Tempest

Pen
THE SETTING:

A green field somewhere in Washington Park, clover and the dream of green: green as green only is when man wishes green to exist; green as a fairy's glade, green as a hope of summer. The setting: flower garden nearby, and it's late evening - not dark yet. Darkness will descend during the second act of

TIDUS ANDRONICUS

OR

THE TEMPEST

OR

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING*.

THE TIME:

Right now the sun is sinking, thinking about setting, There is a stage built up in the park for tonight's play, beginning soon--twenty minutes from now.

People are still coming with their blankets, their picnic baskets, their transportable chairs.

THE CAST:

Penelope Mercury Mars has already staked out a corner of the grass and has spread a nubby blanket out, something in grays and blues which looks like the sea and is well-worn, worn-so-well that it is raveling, that the only hope it had to continue its existence was to become a picnic blanket. Picnic blanket, most hallowed of blanket jobs!

Grace
Grace came with Kalen, bringing the necessary food and drink. She would also consider robots to be necessary, but apparently no -- they are not actually so. Shakespeare did not know of robots. A very sad fact that, with time machines, should be possible to rectify. Why has this not been done yet? Or perhaps it has.

Shakespeare must have had to beat down the time travelers with a special stick made just for future-people. He probably gave it a unique name that would, had he writ it down, have survived the ages.

Shakespeare did know of spirits and wizards though, that much is evident by the play on offer today in the park. It also shows his feelings towards all those time travelers, by making his wizard break and bury his staff and abandon magic altogether.

"Woostick. I think he would have called it that. Or a Magerybopper. You think? A stick for bopping sorcerers?"

That, by the way, comes out of nowhere. If anyone were to ever ask Grace Evans what she was thinking at any given time, it might just be something like that.

Nick
Nicholas Hyde arrives very-nearly-late, particularly for someone well-versed in the Art of Time.  He appears in a whirlwind of dark hair (unfortunately frizzed by humidity) and checkered blue dress shirt and grey tie, fresh from work, and there is a bottle-shaped object in his hand, covered in a brown paper bag.

He halts at the edge of the park, scanning over the gathered heads, and: fortunately Pen's is bright red enough to be spotted quickly.

So he beelines, and soon enough he is about to -

"Oh.  Hello, Grace," he says, lifting a hand in a wave as he approaches and notices the Elite there with his wife.

Elliott Chandler
Kalen Michael Holliday has been a lot of people.  He is, in the end, another person now.

They are about to watch the Tempest.  None of the people he has ever been have watched this play.  None of the people he has ever been understood how to just stop and watch something ridiculous for the sheer joy of it.  The people he has been, likewise, read things to help them survive.

He appears tonight with Grace, calm enough, in jeans and a plain pale gold tee-shirt.  They have enough food to feed a small army.  And coffee.  Two kinds of coffee because some people want dark roast and some people like those blonde coffees.  It is, at least, less complicated than when he brings hot chocolate with about a dozen kinds of gourmet marshmallows.  (But there are hazelnut marshmallows, for Grace to put in her coffee.  And some extra.)

Both Pen and Nick get a subdued, though not hesitant wave.  "Hey."

Pen
Here are Grace and Kalen. Pen lifts a chin by way of greeting once they're close enough for her to acknowledge: cool, welcoming - glad, see, in a way that is quite uncomplicated. She is glad about people. The air is full of possibility; of spirits, of the end of a day; it is sleepless. See how she chases it with the luminous slash of a smile and a raised hand, fingers curved just so. Hello! Come here? Yes no? There's this flick of a look toward Nick because it has been all day long, all long day long, and such engenders longing, and anyway: she is glad in an uncomplicated way to see people knows; she longs in an uncomplicated way for someone she does.

There's a bag of stuff on one corner of the blanket. That includes an environment conscious bug repellent, some fancy cheeses, grapes, bottles; it includes salt and vinegar chips and a baguette. Simplicity.

Grace
"Hello! You like your coffee dark or light roasted? I... think this one is light," she says, grabbing a green thermos out of her bag and shaking it next to her ear, as though she could hear the darkness thereof.

The differences in what people constitute a picnic is definitely on display here, as Grace then unlugs her bag of coffee and stuff all over Pen's blanket. There are multiple thermoses. And marshmallows. And udon noodle take-out. And dumplings of some unknown kind. Also, cupcakes, because Grace decided that sugar was necessary.

There is very little simplicity here, or even a theme beyond "Hey, this might be tasty." Chaos, definitely. Delishus chaos.

And, also, a bit of bluntness, as if Pen and Nick's blanket were already hers to plop down upon. After all, the food and drink are also already theirs.

Nick
Nicholas watches as Grace's bounty spills all over the blanket: dumplings and marshmallows and thermoses and take-out.  A very generous bounty, all told.  It takes him a half a heartbeat, but he smiles up at Grace after a moment and gestures to the expanse of blanket.

Then he hands the bottle-shaped object to Pen, and takes a moment to reach up and loosen his tie and undo the last button on his collar before he sits down and leans over to place a kiss on her cheek.

His gaze then returns up to Grace and the man with her.  "Who's this with you?"

Elliott Chandler
Elliott seems a little more hesitant to just take over their blanket, although he does not seem at all concerned that Grace is putting their food out for people he barely knows.  Still, even if he has abandoned the Order, he is fond of Penelope Mercury Mars.  He settles; relaxed enough, yes, but at the very edges of the blanket.

For a second, even though he came with the food, even though he picked it out with Grace, he studies the food as though it seems as new to him as to anyone else.  He still expects something else.  Something more like what Penelope brought.  And wine.  Red wine and a different language.

Denver still seems surreal.  "We met once," he says quietly to Nick.  "Some time ago.  Though I was someone else then, I suppose."  Not that he actually offers anything other than that.  Apparently Nick asked Grace and will get his answers from Grace.

"Penelope," he says.  It is all the greeting that she gets, but there is a warmth to the tone and there is a little smile.  No.  It is almost all the greeting she gets, because now, now that they aren't bound by their Tradition and separated by it (though Pen may not yet have heard), Elliott reaches out across the expanse of nubbly blanket to offer Pen a hand.

Pen
"What a feast is here," Pen says, as Grace begins to unload thermoses and dumplings and cupcakes/as Nick bends down to hand Pen the bottle of (shh, it isn't alcohol, to be consumed publicly; it is in a brown paper bag, which everybody knows is just how people choose to drink juice sometimes in parks on warm summer evenings while the lightning bugs spark and the stars come out peer out slip away from the edges of the clouds which roil on the horizon to the west see and it will be a beautiful sunset once it comes for certain a sunset like a battle between Hell and Heaven a sunset of gold foil rims of luminous and bloody) wine. She sets the wine bottle down but her hand stays finds Nick's arm and then his thigh and then oh good a Nicholas shaped chair.

To Grace: "I like my coffee dark, but I'm not adverse to light. Would you two like to share our grapes, perhaps some wine? Have you two seen this troupe perform before? I hear they are very good, and that Prospero will be Prospera."

"I feel I haven't seen either of you in an age!"

Grace
Grace looks back and forth between the two men in disbelief. They don't know each other. "Kalen, you're so antisocial these days," she says, no disappointment or shaming there, just a statement.

Kalen will be as he is in the moment -- a whirl of changes around an essentially good man.

"This is Kalen. Or Elliot. It depends on what he wants to be called. My partner in crime and business, which is really one and the same when you think about it." It certainly is where Grace is concerned, in so many different ways.

Then, she goes to making a hole in the cupcake box. Managing that, she hands a lavender vanilla bean one over to Kalen, who clearly needs it.

"We are hoping to open a community center here at some point, because Denver needs more counselors before it goes and hurts itself again."

Pen explains how she likes her coffee dark, so Grace examines a red thermos and rolls it over. "This one's dark! There's a creamer tin in here somewhere, and hazelnut marshmallows..."

Nick
There is a furrowing of Nick's brows as Kalen says they have met before, and: it is hard to pin down faces sometimes, when one is continually meeting new people day in and day out.  Grace mentions Kalen, though, and then there is a light of recognition - ah! and Nick nods and extends a hand forward and up.

"I remember you from the meeting now.  Good to see you again," he says, apparently nonplussed as Pen seats herself on him; evidently he is so used to it that it gives him little pause.

Denver needs more counselors, Grace says, and there is another little furrow of his brows and Nick hmms and reaches for a few grapes.  "Were both of you expecting other people?"

Elliott Chandler
"I've been away a bit," he says to Penelope.  "But I've missed home.  And the people in it."

Elliott reaches for Nick's hand once his is free of Penelope's.  "Good to see you."  He smiles a little again, relaxed but for the first time a little unsure and his eyes travel from Nick to Pen, even if he is still, at least in theory, answering Nick's question about who he is.  "Probably Elliott, more than Kalen.  I've left the people I took that Name with.  Enough people know me by that that I expect it will stick with some of them."

"Denver," Elliott says, returning his attention actually to Nick, "Has a way of seeing to it that one encounters others.  We've simply learned never to assume that we will have a solitary picnic."

Pen
The clasp of hands, Pen to Kalen, was firm: gacious. Pen: she leans back against Nicholas and watches Grace's fingers whisper over the thermoses as if she were shaping the existence of dark roast as if she were a trasure-keeper, market-owner, and aren't there legends about Mercurial Elite Virtual Adepts and their caffinated rites in the deep dark hallowed hollow light of their monitors, rites which - fueled so, by coffee - might shed this world and blossom another? "Hazelnut marshmallows?" soft, this, and bright.

Then: "I recall you - " Kalen. A glance fixes him as the subject. " - saying something about community outreach among the sleepers."

And the conversation flows, as conversation will, and Penelope leans forward a touch to reach for thermos or pull out a cup so that Grace can pour some of the dark roast in (drink of shadows), and then:

The temperature does not drop in actuality, but Pen: she sharpens, come suddenly to attention: is as still, see, as ever anything ready to be pulled from a stone. She is studying Kalen. She studies him all through his commentary on the possibility of solitary picnics in Denver.

And then she says, "Why have you abandoned your Name?"

Grace
"We always expect other people. It's the way of things."

Grace just keeps right on going, after Pen's iciness shows up, offering a kettle-shaped ceramic device to her -- it is the creamer. A tube of marshmallows follows, their brown color indicative of something fancier than Jet-Puffed.

"He's decided to go be a priest of like, all the gods," Grace says, and she is so incorrect, and she knows it, and yet -- this is fun. "We've not got room for all the statues. He got me a Buddha one for my room, and I don't even have a room to put it in yet."

A conspiratorial smile at Kalen, there. Come, play this game with me. It won't be that bad, her eyes say. No matter what.

Nick
Nick settles an arm around Pen and reaches for the bottle of wine even as the others are preparing coffee - at night, in the summer, in the park.  Nick will take the wine, thank you.

"A priest of all the gods?" he asks, and here he turns his eyes up to the other man, and there's a sort of easy acceptance in them: curiosity and openness are often the same thing.  "So you're joining the Celestial Chorus, then?"

Elliott Chandler
Elliott does not, not really mind Penelope's sharpened attention.  He understands that this must, to her, seem as incomprehensible as it once seemed to him.

Grace tries to play, to seize the threat of an oncoming storm and to wrest from it something gentler and warmer.  There is a smile that flickers briefly, something that speaks more of fondness and indulgence than agreement.  Elliott though, allows Penelope to still see his eyes.  His expression.

Because this conversation is less about Nick, really.  Nick just got caught up in a moment between one Flambeau and one former Flambeau.  Grace struggles to pull away from the seriousness of the moment, but Elliott owes Penelope more than that.  They were family, once.  They might be, in another way, family again.

"For years," he says, very quietly, "Everything I did, everything I was called to do...there is a war whether I will it or not.  I will not try to pretend our world is otherwise.  But over and over and over again, the solutions I had were...."  His voice trails off, and it not only that they are surrounded by Sleepers.  Those Sleepers can almost certainly not hear him.  "They were what they were.  I do not regret what I have been.  Those things needed to be done.  But I was always too late, Penelope.  I was always too late and there was but one solution when I arrived.

"It wasn't enough.  I can't be what I was.  Not anymore.  And what use, your people, for someone who has only horror left for war."  He shakes his head.  "Fuck, Penelope.  There may be circumstances that force my hand, but given the choice...I would never again do the things that I have been forced to do.

"I don't belong there anymore, with you.  You know that.  I think you've always known that."

His attention slides from Penelope to Nick.  "Not of any, I'm afraid.  I just have a very inclusive sculpture garden.  Though you're right, about that second thing."

Grace
Grace fake-pouts at Kalen, because he's decided to be serious and not play along with her. Even about being a priest of all the gods. Inclusive sculpture garden? Pah. The hat one has to wear to be a priest of the All-Fathers has to be enormous and grand(iose). It would be awesome. To make fun of.

"There goes my plans to get you a Pope-headdress for Halloween..."

She obtains herself the thermos of other coffee, the blonde, as though Grace ever had a preference when it came to caffeine. She minds the taste of course, they are all lovely.

"You want a dumpling?" she says, to Pen. Dumplings make things better. Don't they?

Pen

When Pen feels Nick's muscles move, she reaches for the wine bottle and snags it before he. The paper bag crinkles and she sets it between her knees, investigates the bottle's neck and mouth,  ah, a cork and the bottle opener tucked away in the bag with grapes, too far for her to reach easily.

Never let it be said that Penelope is not a poised woman; she is poised, just now, and the thing about poise: one cannot tell whether it is because one is on a narrow edge, or a wide avenue; it is only poise; it might be the same anywhere, and ever. Her eyes are such a grey -- Prospero might've conjured such a color for his seaspray-laced cloak or Sycorax (Circe) might've looked into the scrying cup with eyes that witching; that gloam-drunk; that clear. She swiped the wine bottle but she is listening to Kalen Holliday Who Isn't Any Longer explain his weariness.

Her eyes stay on him as she leans forward to snag the bag; get the corkscrew, unfold it: a shining bit of metal. She hands them both to Nicholas, demurs with a courteous shake of her head when Grace asks her if she'd like a dumpling. She would not like a dumpling, just as she does not want the creamer; she does not take it when it is handed to her, unless Grace looks a though she's going to drop it other; then she takes it and sets it down.

"Why do you think I've always known that, Elliot? What could you mean?" It is easy for her to change names for someone; as long as they claim the name, it can be theirs.

She is poised, sure; that does not preclude passion. It tints her voice; it's there in the cant of her head - the flash of her throat when she glances at the stage, conscious alertness, then brings her eyes back; it's in the very slow circling of her fingertips along Nick's knee. She might not even realize she is doing that - she'd abhor what might be regarded as a superfluous movement right now. 

"Do you believe I hold something in my heart for 'war' other than horror?" 

Beat. "This conversation may not be comfortable for our companions." 

Grace

Oh, the ice descends upon this place, now that both Kalen and Pen have ignored her unspoken pleas to keep this whole thing lighthearted. She's been heavy too long. Going to collapse into a black hole at this rate. One must be determined to avoid that kind of thing. It can suck you in, despair. Looking at abysses and all that.

Grace smirks at Pen when she starts declining to accept gifts. Somebody is getting a never-ending delivery of hazelnut marshmallows to their house. More than one could possibly consume in a day, every day. She'll make it hard to cancel, just for fuck's sake. Don't like hospitality? That's too bad. She's going to hospitality the fuck out you. And just try to complain about being buried in a mountain of marshmallows. Oh, that will be fun.

She pulls out her phone, starts typing. "Hey, Nick? Where do you guys live? I want to send you something. Very important, can't discuss this sort of thing in public, you know."

Well. There will be marshmallows. And a note, which won't arrive via shipment. Wrap a lie in a truth, yes? She does have important things to share. And it looks like she and Elliot won't be welcome on the blanket here for too much longer.

Nick

Pen's demeanor changes, and Nicholas is quiet as it does.  He allows Pen to take the bottle of wine (still paper-wrapped) from his hands, and then moments later to hand it back to him with the corkscrew, and he does this all wordlessly.  There is a deftness in his fingers as he flips the wings on the corkscrew up and works the screw into the cork with a few quick spins of his hand, and then he pulls it free with a pop.

His silence could be mistaken for trepidation or fear: his wife is a passionate woman, and Nicholas is an insightful man, and the current of tension passing between her and Elliot could not go unmissed.

Grace says his name and this draws his eyes up and away from what he is doing, and then there is a little furrow of his brows.  "We don't give out our home address, but I can give you the P.O. Box," he says, his voice tinged with apology.  "What is it?"

Elliott Chandler
Penelope's attention sharpens.  It is impossible not to note the shift in the energy, but Elliott seems unconcerned.  Truthfully, he has not faced many beings he would consider more dangerous than Penelope.  Nor, truthfully, more graceful.  Iris was, perhaps, both of those things and he stayed his ground then.  His lack of fear then and his lack of fear now are similar things - to him, neither Iris or Penelope are enemies.

There are, aren't there, reasons he is leaving the Flambeau?

"If I thought you had any love of war," Elliott says softly, barely audible over the crowd, "I would not have offered you advice when you arrived in my city, I would have found the leverage to run you out.  I certainly would not be here now.

"I meant only that I thought you saw what I was just coming to understand then, which is that at some point I was going to hesitate a second too long and someone was going to get hurt.  Perhaps worse.  And that changed, in some respects, everything.  Not because I loved what I did once and did no longer, but because I was no longer capable.

"That my place is between people and things that would make them suffer has not changed.  But the ways in which I can protect them have changed.  Enough that in some ways, our path are divided.
"Though I do hope not in all of them." 

Pen
There is a spark of reaction: a shooting star is the same thing as a falling star, and both smoulder in the wizard's cup. Her eyebrows perk: eloquent. He'd have found the leverage. She listens. She listens earnestly and with a whisper of tension in her shoulders and the End-of-Afternoon gold is gathered up, growing long in this twilight. Grace and Nick are having their own conversations: sort of. 

Pen. Simply: "I don't know what to say to you." 

Her gaze wicks away as water wicks from a stone. It lingers on the sward where the play is to be performed as she sets her thoughts in order(tries to). Her voice is confessional quiet but intense: of course it is intense (vibrant). "I'm not insightful as some other people are. I wish I was. I don't know how to say the right thing." Now her gaze flicks back to Elliott. "There's probably a right thing to say to you, but Ash and Oak wither if I know it. I should probably say nothing. But I can't say nothing. What should I say?"

"I don't believe you see the Order clearly. And how could you see yourself clearly in the Order if you don't see it clearly? You're speaking as if there's only one way to be. As if the only thing to do is fight and toil in gruesome scenes and watch your conscience chiseled away as you follow orders like tock follows tick and there's only one set of orders; but there's more than one House and more than one way to be. What is our Will for if not the freedom to choose and make what we would. I just -


"Tonight I want to watch the Tempest with Nicholas. I don't want to watch it with someone who I know, freshly know, feels such contempt for one of the more important things in my life. Elliott, I'm sure our paths will cross again. But right now you two should find your own blanket. I'm sorry, Grace. Thank you for the marshmallows and the coffee."

Grace

People are mostly incomprehensible. Kalen... Elliot didn't say the things that Pen's accusing him of. Contempt? Grace is still quite dedicated to bringing the fight to wherever it needs to be, and he holds no contempt for her, only love. Always that. Grace had expected this reaction from some people.

Pen? Well.

Suppose that answers that question.

Not allowed to know where they live, not allowed in their general area even. For the present, at least. Until Pen cools down, if she cools down. On second thought, sending her marshmallows might be misconstrued as appeasement.

Grace sighs, looks around at the scattered array of food and drink, starts re-packing her favorites up into her bag.

"We can't both survive, and put these walls up between us."

She looks to Kalen, gives a sad smile. It'll be okay.

"I am going to be sending you both the details of what you should actually be getting worked up about." She lowers her voice. "Apprentices have been getting disappeared from Colorado Springs. The locals think it might be our most favorite enemies."

Sending it to your P.O. box. Because that's apparently safer. Yes.

"He doesn't hold contempt for you or what you believe in, Pen. Otherwise, he'd have contempt for me too. One thing I am not about to do is stop fighting."

Imposition

Nick
Since the summer began, it has been like Nick to come home later on several nights that he works throughout the week.  He texts her, sometimes, when he does this: pictures of the river, or pictures of things he has spied on hiking trails.  This is frequently when he goes to do his own Work.  For Nicholas, magick is something like keeping a second job.

Tonight was a series of little pictures of a crow he saw at the river's edge, and a rabbit, and fields hazy and golden in high summer.  He'd told her he would be meeting with Ned tonight.

So the dark is rising when Nick comes home at last: Pen can hear the telltale beep of the car horn.  It is like any number of nights they have passed together in this house already since they moved in last winter.

Pen
It is easy to forget to be humanblooded when you lock yourself in a tower all day and give yourself over to sorcery because you know your lover isn't going to be home until late anyway and your best friend is at convocation and you're not more interested in anybody else than you are in spending a day honing your knowledge shaping your mind into a powerful thing. It's easy to forget to eat when you are concentrating and it's easy to lose track of the time when you are wrapping yourself in the study of timeless things and it's easy to thin away to nothing. It's easy to forget until somebody sends you a series of pictures of a crow at a river's edge ("A very flirtatious specimen, Crow! You do that with your eyes!"), and a rabbit ("[carrot emoji]"), and fields hazy and golden in high summer ([line of poetry]), and then if you have named yourself Penelope you press your palms into your eyes until the darkness swims, and then you leave your circle and clean up the tools of your Art, put your wand which is sweat-slick away in its box, go wash-up, then you go out exploring -- for a little while. You hesitate over your wand, but leave it, in the end. Daring.

(You know a Word which will bring it to you, no matter where you are.

You are working on learning another Word, which allow it to be found where ever you need it, whenever you need it, but you don't quite have the understanding yet. It is difficult, being a woman of sorcery, a page of mystery.)

And timing sees fit to return you to your home with a paper bag full of unnecessary groceries just as your lover, the one with the crow black hair, the only one, returns to your home, and you brighten right up and hurry to meet him at the front door, or better yet before he gets out of the car, sliding across the car's nose like you're careless and fancy free and then, hello, hello, hello.

Nick
It's easy enough for him to catch Pen as she goes sliding across the hood of the car, catch her in the hook of an arm and draw her against him.  There is a paper bag in his left hand, pastries and fruit for the morning because he suspects that sometimes Pen forgets to eat when he is gone during the day.

Nicholas places a kiss on the ridge of her cheekbone, which does not take long to turn into a more proper kiss; she is held in against his stomach at the moment and he has not gone to release her just yet.  "Hello," he says.  Then, effusive and against her shoulder, "I missed you today."

He does let go of her now, glances down at the bag she has in hand full of groceries.  There are crickets chirping in far away fields, outside their little row of houses.  Across the street the Irvings have exchanged their FEEL THE BERN sign for a more modest Hillary '16; next to them there has been a corresponding response, because for every action a reaction.  Last week the Kidds' mailbox was knocked off its hinges.  Probably just the kids running around town.

Nobody bothers the House of Mars and Hyde.  Maybe it's just luck.  "Are you just getting back?"

Pen
As his paper bag crumples, as hers crackles, as he draws her against him, the air hitches in her throat; it wants to stick around for this next bit. Pen would kiss Nick until the dark finished rising, there on the threshold of their home. Her bag comes perilously close to being set on the hood of the car, where it would have slid down to the ground, cracking the contents and sending them spilling over their driveway, christening the threshold, absolving it and swearing it in. Nick against her shoulder, and Pen kisses Nick's temple.

"Hello. Why did you miss me today?" The uninitiated might consider Pen's voice to be calm; they would miss the undercurrents delight and play, the deep wonder beneath. When Nick releases her, she adjusts the bag in her arm and opens the top for him to see the goods:

A very cold glacial green glass bottle of vodka, a jar of pickled herring and a can of black caviar and a bag of dried apricots.

Nick
"I see a theme here today," is the faintly amused comment he makes once he has seen the contents of the bag.  His eyes are lingering on the apricots, though he shifts his own bag in his arm and places a hand on the small of her back to guide her along with him toward the front door.

"It was a long day," he says.  "And I kept seeing beautifully poetic things and thinking you would have the right words for them."

The front door cracks open for the two of them, and they pass the threshold into a dark room.  "Ned had a lot of questions for me, and I also couldn't help but think of all the things you would have said eloquently.  I missed the sight of you," he adds, and that is one of his moments of rare frankness, delivered with a thoughtfulness as he stares ahead and sets his bag down so that he can remove his shoes.

Pen
"It is my mood," she says, to his remark about themes.

And, inside.

"I missed your eyes," Pen says, honestly, and pleased at the neatness of this: he missed the sight, she missed the seeing. She does not set her bag down. She follows Nick down and stops him after he's taken off only one shoe; follows him down, which is to say, crouches if he's sat himself on the stairs or is quicker than the hunch one does when one abuses shoes by kicking them off at the heels, and she carefully cups Nick's jaw in one hand. She goes lightly on the balls of her feet, rocking forward, that she might - with deliberate regard - kiss Nick's eyes shut one after the other. She could be following a measure. She leaves him to his shoes after, snagging Nick's bag as well as keeping her own and heads into the kitchen.

"What sort of things would I have said eloquently?" Pen asks from the other room. "What sort of questions did he have for you? What sort of answers did you have for him?"

Nick
Nick's eyes, for all that she missed them, are slightly widened in surprise when she so quickly catches him, though this fades into warmth soon enough.  His eyes are still shut when she wanders away from him; after a moment she can hear the soft click of one shoe, then the other, as they fall back to the ground.  The faint jangling of keys marks him as he follows her back into the kitchen.

"I think he's beginning to define his purpose.  He had some questions about other things he'd heard about - about things like the Fallen, and about Marauders.  He...seemed to believe that the things he'd heard about the Fallen were caricature.  So I told him.  But not...I wanted to be able to say it like you would."

He comes up behind her in the kitchen, his hands tucked away in his pockets.  "He has a lot of questions about things like that, and I talked to him about balance.  About...how if souls that Fall are still tainted when they pass again through the Wheel, eventually that will be all there is.  So I talked about the importance of fostering hope, too, in bringing balance."

Pen
He comes up behind; sees, perhaps, the quick shiver, a grave walked over, a memory slain, because the Fallen. She has bad dreams sometimes, Pen. Nightmares. Not every night, not every time she closes her eyes, but sometimes. She is a soldier, after all.

"No. Sometimes eloquence -- my kind of eloquence. Sometimes they don't believe it, because it is too -- I think you probably said it well. Better than I, even. What purpose do you think he sees for himself, then? A hunter of bad things?"

She is clear-eyed, and does not look away.

Pen is unpacking Nick's bag of fruit and pastries first, setting everything out on the counter, because she likes to look at plenty; she has bought fruit before just to watch it rot, and know she won't need to eat it, know that it is a luxury that it has time to rot. She is tender when she puts the can of caviar down on the counter and reaches for the can opener, abandoning the chore of putting everything away for the idea of the onyx-dark moon-gleam salty bite-your-tongue delicacy.

Nick
The quick shiver does not go unnoticed, and it echoes within the great chamber which contains his heart, his breath.  Nick steps up behind her now, a few inches back so that he will not be in her way as she unpacks the bags, and with his hand on her hip he kisses the back of her neck.  It provides him a good vantage point for looking over her shoulder, besides.

"I think he's starting to see himself as a protector, kind of," Nick says.  "A shield.  I think he can grow into that.  And I think it...I think it will serve him better, to think of himself that way.  It'll help keep him from getting tunnel visioned."

He watches her reach for the can opener, and lifts his head away from her shoulder.  "Do you want me to find crackers?"

Pen
"No." Pen leans back to close the inches he left between them. She is conscious of his fingers on her hip the way one becomes conscious of the sun when the golden pleasure of it is beginning to turn to heat. She does not turn to look at him; doesn't quite close her eyes, though she nearly does.

No, she says, and let a moment pass. Please.

And then she goes onto the balls of her feet again to reach, without crinkling, into the paper bag and pull out some very unnecessary thing she bought, which is in a muslin pouch. She opens the pouch's mouth and what do you think it is she bought?

Two spoons made from mother of pearl, for eating caviar.

"Unless you want crackers," she amends, soft. "But then creme fraiche too. Nicholas, you think it will serve him better than what?"

Nick
Let a moment pass.  And so he does, with his mouth nestled against the back of her shoulder, and his eyes are shut as though he'd never opened them after she kissed them closed moments ago.

When Pen shifts away from him Nick moves around to her side, leaning against the counter though he leaves his fingers tethered to her hip.  There is a crinkle of amusement at the corners of his eyes as he notices the little spoons that she bought.

Unnecessary: but people who grew up with only the most necessary things (or sometimes without even those) sometimes glorify in the unnecessary.  Nick knows that: he grew up with his own kind of scarcity.

"I don't need crackers," he says, and he leans a palm on the counter.  There is a soft swell of silence, a brief thing before he adds, "Better than...only thinking of himself as a hunter.  I just hope for more for other people than that."

Pen
Up under her dark lashes, a flick of a glance. They're burnished only in rare light: when her profile is just so against some luminous thing, the window light or the hall light left on and spinning shadows. He doesn't need. Does he want?

Pen sets the muslin bag on the counter and brings the can-opener to bear on the can of caviar. The smell: pungent, salty, immediate -- but delicate, too, a splash of salt on the wrist: it touches the tongue. Then she cants her hip into Nick's hand, or Nick himself. Takes the bag of dried apricots out next and lets them spill out of the wax-paper: dried pieces of autumn-color, dull jewels promising sweetness. Then the bottle of vodka. As she withdraws the bottle (as a sword from a stone), the empty paper bag falls a slow measure to the side. The vodka clinks on the counter, and Pen says as she goes through these motions, "Salty, Nicholas, or sweet?"

And depending on his answer, she'll neatly draw out a piece of fruit or just as neatly dip one of the new spoons into the hematite-dark caviar for-to-feed him.

And watch his mouth, and ask, "Why better to be a shield than a hunter?"

Nick
Nick's nostrils flare only slightly as the can opens: it smells like the ocean, like wind blowing in off of the sea.  He leans on an elbow on the counter, his eyes tracking the apricots as they spill out in front of the two of them.  "Salty, please," he says, because evidently that is his mood too.

He is crushing the caviar against his tongue for a moment before he answers her, evidenced by the flexing of the muscles against his throat and a quick breath in through his nose: brine.  Then he swallows and he says, "I think being a shield allows a person to be more mindful of the reason we do what we do.  It's more focused on what you give to the world and less on what you take from it.  I think it...well, I just think it's a healthier frame of mind, and less likely to lend itself to Jhor."

When his eyes meet hers they are dark, thoughtful.  "What do you think?"

Pen
Here is a lesson. Nick might swear on his love of secrets that Pen is going to kiss his mouth, the way she is studying him. The faint tension in her body, the kind that is precursor of a movement rather than the warning sign of reaction. She herself takes up a piece of dried apricot and bites it neatly in two, sucking on the dusky interior. Distilled late afternoon, a coagulated dawn. She leaves the counter and Nick after in order to pull out two shot glasses, one of cobalt blue glass, the other of hammer-beaten copper, an apprentice's work (Pen's work) - and unless Nick has relocated, she comes back to the counter to set these down and pour them each a shot of cold cold vodka vodka clearer than rime as clear as the air. She forgot to leave him his spoon, but kept it with her, tucked in against her thumb and forefinger. The other spoon, though. Unused, untested.

"You know I cleave more to the concept of 'shield' than other, but for the sake of trying to be true, I might say that it is not better to be a shield than it is to be a hunter. I guess the idea of hunting the bad things instead of defending against the bad things connotes the provision of a necessary service without also the idea of protection, of personally treasuring something that is. The hunter can provide, right? The hunter is a provider, the hunter can bring back - it isn't all taking - but the hunter can be alone. Lonely. The shield is useless alone. What does it do, without anything to shield? Or anyone?"

"Most of the hunters I've known have hunted in order to protect. They've just also chosen to protect by isolating themselves. Is it less healthy to stand so that when you fall you bring no other tower with you?"

Nick
In Pen's body he reads a faint tension, a potential for movement, bound energy, and because these things balance out (equal and opposite reaction, see: the concept is the same no matter which paradigm we choose) there is a corresponding tension in him, a wanting.  Pen leaves the counter, though, and Nick watches her as she takes down the shot glasses.  He reaches for the spoon left behind, though he holds it between thumb and forefinger and without dipping it into the caviar.

Vodka splashes into each shot glass while she answers him.  He is still watching her, though he is watching her hands now, the bones beneath as she twists the cap off the bottle, as she pours.

"I suppose my thought is that you might be less likely to fall, if you don't isolate yourself," he says, though this too is thoughtful, is not wholly decisive.  "And I think helping people not isolate is something the Chakravanti do very poorly."

Pen
Pen does not move to take up one of the shot glasses. She runs her finger up the length of the bottle, catching condensation, drawing a smooth line in the frost. Her boots are still on. Another moment of tension, this as Pen braces herself on the counter, in preparation of pushing herself up to sit on its edge. Here is the beginning lift, and then instead (economy) she cants so her weight rests on one hip and she can unzip the boot then pull it off. One, and then two, and on one of the boots her finger leaves a wet mark like a kiss. As she does this, her eyebrows perk like that's a response, a statement, on the Chakravanti and what they do well, and then she adds:  "What more do you hope? What is the ideal?"

Nick
"I...I don't know," Nick says.  His head is bowed as he watches her, still leaned on one elbow against the counter, gently swaying his hip into it too after a time.  The spoon is still held between his thumb and forefinger.

He looks down at the spoon now, then scoops another mound of caviar into it, and they glitter there like beads of night.  He transfers the spoon to his mouth, holding his other hand beneath it to catch any errant eggs before they can fall to the counter.  He rolls it around in his mouth, his eyes flicking off to the side, toward the window and out into their backyard.

"I'd like to see something more supportive.  Something like what Miles started, I suppose, but...maybe with more focus on what people need, and more focus on...teaching in general.  I think," and hesitation, here, as he bows his head and his gaze directs itself back to the floor for a moment, "that other than the chantry Miles started, the most interaction I've had with other Chakravanti has been when we were in a war zone, or when we needed to hunt down someone else who was in danger of falling.  I feel like...there has to be something else.  I think that's something the Order does well."

Pen
"The Order does everything well," Pen says, solemnly and with a straight face, but look there, Nicholas, there is an elusive gleam (illusive, too?) in her eyes, a rill of brightness, a challenge softened by this impulse: she dips her finger into the caviar, instead, scooping the delicacy out; look how it catches on her fingerprint; look how she offers her finger to Nick (she cupped her other hand beneath it, so nothing would drip except on her palm; see the dark constellation there?) and says, still solemnly, "I want you to tell me if it tastes different now." Her eyes leave Nick to touch the caviar; when she is a sensualist, she devotes herself to it; there's an experimental air about her, see.

Nick
"Everything?" Nick asks, and a corner of his mouth snicks upward, and there's a lift there to both of his brows.  He watches as she dips her finger into the caviar, glances down at the proffered fingertip, and when he leans his head downward his lips seal over it like a kiss.  When he lifts his head again his own fingertips reach up to his lips, to catch any that might be in danger of rolling from his mouth; nothing does.  "It's saltier," he says, with a trace of surprise and amusement that he is surprised.

Pen
"Is it really? More like the sea or like a table full of moon-silt or something else?" Pen's turn at last, isn't it, to dip her spoon into the caviar and hold it up to the level of her eyes and watch how the darkness of it plays with the light and then put it on her tongue and feel the texture of the mother of pearl beneath the salty pucker of fish eggs and she swallows hard and licks her lips, half-closing her eyes - give up a moment to this.

Nick
"More like the sea," he says, and his eyes are on her as she sets a moment aside, as her eyes half-close.  He rubs his thumb against the handle of the spoon and then sets that on the counter and reaches for one of the apricots.  Half of it lingers in his fingertips once he has bitten it through.

"I'll have to think on all of it more."

Pen
"Mm." Pen smiles at Nick. The smile is in her eyes; a radiant bow. She smiles as if she wants something from him; and as if she is happy with him.

Now she slouches, planting on elbow on the counter's edge, and her hand hovers over the shots. Which glass will she choose. Which glass will she choose. The one as blue as a gown painted by Millais, and she readies herself to take a pure shot.

"And yes, the Order does do everything well. Do you disagree with me? And what you said, your answer... I meant more what do you hope, what is the ideal, for the individual. Not for the wonderful future."

Nick
It is Nicholas's turn to be studying the curve of her mouth, to have a faint tension in his muscles, a promise, as though he'd lean forward and kiss her at any moment.  It remains a promise only; Pen is taking up one of the shotglasses and so Nick reaches for the other one of beaten copper.

He lifts it to his lower lip, breathes in first: it smells the way winter ought to smell.

"I do disagree," he says.  "I've yet to meet an Order mage who was content to stay still and do nothing."  There is another smile here, a crinkling of his eyes as he teases her, before the expression fades into thoughtfulness.  "I suppose for him...if he were initiated, I would like to see him as something...more whole, I suppose.  More aware of the preciousness of the things he wants to protect, and so more connected to them."

Pen
So, her turn, then, to brace herself; to anticipate, and be left wanting; Pen sublimates the wanting into: she throws back the shot. She gasps, sharp, when the vodka strikes her chest; and she steadies herself against the counter, dipping toward Nick. Then it's an up-through-the-eyelashes look: a clear-eyed (vigil) observance.

Nick
Nick throws back his own shot only a second behind her, and there is no gasp from him: he only raises his hand and rubs it across the center of his chest, as though he could soothe away the fire that sprung up there.  He is watching her now again as he sets the glass back down on the counter, and it catches the light filtering in through the window and glints there like a red star.  "What is it?"

Pen
"What if he works best disconnected? What if he loses himself, when he focuses on the preciousness?" Pen licks the inside of her lip, a testing thing; it is very strong vodka. Then she takes up her finger again, and dips into the caviar: delicate, deliberate.

Nick
Nick finally pops the other half of the apricot into his mouth; there is a bunching of the muscles at the hinge of his jaw as he chews it slowly, his eyes unfocused.  "I suppose that's a possibility, from what he's told me about himself.  Ultimately he's really the only one who can know what ideal he's striving toward.  But I only...I'm not sure it's possible to wholly protect and remain disconnected from what you're protecting.  You are a part of creation, and so you, your self, would have to be a part of that."

Pen
Pen licks the night-dark jet-seed caviar from her finger, and does pay mind to the taste and how it might change, away from a spoon which is supposed to impart no flavor, no stain of its presence, and she sighs as she does, and she makes an encouraging lilt of sound but is: staying still, doing nothing.

Being aware; waiting, aware.

Nick
Nick leans back against the counter, lets his hip bump against the side, and he is watching her face as she licks the caviar from her finger.  "I don't know.  I just feel that...everything is connected to everything else, and our actions ripple outward.  I think as mages we have to be mindful of that.  I suppose that...that mindfulness is more what I'm hoping to see."

A beat.  "Though now I think I've just confused myself into not acting because I don't want to impose my views on someone else."

Another crinkle of amusement at the corners of his eyes just before her hip lures his hand back to it.  "Are you trying to prove me wrong?"

Pen
He thinks he's just confused himself - Pen laughs. The laughter is transformative, and quicksilver, and her eyes are mercury; she walks her fingers around the shot glasses, toward the bag of dried apricots. Pulls one out, and as Nick's hand finds her hip, tears it apart: inches closer; drifts so. The laughter retreated as she listened; is more evident, revelatory, in the widening of her smile at: are you trying to prove me wrong. But Pen doesn't stay silent. Pen leans in and says, "What is it to impose?"

Nick
Her laughter is a siren song: Pen drifts closer to him, and Nick takes a half step to close the remaining distance until she is flush up against him, until he can lean his chin against her shoulder.  That is, until she lifts her hand to eat the apricot she is tearing apart, and then he tilts his jaw back and away from her, so as not to impede her movement.  There is a gleam here in his eyes.  "I think you might be sharking me, Pen."

His fingertips are sketching slow circles against her hip, and his head is tilted down now; occasionally he glances up at her through his eyelashes.  "To impose would be to...put my vision or my beliefs ahead of what another person wants.  To invalidate or disregard what they want so that I can have what I want instead."

Pen
He closes the distance and she holds her breath; it is sweet to do so. It is sweet to focus on the weight of Nick's chin against her shoulder. It is sweet to note the curl which brushes against her cheekbone and almost tangles up in her eyelashes. It is sweet to exhale, all at once, and circle your arm (if you are Penelope) around your lover's shoulders, and turn your own head away and devour the apricot that way and be aware, see, how your fingertips are both sweet-sticky and salty now, ghosts of different flavors, how there is a bottle full of winter-light still waiting, how he - he is not winter-light; that is never the season you associate with him; and don't you taste salt when you think about kissing his ear? You don't kiss his ear. You you you: Pen. Pen's expression changes; this time, bemusement mingled with laughter, "Sharking? Why do you think I might be doing that?"

"Why would you put someone else's vision ahead of what you want?"

Nick
"They're very clever questions, that's all."  Nick's eyes have fallen shut; it would be difficult to see from the angle she is at but his meditativeness, when he is meditative, is almost palpable.  His fingers walk toward the bag of apricots, though they stop short; they remain there and consider for a while longer.  Nick still smells faintly of soap from this morning, of the warm scent of the oil he uses on his hair in more humid months.

"Because I would rather..."  He stops, and there's a flicker of his eyes beneath their lids as he tries to process her question, as he plays it back in his mind.  "Because I don't have a right to...to tell them what their vision for themselves ought to be, I suppose.  I would rather not get what I want than force something on someone else."

Pen
"Did Delilah have the right?" Pen asks him, her voice pitched low; its most intimate. A tone of voice for endearments. "Did Lysander? Do I? Is it right to be nothing, in stead? Less," she says, and softly breathes across his neck, "than air.

Nick
The food they have been eating is food for cold weather, the sort that has its origins in ice and deep fjords and dark conifer woods, and so it is right that he should shiver.  The tremor is momentary and then gone, and: he is still giving her words their weight.  His hand leaves the counter now, following his arm as it wraps around her and settles around her waist.

"I think you're right," he says, and then a thoughtful little noise follows.  "I suppose I...there is some imposition inherent in taking any kind of action."  He considers the arch of her hip bone with his thumb.  "If you were to teach someone to be a Hermetic, how do you think you would teach in order to respect both their desires and the Tradition?"

Pen
He shivers, before his arm slips around her waist, and Pen is delighted, and bites her lower lip, and her breathing goes shallow, and she listens with her head bent. His expression is hard to see, the way they are positioned; but the same holds true for hers. This is an exercise in restraint. Her hips kiss his.

He thinks she's right. She grins. "We always are," over his thoughtful little noise, and that: a whisper, and a gleam. How would she - ?

Pen glances down at his hand at her hip; watches it for a while instead of anything else. "Well. I would simply give them loads of work and then they would choose to stick with it or to fail out," Pen says. "Desire is mutable, in a way, isn't it? I mean, Nicholas... a Tradition is just a tool."

"Will you pour us another shot?"

Nick
Will he pour them another shot?

Nick is reluctant to lift his hand away from her, but he does it, and he leans over (into) her in order to reach past her for the bottle of vodka.  He pours it into the shot glasses with his arm over her shoulder.  Miraculously, cold vodka does not go spilling over the counter like a shattered glacier, none of it overflows from the shot glass of copper or the one of deep ocean.

The bottle he sets back down with a rattle.  "Is it just a tool?" he asks, and his voice is musing, is thoughtful.  "I think I..."

A beat, as he takes his shot glass between thumb and forefinger and gazes into it.  "Some different sects of the Chakravanti and the Akashayana talk about life being suffering.  I think...I'm more deeply troubled by the idea that to live is to cause suffering, that it's unavoidable.  I think a Tradition is as much a tool as it is a philosophy that guides you on what to do with your magick."

Pen
Pen attends the unsteadiness in his arm as he pours (or the steadiness). She leans against the counter's edge (sometimes she wants his back against the wall. Sometimes her own). She does not unhook her arm from his neck. The timber of his voice is close to her ear and she has to imagine what it is he is doing, construct a story based on what she feels. She reaches for her shot glass and she is not using the Art of Correspondence, but she is a Mage who has surpassed the rank of Initiate Exemptus in this Art, and sometimes it shows in the way she interacts with the world; a sense of assurance, of regard, when it comes to where objects are.

"And philosophy is a tool," Pen says, "We use it to be ourselves while we are alive. Do you believe life is suffering?"

Nick
There is a little quirk of his mouth when he answers; she cannot see it, but perhaps she can hear it when he replies.  There's a certain way words are shaped, isn't there, depending on how the lips pull, depending on how the muscles in the throat work.  "Only half of it.  I think we're constantly balanced on the edge of suffering and joy."

His voice, or the lower edge, the vibration of it, was close to her ear; for a moment it is much louder as he leans his head down to kiss the outer shell of her ear, the upper curve.  When he separates it is only so he can lean his upper half back far enough to lift the shot glass without risk of spilling.  "What's it a tool for?"

Pen
Pen smiles because of Nick. The little quirk of his mouth the rumble of his voice the touch of his lips when and as he says what he says very Nickishly the Nick she likes best and would not imagine being without because a spirit might have its necessities as a body does and a body wants air and a body wants food or it will wilt and a spirit wants Nick saying things like we're constantly balanced on the edge of suffering and joy before kissing the spirit's body's ear. He leans his upper half back far enough and so they can look one another in the eye again for at least a short while. Pen also brings her shot glass up. Brings it to her mouth, and says, "Figuring ourselves out," and then throws back that shot, too. "Figuring out what our Selves are, and could be, and should be, and ah," Pen reaches up to feel her tongue. Still there? Okay. Doubtful for a second, but: still there.

Nick
Much like before, Nick throws his shot back a second after she does hers; it hits the back of his throat like a ball of ice and slides down clear and tasting only of cold, the way good vodka should.  He clears his throat as he sets the shot glass back down on the counter.  "Do you feel closer to that than you did?"

Pen
"Than I did when? Right now?"

Nick
He laughs.  "No.  Than your last Seeking.  Than the one before that."  The corner of his mouth hooks and then he leans forward again, his chin over her shoulder.  "Or than you did five minutes ago, if you'd rather that."

Pen
"I don't know. Perhaps. Should I say 'I don't know, right now'?" He has hooked his chin on her shoulder; she sets her shot glass down on the counter. This time he can feel the singing of her muscles; the possibility that she'll do this one thing, which she doesn't do. Her arm around his neck does loosen; her hand does slip down his back; it runs along his shoulder blade. The rest of her weight is on the counter.

"I believe I know myself better than I did three years ago, four. Five, six, seven eight nineteneleventwelve." Pen: she laughs; it's soft; a clot of smoke, falling apart; all husk. Then: "But it's like... I don't think my belief is going to impose on somebody else. I just think... eventually, some choices are lost and you don't get them back. But it's better to lose them than to never have a chance to make them."

Nick
He can feel the singing in her muscles; it finds some chord within him, and he too becomes possibility, contained.  He instead slides both of his arms around her, braces them against the countertop as he leans forward.  "It's always acceptable to say you don't know, right now."

He listens.  Her laugh, melting away immaterial thing it is, draws his lips back to her ear a second time.  "Are there choices that you regret losing?  Or not having the chance to make?"

Pen
"Nicholas Hyde," she says, soft. Name a thing, and shape it out of air and darkness. "There probably are. I can't think of one now. You answer your own questions. Answer so I can hear you."

Nick
"Mm?"  Her ear is against his throat again as he tilts his head to listen to what she says.  It's with the sort of laziness that wants to look down at her, but doesn't want to move away; he is suspended.  "Answer my..."  And he laughs too, now, something that is half a rasp.

"I regret...the times when I've made you make the hard decisions, take the risks.  Sometimes I regret not appreciating the time I had with Anna and Vivienne growing up more than I did.  Not putting more time into the two of them, and letting them both decide how things were going to be."

A beat.  "But I'm happy with how things have turned out.  So it's hard to regret, wholly."

Pen
"You haven't made me do anything," Pen says, automatically, and Nick is leaning into her (at this stage, onto), and she glances downward; it is a thoughtless gesture, signifying nothing. Pen traces the line of Nick's waist. "And if you have, I wanted it. I wanted to do it. Do you think that's wrong, Nicholai?"

Nick
"Of course not," he says.  "I only...I mean I sometimes do regret the times when I haven't acted."  A beat.  "I suppose all I can do is present the understanding that I have to present, and give the work that I'm able to give, and anything that he does will have to go from there."

Pen
"You are going to begin laying the groundwork, then? Chakravanti 101. See if he's up for more classes, later on, or if he'll switch his Major?"

Nick
"I suppose so," Nick says.  "I want him to...just think about the implications, I suppose.  He says he's prepared for the kind of life it is, but I'm not sure anyone ever is."

He adjusts his weight, shifts slightly to allow her to move her back away from the counter should she wish.  "I suppose I've only been thinking about whether he's more like another Jonas, or if I can help him differently.  Whether that's the kind of role I should let him slide into, or not.  I suppose time will tell."

Pen
There is no accounting for taste. Pen says, "He is not like another Jonas," and one might read judgment in it; one might not.

"He's himself," she says, earnestly. "You want him to be something that isn't a monster. Maybe he is already a monster. You want him to be something better. Maybe he is already better. I don't ... It's good to be aware, but it's no good at all to be still. Which I can be. Better than you."

Pen: a quick grin. Both of her hands find Nick's head. She does not take the opportunity to move back away from the counter, but leans back. Rattle. The vodka bottle. Presses her forehead to Nick's. Wants him lain against her as a bookmark is to book: that neat, that close.

She breathes in slowly, thinking about whether or not she wants to pursue a discussion of what she thinks of Jonas versus Nick versus anybody else, whether she can even elucidate what she is thinking.

"It's not a slide if there are other places to go."

Nick
"I didn't mean to imply that I think Jonas is a monster," Nick says, and this is quiet, and he is indeed still: though there's an edge here, something unsettled, the way a glade of birds will go silent at the crack of an errant foot on a stick.  "You're right.  I'll have to...talk with him, see what's going on with him more."

Pen leans back, and pulls him with her, and they are that neat.  That close.  "Think less."

Pen
He didn't mean to imply that

"I didn't either," Pen says, and her tone of voice is unworried; low, perhaps; the moon might set in her voice. There is no edge; she tucks her observations away, or forgets them. The vodka and bites of caviar and apricot are almost all she has eaten today; she lives in coffee and water and the indulgence of the gods.

You're right

"Hermetic," it's shorthand for 'you're right,' Nick! she murmurs, and it is a tease.

Talk with him. See what's going on with him more.

Think less.

"If you want to start him learning how to do things properly, according to you guys, then you should do that without worrying that you will be imposing. Without worrying, Nicholas."

Nick
Nick's only reply is to nod, and this is only a slight movement of his head, an incline of his chin, but with as close as they are she can feel it.  She can feel the brush of his curls against her cheek, the way the muscles in his neck coil and uncoil and are still.  And then he lets out a long, slow breath of air, and it stirs up a hollow between them as his chest deflates.

He reaches behind her, fumbles around for a moment where he cannot see, and finds an apricot.  "I'm starting to feel that vodka."

Pen
Pen laughs, again.

"I felt it as I carried it home; I knew it would be winter light scratching at my rib cages; it would be a burning in the pit of my stomach. I could throw up. I won't. See?" Pen: handily steals the apricot away from Nick, and will feed it back to him if he still wants it. She waits for him to be done chewing, waits for him to swallow.

"What do you want to do?"

Nick
Nick accepts the apricot back from her after she has stolen it (though a plan, backfired: perhaps he meant for her to keep it, to eat it herself) and it takes him a moment to chew, for the taste to finish blooming over his tongue.  "Eat, to offset the vodka.  Later - "

And he pulls back long enough to look at her, long enough for his gaze to sweep over her burnished eyelashes, the lake-light of her eyes.  "I've been practicing a ritual.  Since you've beaten me at being still, would you like to help me practice it?"

Pen
Later, he says, and Pen says at the same time: "Do you - "

Then she holds her tongue; doesn't budge from silence until he's done. Her eyes are brim-full of play if there is any contest. She was only going to ask him if he wanted her to make him a sandwich. If he wanted her to feed him some bread. Aren't her fingers still in his hair? They tighten and look interest:

"What kind of ritual is it?"

Nick
Do you - 

It almost stops him from speaking; his eyelashes flicker as though they too are part of the struggle to hold onto his train of thought.  "It's a cleansing ritual, though I don't have sufficient understanding of Prime yet to make it really effective.  The first half is silence.  Or just presence - being fully present in the moment.  I've been struggling with it, a little."

Another quirk of his mouth, and his eyes too glint now, playful.  "I thought maybe you could show me how it's done."

Pen
"I'll teach you!" Sufficient understanding of. Pen is ardent. She tucks her face in against Nick's neck for a passing moment. Perhaps he has to repeat himself. Perhaps he waits until Pen untucks her head. Perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps he stays at her temple or her ear and enjoys this very particular bodily shudder, followed as it is by: one hand groping the counter until she finds the shot glasses and she can move those. Until she finds the slippery neck of the vodka bottle and can move that too. There have been any number of promises made by muscles and expressions which have passed unfulfilled.

This isn't one. Her body promises that she will sit herself on the counter and it completes that promise and her arms around Nick's neck promise sweetness just as the apricot did (does [or its ghost does. She wonders how haunted he is, Nicholas.]) and so do her eyes.

"Maybe I can. Maybe you should show me what you have in mind. How you have practiced it." Beat. Earnest: "I'm not hungry; I only want you."

And so.

I'll be the knife

Nick Hyde
It's been a little while since Ned went and found Nick in his office on the hospital's third floor.  They haven't had occasion to speak much since then, besides perhaps an occasional text: they are both busy men.  Maybe Ned was waiting for Nick to reach out; maybe Nick was waiting for the same.

Regardless, it's one day around the lunch hour that Ned receives a text from Mr. Hyde.  Hi Ned.  Headed to the river by the hospital after work if you want to meet me there.  

Arrangements: we don't need to know the details.

The river Nick was talking about runs north of downtown, and there are parks on the banks.  Wilder areas than the rest of the city, some of them, left to river reeds and whispering waters and wandering birds.  The distant towers and the rush of cars just at the edge of hearing remind one that they're still in the city: otherwise it would be easy to forget.

It is early evening and so the sun is still relatively high, or would be if the day weren't overcast.  There are soft grey clouds that scud across the sky today, moved along by the winds; their mirror is in the river water (as above, so) below.

Ned finds Nick at the place where they agreed to meet, which is near a stone bench (polished granite: even here there are traces of a more cultivated life) on which the Chakravanti is seated.  He is facing the river, and there is a leatherbound journal in his lap in which he is scribbling with a heavy pen as black as his hair.  The humidity has frayed his curls, made some of them stand nearly on end, as he bends his head over whatever it is he is doing.  There is a bottle of beer next to him on the bench (some places are stricter about open container laws than others), and on the ground at his side a bag.

The air is stagnant, today.  It has silenced even the birds.

Ned
In silence, can be found a bit of the world.

Not by listening, but by accepting what the surroundings are trying to tell you. That these moments are rare, you have your thoughts, all to yourself, so make the most of it.

Ned's approach is not quiet, but it is somewhat subtle. Few have had the chance to explain much about the Arcane 'subtlety' that comes with some Mages, who drift in and of notice, as if memory were trickier to maintain around them. Ned is not so prolific in it as others, barely a scratch really but it makes him easier to dismiss. Easier to forget, even in silence.

His footfalls approach may be abrupt or it may simply be a moment or two before noticing their distance closing.

"Sweating like a pig." His first words. He is dressed in a simple black t-shirt and dark green slacks. His converse are well worn gray probably in need of replacing soon, and his socks are invisible below the pant cuffs. His hair is gelled back, resistant to the humidity. He carries nothing of accessories. No backpack, no book, not even headphones to denote music to drown out the world should it be necessary.

"Quiet out here. Bit of an oddity I've been finding." A pause as he settles onto the bench, facing the same direction, the river, that Nick was. "Had a conversation with-...heh...well, with River, the person about that. The Quiet places. How rare they are." He flicks a half grin, arm draping along the back of the bench away from Nick.

"She'd like it here."

Nick Hyde
Nicholas, too, has something of the subtlety that follows Ned; he passes in and out of notice.  He is not noticed, unless he wants to be, embodies a sort of cultivated ambiguity in his maybe-white-maybe-mixed-maybe-straight-maybe-middle class sort of way.  He exists between worlds; he always has.

He does not notice Ned immediately, but his senses are sharp and so it is not long: Ned is still a little distance away when he turns his head, though not in full.  There is a crest of light along the sharp edge of his cheekbone, the gleam of a dark eye.  He is wearing a checkered shirt of white and light gray, light gray pants: all monochrome and neutral, today.

"I'm glad you met River," are Nick's first words to the new initiate as he tucks his pen away and closes the journal in one hand with a soft snap.  He lets it rest on the top of his thigh, rests a hand over it.  "She would like it out here.  I've been meaning to invite her out hiking sometime."  As it is she has been helping him garden.

Nick glances over at Ned now, takes in his appearance.  He is indeed sweating.  Nick is not sweating as much, or at least seems less affected by it: he is used to the heat; he grew up in it.  "What did you think of her?"

Ned
"Abrupt. Blunt. Child-like without being innocent. Sort of like a doll someone scooped the adult out of and put in a Tradition."

If it sounds harsh, Ned doesn't seem to notice. If anything, there's a hint of...admiration? Appeal? Attraction in his tone? He doesn't glance at Nick during the explanation, nor does he seem put off or put out about explaining. Abrupt was something Ned understood and appreciated. He and River getting along probably wasn't difficult to imagine.

"She bends to the Euthanatos method pretty firmly traditionally. Went into details about several names and differentiating spokes on the Wheel and what they mean...I had to prod her to boil it down a bit but essentially it came out like I expected and like you've hinted at."

He turns to look at Nick, a vague smile on his face.

"She's good. Different, which is also necessary these days. More perspectives I catch the more firm I become."

Nick Hyde
Nick listens to Ned's assessment, quiet and without interruption; there is a smooth arch to his brows as he listens and notes that - admiration? attraction? there.  Nicholas is an insightful man; he does not have to look hard.

"River is very straightforward," he says, and maybe it's an agreement of sorts.  "I think she's more traditional in her beliefs than I am in mine, though, to be honest with you.  She was trained more formally and much sooner than I was, from what I understand.  But it's good to get different perspectives.  There's room for difference even within one Tradition."

Nick drums his fingertips against the top of the journal.  His eyes have wandered out along the river; he absently tucks his feet underneath the bench.  "Have you had any more chance to think on what we talked about?"

Ned
"I've had the chance. I haven't changed my mind, if that's what you're asking."

He turns back to the River, regarding the flow of it, the landscape of the 'Wilderness' that tries to hide the civility of where they genuinely are. It's an inspection, his gaze darting and moving with slow sweeps over the various green, dark puddles and flowing currents.

"There's a certain level of...Hope, necessary to all of this. What we are. Nothing I could comfortably give a point to just...Hope. Possessing it. Torch in the dark. We're losing a fight or lost a War or waging a battle that can't be won and we keep going anyway. The Wheel turns and all that, but the point was never to turn it until it clicked into the right place. Just to ensure it keeps turning, even if we're... Well-" He huffs a laugh, not depressed or somber. Genuine amusement.

"-Keep on going, until you can' anymore and Hope there's someone else to pick it up when you're gone. I like that. Pieces in a puzzle that may never get solved but...it's that maybe that I'm interested in. Because what if-" A glance at Nick, brow arched. "What if, you know?"

Nick Hyde
Hope necessary to it, Ned says, and here Nick draws in a sharp breath: an audible thing, that, a sudden rush of air.  There is still that arch to his brows, a little point that has appeared between them as he considers the words.

"Keep that hope, then, Ned.  You're going to need it."  It is perhaps a more grim thing than Ned will have heard him say before: nonetheless it is delivered with gravity, with only a touch of the wry humor Nick sometimes exhibits.  He lets a hand drop behind him on the bench, leans back on it.

"I think once you begin to work more extensively with the Wheel, if you do, once you begin to work more with balancing life and death, you realize how fine that balance is.  The world is never very far from chaos.  It needs us, in order to keep turning, because there are things that actively work to stop it.  You realize that, after a time."

There is a little sigh, and then Nick straightens again, his hand returned to his lap.  Then he glances back over at Ned.  "So what is it, exactly, that you're hoping to learn from me?"

Ned
"Learn?"

Ned says it with a vague frown, brow creasing inward. It hadn't when Nick had said his part about balance, life and death. That was the party line. The edge that many of the Euthanatos he'd met or heard about seemed to have in common. Learning though.

"I'm not sure, Nick. That's sort of like a Teacher asking a Student what they want to know about?" He pauses, a hand rising to scraped over his chin and cheeks for a moment.

"Mostly I want to know more about the threats to the wheel. Their reasons for threatening it and what you do to stop them. You, personally, and you, the Euthanatos."

Nick Hyde
"Shouldn't teachers ask students what they want to know about?"  A sidelong glance now toward the other men, and there's a crinkling of the skin near his eyes.  Humor, even if there is sincerity there too.  "You must be more broken up about deciding not to go to a university than I thought, if you're after a lecture."

Ned offers more specifics, though, and he wants to know about: threats to the Wheel.

And here it's Nick's turn to furrow his brow again.  "There are as many reasons for threatening the Wheel as there are reasons for maintaining it.  Depending on who you talk to, they might not consider themselves a threat to the Wheel at all."

Ned
"When it comes to something you can't learn on TV, the Internet or through experience. Like this? Hard to decide where to start."

Ned offers little more than a snort at Nick's explanation, head shaking gently.

"This vagueness that suggests everyone has a reason for doing what they do, is endearing and all, but it doesn't answer my questions. I understand the circumstances often demand you be careful about how you handle things but there was a War you old guard keep talking about from way back. Something happened and you went up against some folks who decided you weren't doing the world or reality any services. From the Tradition's standpoint...from your personal standpoint...Who is harming the Wheel and it's progression these days that you want to do something about. Kill, heal or help, doesn't matter."

Ned turns slightly so he's facing Nick, enough that he has to prop one leg up on the bench between them to do so.

"Right now everyone's handed me particular words that don't mean anything. I've squeezed a small amount of info. out of the Doc and Grace about the Technocrats. 1984 meets Men in Black meets 'Human Patriotism' but that's about the gist and mostly sounds like propaganda. Then you have the other things out there that..." Ned mangles a smile, trying to find the words.

"Words like Nephandi. Or Marauder. Terms with definitions that don't do much but paint a text book picture. A Theory. Give me some detail here."

Nick Hyde
Nick laughs, once: it's a sharp sound, and clear.  "I'm not old guard, I was never in the Ascension War.  That was a little before my time.  I think even if I had been, though, it wouldn't have been my war, beyond just trying to survive to make sure I could keep doing the things that matter."

The other questions Ned asks him: well, they're personal, and Nicholas is less comfortable talking about himself than he is with making other people talk.  It shows when one looks, in his subtle shifts of his weight on the bench and how his gaze wanders from here to there.

"The Technocratic Union is full of people, and they're as human as we are," or as human as they're not: these unspoken words.  Ned made his thoughts last time clear enough to Nick, it seems.  "Most are well intended, some aren't.  My understanding of the Ascension War is that it goes back a long time, like most wars do, because they were trying to make the world safer."

A beat, and there is a thoughtful furrow of his brows.  "And maybe they have, for some people.  I wouldn't be happy there, so I'm not there."

There is another soft exhale and he lifts the bottle of beer by the neck and takes a quick swallow.  It's an afterthought, then, but he leans down to reach into the bag next to his foot and retrieve a second, which he extends to Ned with a raised eyebrow.  Then, after Ned takes it or declines, "Marauders are what happens when you...well, you have to make your own rules to some extent, to do magick at all.  Marauders happen when your rules are all you see.  I've never encountered one, that I know of.  What do you know already, about the Fallen?"

Ned
Ned declines. A quick, swift wave of his hand that might be a bit telling in it's abrupt and suddeness. Ned doesn't drink, but he doesn't say anything or frown to suggest offense. Just a hard line.

"Technocrats sound like they have Tunnelvision. They imagine the world in a particular way and expect everyone to follow along, despite the fact...well...not everyone writes Poetry, plays Bach or fucks the same sex..." Ned shrugs apologetically.

"I don't know anything about the Nephandi. The Doc's explained a very straight forward, clear cut avenue about what and who they are and meeting one is apparently like..." He scratches his chin again. "Like if all those old cartoons where the hero meets their exact opposite. Bizarro Superman or Evil Ned...something similar with entirely the wrong moral code and standard. Purposeful evil, even if they don't recognize it." Ned's frowning throughout this explanation, as if he doesn't quite believe the 'cartoonish' quality of it.

"I expect that coming through an Awakening, not everyone is ready for it. Not everyone can handle it and sometimes those who can handle it, aren't the people reality wants handling it, but they do anyway."

Nick Hyde
That swift wave of his hand is indeed telling, and without a word Nick tucks the bottle away again.  He offers no apology (he does not make them when no offense was given), but there is a sort of understanding in the look he gives over; perhaps that is enough.

"I think some of them probably do have tunnel vision.  I think the Technocracy suffers from the same thing most large organizations suffer from.  When you are surrounded only by people who do the same things you do and think the same things, that becomes your normal."  There is a smile there that suggests that the apologetic shrug was not needed, and Nick adds, "I've seen plenty of Hermetics who have only ever worked with other Hermetics act the same way.  And Chakravanti.  It's how people are."

The explanation of Nephandi makes Nick draw in another breath.  His hand comes to light on his journal again, momentarily.  "I think some are obvious that way, or...so far beyond the pale in what they're willing to do that it becomes that way, like dark caricature.  Not always."

A beat, and Nick's jaw firms, relaxes.  "A friend of mine Fell.  An old cabalmate.  Her perspective made a lot of sense, when she explained it to me.  I didn't even realize, until...I don't know when it happened.  It's not always obvious.  But it's not always easy, to stay hopeful, even if you are ready and seem like you can handle it.  Liz was a good Chorister.  She was...if she Fell, anyone can."

Ned
"Falling's not impossible. It's not even difficult. The best comparisons to when I was human, I've found is addiction."

He pauses, turning away from Nick and back to the River agian.

"Margot's Brother was an addict. Drugs, possibly alcohol. Before the whole killing thing, before even Awakening, he was into it. It's how-" Ned shakes his head, moving past the tangent before it has a chance to emerge "Luke was a problem but from his perspective, it's what needed to be done to deal with what he was dealing with. From inside the bubble, you're as good or as bad as you make it and those who agree they are bad and do bad anyway. Sure. Caricature. Twirling mustache and 'I want to see it burn', Joker styles. For most others though, it's just this circumstance they are in that says, I can't be the normal or the beautiful or the fierce or the brave because...Reality says me, specifically me, has to deal with this combination of things in this particular way and I belong to this particular avenue so this is all I can really do. Addiction thin's you down into this moment where..." He chuckles slightly.

"It's an addict wandering into the hostpial with a glass shard, cutting someone they don't know because they're in pain and don't know how else to handle it. The expectation weighs on them that they are responsible for making themselves better and they have the power to do so if only they just..." Ned's hands shake in front of him, emphatic and nebulous. If only they just...what?

"Nephandi sound like the sports team you want to hate because they beat your sports team all the time. As a collective, you just don't want anything to do with them. As individuals, they have jobs, wives, husbands, relationships and all that sort of stuff they are dealing with...they just happen to want what you hate with their own rational in place." Ned's scratching the back of his neck, lips tucked between his teeth for a moment.

"What exactly are you expecting from me if I manage to get into your Club?"

Nick Hyde
"As individuals, their Avatar still shifts and changes.  Becoming a Nephandus isn't just...it isn't just having a different perspective on life.  Your soul becomes saturated with destruction, with destructive tendencies and impulses.  It doesn't come back.  We can't offer them the same blank slate or starting point we can offer other life, when we return them to the Wheel."

Nick's eyes are unfocused as he watches the water make its way over rock and reed, thoughtful and distant.  "Most of them believe - at least, Liz believed and I believe others believe the same - in helping things to their ending.  Some because they believe that's a natural state, and in Liz's case because she believed it was the...that it was God.  That there was purity in Nothingness and it was the only way to attain that purity.  To not have any more questions."

Inhale.  "But she won't...I killed her, and whatever she comes back as, if she Awakens it'll be the same.  If people keep Falling, eventually that is how the world will end because there won't be anything left.  So it isn't enough just to kill as a means of tending the Wheel.  It's balance.  Do you understand?"

Ned
"Yeah. You can't change or get rid of someone who falls, so you do your best to ensure those who haven't fallen? Don't and those who have Fallen? Stick around for as short a time as possible to ensure those who haven't Fallen? Don't."

Ned's roundabout sentence comes across with clarity. At least to him. His hands rise to collect beneath his chin, fingers curling over his mouth and cheeks until the tips are tapping gently under either eye. Elbows to knees and regarding the River, working over some thought like it was gristle between his teeth.

"It isn't easy noticing. You had a friend, a Cabalmate who fell and you didn't realize she had been and was. Are there any warning signs? Indicators? Common ones, that is. Sensory input or particular-" One hand releases his face, snapping his fingers "-the hell did Margot call the- [i]Rotes[/i], rotes that can be used to ferret them out? Or maybe that's too easy."

Nick Hyde
"Yes.  But it applies to more than just the Fallen.  If we're talking on a larger scale, or...a more abstract one, maybe, despair is what makes them alluring.  It gives them power, because it's more believable if it...that kind of perspective that Liz was talking about only makes sense if it has an echo in you, you know?"

There is a flutter of his eyelashes as he realizes he was staring too long at the water, and drawing in another breath he straightens up.  "So I...Pen and I have talked about it, a little.  About fostering what's...what's good in the world.  Nothing else needs the help.  That's what I do for the Chakravanti.  If you were initiated your role could be different.  There are a lot of roles."

There is another glance to Ned, and no confusion there: evidently the roundabout sentence was clear enough to him as well.  It's straightforward, at least.

"There are ways to tell, sometimes.  The feel of their magick changes and warps along with the Avatar.  But all of that can be hidden by someone with sufficient skill.  And sometimes some of us don't feel all that great either.  It's relative."

Ned
"Helpful."

Sarcasm without the bite to make it unpleasant. Just another fact. Ned might have been hopeful there would be an easy way, but hope didn't equal delusion.

"Right now I'm more concerned with those who have active intentions toward flipping the table. Inspiring Despair's a lot harder to do when you can pinpoint those who are pursuing it, for whatever means or ends." Ned's jaw grits and it's the first moment of genuine agitation in this meeting that comes to him.

"I come back to all the folks I've run into. The hospital, since Awakening...Margot's Brother. Everyone of them had some sob story or moment that just handed them over to that feeling and emptiness and ugly. Except, it wasn't just a moment, there were people behind it too. Circumstances from the bullying on the playground that one time, to the shitty boyfriend or girlfriend to that active participant who wanted nothing but to do you harm enough to make a mark. Make it permanent and then...you spiral out on your own, from that one trauma. That one realization they imprinted on."

Ned snaps his fingers.

"I want those people. Those scar-makers. Wounders and harmers. I want those who think it's ok to deliver and hand out pain and think it's easy. Who decided they were monsters...and then went and decided that the best way to be...Not the only way but the best way to be, was to make other monsters too." A pause, his hands settling, dangling between his legs, elbows on knees in a hunched position had him staring at the River.

"Everyone else has a chance, but only when those chances aren't getting snuffed out. Forcefully crushed and broken. Technocrat, Nephandi or otherwise, you don't get a say in the matter if you think your Best is when others are at their worst."

Nick Hyde
Ned's sarcasm is met with another smile, something that is half wry and perhaps tinged with wistfulness.  Sympathy for the desire for an easier answer.  "Things are complicated," he says.

And then he listens.  He is slightly leaned forward, head bowed and his eyes on the ground for the time being; it gives him an intensity.  (More appropriately: it gives the intensity of Ned's words their due.)  "My acarya thinks that way.  One of my mentors.  I think you'd....you'd find a lot of what he has to say to be interesting.  He's someone I would call here, if we decided to have you initiated."

The 'we' is not exclusive to Ned, though it is subtle enough that it could go missed: it is a mutual decision.  Nicholas recognizes that.

"What will you do to keep yourself from Falling, Ned?"

Ned
"Margot. The Doc. My Cabal...even if the Doc's reluctant to call it that."

He lifts a hand, three fingers already shown on it to indicate those three elements he's already named. He hasn't turned to look at Nick, merely regards the water.

"Something to be recognized in knowing there are others like me out there, who don't care that I'm the Supernatural me, just me. They don't care much how I think, beyond pointing out when I'm wrong or right. They don't care that I have agendas or secrets, but will respond when I don't follow through with good things, proper things, correct things, because of those agendas and secrets."

Another finger flicks up.

"Put as many of those who aren't supposed to be here and are ruining it for the rest of us, in the ground."

And a fifth finger goes up.

"Learn what I can about how this new reality we're all in and how it affects us and keep asking questions."

He finally turns toward Nick, a brow arched.

"And hopefully join a Tradition that knows how to put me down if that's not enough."

Nick Hyde
Nick nods, and his head is still bowed, see, his brow still furrowed in thought.  And now he turns his gaze back to Ned: more directly perhaps than he has so far tonight.  "You know that the Chakravanti will do that if it's not enough, right?  I'll do it myself, if it becomes my responsibility to do so.  And I would expect the same from you, if it were me.  I just...I want to make sure you really understand what you're entering into."

Ned
"Nick. Really understanding seems to be the entire point of all this."

He flaps his hands around them, as if the air itself held the answer to what 'this' is.

"I don't get why I have these abilities or you or Margot or the Doc or half the other people out there that do. I don't get why the Wheel turns or how it came to get so complicated. I don't get how finding a bow and arrow or crossing a bridge or seeing Margot during my seeking was meant to make me understand it better but it does. Did....does." A frown. Head shaking. Moving on.

"But the one thing I'm certain of, is if I knew? I'd be where I was supposed to be. That part where Reality says I should be or the Wheel says I'm meant to be or Big Brother just doesn't want me to do. If I knew. But I don't. So I have to start making decisions for myself and by my own measurements of how this life has treated me and I've treated it, to learn more. Get more. Be more and right now, the best parts of me and the bigger parts tell me the Euthanatos is where I belong. Either to do some good or learn how to do good better than I currently am."

Ned
"....And if you or someone else around you falls, I'll be the knife. Plain and simple."

A nod. Firm. Unflinching. Maybe a bit too staunch, but there it is.

Nick Hyde
He listens to the rest of this, and he's looking past Ned then and then turning his head to look back out toward the river.  The sun is sinking low now, lower, and the edge of the horizon has begun to turn pink.  The beginning of a sunset: of a threshold.

Not so long from now he will go Seeking, and he will sit alone at this hour.

But not now.  Nick takes the last swallow from his bottle of beer and then tucks the empty bottle away in the back pocket of his bag, and then braces a hand on his knee to push himself to his feet.  "All right.  We'll have to talk more soon."

He turns his head to glance down the dirt trail that twists along the river's edge.  "Do you walk much?"

Ned
"All the time. Hate driving and biking in the city is a death sentence."

He gets to his feet, hands stuffing in his pockets, regarding the river for a moment, before turning and nodding toward the East.

"After you."

The pair head out into the Parklands, enjoying a bit of the landscape and normalcy.