It took a long time, walking downward and off the mountain. As they drew close to the parking lot it would have become more difficult to avoid Sleepers, with Nick in the flying hammock he is nestled in: so who knows how Pen accomplished it.
Regardless, she brings Nick home and gets him into their bed just as the sun is reaching its zenith that day.
He sleeps until it is dark, and then wakens to half-limp half-stumble to the bathroom and to, perhaps at Pen's coaxing, drink more water. Then he collapses back into his pillows. If she nudges him she finds him unresponsive, and he is still asleep when day breaks the following morning. He is still as the heart of a tree as the sun climbs higher on the second day. He wakes only to drink, and has to be persuaded to do that.
His feet by now look somehow worse than they did the morning she found him. They are swollen and a bright red in the places where they haven't crusted over with hard black scabs.
It is getting close to dinner on that day when he finally wakens again. The rustling of blankets and a sharp intake of breath announces his return to the land of the living. Then silence. Then, "Pen?"
Pen
Pen is released from the constraint of vigil, promised, only to find that she is still holding vigil. He is back but he is changed. He is more himself, perhaps? He is injured. He is many things according to WebMD. She worries. Her days do not change much because Nicholas is asleep in their bed, anabasis, though she has come to look in at him more times than she would like to recount. She will not recount them.
Instead she buys a journal from a small independent bookseller, some paper goods hole in the wall. The journal is plain and bound in linen but sewn interestingly on the edge. She buys paper, too, and makes a very messy book, stitching it clumsily together. She begins to write a list of goals, and her days pass, and she checks on Nick another time.
Nick wakes up, breathes, says her name, but she is not in their room and he will need to speak louder than that to call her attention back. There is a glass, smoked glass, carnival glass, of water on the night stand, and a little ink blot drawing of a raven sleeping in a nest that is also the moon, and a stirring of fresh air -- a breeze through the window which is open to let the end of August, the golden end of it, into their bedroom:
and it is close to dinner, and Pen is making dinner. If Nick waits, she'll come to him to check in and bring another cup of water. There are how many cups on the night stand now? What card have they drawn?
Nick
He tries to get up instead of waiting for her, Nicholas does. When he lies there bathed in the golden sunlight of end-of-August evening, the warmth against his bare back, he can hear her downstairs: chopping vegetables? Boiling water? The sizzle of food in a pan? Whatever it is, he can hear it albeit faintly.
So at first he tries to get up, and even though his muscles feel as though they've hardened, turned to plaster, he forces them to limber. It takes time and a few deep breaths because it hurts, moving after days like this: but he can push himself through it.
And he does, until his feet touch the floor and he puts his weight on them.
Then he flops back on the bed, and that is how Pen will find him when she returns to the room: on his back, with his hands cupped around one of the glasses of water which he has half-drained. Her card is lying on the bedspread next to him. The breeze is stirring past the window and through his hair.
When he hears her he lifts his head. "Hello, Pen."
Pen
"You."
Pen is quick across their bedroom's floor to the side of the bed, and she sets the cup down. A lap of water escapes, stealthy, over its rim; splashes her hand. The sharp knuckles of her other hand press into the mattress and she sets her knee atop it, too, and she holds the back of her hand to his forehead as it were medicine and true gauge, and she smiles at him.
She is still worried; does not think he is, for certain, awake; has come back to her, his proper self; her clear eyes are pensive, hope is immanent, and her free hand: she seeks to take the cup from him. Catch it, if he's going to let it drop.
"Do you want anything?"
Nick
"Food, and a shower, and you," Nick says, and he half-lifts himself on his elbows so that he can look at her. He can read the worry in the creases that have formed on her forehead, or simply in her eyes which have always been her most expressive feature: lake-water unrest.
He takes another swallow from the glass before allowing her to take it from him and set it back on the nightstand. Once her hand is free again he catches it in his own.
"Maybe some aspirin," he adds, with a tightening of the flesh at the corner of one of his eyes. It's good natured though, this. He has not yet looked down at his feet, which is all to the good as far as he is concerned. He winces as he, very carefully, wiggles the toes on his right foot, and then repeats the gesture with his left.
Pen
He is speaking in full sentences! He can perhaps see how the impulse to leap at him or on him rises; is restrained, because she shall not give in to every passing whim, she shall press his hand ardently and hold it clasped in her own and settle her weight on her hip, and her smile will strike a spark he's flint and worry's stone for just an instant and then the instant gone. "I'll give you the first, thank you for the second, and you already have the third." Beat. "Should I drive you to the hospital?"
Nick
Very carefully, Nick begins to bend his knees so that he can move his feet back onto the bed, where he curls them behind him. It leaves him angled slightly toward her, and he tangles his fingers in hers and lets their hands rest between the two of them on the bed. The rise and fall of his chest is steady and slow.
At her question, he shakes his head. "The social worker and the nurse down in the ER ask too many questions. Besides, I don't know what the hospital would do for me, aside from bandage my feet and pump me full of fluids. I can do that here."
His hand leaves hers, but only so he can lift it to her face and trace the pad of his thumb along her cheekbone. "I'm sorry I worried you."
Pen
Pen cants her head into Nick's hand. Her lashes sink, but do not fall completely; the bright gray, the mercury, of her iris' goes to shadow. "I'm not."
Pen: she'd say more - seems as if she'd say more - but not quite yet. The rise and fall of her chest is, too, measured out, so it is very clear when it catches. Pen lingers for a moment. It is clear she is lingering by her stance, by an air she takes on of having alighted. The aspirin isn't near at hand and she doesn't have a bag of requirement spell going right now. It's clear she is lingering in the way she settles her weight, not quite here, not quite gone, longing to be here, longing for a here to be.
"I'm only sorry for your feet. They look as if you've walked many roads at once. I think that's how feet would look. Iron shoes. Nicholas."
But okay: Pen can only restrain her impulses for so long if there's nothing to distract her, so she stops malingering in a rush. In a rush: she leaves him for the bath room, for the medicine cabinet and its very boring pill bottles. Pen is not back as quickly as she should be if she just went to the bathroom. She goes there first, but then disappears downstairs. When she does return, it is holding a wooden tray, for eating in bed. The wooden tray has food on it: some chickpea lentil thing in a small bowl the color of a ruby's heart. A piece of toast, brushed with olive oil and garlic cloves. A smaller dish of crumbled goat cheese. A mug, with the tail of a tea bag hanging over.
Nick
"It feels as though I've walked many roads at once," Nick says. "But I think I just walked one, for a long time." His lashes, too, are hanging low over his eyes; it dims the amber of them, and he is still very tired. He will still sleep tonight, though perhaps he will be well enough to be awake with her again tomorrow.
Pen is lingering, and his hand trails behind her as she rises to her feet.
When she returns he is in the process of draining another glass of water, and he has mounded pillows up against the headboard and has pushed himself up against him to half-sit there. He is rewarded for this with the tray, which his eyes light on, and he pushes himself up just a little straighter.
His skin pulls against his ribs when he moves and his frame is more spare: he has lost weight in the four and a half days since he left to go Seeking, not all of it water. "I told you about what I saw, didn't I? My memory of you finding me is a little hazy."
Pen
"You told me."
Pen sets the tray down over Nick's lap. There is a silver spoon and two paper towels, folded into triangles beneath the bowl. The aspirin is resting on the tray by the mug and it doesn't rattle when Pen sets it down. Pen sets it down with such assiduous care. When he pushes himself up just a little straighter, look, though she is setting the tray down, and with care, she is running her eyes over his shape, marking changes. She puts her hand flat against his ribs, but only for a second. She wants him to eat.
"And you rode my robe," Pen says, with the flash of a smile. A star fell for it: look, fell for that sort of quickening brightness, that momentary sweetness: a thing to hang a wish on. "Very dashing, very Romantic poet lolling about mad from a sojourn in the wilderness, mad with visions, bright - you were bright. Do you feel clean and stronger, um, in your spirit?"
Nick
Nick takes up the spoon and scatters some of the goat cheese onto the piece of toast, which is the first thing he lifts to his mouth. Breathe in and out and blink, and half of it is already gone.
When he pauses, it is only to take her hand so that he can gently pull her down onto the bed with him: he wants her there beside him. "I feel stronger," he says. A quirk of his mouth. "But not very clean, at the moment. I...I do feel like..." He plants a spoonful of the chickpeas and lentils in his mouth and chews quietly for a moment, his gaze wandering off toward the golden honey light that spills through the window and puddles on the floor and across the coverlet.
"I feel full of possibility," he says. "I...I feel like I saw more of what could be possible. That I kept following something that I knew I wanted, that I knew was right, just because I wanted it and I - I don't know. There are a lot of things I want to try, once I'm well."
Pen
Pen is susceptible to the pull on her hand. She carefully sets one knee on the bed and then follows it, sitting aslant. Pen tonight is in an embroidered blouse, her shoulders naked, and a pair of very short shorts, no shoes and no socks and no intention toward wandering. Pen slides her hand down Nick's shin and then up it again, resting at his knee. She wants to work his flesh and so she begins to, gently, massage his calves until the skin around his eyes tightens so that she feels herself the cause and she stops.
"Tell me about some of them!"
Nick
Nick cups the bottom of the bowl in one hand as he eats with the other; it helps shorten the pathway to his mouth. "I want to find someone who can teach me to step through into the spirit world without needing to find an already open gate first, and how to step back again," Nick says: but of course he would say this as the first thing. "I want to explore everything that's out there and see if I can learn to bring you with me."
Nick takes another mouthful of chickpeas and lentils, and another. Rather than a wince, as she works the muscles in his calves she can see his eyes shutter and then slit back open once more. "I want to awaken the things around me and make them more alive. I'd like to get back to learning to grow you that labyrinth, too."
He glances over at her now where she is seated on the bed. "What did you do, while I was away?"
Pen
"I pined." This with something of mischief in the cant of her chin, the sweep of her lashes, the cast (the lure) of her gaze. Pen's thumb finds his ankle, her fingers lace around it, test the meat there on his bones; if he does not wince, if he never winces, she continues to work his legs. Here: her voice is on the verge of shaping itself into laughter; that kind of restraint. "Crow, no, let's not talk about me yet. You feel full of possibility. I want it. Perhaps you could do a ritual to find someone who can teach you to make a gate to step through. You could write Delilah?" Beat. "I don't know how I feel about you awakening things around you to make them more alive. What sort of things? What does that mean, 'more alive'?"
Nick
There is a flicker of mirth there in his eyes as she chides him, though he gives a quick nod of his head as she redirects him to talking about himself again. "Well, there's a tree down by the river that Kiara and I found a few months ago, back when we were looking for Alexander. Crow told us about it," he says. "It's asleep because if it woke it would be the death of the tree. But most things we find - they're all alive, they're tied to creation. There are just rituals that make them more themselves that I've heard of being done - sort of like how you were saying that when we work toward Enlightenment we become more ourselves."
Somehow the bread is gone, and the lentils and chickpeas and the goat cheese has all disappeared. "I planned on writing Delilah. I can talk to Kiara, too."
Pen
Pen mmhmms! as Nicholas mentions the tree. She remembers the tree. She remembers what he told her about it. Her thumb strokes the sharp edge of his ankle, then finds his achilles tendon. A weakness, a tender place, a flaw in the design; it was Achilles' fate to give his name to that tendon, for an Achilles heel to become the name for some inevitable end. One leg is tucked beneath herself and Pen shifts her weight and swings her other leg onto the bed, stretching it out alongside Nick. She is seated by his knees. Her heel digs into the mattress and draws a furrow in the sheets toward herself. The sheets don't hold the mark for long; it is a rumpled mess, the bed. And then, neatly, she tucks her toes under the mound of pillows Nick has made to prop himself up.
"Would you find yourself a teacher by following signs, consulting the stars, trusting to fortune? I'm really curious... about why you would and why you would not. But before you answer I, I'm thinking wait, I also want to tell you I'm not sure I understand, or … Hmm. No, it's … well. Is it only flora that you can Awaken? What about a rock or a library? What might an Awakened plant do - what is the difference?"
Beat. "Do you want more food, Crowheart, or shall I help you to the shower?"
Nick
Nick's foot twitches as she finds the tendon, though the sharp intake of breath seems to be more from relief than from pain. After he has gathered his thoughts he says, "I think probably...some mixture of following signs and trusting to fortune. I want to begin soon, so I'll probably...I'm not sure. Ask the spirits who they know, who they're familiar with. They're more likely to know someone reputable than anything else. If I were skilled enough to manipulate Fate to lead me to someone I might do that, but I'm not."
He is leaning his head back against the pillows, and his eyes are half-lidded as he watches her. "It's not just flora, but any non-thinking object really. It might...well, an awakened flower might be more beautiful, or if it were a medicinal plant it might be more effective for that purpose. I've heard of others awakening things like peyote, which made them more potent."
His head rolls along the pillow as he glances toward the bathroom, with its waiting shower. "Shower first, and then after that I think I'd like to eat more," he says.
Pen
Penelope's eyes widen when his foot twitches; when his breath turns to a knife's point, scrape, in his throat; it can be a relief to cut through a knot; it is still a work, and a startle. Her head rears back; it's a minute gesture, a drama played out in the miniature; look at the hollow of her throat, when she inhales; the way the honey light, fading to dusk outside, faded already to the color of a yellowing leaf from some old book, lights up her eyes. Washes their color into a dim radiance, water-gray, seaglass silver.
"So what would an awakened bed do? Would it be more what its maker intended it to be? A cradle more soothing to a child and prone to rock, a, um, a bed like this one more comfortable and prone to hold its shape against trials and travails," and see, here, a mischievous lilt that is not quite a smile but something kin kissing at the corner of her mouth.
Her nose wrinkles at the thought of awakening peyote: like someone getting their first snootful of uncleaned kitty litter after a hot day with the door closed. She forgets to move and begin helping him toward a shower because she's listening for his answer. A moment; she starts; stands and has a considering cant to her head, a pensive look to her brow.
"Just flood the whole room if that's easiest and you need to sit."
Here: she is prepared to take his arm over her shoulder, relieve the pressure he'll feel when he puts his feet to the ground by taking as much of his weight as she can. Pen's strength is, on the whole, only average; a thing she occasionally thinks about remedying. Usually when one of her gym buddies shows off how ripped they are or some sort of need to carry a full grown person thing comes into play. Sometimes when she's working with metal down below. Finesse rather than strength: that has been her focus. But isn't there a place for strength, too?
Nick
Nick watches her, and the sunlight that strikes his eyes at the angle they're at gives them a warm glow, casts them as more brownish-gold than their usual. His eyelashes kiss his cheek, and he has not yet moved to rise from the bed; he would like to look at her a little bit longer. So he does.
Then he carefully lifts the tray off of his lap and sets it aside on the coverlet. He swings one leg off first, leaves his toes dangling an inch or two off the floor. "Well, it would depend on the bed," he says, with a little quirk of his mouth. "Because individuals and experience imprints on the spirit of that individual thing. In our bed, for example, you might awaken extra refreshed to get up early and go running, while for me it might just become more comfortable."
He meets her eyes, and there is a playful slant to his brows. "It might creak less, or hold its shape better, or any number of things."
He swings the other leg off of the bed and slides his arm around her shoulders. Even with her assistance, getting there will be slow; he picks his foot entirely off the floor and sets it down with great care with each footstep, and with each she can hear his breath catch. His weight, and how it hangs on her, tells her that her presence is indeed needed, but he persists.
And they are there after what feels to Nick to be far too long. "I'll just sit in the tub," he says after he has caught his breath.
Pen
"Individuals and experience," she echoes. "So … " And there's this hook of a smile, mercurial, quickening, to meet the playful slant of his brows. "So an awakened object is awakened in ser - " His arm is around her shoulders now; her breath catches and she puts the thought aside to continue once they're in the restroom.
Pen is rather ruthlessly matter of fact about helping Nick to get to the tub. It's the only way her heart can take it without cutting her: by holding, see, a sheathed thing; here is the restraint which kept her from leaping on Nick as soon as he showed he was truly awake. The ruthless matter of fact manner holds until he is in the tub and she rolls her shoulders to relieve them. She pulls the curtain around, and remember, it is a rather large tub they have acquired, and high, and she sits on its lip near the knobs so she can control the water for him, bringing down shampoo and soap and a loofah or a sponge or a washcloth or all three and a brush besides so he can really dig in there.
"Ready?"
Nick
"Ready," he says, though there is a preparatory grimace there twisting his mouth and his eyebrows: the water touching his feet is going to hurt, at least until he has grown used to it and perhaps a little even then.
From her he accepts the brush and loofah and shampoo and soap, setting them down nearby where he can access them easily. He has settled his weight at the bottom of the tub, and he is not terribly strong either: see the muscles of his upper body quiver as he lowers himself carefully carefully down.
"What were you going to ask me?"
Pen
"I can't see the question exactly," Pen says, and she starts the water so it goes pouring down as if he were going to bathe. She tests its temperature with her fingers, and look at how they gleam under the water; look at how the drops gather at the pale crescents of her finger nails, then scatter. How her skin looks, wet, contrasted with the dry. And, with an inquiring look, and guileless, toward Nicholas she begins the shower. The needle spray is focused; he hears the hiss before it hits him, the leading edge of it; before it soaks into his curls and gives him a mask of droplets, a glassy and transparent mask: a mask of motion. Pen's sleeve is rucked back at her elbows, but some of the spray gets her shoulder anyway, some of her shirt; damp splotches form. As this happens, she is saying, "But I as going to say, so an awakened object, it sounds, from that description - imprinted, it sounds as if it is awakened in service, or to service, and its self is defined by the service those around it require from it; or maybe its the service those around it with the strongest personalities require from it? I don't know if I like that idea. I don't know if it's what I'd call a complete idea, either. But if a bed will be what the people who lie in it want it to be rather than what the person who made it wanted it to be or the … materials it is made of incline to be … I don't know, how much of it is only polishing up the symbol so it is sharper, brighter? I don't know."
Nick
Pen's glance is guileless and Nick angles his face down and away from where he imagines the spray will hit first, and he is correct; it drums against the top of his skull and his curls drink it down and flatten against his head and the back of his neck. It trickles down his legs to his feet and this is more bearable than if it were striking them.
The water is a relief; it is bliss, and so for a moment he sits there and lets it sluice down over his back and drip from his hair and face. He is hearing her, and he is also grounded for a moment only in his body.
Then as Pen speaks he reaches for the shampoo, which he squeezes into his palm and then starts to scrub into his hair with vigor, using his fingertips to penetrate the dense thicket of curls. He blows water away from his mouth and says, "I don't know if it necessarily awakens in service. The spirit of a thing is in part defined by the concept of the thing, or how it's used, so an awakened...well, an awakened oak tree, or an awakened river, might look kind of different. I think it's more that it'll...it'll be itself, the materials and what the person who made it wanted and how it's used, all of those things make it what it is the same way our experiences and memories and thoughts shape us."
Pen
Pen rests her shoulder against the tile and cants her head so her temple is kissing the tile, too, and perhaps the edge of her cheekbone, and so they are parted by a fall of white water, and Pen is quite the languid creature there, gazing at Nick as the water falls over him, transforms, bedraggles him and turns him into a mer-man, even when he itches at his hair frothing the curls into foam and the sharp smell of his shampoo something with sandalwood running beneath it perhaps almond or cedar is carried into the air by steam. Pen feels no desire to get into the tub with Nick. He's disgusting; the tub is soon to be more disgusting. But she enjoys watching him, and her mind is absorbed by this idea of awakening the thoughtless objects of the world.
"But can they awaken on their own; beds, chairs, etcetera? What is it like for them, to be awake?"
Nick
Almond and orange are the scents she can detect beneath the stronger smell of the wood; the scent is warm and dry and permeates the little space they are sharing at the moment. Nick leans his head forward into the stream to let the foam rinse from his hair, tilting his head this way and that to let it sink through the dense black mat. His hair has grown long; now that it's wet it waves down the back of his neck nearly to the nape, though it will spring back up once it has dried again.
He blows water from his mouth again and reaches for the brush and soap, flicking a curl from his eyes. It will be for the best if Pen stops watching him at this point; it will keep her from seeing the dirt that is going to come off of his legs and arms.
"I'm not sure if they can awaken on their own or not. The little skinchanger lore I know says that they've been awakening things that way for a long time, and that it used to be the natural state of the world." There is a little frown, here, as he scrubs at a shoulder. "Most of them aren't self-aware the way we see self-awareness. They...feel, kind of, and they want things and can communicate, but it's different. I talked to a garden once. It was thirsty but it liked being a garden."
Pen
The urge to snip a lock of Nick's hair comes upon her now and again; it is when a certain covetousness rises in her; when she feels unsated; unsatisfied; when she does not have enough of the color of his hair or the look in his eyes or the sound of his voice or his thoughts laid out. I feel like a dragon: she has said that to Nick before; she wants him as a golden hoard. Her lashes sink; she looks forbidding; she is not, but she looks it; that restraint.
"Is it right to wake something up instead of letting it wake up on its own?" This sounds like a philosophical question; a quiet wondering, rather than something she has a passionate opinion on. She might discover she has one in the middle of their discussion, of course; that has happened before. Right now: no opinion. Neutral.
"What if you woke up our house? What if you woke our wedding rings?"
Nick
"I think it depends on the thing," Nick says. "If it was the natural state...it can be returned to that, as long as it doesn't threaten the thing you're awakening. I think that, generally, they're happier for having been awakened." There is a little silence here and now, a furrowing of his brows as he gazes into the mist created by the water striking his body. He scrubs at his other shoulder; he scrubs down the length of his arm and under it.
"Is it right to change anything about the world, without the consent of everything you might affect by doing so?" And here there is a tilting of his head, a wry smile as he flicks a glance up toward her through his lashes.
"If I woke up the house, it might arrange itself differently in a way that's more pleasing to it. It might guard us. Sometimes, over time, I think that's how things become Wells, but I'm not sure. If it were our wedding rings..." And here his head sways to the other side, the thinking side. "I suppose they might do something like gleam more brightly in the presence of the other. Things like that. It's hard to say since it's not a ritual I know how to do, on my own. I just know it can be done."
Pen
"I think it is different: to give consciousness, or awareness; it is different from only changing wine to water, honey to bread, silver to gold. I want my army of stone lions and my homunculi, one day. But I haven't thought about the need to conjure consciousness; like my robe-steed. It only looked like a steed. Sort of. It was really just me moving it; just my desire, nothing of self-determination; nothing of determination! Again, excepting my own. I'll be right back, my Crow."
And she leaves him alone in the bath room for five, seven minutes.
--
Five, seven minutes she returns, ready to languish again on the lip of the tub like a fairy at its pool in the middle of some questing wood.
Nick
"Well, it's not...consciousness, necessarily. Not the same way you or I think of consciousness." Nick looks up as she disappears, and he watches her go.
When she returns five, seven minutes later he has made significant headway with scrubbing the past few days off of his skin, which is flushed beneath the dappled-sand-summer brown of it. His eyes flick up to her as she appears to languish on the lip of the tub. He is in the process of scrubbing at his shin, smoothing the soap away with water; he is rubbing soap carefully over his feet and letting it sluice clean.
"What do you think it would be like to have a homunculus? Or a familiar?"
Pen
"You baked," Pen observes. "Like river clay." His skin. He had a question; she is thinking about it. Her eyes do not hood; they stay open, but their expression grows distant; turns inward. "Different to have a homunculus or a familiar," and if there's a note of longing (a fox familiar; someone has one!), then Nick knows Pen well: but she was very charmed by certain familiars in the past.
"A homunculus, a famulus, I imagine it being a very different sort of relationship -- because the homunculus is more an expression of your magick cut loose; given limited autonomy; and a familiar is a spirit who you have entered into a compact with. I imagine the care and feeding of both would be tricky. So... yes, all right, I think it would be difficult, but rewarding. A little more wonder and a little more ease in the reaching for wonder."
Nick
Nick nods, cupping water in his joined palms and scattering it over his foot, though he winces as he does so. Then he scoots forward, bends at the knees so that he can lean lean lean until he reaches the tap and stops the flow of water. "Can you hand me the towel?" He braces his hands on either end of the tub, and with a great heave moves himself up so that he can sit on the lip of it beside her.
"I think the same thing," he says. "I've thought about...about summoning a familiar, from time to time. But caring for it would be the difficult part." When she hands him the towel he wraps it about himself, luxuriates for a moment in its folds. "Would you prefer that I don't awaken other things, then?"
Pen
Pen reaches out, languor, to snag a towel and tug it from the towel rack; it does not want to be tugged smoothly because it is a towel and towels are frustiferous creatures; she tugs on it again and finally it flops to the ground and over her thigh and she hands it into Nick's arms. He's dripping on her, but she forgives him for it; lets the shower continue to run a little and does not look at the tub's bottom for what the water is washing away. She smiles as he wraps himself up. "I don't think so," Pen says. "I'm just trying to understand the purpose of it; for you; for me; wondering at the ramifications. I wouldn't like you to awaken our house if there was a chance it could then be more easily coaxed into allowing intruders in. Would you rather I never tried to make a homunculus or lure a familiar?"
Nick
"It wouldn't be sentient in that way," he says. "Awakening the spirit of an object isn't really the same as granting it that kind of awareness. Many of them aren't human, either in thought or in their desires. The house already has a spirit, it's just asleep."
He rubs the towel over his hair, quite vigorously; he has to do this several times in order to suck the moisture out of it, leaves it thick and fluffy and looking more like a cloud than it generally does once he has added oil to it. "I'm not troubled by the thought of you making a homunculus or bonding a familiar," he says. "You should try."
Pen
Pen frowns.
"But don't spirits have ... if something is aware enough to like its state of being, or its aware enough or awake enough to lend itself to being more comfortable or - what have you - is it not aware enough to be coaxed and cajoled? Would you be able to make a bargain with the awakened spirit of an oak tree?"
The frown lessens as she speaks on; she is staring at Nick's hair; and see, see, see, her gaze is: charmed, witched, rapt. "Black sheep," she tells him, without thinking.
Nick
"Well...yes," Nick says, and there is a little furrow of his brow here. "I suppose I...I understand what you're saying. It would be more inclined to protect us than not, though, I think. The house would. And it's easier to understand what spirits want, in some ways."
There is a laugh at what she says of his hair, soft and low and clear. "It does kind of feel that way," he says, moving the towel down his legs and over his torso. He leans over then to let it hang haphazardly off of the towel bar adjacent to the shower, and with a deep breath braces himself on his hands and heaves both of his legs over the side of the tub and swings them around.
Pen
"Easier than what?" Pen says, and as soon as Nick begins to rise, she is on her feet, there to offer him her hand, and her arm, (and her heart) and her shoulder, and so brace him up.
Nick
Nicholas gladly takes her hand, and her arm, and her shoulder (he knows he has her heart and he is glad of it), and leans on her as he lifts himself to his feet. "Easier than people," he says. "I think it's usually more straightforward. At least for most of them. Not all."
Pen
Pen's expression is one of extreme doubt. If one were to look up, in a dictionary of expressions, 'Expression of Extreme Doubtfulness Over the Veracity of a Statement Made by Someone Who You Are Certain Believes It And Has Found It True But May Nonetheless Be Wrong,' there would be her portrait. But Pen trusts Nicholas and his insights, so the doubtfulness is not implacable. "I... well, you must be right. I think in stories it usually seems as if they are straightforward, it just also seems as if they are not. Do you want to go back to the bedroom or brave the stairs? Sit in your study or mine? Lounge in the guest room?"
Nick
"Well, if it seems as though they're not, it's because they aren't human and so their motivations aren't always clear to us," Nick says. "I think it's one of those things that experience bears out." His steps as they move out of bathroom are slow, but seem to come more easily; perhaps the bath and the food have both helped to invigorate him somewhat. "Let's go back to the bedroom. I'll brave the stairs tomorrow."
Pen
"But they're all honest and open?" Pen says, and here's the doubt again. Pen's gaze is gone sidelong, and she (subtly) bites the inside of her cheek when she thinks he might wince. He doesn't and she marks it without comment, but a little upswing of hope; maybe it is right that there is no hospital or doctor to look at him; maybe his feet will not fall off, tithes paid to understanding. She is not conscious of how her arm tightens around his ribs; how she cants for a moment into his body. Let's talk about imprints: so well familiar with a rhythm that one can slant, like a rhyme, and play echo or shadow, tangle up without being tangled and laid so.
Nick
"Well, no," Nick says. "It depends on the spirit." Her arm tightens around his ribs and his arm, correspondingly, tightens around her shoulders, though this could be the simple desire to be nearer to her after what feels like a long time apart. "Crow and Raven usually aren't honest or open, for example, but you usually know that going in."
Pen
"Sit on the chair a moment while I finish making the bed," Pen says, once they've come to the threshold of their room, and he will see: all the sheets have vanished, leaving a bare mattress and naked pillows, austere in their luminous whiteness. Pen stays with him until said chair; brings him one of the cups of water; then leaves his side to open a trunk and take out fresh sheets: some warm color. Here is the ghost of her time cleaning hotels: how mechanical it is, the making of the bed, how neatly the corners are tucked.
"I feel we're off point!" Here: withheld laughter. The presentiment of it. The way it curls through her voice: like tea clouding fresh hot water. "Tell me more about what you see yourself doing. Finding a teacher by asking around. Do you think you will learn how to ply fortune; now that you can see more clearly?" Beat.
"Would you say you see more clearly or you feel more clearly?"
"Or none of the above?"
Nick
Pen's laughter makes Nick smile as he sits there with his glass of water watching her make the bed. It is fascinating sometimes, isn't it, watching someone do something well and with familiarity, movements they have made thousands of times before. He takes a few swallows from his glass.
"That wasn't in my immediate plans," he says. "I want to learn Prime, too, if you'll teach me. After I learn to grow the garden."
Her question gives him pause, furrows his brow and he slumps back a little in the chair. "I think I would say I both see more clearly and feel more clearly," he says. "Though I haven't seen many new things yet. It's just a matter of...I feel more purposeful, maybe. More certain of what's out there. And maybe that leads to clarity of vision."
Pen
After the sheets, the pillows are given their new slip-cases, each pillow fluffed with brief violence then placed in a mound at the head of his side of the bed. 'His side' - and perhaps Nicholas stays in one place when he falls into sleep. Pen does not; Pen moves in the middle of the night or falls asleep at odd angles half-tangled up in Nick's limbs only to wake tangled up in a different formation. She is never entirely sure whether Nicholas is responsible for the change in her position or not. Once she has mounded pillows for Nick to her satisfaction she turns to help him, holding out a hand and allowing him to stand as much on his own as he can this time around. The space from chair to bed is so scant in length: she only has a small qualm, and though it troubles her, it does not change her mind. Practical ruthlessness.
After Nick is safely in bed again, Pen combs her fingers through Nick's fluffy hair, and studies his expression without saying anything.
Nick
Nicholas does indeed stay in place once he has fallen asleep; he is too heavy a sleeper to move around much once he has found a comfortable spot. Nick is able to stand and move on his own over to the bed, albeit slowly, each footstep taken mindfully and with great care for how his foot comes to rest on the floorboards. He reaches the bed and slides his way down into it as though he were diving, wiggling his way up to the pillows.
He looks contented, once he has settled; moreso once she begins combing her fingers through his hair. His eyes are hooded. "Is this how you felt, after you last Sought?" And he is not sleepy or at least not quite yet, but his voice has a faraway quality, dreamy.
Pen
Pen's gaze skims over his lashes; up to her hand, where it cups the crown of his head; she is canted over Nick, and when her fingers leave his hair they do so by taking the long route, which is against the pillow, following the curve of his skull trailing behind his earlobe pausing at the nape of his neck.
Bounce! Pounce! Boing! Boing!
There is still a measure of restraint; she does not leap on Nick wholesale, but she jumps onto the bed and crashes in against his side and bumps her head against his neck and shoulder. Then she straightens, there is no sheepishness and no abashment, because Pen is too certain of herself or too present in herself for such a thing to be a concern, and flips her own hair back; hand still in her hair, she says, "Probably."
"Do you remember how unhappy I was before I went Seeking?" There is a note of apology, still, for how unhappy she was; she does not mean 'unhappy,' just, but: Penelope in a mood; a constant mood; at her most flawed. "Afterward I felt I could breathe again."
"I suppose it is the same, because you know... it was this sense of the scope of the world expanding, the horizon being broader but also more attainable. I couldn't wait to conjure fire from nothing."
Nick
The springs are quiet; theirs is a well-made bed, and so Nick's bouncing is minimal, but his eyes still widen as she lands next to him and smashes in against his side. He is quick to pull her against him after that, almost on top of him; he was filthy and exhausted after coming home and the desire to have her there against him ignites, roars sudden.
Her question, and he nods once: he could not forget it. "I remember," he says. "I don't know if I feel relieved, exactly. Just...more whole."
Pen
Pen is amenable to being drawn against and almost atop Nick. Pen is amenable to letting her hair go loose and wild after all, and curling an arm over his chest, and resting her chin on the edge of his shoulder so she can look him still in the eye.
"If you could have three wishes right now, more whole in yourself, what would they be?"
Nick
Nick makes a noise low in his throat, musing, and angles his head back a bit against the pillow so that he can look her in the eye. His hair flattens against it, forms a dark ragged halo around his head. Outside the window the honey light is fading, has faded to blood and bronze, and so his eyes are dark.
"I want to go somewhere new with you," he says, "somewhere that's full of myth and wonder. I wish for a world in which people are only good to one another. And I want..."
A generous pause here, because the third wish is always the hardest, the last. A moment, and it will become clear that it is because he is hesitating. "And I think I would wish for us to be with our best friends again, and have them all be more whole too."
Pen
"You're such a generous man." The inflection of her voice is musing too; he gets to be her muse, with his ballad dark eyes, his grave black hair, the sun-brown of his skin; with his stubborn insistence on wishing for good things. He wants. He wishes. He wants but turns it into a wish. You're such a generous man, she says.
"My wishes for you are these: that you find the work of surpassing your initiate exemptus status in the Arts satisfying, that you and I figure out a way to make this house a mutual sanctum - I snuck myself in there, and that you be happy."
"We can go somewhere new. We can just go. Any time."
Half-pause, slender-pause.
"Do you want a scrambled egg on toast with goat cheese or a BLT?"
Nick
Nick's hand slides up the length of her back and tangles in her hair, a handful of it, and he listens to her wishes for him. His eyes smile even if his mouth remains firm, solemn. "I am happy," he says. "I'd also like for us to make this house a mutual sanctum."
So shall it be.
"I want a scrambled egg on toast with goat cheese and bacon and tomato," he says: he wishes for this unholy and probably delicious matrimony. His fingers gently work their way out through her hair, combing it across her shoulders. "What would you wish for, for yourself?"
Pen
Pen is going to leave the bed in a moment and make Nicholas a scrambled egg on toast with goat cheese and bacon and tomato, but the question turned back on her lends her a reason to stay for another moment.
"A new deck of cards, and you whole in body as well as spirit, and ... I would wish for a moment of satisfaction."
Nick
"I would wish that for you, and to be able to give that to you if I could," he says, and his eyes sweep over her face. And then there is a lift of the corner of his mouth. "Why a new deck of cards?"
Pen
Pen lifts her chin from his shoulder and props herself up on one elbow, shifting so she is sprawled on her belly, one leg hooked around Nick.
"I don't like the deck I have. I want something that feels different. I want a deck full of talismans, full of - I want something that has born the weight of questions or a gambling den, which has ruined or elevated spirits. Something artistic."
Beat. "You wished two things for me; do you have a third?"
Nick
Nick makes another low noise in his throat as she tells him what she would like, and there is a slow, careful nod at this. "Well, I hope you get your wish," he says, and one of his eyebrows twitches upward along with the corner of his mouth.
His head tilts back against the pillow and his eyes roll toward the headboard as he considers the third wish. And then when he looks her back in the eye it is to say, "Time. I wish time for you, to do all the things you want to do and perfect all the things you want to perfect."
Pen
Pen regards him without saying anything in response for a moment. Her head is canted to the side; her hair is a mess, but not tangled, sweeping over one shoulder more than the other; the muscles in her thigh work; he can feel that they do.
"The trick is," she tells him, and her fingers walk up his ribs, "being satisfied with satisfaction." Here: a quick grin; she sends it out like an invitation; she slides her leg away from him. She sits up, even if his grip on her tightens. "We'll get there one day or one night. In the meantime, you must have more food."
Nick
"That is the trick," he agrees, and his tone is wry and wistful all at once, touched with gentle amusement. His hand runs over her thigh, squeezes around it just above her knee. His grip on her does tighten, though it slackens again as she begins to rise.
More food, she says, and even though he is gazing at her as though he would prefer to linger here with her a while longer (and he would), he is human and sometimes humans are slaves to basic needs. Or the desire for goat cheese and egg and bacon together on toast, which is perhaps something more than basic.
She will return and find him dozed off in the dim purple glow filtering in through the window now, but he can be roused at least to eat. Perhaps there will be a moment's peace: something, at least, stretching (striving) toward satisfaction.
