things, doesn't he? Nicholas understands Pen in a way that he does not understand himself; he cannot help the swell of tenderness that billows up within him, a thing he would never direct toward his own emotions and perhaps that is part of the root of understanding, after all. He does not hand back the flask, just yet.
There is a sweep of dark eyelashes over his cheekbones as his eyes lower, as he looks down at the steps in preparation to sit beside her, which he does in short order. "Pen, what is it Rob said that you're having such a hard time forgiving? You never told me."
The hose is still in hand; after a moment he leans sideways and down to set it next to his foot on the step.
Pen
"That lies between Robin and myself; I wouldn't have you know and be angry at him, or not angry at him," and here: she is honest; she does not want to come between Nicholas and a friendship; she does not want Nicholas to fail to be as righteously indignant as she is; she wants to curl against his side and rest her face against his neck; she wants his hands on her. She wants not to talk about Robin; she wouldn't manipulate him, but she also wouldn't have Nicholas feel left out. "What do you and Ari still need to do for this gift?"
Nicholas
His gaze lingers, and that is all; Nicholas is not always opaque to Pen but he is tonight. There are many times when he will reach inside himself for the seed of some emotion and project it forward, because all lies have some element of truth after all. Today, speaking of their shattered cabal and distant friendships, he does not have the energy for it. And so: he is smoked glass, he is a river whose currents run deep however slowly.
"We're planning to take a day trip out to the mountains soon," he says. "But I think - I'm hoping - that will be the last of what we'll need to do." There is a flicker of hope in his voice too; he enjoys the giving of gifts, but he does not enjoy the uncertainty inherent in obtaining them. She knows that about him.
Pen
"But what do you need from the mountains?" Pen says, neutrally, attempting to engage without thinking about who the gift is for: ugh, Rob.
She likes it when Nicholas tells her stories, see.
Nicholas
Remember how the most convincing lies contain an element of truth? That's important: it's important for it to be convincing, and it's also important to not get trapped in multiple versions of the present, because at the root isn't that just what a lie is? Doesn't it blur the bounds of reality in the same way?
He still hesitates. Ultimately, though: "Well, a few of the things we found we were able to trace back to something...it looks like a very old cabin, something overlooking a ruin, it's hard to be sure. We had to do a ritual to source it. So we're going to go and investigate that place, and I might do some spirit work and Ari is going to try to find the rest of what she needs."
Pen
Pen likes it when Nicholas tells her stories. Pen is also used to Nick's narrative style, such as it is. So: she reaches to reclaim the flask, and asks, "Do you mean the rocks came from the ruin? What made you choose those rocks, of all the rocks in these mountains; are they resonant?" "
Nicholas
Such as it is. "They might have come from the ruin. All we know just now is that they're tied to it in some way. Sometimes that's all that Time can tell you. Something that was significant, but you have no way of knowing how it all fits together until you know more." He allows the flask back into her hand. His own, now empty, rests over his knee. That is only for a fraction of a second, half a heartbeat, before it shifts off his knee and onto the wooden panels so that he can lean on it, closer to her.
"Ari felt drawn to them, so that's why we picked them up. We think we'll know more once we're there."
Pen
Pen takes a rather deep drink.
"More about why she was drawn to them?"
She tips her head back, into the greenery; her eyebrows are drawn together, contemplative. Then, because she is dutiful, and holds herself to her own sense of fair play, she says, "If you let me handle one of the rocks or pieces of metal, I can look at the - cabin? - myself and make certain all is well, or bring back more rocks for you two without need for tromping through the wilds and the ruins. Or... what do you think you're going to find there?"
Nicholas
"Well...more about what drew her, I suppose." If he has noted the deep draught Nick does not comment upon it; too he intuited that she did not want to talk about Robin Anton, not today. But it would not be a far cry to assume that someday they will, or someday he will ask about it, because Nicholas wants them all together again. He wants it the way he wants his father to call, and call again not long after; he wants it the way he wants his mother to shake off the dust that settled in her solitude and rejoin the living.
Those things could happen, in one of the futures that orbit on the gyroscope. They probably won't.
"We're not sure what we're going to find, yet," he says. "We did scry ahead last weekend to see whether there was any danger. It would be interesting to do spirit work out there. I don't mind going."
Pen
"Is there any danger?"
Pen wants to know, because he did not say whether there was or not. She removes the sketch pad from her lap and sets it on the ground, not near the hose, close to a spray of grass and a dandelion, which nods in quiet and ceremonious acknowledgment. She chooses to lean on Nicholas's lap, against the curve of his ribs, and from that position find his left hand with the fingers of hers: trace his fingers, quietly, from nail to knuckle, then follow the map of sinew and vein and then back again.
Nicholas
His hesitation is palpable; this, too, was a reason to consider disclosure even if they are both trying to surprise her. There is danger, there could be danger, and they would doubtlessly involve her under any other circumstances. Pen when furious is a vision, and it's the sort of vision that might sour whatever pleasant surprise could emerge assuming they manage to find any kind of library to speak of. "There might be. There always is, with things like this."
A beat. "You could come out there with us. Or be ready from afar in case there's trouble, if you don't want to come out."
Pen
"I'm always ready from afar," Pen says, and it is not quite true, but it is something she strives to make true; Pen is always readying, readied; it is only being human betrays her intentions, because one cannot be perfect until one has been perfected. "But so too can you and Ari be, you know. Now that you are more adept at using Correspondence," and listen, she even uses the low parlance as casually as any other Mage who never knew the Latinate for the Spheres, "you should be able to look and investigate from the - relative - safety of a circle. A threshold, far from the ground the danger might be lurking, depending on the kind of danger."
Nicholas
"We've done that already," Nick says, and if he has sensed that she wanted him to touch her not long ago now he finally does, scooting closer to her on the porch and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. He lets it settle companionably, letting her choose whether or not to move in against his side. There is a glance down and to the side at her, and his eyes are shadowed if in part by the sweep of his eyelashes, but they linger on her, on how her lips shape the word Correspondence so easily, without pretension.
"We may again, before we go. I think it'll be all right." A beat. "Besides, I think it's good for me and Ari to work together more on our own, a little. Have you and her done that very much?"
Pen
[I hide things! :D]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Nicholas
[Oh Pen. You do not. You do not hide things.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
Pen
"Yes. We've known one another almost since the beginning of my apprenticeship with the Order, and we've been in two cabals -- three now, I suppose." There is a pause, after that, as if the number has just struck her about the heart; she reaches up to pull on her earlobe, the earring there (just a pearl, black; that is to say, lustrous in the way that hematite is, but softer and more moon dipped), plays with it. "So we have worked together often enough on problems. I strive to Work with everybody I'm caballed with, even if there are natural partnerships, roles one slips into." Here's a sudden upswell of fondness; it manifests as a nudge-nudge, wink-wink, sans wink-wink, just the nudge-nudge oh, oh, oh what happened, now it is a lean, such tragedy, such unavoidable inevitability.
All of this is true: fondness, the struck moment of realization, of wondering and turning inward for that wonder; but also: Pen, she thinks he is changing the subject, thinks he is being blithe, has simply quietly and privately resolved to scry from a distance herself if necessary since the two people she loves most are determined to physically go charging in to -- weirdness. Who knows. She doesn't. They'll never know. Nascent plottings.
Nicholas
"I wish I had worked with Rob more individually, and," Nick says, and this is thoughtful: wistful, though, too, and in the abrupt way his sentence aborts perhaps Pen can intuit what he was about to say. (Liz, see, he and she were fond of each other but never Worked together that often, not really.) He doesn't say it; it will not change his regrets or take them away.
As she leans into him he glances down at her again. "Are you going to look after us anyway?" It's teasing, not accusatory, though it does make Nick wonder if there was a better way he could have gone about hiding a possible present.
Hindsight.
Pen
"And Liz," Pen says, and she does not say anything to his question, but ceases playing with her earring and stretches one leg out, hooking at the hose with her pointed toes. "Rob is boring to work with," and she sounds wistful, perhaps, all unknowing. Then: "Do you wish that I, or Ari, knew Ars Spiritus?"
Nicholas
And Liz, and Nick simply nods once, the sort of slow downward slant of his chin that could be mistaken for something other than what it is. He watches as her toes curl around the hose, both because he wants something to focus his eyes on and because he is suspicious.
That is until her question, which draws his eyes back to her face. "Sometimes," he says. "But only because it would be nice to share it with you."
Pen
"Why?" Pen wants to know; the end of the hose: water, trickles; a sudden gold stream. Dusk-light is going diffuse; it is going soft and milky; and there we are, we've got it. The hose is behind her heel now, within reach, but Pen has no nefarious designs: at least, none that are conscious.
Nicholas
His feet slide sideways on the step, but they can't go very far see because she is still leaned against him, he still has her hemmed in against his side and his hips don't move even if his feet and knees suggest that they should. They have a stronger desire to stay dry than the rest of him, evidently. "Because it's like another world and I'd like to be able to be with someone when I start to explore it more."
Pen
[Let's do a WP check...]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Pen
[Er, ahem. +5 more.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Pen
Nick's body language causes Pen to take notice and, having taken notice, to: consider. The flask she brings to her lips again. A drop of gin clings to them when she sets the flask down once more, emptier than it was, and she licks her lower lip.
But witness how reserved she is, and how restrained. How temptation comes for her, but she does not give into it. She stays above the fray, although she scoots closer (with intention) and slides a leg over one of his thighs and wants between his knees and to keep him so.
"Oh so it would be nice for you, not for me or Ari." She is teasing him, of course; she leans closer, gray eyes bright. "I thought you might talk about what a great unmapped thing it is; why spirit is better than flesh. Won't you? With Correspondence, you can always be with someone."
Nicholas
"It is a great unmapped thing," he says, and the grey of her eyes is a magnetic thing isn't it, the way any polished gleam will tug at the soul, the way a mirror or lake surface traps a reflection. He traps her thigh in his palm as her leg slides between his knees, and then she too is trapped. "With places at the far reaches where there are things that haven't been thought of or created yet, and things that we've all forgotten. Correspondence won't help you see it, or feel how it is to be there."
One of his feet, the one that was the more reluctant to wander, snakes out and traps her own: he hadn't missed that she was going for the hose, hadn't missed the temptation even if she resisted it. Who knows how long her resolve will last.
Across the street, Paul Irving glances out at the two of them, sighs, and reaches up and lets his blinds fall, the way a building will collapse after demolition. He and his wife are on again off again on again, and just now they are off again, provoked by a suggestion that they might want to rethink the Yard Sign War of 2016.
Pen
Pen is quite resolved (resolute). He doesn't know. He can't know just how absolute she is tempered. So Nicholas has caught her and Pen (caught [longing]) lets her gaze sink and when it rises again it's armed with the flash of a smile, light thrown (largesse) from the point of a blade. "But it will help you not be alone. You can always find me and have me; no matter where you are, or I. Whether you are somewhere as yet unimagined by mortal minds, or you are in the bathroom of a grocery store. Nicholas, what do you think it will feel like? How will it feel different than being here?"
Nicholas
"Do you think you would ever like to learn?" he asks, and his head dips toward hers as her eyes find his once more, until his forehead is against her own, and they are leaned into and against each other. He cannot look away and so when she asks him those questions his gaze goes diffuse, falls inward.
"I'm not sure how it will feel," he says. "More surreal, maybe. I hope it's like...everything is new and I'm seeing it for the first time. It'll feel like that time on the shore or in the car after I took you to the chantry, or when we snuck into that little room at Lysander's place, or like when Jonas and Delilah held me under water. Or like when I found the Old Road."
Pen
"Is that what you want? Newness?" Pen; she covers Nick's hand with her own, guides it traipse trip up her thigh: let's leave that there. "Tell me about one of those times; I don't have a care for which one. Any. Either."
Nicholas
Let's leave that there: but know that Paul Irving would be more embittered right now than he is scandalized, as his neighbors to the south and east would be. Nick, at least, has a modicum of decorum. Only just. "I want wonder," Nick says, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, "and sometimes new things bring that. Plenty of familiar ones too, though."
She asks him to tell her a story, and he laughs once, letting his head fall to the side. "Maybe I should get you to tell me one. You're a much better storyteller than I am."
Pen
"Artful, Dodger, but come on -- tell me. Do not be saturnine," Pen says, her voice kept an intimate secret on par with what the underside of a lake knows about the dark and the dark knows about the stars: which is to say, low and confiding and teasing. "Come on."
Coax, coax.
Nicholas
She coaxes him, chides him, coaxes twice: and the laugh is there in the fine webbing that appears around his eyes, even if she is a much better storyteller than he is. Perhaps he would have told her about the time in the car, but he does not want to share this day and hour with her brother's ghost; he does not want to share it with the worlds beyond the Veil. Nicholas is guarded of his time today.
"Well, you remember how we went to Lysander's on Christmas Day," he says, and of course she does. "And how I'd just gone off to speak with him on my own, while you were left to the intellectual Maenads in his solar, and all three of us were walking back to the rest of the party. I was nervous because they were all waiting for us in there. I was afraid of Diana." A quirk of his mouth here: Nick may still be a little afraid of Diana, because Diana is terrifying.
"Remember how Lysander told us to check out that door off to the side, the one that looked kind of like a fairy door? And I was afraid because he had just shown me the Green Door, and then you laughed and you led me back anyway. We both went back through the door, and away from the party for a little while."
His eyes have gone soft and unfocused again: it's a little like how he looked back in the room, when he allowed himself to relax enough, when they had gotten a moment's reprieve from the den of Hermetics. "Remember how we shut the door behind us and the lights came on, and the painted clockwork city and the little figures? Then one of them held out a sprig of mistletoe, and you kissed me and I didn't want to leave. You left a lipstick print on my collar, remember that?"
He's returned to the present moment, and his eyes are for her once again, or at least who she is in the here and now. The crow's feet are gone, his skin is smooth once more and it could look solemn, almost. "It made me like Lysander. I was embarrassed that I'd been suspicious of him."
Pen
She watches Nick's face and what talking about the little clockwork room does to it and her mouth echoes his when it quirks, but otherwise she just listens as if she is rapt. After all, she is: rapt and interested and a bit arch.
"It was wise to be suspicious of him." Pen slides her fingers along his shirt collar, and then trails the back of her knuckles along his throat and his lower jaw. Her tone of voice is burnished, steady for all there is a quality of quickening: deliberately steady. "And it is very wise to be suspicious of doors."
"Tell me something about wanting wonder."
Nicholas
She knows by now how his stubble feels when her skin catches against it: he rarely goes without shaving and so it is always just a few little rasps there on his throat and jaw, like a cat's tongue. He'd held her eyes, and now he laughs because maybe he should have known that a second tell mewas coming; maybe he did know.
He does not answer right away; there is a glance over his shoulder at the door because he'd like Pen nearer to him, he'd like her on top of him or lying against him and they are outside. (Maybe it's just that he's caught that the blinds across the street have lifted, that Paul Irving's mustache has appeared once more in the window, that the noise his wife created when she set a glass down next to him speaks louder than her words do.
"That couple is out there eye fucking on the porch again," Paul grumbles, and Amy, his wife, unfolds her arms long enough to glance out.
Finally she sighs. "It's just the social media generation, Paul. Everything's on display." They both sigh together, and the blinds cascade down, and for a moment there is peace.)
Nick's hand leaves her thigh long enough to enfold hers; he is looking at her again, tempted away from the door for a moment. "Will you tell me a story after?"
Pen
Pen has a lack of shame in public, or a lack of restraint when her ardor is sparked, that Nicholas is - by now - well familiar with. She watches his face when he glances at the door, she scoots nearer (how? With her leg caught between his knees, and feet tangling hers?) when his hand leaves her thigh to cover her hand. She opens her mouth to say - yes, maybe. But then mischief surfaces, and she rests her chin on the edge of Nicholas's shoulder, pinches his chin and says, "Will you make that a condition? Because if you will, I will. But we could also play a game for it. I mean, if you succeed at a challenge, then I'll tell you any story you please. But I understand if you want the easier tit-for-tat."
Nicholas
He cannot help but respond to the glint of mischief there; it rouses the same in him, calls it out of him (it's never very far.) "I suppose I can take you up on a challenge," he says, and there is a lift there at the corner of his mouth. "I'd ask you if you mean for it to be a fair challenge, but I trust you." Base guile is more Nick's sort of trickery, anyway: Pen herself has said as much.
"So what are your terms, Miss Mercury?"
Pen
"Get me inside," she says, without any guile at all. Playful inflection: "And that's Ms. Mercury, or Ms. Mars, or Mrs. Hyde, Mister Hyde."
(In the Kidd household, this conversation happens.
"Marianne, those liberal wack jobs are spying on those kids."
"What?"
"I saw that hippy's mustache."
"He's not a hippy, Bobby. If anything the kids are hippies. Did you know they're thinking about keeping bees?"
"Look! Their blinds!"
"What are the kids doing?"
"They're... Hmm.")
Nicholas
"We do have some clotted cream still," he says, with a glance toward the door. Best to try the easy tactics first, right? Path of least resistance. "If you come in with me I'll let you have the last of it. I'll add honey and some of the blueberries left from yesterday."
Pen
"Hmm," Pen says, letting her chin on Nick's shoulder grow heavier and more pointed. "That sounds like a lovely snack, for later."
Nicholas
[This is going to be really embarrassing.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Nicholas
Pen's chin grows heavier and more pointed, and Nick meets her eyes again, levels this look at her that is almost humorous in how deadpan it is, how plainly it comes across that he knows what sort of challenge is being hinted at. It's true: Nick is ill suited to the terms that have been given. "This isn't a fair challenge at all," he says.
And half a beat later he sucks in a breath, and she can feel his muscles bunch under her hands just before he surges up and to his feet and her with it, over his shoulder. He's moving very quickly; he has to.
He's also holding his breath. Maybe it helps keep him from laughing, or maybe he just has no idea how to lift something heavy.
Pen
This pleased-with-herself curl of a grin: she knows it isn't fair. Doesn't she know Nick's strengths and weaknesses as well, if not better, than she knows her own? And her chin lifts from his shoulder so she can nuzzle the side of his neck, like so, and then: his muscles bunch and she is amused, although she is preparing herself for a rather nasty fall. They're on steps, after all. But no: his shoulder catches her in the ovaries and that hurts like a nail driven into flesh for one shrill moment and then there's general awkwardness of position but she does laugh. "Are you holding your breath? What if I...?"
And she tickles her hand over his ribs, over his side. Maybe over his back. Tickle, tickle, a valiant try but winning contests is for Hermetics better luck next time tickle tickle.
Nicholas
[Nooooo]
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (2, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Nicholas
Pen was right to prepare herself for a nasty fall: she has seen Nick outside while gardening struggle to lift bags of topsoil, drag them across the dirt and roll them to where they belong with much effort rather than lift them upright. She's seen him try to lift boxes when they were moving. She's arm wrestled with him.
Her fingers find a particularly sensitive place just behind his armpit, the place where it connects with his back, and he isn't holding his breath anymore; she can hear him suck in a deep breath and can hear his jaw click shut again to stifle whatever undignified noise might have come out. He bulls on ahead. He almost drops her then; she can feel herself sliding down his chest and his shoulderblade probably finds her ovaries again and one of her feet touches the floor, and he pushes onward.
"Just...just hold still so I can - "
Pen
Ow! Her breath hisses; she rather forlornly, wide-eyed, notes her flask still on the top step and she reaches for it not that that'll do anything unless she also Wills the flask to come to her hand. She doesn't; she must save her casting for the inevitable drop. "Just hold still so you can...?" Pen says, obligingly still: for now. Still is not helpful; it would be more helpful, perhaps, if she were to coach him into carrying her in a way more easy to manage: legs around his waist, draped over his shoulder, or piggy back: that usually works. The fireman's lift: one can carry beyond one's strength using the fireman's lift, at least for short periods of time. She is not helpful. The obliging stillness is a lie.
Nicholas
[Inside? Yes? +1, dead weight!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (3, 4) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Nicholas
By the time he gets her inside he is likely to be exhausted, spent, and probably quite pliable; it's lucky Pen isn't the guileful type after all. Mostly not. Her breath hisses out of her and his head turns and he presses a kiss into her side, an apology both for the indignity and for ramming her in the stomach.
They wiggle on ahead, they persist, and she still has a foot dragging on the floor. But they have made it past the threshold to the door! Nick manages to open it one-handed, to stumble into the foyer, and once they are both fully inside he lets her drop the rest of the way to the ground. His arms are still around her, and now he laughs and rests his head on her shoulder. "Okay. We're inside."
Pen
"Ladies and gentlemen, the magnificent Nicholas Augusto Hyde," Pen says, wry, but there's laughter caught up behind the wryness; a vibrant and shimmering net, restrained, controlled: she rubs her side, and is perhaps a touch breathless. "I have never felt so much in common with a bag of fertilizer before," and here, flash of another grin. Pen: having settled, she reaches out for Nick's shirt, to pull him flush against her. "So tell me something about wanting wonder, then I'll tell you any story you please. Any."
Nicholas
He is pulling in air as though he were just drowning moments ago, as though he'd surfaced again after swimming through frozen waters trapped beneath ice, and no wonder: he wasn't breathing properly. His hand wanders up and finds his chest, smooths over his breastbone, and there is a weak huff or two of laughter as she teases him. He slumps against her, looping his arms around her waist.
"Let's sit down first."
Pen
He slumps. He is heavy; she is not so strong, but the way he drags air into his lungs and the way he gives in to gravity causes her to laugh again: she circles his shoulders with her arms, stroking the back of his head lightly indeed with her fingers, and she says, "I am very tempted right now to wake you up earlier than I already do, so we can do lifts together, Nicholai, Nicholay," and she walks him back toward: maybe the door; maybe a low bench; some convenient table or chest or counter or ledge to lean against or perch upon. "Do you want me to bring you water?"
Nicholas
Lifts. Lifts early in the morning. The groan he makes implies that Pen has suggested a new and unique sort of torture, that she is standing in front of him and threatening him with it. "I don't need to lift. I got you inside, didn't I?"
She walks him back toward a bench in the foyer and he slumps back down into this instead, and he gently takes her hand so that he can tug her down with him: into his lap since his legs evidently haven't suffered enough in the past five minutes. "I don't need water," he says. He draws in another breath, exhales.
"I've always wanted wonder," he says. A beat as he tilts his head, considers a story to tell.
"You know I was a difficult kid," he says, because she has heard, he and his sisters have told her stories about his adolescence and the other information he has given has perhaps provided context. "I was afraid of a lot of things. I think I was...I must have been maybe nine or ten, and Anna and April and I all went out to stay at our grandmother's for a week. She lived all the way out, just...hours out on the mesa. She had her own garden and was really into crystals and things like that."
There's a pull at the corner of his mouth, and he is not looking at Pen; his attention has drifted off somewhere else. She knows how these storytellings go. "None of the three of us had ever been away from the city before at night. And it was...it was so dark. We'd never been anywhere that dark before. Anna kept telling April and I about cougars and chupacabras and zombies and any horrible thing she could think of. She wanted to go out and look for them."
Perhaps it won't surprise Pen, having met his sister on multiple occasions. "So we waited until our grandmother fell asleep and then we went out sometime after it had cooled down and had gotten so dark we wouldn't have been able to see our hands in front of our faces. April was smart enough to bring a flashlight."
Nick's arms encircle her again, linking at the wrist; his breathing has finally regained some semblance of normalcy. "The stars were so bright out there though. You could see them and how they were...it was like there were layers and layers of them. More than I've ever seen anywhere else. We felt like we were the only people in the world, or like we'd gone to another planet alone. But I think all three of us felt...connected, like we were part of it. I forgot to be afraid."
A beat. "Then we heard a coyote and all three of us fell and tripped each other running back to the house. They made me explain why the flashlight was broken."
Pen
Pen is a responsive audience. Pen, who was drawn down easily (too easily, perhaps) into Nicholas's lap, who wants only to trace the shape of let's say Nicholas's knee as he tells her something about wonder.
Anna wanted to go out to look for these mythical monsters. Pen's hand leaves Nick's knee; finds and traces the shape of his arm instead, fingers wrist-bound to forearm to elbow to bicep to shoulder to no to over his heart instead so she can feel his voice rumbling through her fingers can listen to the pulse of his heartbeat.
"Did you tell the truth?"
"What'd she want to do if you found any of them?" Pen wants to know. Anna's quest into the great dark.
Nicholas
"Anna never thinks that far ahead," Nick says, and note how a smile can be both rueful and fond at the same time, note how Nick can be exasperated with his sister's impulsive nature even as he loves her for it. "She just wanted to find them. We both got drawn in." A beat, and then he adds, wry, "I don't think we were more than a few hundred feet from the house."
She can feel the vibration of his voice up through his chest, up through his throat; his heartbeat is still quicker than normal, though that could be less a consequence of carrying Pen inside so much as simply having her so near. "As for the flashlight, I tried to lie at first and I think I...made up some story about how I got up in the middle of the night to water her plants in the garden, but she saw right through me. It was too virtuous." His eyes lift and find hers again, and laughter has appeared once more at their corners. "So eventually she got the truth out of me."
Pen
"Tsk, Crow," Pen says. "Now what story do you want from me?"
Nicholas
Nick makes a thoughtful hmm in his throat (she can feel it rumble beneath her palm) as he leans his head back against the wall to regard her: the sword light of her eyes, the burnished waves of her hair. "Tell me a story about you and Rob and Thane and Liz, before I came along. Tell me about an adventure all of you had together."
Pen
"It was a dark time," Pen deadpans. "A time of despair and fruitlessness, a time only leavened by what we were foretold: that a man would blow into town and, being tall dark and handsome, vanquish our despair, give us hope of daybreak again - oh he would be better than a grail song, we were told. Before him - " stge whisper " - you - " regular voice " - we wandered around not knowing what direction was East or what direction was West, even staring at a compass! Maps dissolved before us. And you want me to speak of that time, my Nicholas? Are you sure?" A pause; and then, "Give me a theme. So I can choose one story." The theme will have to wait for a moment: she has wound her fingers through the curls at his nape and leaned forward to open his mouth with her own: kiss him deep and drink him deeper.
Nicholas
It's rare these days that Pen's teasing, or her sincerity, can catch him off guard; still, from time to time she does elicit a familiar reaction or two: see here how he lets out a huff of laughter, how his eyes roll away, amused and embarrassed all at once. "Well," he says, manages really and see how solemn he is, how dignified, "if recalling those dark times will help you better appreciate today's dawn, I think it's my responsibility to ask you to tell me."
But the theme has to wait. He is pulling her down and flush against him, his arms anchoring her there, and he could kiss her until this age turns into the next, until the great Masters unravel the threads of the universe that would let them turn it back again. Maybe that's exactly what happens, because he loses himself and he blinks and he does not know what has happened in the world around him between when she leaned forward and now. She does this to him.
He looks back up at her then, runs his fingertips over her spine in a way that is slow and contemplative of each dip and curve. "Tell me about when you all went chasing after a mystery."
Pen
Penelope gives Nicholas a clear-eyed and luminous look: as if she'd rather worship/celebrate the flesh than tell a story about a mystery. As if she'd rather take him to bed (now and here), and see - it is a luminous because the half-light the promissory note in her eyes is heightened by the dark sweep of her lashes the slant of dusk-light gold and Tarot-card gilt falling through the window in diamonds where one of those overlays to make glass look stained has been placed.
"Once upon a time Robin Anton and Lizzy Courtright - " Pen sighs, perhaps without knowing she does so. She sighs because she is staying on task and she sighs for the irony in Liz's name: she didn't court right at all. " - went together to a shelter, and one of Liz's regulars, a man with faith in his heart and a bit of a crush, a man on his last legs - he took them both aside - Rob, he was a relaxing figure, to guys like that - and showed them some of his genealogy project. The man was building a tree, not for himself, but for his dead friend. And it wasn't for the dead friend's family, but for the people who owned a chitarra battente. Do you know what a chitarra battente is?"
Nicholas
The light spills over the top of his head and onto Pen, and it clings in droplets in his hair, at least what of it the darkness of his curls hasn't drunk down. His smile is playful, sly and it brings out the curiosity in his eyes; it could almost overshadow the want there, if she didn't know better. She does know better by now: she knows Nick.
His heart catches on the sound of her sigh, on the sound of their dead friend's name though in truth Lizzy Courtright died before Nick put a bullet in her heart. How long before, not a one of them knows except Liz and whatever black hearted silver tongued snake witnessed her Fall. She asks after a chitarra battente and Nick shakes his head. "I don't know."
Pen
"It is a guitar. A 'strumming guitar,' an Italian instrument. Sweet voiced. Va va voom figure." Pen: waggles her eyebrows.
"They decided to look into it because there was some news article from - 1902, perhaps? - about the chitarra battente and the singer who had it, and Liz thought he might be a Singer. They wanted to see if they could track it down and if it might still have some resonance or, well, Robin wanted to see if it could be coaxed into remembering the rotes it had been used in, if it had been used in any - he was working on that rote to illuminate spell-work. He would have been good in Bonisagus."
Diplomacy has her saying that, leaving that there: setting it down. Rob in Ari's House: what might have been?
"But... ah, well. What do you think they did? Can you guess why me and Thane got sucked in, too?"
Nicholas
It's bittersweet, hearing about his friends before they were his friends, before all that came after. It's bittersweet thinking about Rob in Ari's house, Rob if he hadn't had Viktor for a mentor. What might have been, indeed.
He listens and leans his head back against the wall, watching Pen through the dark veil of his eyelashes. He lifts his head only when she asks him another question, lifts it so that he can more easily reply. "Did they track it to some sort of trouble? Did they find it and find that its song was too enchanting?"
Pen
"Is that what you believe would have drawn us in? Trouble or enchantment?"
Half-smile to match the half-light luminous in the look she is still giving Nicholas; she plays with a curl of dark hair near his ear, toying with it idle as anything that ever knew languor, that ever knew slow-moving dreaminess.
Nicholas
"I could also believe that both of you helped because they asked you to, or because they found some sort of interesting resonance. Or did you just want to see the guitar?" Nick has tilted his head, leaned his chin against his shoulder; it leaves her better access to the curls at his ears. He mirrors her half-smile now: the other side of his mouth.
"Did Liz make some sort of misstep and find herself with some terrible Paradox backlash?" She was rather given to that; they both do not have to think hard to recall. Beloved, and misfortunate. Poor Liz.
Pen
Pen laughs; she sounds delighted by his guesses, and she curls her finger under his chin to tilt it up. "Liz made no misstep, no interesting resonance was found. The chitarra had been stolen from its last owner -- oh, I think a couple of months prior to them tracking it down? And there was a chip left behind, and -- well, they had no luck scrying for it, so they asked us to try our hand. Together we found that beautiful instrument."
"Wouldn't that be a nice place to end the story?" Beguiler: she leans close; she could kiss him in less than a second; that's how close. They could breathe the same (gin-soaked, basil-tinted) air; share a breath, lung to lung.
Nicholas
Pen is beguiling: it's amazing it hasn't found its way into her resonance yet. She could kiss him in a fraction of a second, or he could kiss her; it is obvious by how a glance sweeps from her mouth up to her eyes that he would like to, that he'd be willingly hypnotized here and now.
Of course, he's only won her challenge this once; who knows when the chance will come again?
"It would," he says, and there may be a hint of regret there in his voice (because there is), "but that's not where it ends, is it? Tell me about when you found the instrument."
Pen
Pen inhales quietly. Her rib cage expands and she leans back. Lets her finger trail down Nicholas's throat before she rakes her hand through her hair, holding it up and off her neck. Waves are wild, and they fall slow as anything drifting underwater. Lake-light, Pen, and lake-shadow, dappled.
"First there was the finding, and then there was the stealing of it back. Very simply done. But then Thane played it, Nicholas. He was enchanting," and her eyes almost glow. "He was amazing; it had such a sweet voice."
"And he put the guitar down, and he went to sleep."
"And he would not wake up."
"He would not wake up even when someone jumped on him, or a thunder clap sounded near him, he would not wake up even when Rob tried to go into his thoughts and stir them up."
Nicholas
He knows the moment that Pen draws in that breath, as soon as he sees her pull in air like a bellows feeding a furnace, that it would have been a nice place to end the story indeed; she is bracing herself. He watches her still, because he still knows that the story ends well or as well as it can: Thane lives, however far away he is from them for the moment.
There is warmth in his smile when Pen tells him Thane played, and how Thane played, because of course their friend enchanted whatever crowd he had there. "How did you wake him?"
Pen
"What are the methods one commonly applies when one must wake a sleeper in an enchanted sleep?" Pen asks, with the air of someone teaching a lesson.
The topic may be serious: but she will flirt with her husband until the sun unspools itself, and probably after.
Nicholas
"Well, I suppose all the ones you tried," he says. "And in the fairy tales there's kissing. I suppose you can also unweave the enchantment itself, either through Prime or...well, I suppose you could have broken the guitar," he says, and of course he regrets it the moment he says it because obviously they do not have it now. Perhaps that's what happened; perhaps that's what they had to do.
Pen
"Very good, but you have forgotten a step, or assumed it - and one shouldn't assume when it comes to spell work. We had to see whether or not Thane was connected to the chitarra before we broke it. It was solid; it was - when we looked close we could see that it would withstand fire. Normal fire; fire unlaced with essentia; fire that did not drip that silver stuff, that was not especially searching. It would withstand a lot, for into the wood and into the varnish had been woven its armor."
"But he was connected to it, our Thane. When we looked very carefully and very closely, we could see how he was connected to it, by a thread. And if that thread snapped: well, we weren't certain."
"The thing was, there were a lot of 'threads' connected to it."
Nicholas
Some people believe that Chakravanti are cold and unfeeling when it comes to endings, when it comes to deaths of all kinds. The reason goes: how could they mete it out, how could they accept it unless they numb themselves to its pain and horror? They aren't like that: the ones who are still whole anyway. Sometimes they perhaps feel the pain of a loss even more keenly than others commonly might.
Nick's brow is furrowed as she relates the story, even though he'd anticipated the end. Even though it all works out for the better (at the end of this story, at least.) "So there were a lot of people it enchanted to sleep, then? Did you find them all?"
Pen
"No. We found some, though. All asleep, or under the ground. The threads went to their final resting places and, strangely to us, stayed there. Rob and Liz peered back to try and find out what was going on, but we were hurting for Thane's help."
A pause. A long pause, during which Pen toys with Nicholas's shirt. She is considering how necessary its presence is to her story; she stares over his shoulder, and the dusk-light glances off her eyes and strikes them into pale fire, until she shifts position and they lose their lucence: become dark.
"We talked to a few people who had heard their sleeper play the chitarra beforehand, and we figured out what was happening."
"It was a quintessence well. A quintessence trap. But it was ... broken, or turned up too high - it wasn't supposed to stay connected. It was supposed to be played, and when it was played it would generate quintessence from the playing, from the quick that is the life in the musician, and then it would stop no harm and no foul. But the family who'd had it in their keeping had forgotten the Word to turn it off. And there was a Word necessary to turn it off."
Nicholas
"Hell of a thing to forget," Nick says, and he is still wistful, and thoughtful, and relieved that they were able to figure out what it was that would free Thane, regardless of how the rest turned out.
He slides a hand under the hem of her shirt, and his palm is like a sun baked rock against her flank. He splays out his fingers, brushes his thumb over the ridge just where her ribs begin their climb up toward her collarbone. He, after all, does not have to be mindful of continuing a story, or what is necessary to continuing it.
"Was the family upset with you, when you had to break it?"
Pen
"Ah. You're certain we broke it?"
Pen is not a cat. And the cat Pen is not does not have canary feathers in her grin, because cats do not grin, and there are no canary feathers, and Pen is not a cat.
However.
Pen likes watching Nicholas try to figure out a riddle or a story. She likes the thoughtful cast of his features -- has perhaps drawn it more frequently than any other (or maybe that's a lie; she likes quite a few of his expressions). There's charcoal on her fingers, remember, hematite-gleaming, and she takes another slow and deep breath.
"Robin tried to get Thane to say the word in his sleep, but he could not do it. And Rob, he fell asleep too." Her tone goes just a bit tarnished and dark, there: metallic; rust. Suggestion of. "The thing was the Word had to be spoken by someone who'd played a song. Liz couldn't pronounce the Word; I can't play a guitar. So what we wound up doing was... Liz put her hands over mine, like so," Pen, she follows Nick's hand beneath her shirt and rests her hand over it. Finds his other hand, too: the same. Maybe shifts his hands to be more (and more) pleasing to her: play.
"And helped me play something, something really simple - the Water is Wide; do you know it? And I said the Word, and then got out a knife we'd prepared before Rob tried to make Thane talk and we cut all the threads, and Thane woke up, and Rob woke up, and everybody else woke up except for the dead. I don't know what happened to them."
Nicholas
"How did you learn the Word, if the family didn't remember it?" Thoughtfulness on him today looks alternately pensive and dreamy, sometimes shifting with each word the way clouds will each time the wind changes. His hands go where they are bidden; he's responsive this way, Nicholas, and he could flirt (if they can still be said to be flirting) with his wife until the last star winks out in the heavens.
He leans forward a scant inch or two and places a kiss on her collarbone, and an errant curl brushes the underside of her chin. He adds another for good measure before raising his head: he's still listening. It's made evident by the wistful cast to his features. "That's a good story. I'm sure the dead were grateful too. You may have unbound them so that they could return to the Wheel."
Pen
His question makes her smile: flash of a thing, glooming light a-dazzle and a-dream; a knowing hook of a smile it is. "As if the family who didn't know what they had was the best source of information; as if a family knows what it inherits, or cares as much as someone outside it. The one who stole the instrument knew more about it than they did: what that one didn't know, dreams filled in."
Her breath catches; it catches again; she lets his hands go where they would and slips hers under his shirt and up his back: see, like this.
"I don't know about that," and she is solemn. "But the threads were gone. Was that mystery enough for you?"
Nicholas
"Is that person - the one who stole it - do they have the guitar now?" He wonders this; he wonders if perhaps Liz kept it, or Thane, someone who could play it and would understand its worth. Thane, he hopes, if that is the case; he does not know what happened to any of Liz's possessions. Knowing what happened to Charlie (poor little Chazster), he can only guess at it.
His chin is resting against her breastbone just beneath the hollow of her throat as he looks up at her; he is careful not to press in, but if her neckline is low enough she can probably still feel the light scratch of stubble. "It was," he says, of mystery. "Enough to make me think that you and I should go hunting one down."
Pen
"No," Pen says, because that person does not have the chitarra battente. "Rob took it." Here is his spine. Here are his ribs. Here is his side: here is his arm pit. Here is his shoulder. Here is his collar. Here is his sternum. Here is -
"I wonder how good you are at finding things now," Pen asks, and it is a distinct challenge, for all her tone of voice is musing. Maybe she is considering disappearing: she is certainly considering disappearing, telling him to come: find her. She doesn't yet; it takes bending the Tapestry, making it her plaything. She does not believe in Might above all things.
"I wonder if you'd like to hold vigil with me."
Nicholas
He has pressed his lips against her collar again, against the shallowing where her throat meets her collarbones, and she can feel the thoughtful hum he makes when she tells him who took the guitar. Rob: it has been too long since he spoke with Rob, more than a few texts and photos' worth anyway. Knowledge of Correspondence though he may have, Nick is not the sort of friend who excels at keeping in touch when distance separates. He already threatens to drift and fade away and sometimes living a separate life snips free whatever tether he might have had. He may make the effort still: and yet.
"What would you like me to try to find?" he asks, and the challenge in her tone draws his eyes back up to her own once more. His hands have come to rest linked one into the other at the small of her back. Given that he's leaning into her hand, she might need it in order to keep from falling backward. To her question, about vigil, he only nods; his eyes are too steady for that to have been done casually. There's gravity there (there were minor notes there, layered beneath their conversation) in spite of his smile.
Pen
Pen is a study, Pen studying, ardent and glowing with it: Nicholas with his dark hair, his dark eyes, his sharp nose, his cut-glass mouth, his mouth pressed against her collar, his nose against her neck, his eyes rising and steadied by gravity as any dowsing needle as any compass as any haunted by direction thing, the Hanged Man, careful not to press in, but leaning leaning into Pen's hand his own a brace so she doesn't fall, and Pen: the slant of light has shifted enough that Pen's eyes are a submerged radiance; the gloom is drawing close, bat song; the light cuts across her cheek-bone and her brow, still illumines half of one eye (bright; molten glass, gray as rain) and a few strands of hair, the curve of her mouth, the pleased with him with this moment with him look:
"Beloved." Pen pronounces the word as she often pronounces phrases in Enochian, to tease Nick and because it is a truer way to say things she wants to say: she is inhabiting it for a moment. "I would like you to try to find a key."
Nicholas
"A key?" See right now how he's torn: the curve of of her mouth is a hook and snare, and it promises mystery and it promises wonder, and at the same time he would likely only to celebrate and worship the flesh here with her right now. He is torn between those two desires: a Hanged Man indeed. He runs the fingertips of one of his hands down the dip in her spine until it reaches her waistband, and it stops there, at least for the moment.
"What sort of key am I looking for? When?"
Pen
Pen doesn't laugh but there's laughter anyway in the way her cheeks tighten and there are her dimples, in the way her eyes deepen; the way her fingers tighten and her eyebrow slowly rise. Flip a switch; strike a match.
(But the truth is, she feels like somebody who should be handing out quests. Who should be at the crossroads, a marker of success or failure. Someone who should know, who should be able to tell. Lady of the Lake. Fairy at the Crossroads. Enchantress on an Island. A Siren. Medea. Circe.)
"It's a mystery you haven't found yet; I couldn't say. Use Ars Fortunae, Conjunctionalis, and Temporis. Then once you've found it we'll see what happens next."
Nicholas
"I see." He does; his eyes are clear even if they're difficult to see or look into, hidden as they are in the shadow cast as the evening settles over Denver. The stained glass overlay does not illuminate him, not like it does Pen. "I'm being given a quest."
He isn't laughing, not yet: not aloud and not in his eyes either, but that doesn't mean he is displeased or even burdened by memory just now. His smile is a sly thing, the way the sickle moon is sly, the way it's glowing and still holding more than half itself in reserve. "I accept. I'll bring you a key."
Pen
"You'll find us a key," Pen corrects him, gently but firmly. She chooses not to resist and kisses the corner of Nicholas's mouth; then she kisses his mouth directly. It's important, the choice: she is not helpless (or if she is, she does not know it). She'd have tried the apple; she'd have felt the crisp cool moonlight of it on her tongue after the first bite. She'd have swallowed the pomegranate seed for curiosity's sake, but: not for helplessness' sake. "And then we'll hunt down the rest of the mystery. What do you think, Nicholas?"
Nicholas
As she kisses the corner of his mouth he is already turning his head to kiss her more fully; fortunately this was already her intent, she was already making that choice. "I think that's a very good idea. I'll start Working this weekend and see if I can track anything down. Any kind of key?" Because: keys can be material and metal, or they can be any number of other things. A Hermetic knows.
Pen
He asks a question. Pen cants her head; it could be an invitation (it is an invitation); she regards him, directly. It is her habit to regard people directly when they have her attention; even when her head is canted, even when her face is turned slightly away; even when:
she doesn't answer his question. Instead she makes a suggestion, and it's not a suggestion any respectable rag would ever print; it doesn't belong in black and white, written for anybody to read and be scandalized by, and she follows the suggestion up with a suggestive gesture and by that time she's a siren singing that song. Not the oldest song: this one's for love.
But later he might well extrapolate: any kind of key. She'd probably laugh if he handed her a key found in an antique shop or a copy of their house key. She'd laugh, but where's the fun in that?
It's better to quest.
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