Here we lay our scene. Late night and Penelope is sprawled on the floor, lying on her back with her legs on Nick's lap or the day bed which is pushed against the wall not occupied by her apothecary's desk. Nick's lap and the day bed both are in her study. Nick she put in front of her computer, so he could read over a new poem she has written and give whatever feedback he might.
Pen is reading a book, for fun!, but only to keep herself from talking to Nick while he reads, who she has missed this live-long day. She looks quite serene, and the Magely Fashion Gazette would note that our favourite Flambeau in the House of Hyde and Mars in wearing a pair of (very short) shorts, where-in half of the short is crocheted lace - gray flirting with ivory, with moonlight on water, and the upper half of the short is a dark silkish fabric with a simple pattern of leaves printed upon it, the leaves the same moonlight-on-water, silver-soft deer prints in snow pale color, and a kimono jacket with long, long trailing fringe which spirals over wood just as her hair might if it weren't braided neatly in a coronet a crown for her very red head bright and shining and complexly woven. A tuft of her bangs is sticking up, at odds.
The poem is about speaking; it is about voices, and conjuring voice out of silence; what is more oppressive than silence. The poem is also about a very simple swim: about a river, forking; branching. It is meant to be haunting: to niggle, get inside the skull; it is meant to be: sensuousness, expanding; imagistic, sharp as a knife: narrowing to a point.
It's meant to be a lot of things. It needs work.
Nick
Here they are, the both of them: late night and Nick is seated in front of Penelope's computer, his face bathed in the soft glow from her laptop. His eyes are dark wells in that light: as the way down is made paradoxically darker in bright noon, as light blinds and casts contrast. He has a single curl corkscrewing like a horn down over his forehead; the others are sticking out at odds and ends. The longer it grows the more its coarseness becomes apparent, the more it sticks together in tufts.
Pen's feet are in his lap and Nick has both of his hands around one of them, massaging it not quite absently but without any particular focus (his focus is on her poem, see.) One thumb kneads her arch, the other the muscle above and behind her ankle.
Her words he reads with fondness: because he missed her all this long day too, and even if the poem needs some work these are still Pen's words and so they are beautiful. His face is still, placid, thoughtful. Nick, who perhaps could have once been artistically inclined himself, never cultivated this talent; nonetheless he has long been giving feedback to Anna and now to Pen.
"I like these lines," he says, sweeping his fingertip across the screen, "but I'm not...it still feels like it's in pieces. Like a few different poems."
Pen
"Hmm." Pen had stopped reading as soon as Nick spoke; propped herself up on both elbows, the book open flat across her ribs, the curve of her stomach - she doesn't sit up so much that she will remove her feet from Nick's lap, you see - and her neck is a long line when she lofts her chin and glances toward the gesture of Nick's fingers sweeping across: well it's just light and shadow, pretending to be words, isn't it?
"Will you read me one of the pieces? I want to hear what you mean."
Nick
[Uhhh...reading! Charisma + Expression]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Nick
He can feel her weight shift and redistribute as her legs move, maybe digging in a heel here or there, and so his thumbs still themselves long enough to allow her to do so. Then they move to her other foot and begin the same ministrations there.
Nicholas glances at her sidelong as she suggests that he read her one of the pieces, and then he says, "I'll read you two so you can see...maybe you can tie them together." And he begins to read to her, not with any particular skill though Pen knows Nick knows that he can speak softly but poignantly, but these are not his words and he is not a trained performer.
There is a swim through river water through the expansiveness of the water through reeds and: up above the surface light filtering down and through, and silence all around; and also a segment about oppressive silence, about ringing voices and the two segments are quite different in mood and description of sensation. Perhaps she can see it as he reads, doing his best to add inflection and mood where he will. "I'm not doing you justice, but," Nick says, and then furrows his brow thoughtfully at the screen, at light and shadow in the shape of language.
Pen
Pen, listening, is as intent as a cat who is watching a bird on the other side of glass it knows will not vanish; and yet, the bird is still there: and probably sweet. The bird comes closer, with its quick heart, its tempting wings; Pen is intent, even intense. An outsider might think her expression is reserved, for she does not smile or frown; she holds herself up on her elbows and when he is done reading to her her eyes cant to the left toward the ceiling. She waves the idea of Nick doing her no justice away with one casual hand, all elegant languor, and then kneads the back of her own neck with her knuckles.
"What is there to say about human voices, Nicholas?" Pen has her musing voice on: her silk and shadow voice, as intimate as heat from a fire is: turned low. "I did always love that line: 'til human voices wake us and we drown." Emphasis. Punctuated by a sharp gesture from her hand. "I want something that sounds like that. Like a knell from the deep. Like that -- you know, that shiver you get in Lord of the Rings, when you hear about an old battle, and then the drumming from the deep is real. And means something other than what you thought. Isn't 'knell' a good word? I find the etymology of it interesting. Knell from - oh Danish ghosts, forgive me: I'm not completely clear on the right accent. But cnyll, which is a noun, verb-form cnyllan, Old English, which means crack. Like," and she lets herself lie flat on the ground again so she can compass a line with her hands, go through the motion of pretending to crack an imaginary - "a tree branch."
She mimes the gesture; clicks her tongue. Crinkles her nose, expression leavening: amusement. "Or a bone. Pop, bang. These sounds all had the same word: cnyll. I don't know if they had others. But it is a word which is a fixed moment. Even when we use knell as a verb, it seems to be only pretending action; it would rather be a noun."
Nick
Hermetics: they are fascinating creatures, aren't they? The way in which they study language, and how each word in each language has its own significance and the way in which they can tie it all together, weave it into spellwork or wordsmithing or whatever they please because what they please is what they Will. The way in which they talk about things that few human minds comprehend or care to comprehend as though they are commonplace.
Nick sweeps his fingertips over the top of her foot, trailing affection over her skin. That hand wanders up her shin, up the ridge of bone. "Voices sounded distorted when I was drowning," he says. "I could hear Jonas and Delilah speaking, but they sounded...yes. A lot like bells, or like an echo that started here had found something on the other side of the Veil which was calling back. Voices change shape depending on how we hear them."
Pen
Pen's thoughts are so alight that the sensation of the pads of Nick's fingertips sweeping across sensitive skin can be a background pleasure; but she flexes her foot once he has passed it by; might watch him trace the ridge of bone to her knee or look at his hand if it reaches the knee and has her surface from the realm of word-thought. "Something on the other side of the Veil which was calling back? Hummmmmm."
Then, with more immediacy to her expression and her tone-of-voice, toes curling and an alertness come stealing into her eyes: the way dawn'll steal stars from the night, one by one by one:
"Did you understand what they were saying?"
Nick
"Or an echo, as though their voices had struck something and come back," Nick says, and he too is thoughtful because maybe he's thinking about what that means, thinking about how things fit together. His fingertips reach her knee and then they come sweeping back but under this time, his hand curving around the back of her calf. His fingertips begin kneading again, here behind her knee and below.
"I couldn't understand them. I just knew they were talking to each other, but I was too far under and once I started to lose air, I wasn't paying attention anymore." He could look back with Time perhaps, pick apart that moment: could even dredge the voices out of the deeps if he had a knowledge of Forces too. If he cared to do so. "There was just a point where everything began to sound more and more distant. But they held me there and as long as I could still hear them I knew I was still myself."
Pen
Penelope closes her eyes, the lashes a dark crescent against her cheekbones; the shadow they cast, the same. The rise and fall of her chest is steady, not quite regular enough to play music by, but not unsteady, and the book begins to side off her ribs. She catches it, opens one eye to look at the page number, and then sets it aside. She rests her hands flat over her ribs. She has fallen asleep like that before, but she seems wakeful still.
"Is that why they were speaking during your rite of passage? To give you a road?"
Nick
Pen has fallen asleep this way before and so Nick is sweeping his gaze over her in this way that is simultaneously wary and yet it lingers here and there in a way that wariness doesn't: he is fond and that is all. She is still wakeful and so he half-turns away from the screen so that he can focus more fully on her leg and foot.
"That might have been. Or...Jonas uses Words the way you do, a lot of the time, so he may have been speaking ritual so that I didn't lose my way back. I haven't been taught how to initiate someone that way, so I'm not entirely sure."
Pen
Penelope inches her leg closer to Nick's waist. She is paying attention, although there is no particular sign of it: a certain air, perhaps, though she looks like the model for her namesake, Elaine, floating down to Camelot: she lay as if she smiled, according to Tennyson. Who wouldn't smile, that was half-sick of shadows, and suddenly turned; let the curse fall, in order to breathe new air?
Her brows pull together, once. Smooth out again. A beat. She opens her eyes a lit. He hasn't been taught: she watches her knee, the slope of her shin, the suggestion of movement in the dull glow of her laptop screen.
"Okay. Let's go back. What is there to say about human voices? What good are they? What do they do?" She sounds: imploring.
And adds, "Would you want to go back to New England with me, for a visit?"
Nick
Pen inches her leg closer to Nick's waist, and Nick inches nearer her: scoots himself a little along the floor so that he does not have to reach as far to continue massaging the back of her calf. His head is bent and his eyes are thoughtful, shadowed and overcast by the sweep of his eyelashes, the fall of his hair. In dim light he is: an elegiac thing dark as his nickname-sake.
"They're a guide and a tether. They hold you to life and connect you to it," he says. "And they...hm. They are a knell, kind of. Even when you move on past the Veil to the next life they still remember you and call you back, even if you can't hear them anymore."
He glances up at her when she mentions New England and he says, "Of course. It would be good to see people there. Who would you go to see?"
Pen
Her smile deepens when Nick uses the word: knell. She mouths the word herself, or the Old English root for the word, and wriggles in place, back: arcing. And her eyes are open; her head tilted to the side, so she can look at Nick.
"Mom. The boys. Mary. Aidan was saying he wanted to come out and visit us here. If Jonas is in town, I could get his take on From the Mixed‑Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and you could check up on him. See Jackson."
Nick
"I do miss Jackson," Nick says, and there is a softness that touches his eyebrows, the corners of his mouth, this slight smile at the names of people who were dear and seem so distant now. "We could both see Thane again, too. Delilah might even be around."
Nick scoots himself a little closer, lets his hands come to rest over both of her knees. "I talked to Rob the other night. He and I made a bet to see which of us could convince Ari to take a job somewhere like Michael's."
Pen
The right hand stretched on her ribcage leaves it to reach across the floor towards Nick's hands; she arcs her back a little more; she is an elongated C, and there, there: got it; she can reach his hands if she wants to. "Maybe Jackson can be coaxed out here."
But it was just an impulse; she doesn't chase it to its conclusion. He talked to Rob the other night and she follows the line of her thigh back up; stretches the arm over her head; frames her head, so, resting it in the crook of her elbow. And then she laughs: "What do you win?"
Nick
Pen can reach his hands: Nick catches hers in his own, laces his fingers through hers though not tightly as she has to curve her spine in this way to even reach him. The thought of bending his own spine in that way makes his back ache. "I think he probably could be. Jackson likes to travel."
Nicholas, too, does not chase this thought to its conclusion: he is watching her head settle there in the crook of her elbow, her hair nestled there bright as the sun between the clouds. And he hesitates, in answering her. "He visits if I win." A beat. "You don't have to see him. I just thought I'd coax him out here and let him know I haven't forgotten about him."
Pen
[Hmm... Charisma+Expression.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Pen
Impulse! Unchecked reaction! Pen groans; it's just a short thing, almost a grunt: bare bones eloquence, coupled with a distraction. "What does he get if he wins?"
Nick
Pen groans aloud, and here Nick has the grace to look a little abashed. It's a look that says that he knows he should have asked beforehand, and it's a look that says that he knows that maybe Rob was a little too right. (He often is, isn't he?) "I go back out there for a few days on a quest of his devising. And, uh, a lock of my hair."
Pen
"It sounds as though you did not bargain very well," Penelope says, neat: and measured. "I wouldn't call those very equitable prizes."
She does not sound incensed, or angry, or concerned. The reason becomes evident when she: squeezes Nick's hand, lightly, then stretches both arms over her head, arching her back a different way: stretch, stretch, stretch, all the muscles gone taut: even her legs; she streeeetches. Evident when she: does that, and says, "I want to take part in the bet."
Or not evident yet. Almost evident. "I bet that neither of you will get Ari to work at Michael's."
Nick
"Whether or not it's equitable is relative, I suppose," Nick says, thoughtful here because: that could be a concept to allow to swirl around in his mind, breathe and percolate, because he often bargains. As Pen squeezes his hand he inches still closer, leans forward just a little.
And laughs, when she announces her intent to take part in the bet. "It's entirely within the realm of possibility. What do you get if you win?"
Pen
"Robin's balls in a wee little jar," Pen says, disdainfully, and then: mischievously, "And yours in my hand." Sly walk of fingers toward his hip; of course, she cannot reach. The slyness is the thing; the suggestiveness. "And you must go running with me at four am, every day, for three months. Robin must send me his journal."
Nick
Nicholas laughs again: tracks her fingers along their walk toward his hip, even if they fall short. "Four a.m.?" He cannot quite hide his dismay, see: it is still very dark at four a.m. no matter when the time falls in the year, and right now it is hot, and soon it will be cold in the mornings. Too hot, too cold for running, and too dark always.
"I...I suppose that's fair," he says, with an air of virtue here, see, because he understands that the terms he and Rob set were not entirely palatable to her either.
Pen
"Nicholas, you cannot simply agree immediately to a bargain," Penelope says, even if something causes her to smile: distant, see, like her thoughts are far and away; they are not so far as they seem.
Nick
Pen's smile is a distant thing as her thoughts have been drawn down some unseen trajectory (you'd need Mind, Nick) and as Nick finally leans far enough forward to rest his chin over her hand which rests on his hand which rests on her knee. His eyes are solemn. "Why not, if it's a fair bargain?"
Pen
"Because it is not respectful to the art of bargaining, which asks a tithe of wit and contest, Nickolai. Also simply because you do not mind me having winning those prizes does not mean it is a fair bargain; one side of the rock is always dirty."
Pen
ooc: ahem, strike that 'having' before that 'winning' from the records.
Nick
There is a not-smile there, tugging and pulling on the corners of his mouth; they waver. "Well, maybe I would rather you be the one to come out ahead," he says, as he turns his head in and kisses the side of her knee. "Or maybe I don't intend to lose."
Pen
When he finishes declaration number one / when he presses his mouth against her knee there is a sharp glint of laughter: she swallows it; it was a bright cinder, and it illumines her eyes; she closes them. Coolly: "You did choose a rather mean prize; I wouldn't want to win it if I were you. What if he doesn't agree to giving up his journal, hmm?"
Nick
Nick keeps his mouth pressed there for a moment, flat until she can feel him smile when he sees the corresponding glimmer of mirth in her eyes. "He could always haggle and re-negotiate terms. Didn't you say that's what would most respect the art of bargaining, anyway?"
Pen
"He can't because I take a hard line with Robins," Penelope says, still coolly. The cool approaches cold: this is the truth. Her hair is red and her resonance is one part ardent and she is passionate and passionate and passionate so many people associate her with fire: occupational hazard of belonging to House Flambeau. Flambeau, Flambeaux: candles, many-branched fire-holder. "Unless you bargain in his stead; and it seems, Crow, that you have no interest."
Nick
"Well, I suppose it comes down to whether you'd rather have Robin's journal more or have me run with you for the next three months," he says. A beat, a thoughtful tilt of his head. "I do doubt that Robin would agree to give up his journal. Though maybe he's confident enough in his ability to agree to it."
Pen
"Every morning," Penelope says, helpfully, as Nick is tilting his head, thoughtfully. "Before daybreak. The world is so mysterious in that hour, love."
Then: she squirms again; takes her hand away from Nick's hand and twists so her legs have not moved, but she has twisted at the waist/curved in and now rests her weight on her hip and now (how is it this is a languorous line; how is it she looks like the portrait of decadence and dissolution?) she plants her elbows on the ground and laces her fingers together casually with wanton nonchalance and rests her chin there-upon and looks down/over at Nick.
"And I will have both -- all. Journal and balls and you, running. Did you choose a deadline for this bet?"
Nick
"It's funny that you think Robin would give you his balls in a jar before his journal," Nick says, and now the threat of a smile actualizes. "You're probably right, but still."
She asks after a deadline and his curls sway as he shakes his head. "No. We probably should have. I'm going off of the interpretation that whoever gets her to do it first wins, but with your terms we might have to negotiate a deadline now."
Pen
Another glint of laughter, swallowed and sharp; now her eyes are even darker, though the rest of her is gone to luster because this almost-laugh ends with a wide wide smile lines around her mouth and eyes. The smile diminishes slowly, naturally, fading into thoughtfulness; it leaves behind a glow.
"The end of this summer."
Nick
"The end of the Michael's hiring season," Nick says, and here he offers a thoughtful, even sage nod. "That's a reasonable boundary to set. So would that be the end of August? The autumnal equinox? The first frost? We should be precise in the setting of terms."
Pen
"August 31st," Penelope says, stoically, and now she pushes herself up so she is sitting with her weight resting all on one hand and her hip: her knees neatly scribe a triangle; draw together; shift, restive: perhaps now all hint of Pen-still-lounging-her-feet-on-or-near-Nicck has gone the way of myth.
"I had another idea for the autumn equinox this year; and besides, I don't want you to run with me in winter, not unless you've already grown used to it and it is your own free choice."
Pen is an optimist. Nowhere is it clearer than now: she sounds as if she thinks Nick might just make such a choice!
Nick
Nicholas regards her now through a dark spray of eyelashes, up through a lowered brow that says all it needs to say about running in winter and whether he would make that choice of his own free will. Though perhaps he will grow used to it, if he does it for three months. Perhaps.
"What's your idea for the equinox?"
Pen
"I'll tell you and Arianna together when the time is right, and I've thought about it a little more," Pen says, seriously. "But remind me how you feel about tattoos?"
Nick
"I used to think I wanted one until I went with Anna when she got her first one," Nick says, with a quirk of his mouth. "I thought she was going to break my fingers." A thoughtful tilt of his head, now. "But she was just eighteen, I guess. I'm not opposed."
Pen
Penelope nods, and then her gaze wanders back to the open screen of her laptop. She gazes at it, but blank in her consideration; an empty vessel, a chalice, a grail, a cup; bright with some moon-froth thing. "What did you think you wanted?"
Nick
"A sun or a jackrabbit in this stylized way Anna used to draw all the time," Nick says. "She'd draw little things like that all over the house or in my textbooks sometimes." On Vivienne's white shoes once too, though he leaves that out: he was never sure whether his sister was angry and secretly pleased, and regardless.
"Why do you ask?"
Pen
"Because curiosity sustains my wild life," Pen says. This quick grin, again: limned in brightness. She lifts her darkened gaze from her laptop, meets Nick's eyes, then - another twist - she languishes on her back right flush beside Nick and her laptop, one arm most dramatically and languorously trailing over his most-coveted-of-spots lap, the other floofing her bangs away. "Because I like the sound of your voice when you speak. Ask me to teach you a word in another language. Why a jackrabbit?"
Nick
Pen's arm trails in his lap and Nick's hand, absent now of her knees, wanders up along the length of her forearm and finds her fingertips instead. He presses his own lightly to hers, letting his hand splay and web where it arches above. "They're quick and smart, and Anna drew them with a lot of angles that I liked."
He leans back on his other hand and his eyes sweep over her: contemplative, considering. Then he slides the rest of the way down, turning on his side to face her, his weight on his hip and elbow. "Teach me something in Enochian."
Pen
[Something like this? Char + Esoterics (Specialty).]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 1, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]
Pen
As he slides the rest of the way down, Penelope rolls onto her stomach and pillows her chin on her hands, folded neatly just under. Nick turns to face her and she turns to face him, resting the soft curve of her cheek against the joint of her wrist. What does it mean to beguile? Penelope keeps her dark gaze steady on Nick's face - the neat curve of her shoulder hides her chin and mouth. Her tank top is askew.
Even after his request, well, she does not seem surprised, though she inhales slowly. On the exhale, she lifts her head and says something to Nicholas which sounds like light moving on water, shaping itself out of a fall and moving just so, a quick and liquid phrase or word and her throat clicks when she says it. She swallows, after. Does the air have a frisson now, ozone - readying itself to shape into lightning, strike?
"If you can pronounce that correctly."
Nick
[Perception? You are making mouth-noises. Astute specialty.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
Nick
[Manipulation + Expression - I can sell this, right? Diff 8.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Nick
Nicholas is well beguiled: his eyes are fixed on hers, and they are not dark; the light has found them here and they are full of gleam, full of the light of a muddy and slow moving river. His eyes fix on her mouth as she pronounces those syllables because it's where they're drawn: he watches her lips move, watches them shape whatever Word that is. Lakelight and lightning.
He is a good enough study to begin to reproduce the sound, to say it convincingly even if he has no idea what he's saying because he goes for the emotion she has evoked or the feeling the Word has created, the imagery: readiness, motion, the flow of one thing into the next.
"How was that?"
Pen
"It made me want to cover your mouth with my own," Pen says, solemn. She'd been grave and attentive, this sense of conscious watchfulness, of gathered awareness; something that can very nearly be felt(ardent, it is). Even when she laid her cheek back down. "But it wasn't right."
She could have said wasn't quite right: he came so close. But when it comes to Enochian, one is either precise and perfect, or one is wrong: and possibly dead, given what is written in Enochian, what beings speak it, what conversations might be had in it.
Nick
He did come close and he knows it, was sharp enough to mark the sounds as she said them and to form some semblance with his lips and tongue and teeth: and he does not understand precise perfection. Nicholas, living as he does without defined edges and without ever really being fully in one place at one time, would struggle to understand precision. Wouldn't he.
So his brow just furrows a little, and then he says, "What did the word mean?"
Pen
Pen watches expression chase expression over Nick's face. "Since it was mispronounced, I can't tell you tonight; that would be teaching."
"But depending on where you put it in the sentence it might mean three different things, and can mean a fourth if you write it down beside a - " - and here is another word. It might not be Enochian - some Bonisagan's short-hand for Enochian glyphs. "On its own, it is a Word I find attractive."
Nick
"It had a beautiful sound," he agrees, and then stretches out more fully on his side, lets himself drop with his arm stretched out above his head and his other folded across his chest.
A half a heartbeat later and he is reaching for her, to fold that arm around her instead and slide an inch or two closer to her on the floor. "Have you ever tried writing poems in it? Or in any other language?"
Pen
"In Enochian? No." Pen doesn't sound shocked, or scandalized, as if it were so sacred that to turn it to such use would be profane; perhaps she has thought about it. "It is a difficult language." Beat. Then, simply, "I struggle with it."
"As for other languages, I find most poetry written in Latin is like reading a neat little chain of links. It can be nice held up against the light, but it is still a little chain, and can get rather dull. Ancient Greek is nice, but I haven't done anything with it either."
Beat. "I do try to write new ritual with Enochian. Sometimes. Rather than just following the old ones. That can be ... almost poetry. But it isn't quite."
Pen cuddles into Nick and closes her eyes.
Nick
Nick makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat as she describes the languages she has thought to use, has read in: both languages that are no longer used, both unchanging and static now. He rests his chin on the top of her head and: maybe he can feel his eyes beginning to drift shut, to grow heavy. "I'll try to listen more carefully the next time you do ritual."
Could he reproduce sound without any idea of what it means? Perhaps, though it is unwise to do so. Then, "If you fall asleep on the floor I don't think I can carry you to bed."
She'd compared herself to a sack of topsoil before: and so.
Pen
He can perhaps feel the tension that goes singing through her when he declares what he declares. She makes a sound; it could be the edge of a sigh, if sighs were to have edges. She doesn't tell him not to, and she tells her fingers to loosen.
A beat. She opens her eyes, sweeping her hand over Nicholas's belly. Then: energy! Pen leaps to her feet! Isn't she quick, ladies and gentlemen? Wasn't it economical of her?
"Then let us move this conversation to our bed."
--
And so it will go: until sleep claims them both. Pen first, then Nicholas. So long, stars; the morning will soon be near.
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