[Summoning plz? Corr 2 + Spirit 2, base diff 6, -2 personalized instrument, -1 taking time. WP.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
crow
Nicholas left just before the dusky glow on the horizon promised the rising sun. That was two days ago: or, two days and three hours ago, if we are being more precise (two days three hours seventeen minutes and thirty-seven seconds, if one is using Time to measure such things.)
When Nick left he was carrying a backpack with two water bottles and his cell phone and a pair of hiking boots. A first-aid kit. He wasn't carrying much else.
It is early morning, not long past sunrise: cicadas are beginning to chirrup and a light fog is beginning to evaporate in the dawn. Perhaps Pen is starting to get worried, or perhaps she isn't: she can look in on Nick whenever she wishes, can't she? This is the case even if she hasn't received any texts. (And she has not; there are still places in the world which a cell phone does not reach. He is in one of those.)
While Pen is doing whatever she is doing this morning, there is a soft pop that sounds as though it comes from another room, or outside: it is difficult to pinpoint the noise. And the next moment, her eyes will be drawn to the window, because: there is a raven there, and as it taps the window it fixes her with an eye that gleams like starlight.
It perches there on the sill and drinks the sun for what must only be a scant few seconds and then: gone.
lake-light
[Ooo, my turn. First an Intellignece + High ritual roll.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 4) ( botch x 1 )
lake-light
[Theeeeen... A skirmish with elemental forces! Wits + Enigmas +2 diff.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
lake-light
[Theeen a willpower roll. Nobody must ever know.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
lake-light
[Then we do the ritual again. Again!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
lake-light
[Then: scry-scry-scry -3 diff.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
lake-light
Two days and three hours ago Nick went out.
Nick might be aware enough to feel it when he is sought (scried). The window is a one-way window so, excepting that feeling in the air of ah! a Working that is Ardent (Passionate), Daring (All the Devils), Resplendent (lake-light, dripping; the milky way in a cup; a jewel, dragging shadow out of - ), there is no sense of Pen. The scrying was not immediate after the ghost (?) raven pulled Pen from whatever she was concentrating on -- no, not from. Fortunately, a raven falls in line with the object of her attention at after-dawn when the mist is clearing and there comes a tap tap tapping at window glass.
And then:
a lock of Nick's hair is a black shadow in a cup; a ring burns with fire. The elements commute a vision of Nick.
What point, seeing without finding, sight without knowledge, vision without focus?
--
This was not without effort because some Workings require precision and when mistakes are made - bad mistakes, apprentice-level mistakes - there's a price. There's a price for being practiceless and sloppy, and there's a price for vigilance and promises made, and there's a price for hope: there's a price for everybody under the sun and west of the moon.
These are the sounds made:
A soft inhale, a soft exhale, and the invocation orison murmured again,
Dry paper rustle, rattle, as the maps are laid out and two hands
Two palms (holy palmer's, see) unroll smooth straight
These are visuals worth noticing:
Glint of light on a strand,
The dull burn of copper,
A spray of splinters from some broken thing, not entirely cleaned up,
And light skimming over glass.
crow
Nicholas, when he is sought (scried) is not aware of much. The window is a one-way window, and Nick, when she finds Nick, it is plain that he is exhausted. She can find him when she drops a coil of black hair into a cup, she can find him within the elements.
Here, at the top of a mountain: it is long distant. He drove at least an hour once he left the city limits to arrive at that lonely place. He walked far longer than that.
He is sitting there, his feet in a stream, his hands and hair and clothes still damp from river water: Raven arrived to her quickly. Who knows how time and distance operate for spirits, really.
Nick himself looks half a ghost so perhaps it is appropriate that he sent one to call her to him. The cuffs of his pants and his shins and calves are streaked with brown: some of it dark, some of it dusty and light, one of his palms scraped and red and raw. His feet are clear within the river water, which must be icy mustn't it, and given the state of them maybe not feeling them for a while is exactly what he wants.
He's drinking from one of the water bottles. His eyes have a hazy look to them: but that's just Nick, sometimes. He is within a stand of pines, and beyond him are the plains and the broken country surrounding the mountainside.
She can find him, though with some effort (and this was already a ritual which took effort.) She can pinpoint his location when she lays out her maps beneath two hands, far and away.
lake-light
[Hmm. Okay. Intelligence and Enochian.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]
lake-light
[Very Vulgar Working time! But no witnesses, wee. Corr 3 + 4. -3, thank you Enochian skillz, and willpower because.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
lake-light
He looks like Dionysos alone and after, or Orpheus after and alone, or some ballad's knight after he has been released from the hill, and Pen considers Nick's evident exhaustion and injury (?) - she only has sharp eyes and common sense to tell her so - and then she considers the swiftest course of action to take. Not just to get to Nick: that's useless, without another plan to come home again or (she does not like it, but) to urgent care. She continues to watch while she considers, her eyes hooded and whatever is in their gray a secret thing, a Mystery.
She is not quite good enough to bring him to her with a word. She regrets that but does not spend much time on the regret. The threat of consensus wants to stifle her schemes, but consensus can fuck itself (--Order of Hermes saying), and then perhaps fifteen, twenty minutes later, the air is [dazzling] full of her resonance again and she seems to shape herself out of the dapple shade leaf-light and water-light (probably water-light, it being Elaine).
Resolve into shape; resolve into place. This place, three feet from where Nick sits or stands. The lady-wizard (Circe, Medea) is wearing boots well-broken in hiking boots the color of a fawn and has a knapsack on her back filled with the necessaries and a long robe patterned silver and green and gray look ferns it is an undine robe she is swimming in it it is tied around her waist with a tasseled belt, and she does not look as if she is that much closer to having reality swipe at her (a gnat, an irritant).
She finishes speaking some Enochian word which sounds like the river and the stream is eager to take away; some glinting, lyrical fall of syllables.
And then, "Nicholas, hey," she says, to get his attention and to get a sense of him.
lake-light
[?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
crow
At the first sigh the Consensus makes just before it is broken, Nicholas looks up and toward the place where less than a second later she will appear, will shape herself out of the wilderness around him. Watching Pen materialize still makes him catch his breath; he has not seen it so very many times, just yet, since she first appeared in his study with a wobbliness in her legs that they both ignored.
So she does not have to say his name in order to get his attention, though perhaps she does it anyway; his eyes are already on her and only her even before she appears before him. His arms are folded, his elbows on his knees.
Closer his aches become more obvious: his lips are parched, dry, almost in contrast to the clamminess of his skin: the body paradoxically does this when it craves water. He appears to have been faithfully swallowing mouthful after mouthful: the bottle she glimpsed him drinking from is lighter now even than it was then.
His feet are beggar's feet, are penitent's feet: the feet of an old man, of a pilgrim. They are torn and battered and bloody and they look raw and bruised even beneath the water. He tore away a toenail, at some point. Pen can take in the scene with a sweep of her eyes and she notices: blood smeared across several of the rocks and small stones leading up to where he now sits, streaked across a leaf that was in his path. Otherwise he appears uninjured.
His boots are hanging by their laces from his backpack.
It does not take her long, either, to sense some steadfastness in how he looks at her, the way Orpheus was steadfast, the way statues stand over the churchyards they guard. He watches her for only a split second after she says his name, then glances about him and pats the ground next to him. "I'm here," he says.
lake-light
There is an internal pang at the sight of Nick's feet and the blood. This isn't because the gore of it disturbs Pen, and as it is an internal thing, the physical sign of it is small and perhaps Nick misses it. He could miss it in how absorbed her gaze is by tracing his path, by how absorbed her gaze is in tracing his face, as if a glance will need to do in lieu of a hand when it needn't at all because space was no object. Solemn-eyed, Pen lifts her left hand and follows the line of her brow down over her cheek to her mouth and her finger lingers there, half-obscures the moment Nick's presence kindles a smile (blossom, like so), and she swings the knapsack off her shoulder and if the long robe didn't flare out behind her when she strides over closing the three feet at once she'd trip on it because it drags it trails the pebbles it darkens in the water and collects moss.
The knapsack hits the ground behind Nick.
Pen does not sit but her hand finds Nick's (clammy) forehead then rucks back through his curls and she bends to kiss him between his eyebrows or on cracked and peeling lips. Her eyebrows are eloquent: they lift in question, because he feels different but of course he does he went Seeking. It tells her something about the flavor of his quest. That's all.
"Well?"
crow
"I think I...I think it worked," Nick says, though his tone is uncertain, is doubtful. Like a cat starved for attention he leans full-body into her when she sits down beside him, accepts with gratitude her hand in his hair, her lips on his forehead or on his cracked lips.
"I saw Her. My guide, at the end. And I knew that...that there is an infinite number of things I don't understand. But she didn't stay to speak to me."
Some people speak of a feeling of wholeness, of completion, of power and assurance upon finishing a Seeking. Perhaps Nicholas was expecting something like that: some sort of ending, something definite. Instead there was only then and now.
These things are not always so clearly defined.
"Do you have food?" He is looking at her, but she can tell by the way his gaze wavers back toward the knapsack that he wants to look at it. His eyes hold firm nonetheless.
lake-light
"I want to hear about it. Later. I want to hear what shape she took and why you - but later." This 'but later' is Pen reminding herself that now is not the time. He wavers. He wants to look behind himself at the knapsack. Pen (is a beguiler, could be the thing that leaves the ballad knight out on a hill except that she's so bright and present and so) flashes Nick a smile. This one draws out the dimples and she draws away, but only to reach over Nick and open the knapsack's flap. She never sat, so she is leaning over: he can wrap an arm around her leg if he wants, rest his head there, disappear inside her robe because it is in danger of enveloping him. "Yes. You're east of nowhere, west of far away from anywhere that will lead back to civilization, so I came equipped. Some protein bars and vitamins, an orange and trail mix. What do you want?" Pen, rather than digging food out for Nick, hauls the knapsack over his head and places it in his lap, so he can investigate it himself. She draws her wand out of it at the same time and, standing back, shrugs out of the robe.
crow
Nick does indeed wrap an arm around her leg, rest his head against it just above her knee, and her robe flutters against the top of his head like a veil. His eyes are shut, at least until she drops the knapsack in his lap. Then he is quick to respond and begin rummaging through it (though not so busily that the falling cloth does not draw his eyes back up to her.)
His fingertips find the orange, and his thumb plunges through the peel and into the flesh. The sweet scent of it blooms into the air between the two of them almost immediately. He tears chunks of rind free and sets them on the stone beside him and brings a slice to his mouth, nevermind the seeds.
"I haven't eaten since I left yesterday," he says. "The car is at the bottom of the mountain, if we can get to it."
lake-light
"I'll chart a route to the car, then, instead of a fortunate coincidence," Pen says. As Nicholas tears into the orange, revealing flesh and seed and sinew, Pen steps away from him and the air catches the robe as she whisks it out with a sharp snap of both wrists and lays it on the ground. The pine needles beneath whisper a story of silence, and Pen scratches her temple with the tip of her wand. Maybe Nicholas noticed what was written in mercury ink on the inside of Pen's robe, catches a flash of purposeful lines. But maybe Nicholas has been starving for three-some days and has no time for anything that isn't orange flesh. "Do you have the car keys with you? And would you mind sitting on my robe, Nicholai?"
crow
Nick's head rolls to the side as he looks at her robe, and the stiffness that has settled into his muscles is evident once he braces his hands beneath him to shift his weight that few feet to the side. He sets the orange down there, and then his head stretches back, cranes, and the muscles in his face tighten as he scoots over to take his place on her robe instead.
He lets out a breath, hard, through his nostrils as he leans back and pulls his car keys from his pocket and holds them out to her, hooked on one finger. Then he reaches back for the orange and continues eating.
It is gone in a matter of moments, after which he turns his attention to one of the protein bars. "You got everything together fast."
lake-light
[Okay, okay. Okay. Charisma this time + Enochian.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]
lake-light
[Vulgar Magick! Forces 2/Matter. +4 because did we mention Vulgar. Diff 6-3 thanks Enochian (or Lysander. Way to teach). Willpower, too!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 3, 5) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
lake-light
"Not really. I prepared most of it after the first morning passed with no sign of you or from you. So... I was spending my hours thinking of you and watching for you. After that point, laying out objects was something to give the time an anchor," Pen says. Because vigils are tedious and difficult, especially when you are a creature of action. But they are rewarding, if you can stay the course. To give the time an anchor, she says, and she means it: but also something to relieve, or focus, the monotony, and her emotions; which were riled.
Once Nicholas is on the robe she circles it, Sun-wise, and stands at its hem, and she scribes a sign with the tip of her wand, an elegant sigil which drips command, and she bows her head. The sun has crested high enough that light lances through the pines and burnishes her hair, a shining cap; her eyes are in shadow. Her head is only bowed a moment; she lifts her chin and she shapes her voice into a promise and a demand she might be asking air to turn to water or earth to turn to fire or the sun to ice and it would turn to ice if she asked it in this voice looking like she does holding herself so and if she asked the moon to come to her hand if that is what she is asking the moon itself will come to her hand it will fall from the heavens to kiss the inside of her wrist.
But she is only commanding a steed into being for Nick and when the spell takes, catches, he can feel a ripple move through the fabric, and Pen touches his shoulder lightly with her hand to steady him as
The robe pushes itself up, twists and folds so that it has four legs (the mercury silver runes a running liquefaction visible and not all through the twist shadowing the ground) and the center of the robe where Nick is seated or the robe rolls him sags a little enough to cradle him and the four 'legs' are higher than he is where they bend but then they straighten and unfold so that the seat of it is higher than one foot higher than two and then, steadying itself, one 'leg' is lofted and it looks like the robe's sleeve and it drifts up and then one of the back 'legs' is lofted and it untwists until it's the hem again, and then the other front 'leg', and the other back 'leg,' and Pen keeps her wand lofted but also grabs hold of one of the sleeves as if she were holding a hand and the robe drifts up another foot so it is at the height of her waist then her ribs and it is bearing up quite well.
Pen's cheeks puff out when she sighs out. The keys, she drops on the (flying - or gliding, rather, unmoored) robe, and points her wand at. Navigating toward the car is next.
crow
Does she draw some satisfaction from it, this cry of surprise that passes through his lips? Magi like Pen do this, toy with reality, call the moon down to them with their eloquence and command, and it still sometimes surprises magi like Nick even when they know.
He does not disbelieve. But it surprises him all the same.
The robe-steed springs into being and he is lofted then into the air, and with his eyes wide he shifts his weight around until he settles more comfortably. Then he finishes off the rest of the protein bar he was eating, carefully tucking the wrapper away in his pocket (it wouldn't do to cast it to the ground.)
"I'm sorry," he says. "I was going to contact you, but my phone doesn't work out here and I didn't even realize it was morning until I came back."
lake-light
"Why are you apologizing?" Pen says, a rake of fondness. Her hand has left his shoulder. "You were Seeking enlightenment. Mornings come, mornings go. How long do you think you've been out here? My heart is glad to see you. Drink more water. Oh, right."
The knapsack is still on the ground. Pen, still holding the robe by its sleeve, bends down to pick it up, swing it over her shoulder, then angle her back and the open knapsack towards Nick so he can pull out a thermos or whatever he wishes.
crow
"In case I worried you," he says, and this as he reaches into the knapsack for the thermos and another protein bar. He leaves the bar in his lap, unscrews the thermos and takes a few long swallows from it. They slow with each; there is a voice within him however small telling him that he doesn't want to make himself sick.
"I climbed up here," he says, casting an eye along the ground as they move over it. And as they walk she can indeed see that he did: his blood is scattered across stones all the way up. As she walks down it tells a story in each broken twig and displaced rock and, occasionally, a skid where he slipped during his ascent. "Following Her. Well, not at first, but afterward. I don't...I don't think I was here for all of it, but I'm not really sure."
lake-light
[Final rote. Coincidental, yay. Corr 2/Matter 1/Entropy 1, easiest path to the f'ing car. . +3 +1 diff because maintaining other Working. Diff 6 -1 for personalized instrument, -1 for sympathetic magick (keys). WP again. Hermetics are willful, rar!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 2, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
lake-light
[Extend-y extend, and more WP.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
lake-light
[I think we need one more success, so extend again, and more WP. Do not want to be eaten by grizzly bears.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
lake-light
Pen shrugs the knapsack onto the other shoulder, too, so she is well-balanced, and then she slips the ring of the car keys onto the point of her wand. She closes her eyes, the thin shell of skin flickering her lashes as dark as the pine needles where they lie against her cheekbones and she Wills an easy path for them from this point to their car, key wants lock, lock wants key, and lovers should be joined together: she whispers something into the air; or maybe only shapes the words. Not every rote requires anything more than a gesture. And they walk, and there is blood on the path, there are signs of Nick's passage until the path Pen can see (Ariadne, Theseus) unrolling veers from the difficult passage Nick took up the mountain (he was lead in a wide circle; he was lead astray), and she takes the truer path, Pen, a true path downward: Pen whose name is also Katabasis, see. And once that is clear and evident and shining before her, she can pay Nick all the attention she wants to pay him, or at least most of the attention she wants to pay him because that last took a lot of effort and she is tiring.
"Don't tell me what you're sure of. Tell me what you experienced; tell me what is true, that happened, until you want to sleep. You can sleep if you want, my Crow. I can keep myself company."
crow
[WP to stay awake?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 9) ( success x 1 )
crow
Perhaps Pen made that suggestion because she can see Nick's eyelids growing heavy: he is not sure how long he has been up here on the mountain. He is not sure how long it has been since he last slept or ate, he has only his body to tell him that story. They are hanging low, until there is only a thin sliver of hazel visible beneath them.
As she speaks he opens them again, struggles back to wakefulness. "I started up the mountain yesterday morning," he says, "and I decided on my way up that I would go barefoot, that I would fast. It seemed right to me," he says, and this is a simple statement, something he is sure of even if she urged him otherwise. "So I came up this way."
His eyes are skimming the trail ahead, and at some point he glances to the left, right, perhaps searching for some sign of places he passed: but no. Pen's path to the bottom is a truer one. "I met a woman on the way up who asked me where I was going and what I was looking for. She reminded me of Sera, a little, actually. Conversations we've had. But not. I was getting to the top just as it was getting dark. I stopped on a ledge so that I could meditate. We spoke there."
A beat. "Everything felt...I couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. Everything hurt and I was hungry. It was...I thought maybe I was imagining her at first."
lake-light
Pen makes a curl of a thoughtful noise; deep tone, vocal fry whisky-over-ice in it; acknowledgment, mood. Nick has all of her attention (most of her attention), but the true path keeps her eyes; her alertness is conscious. The robe gives when he moves; it carries him like a hammock might, though there is less drag. He is flying; he is on some thing which flies.
crow
"She asked what if I had to wait forever," he says, and his voice is a little wondering, a little childlike, a little furrow to his brow. "I don't completely remember what I said. She gave me a granola bar."
And here there is a pause as he takes a bite of the protein bar in his hand: some residual hunger perhaps. He does not chew as quickly as would be expected, either due to his exhaustion or due to mindfulness of how long it has been since he ate last.
"Then she left, so I went to follow her. Only I think maybe I lost her at some point, or maybe I didn't. Maybe she was just testing me. I got to the top of a ridge and kept walking, and...I'm not sure how long. I kept looking for her but she didn't appear." A beat. "For some reason I never thought I should backtrack, I just kept going. I was afraid that if I went back I'd lose her."
More chewing, and he stuffs the next wrapper into his pocket. His fingers curl into the fabric of her robe; his body sways with the rhythm of its four legs. "I fell, at some point. Then I got up and kept going. And I got to this...great darkness. But I could see there was something inside it, so I walked through, and then past that there was an ocean and a long bridge leading to an island."
lake-light
"You don't remember your answer or you don't remember what you said after she asked you that question?"
Pen doesn't look at Nick. There's a path which needs minding. A true thing about Penelope: she wouldn't look back at the mouth of the underworld to make certain her lover were following her, if she didn't hear him, if that was the deal; she'd devote herself to the path; she'd not look away until it was done. She thinks she wouldn't look away until it was done. Her concentration is just that total.
She sounds thoughtful when she says, "Go on. But," quick, "you don't need to tell me just the facts, you know, just tell me what happened, what you remember, not what you don't. I mean, what you have now of the experience is the experience, right? I don't know. Maybe that doesn't make sense. Sorry!" Bright flash of a smile; she darts a quick glance at Nick, the quickest, then pays mind to the path again. "Go on. What then?"
crow
"It makes sense," Nick says, and she isn't looking at him but if she were she'd see his hand reach out for her, for the burnished spear-bright glint of her hair. He cannot quite reach her and it falls short, and so instead he unscrews the thermos cap again and takes another long swallow from the bottle.
His eyes fall shut, but only for a moment; his body is still swaying in time with the robe-creature's four legs as it carries him down the mountain. Pen's emotions were running high as she prepared the pack and the words writ on the inside of the robe for when Nick was ready to return: perhaps they still are. Nicholas is only drained.
"I started to walk across the bridge. It took a long time. I feel like I've been gone a lot longer than a day. I was worried that maybe I would come back to myself and a lot longer would have passed, and you would have only thought that I'd died up on the mountain." His hand reaches for her again, brushes the fabric that hangs over her shoulder.
"About halfway across, I came up to a gate where there were three ways to go forward, to a church and to a cave and to a hut on the shore. There was a boy outside the gate, sitting with a fishing pole. I talked to him, but he didn't have a mouth to answer me. He told me if he were me he would dive over the bridge and into the water. I thought about it, but I decided in the end that I would rather go through to the church. I couldn't find a way around, I had to go through. And then I...I went through, and all of a sudden I was up on top of the island's mountain, at the church's front door.
"I didn't want to go in right away. I decided to stop and look, and so I turned around and I could see the bridge and the gate and the boy. He was out there fishing off the side of the bridge. I could see the great darkness, at the other end of the bridge.
"Then I went through the door and into the church. It was so still in there, and the inside was paved with gravestones. The pews were all gravestones. I tried to read the names but I couldn't. Everything was smooth, like there were thousands of people there before me. And then I got to the, the abside - the back, I can't remember the English word - and She was there waiting for me. There was a raven on her shoulder.
"She smiled at me, and - there were thousands of people around her. And more, more than I - something infinite. And then I was sitting back at the mountaintop where you found me."
lake-light
There are two moments when Pen almost (almost) interrupts, her restraint snagging upon and torn by some remark. He feels as if he's been gone a lot longer than a day. You - her mouth almost shapes the word, lips parted to speak or to take a breath. The breath becomes only more air and she sucks on the side of her lower lip and she concentrates on the path her eyebrows rising when his hand brushes her sleeve. Beneath the robe she is wearing a teeshirt, short sleeves. The other moment she almost interrupts. The boy told Nick he would dive over the bridge and into the water. He thought about it. Here is a sharp intake of breath, and the beginning of Nick's name on her tongue which is touching the roof of her mouth behind her teeth the nnnn sound readying itself and yes Pen is still quite emotional (passionate [ruled by]) Nick he's only seen her truly drained a handful of times and less than that has it been difficult to rouse her whip her up and she is engaged in this story and audience participation is a true sign of engagement and then Pen's gaze falls to the ground because this is a steep descent. If she had only brought a blanket or one of their carpets, she might have been riding too, but she didn't want to risk it in case the spell didn't work. Slide slide gravel rattle slide pebble scatter plink plonk plunk. Pen stoops to pick something up from the ground rub it free of dust against her jeans and then slip it into her pocket.
"There is more. After you found yourself sitting at the mountaintop again, alone?"
crow
Once, twice, Nicholas looked toward her as he spoke: that sharp intake of breath and the word she begins to shape, which might be (probably is) the start of his name. His gaze falls on her again after he finishes and now it lingers, now it wanders over hinge of jaw and spray of eyelashes across her cheeks. She is not looking at him, she is looking at the path.
"I tried to call you, but my phone wasn't getting any reception," he says. "So I drew a circle in ash to summon Raven, and asked him to come to you and tell you that I needed you. I gave him two tears," and Nick says this simply, as though this sort of abstract dealing were far plainer than it is, far more mundane. "Then my feet hurt, a lot, and I couldn't stand up so I put them in the stream and waited for you. And ate the granola bar she gave me."
lake-light
"Did it feel different?"
Pen could mean eating the granola bar. She could.
crow
"Summoning Raven?" Nick looks over at her, and he blinks. His head tilts slowly to the side as he considers this, her question. "It felt easier to do. I think just...the knowledge of what else is out there made me realize how small it is, being able to do that. How much larger the scope I could be working on is. Does that make sense?"
lake-light
"Do you mean the feeling of what else is out there?" Pen glances at Nick again, and he'll keep her gaze for a moment, steep descent be damned.
crow
"I...yes." Nick blinks once twice thrice, blinks again for good measure, and in that moment it perhaps becomes even clearer just how tired he is. He might not even understand precisely what it is that she is referencing, the words he spoke moments before.
"Or, I...I know there is more out there than what I know, alone. And I also feel it. The wonder of it. Both of those."
lake-light
"How do you know?" she says, entices, lures, this-a-way, say-anything.
Pen is holding her wand, right, slender wood twisted with metal, a work of art, a commitment of will, and she watches Nick's eyelash work and then touches her wand to the place between his two eyebrows.
crow
"I just...I knew. I knew how much more there was, past life and past death, and how...how limited the human experience is. I know the way I know how to breathe, or that you were the best person I could pick to start to tell about myself."
Her wand touches the space between his eyebrows; his eyes cross as they try to settle on the point. And then: they refocus, and when they do it is on her.
lake-light
The point of the wand traces the bridge of his nose, then circles back to the point between eyebrows and holds. By then Nick has found focus, and Pen draws the point away again, taking better grasp on the flying robe creature's sleeve.
His analogy transforms her into poised stillwater luminous laughter; restrained; just a moment.
And then, and see, her voice is still pitched a certain lullaby way, but,
"Do you think your guide is content with you?"
crow
As Pen draws her wand away Nick's eyes unfocus again; and see how he trusts her? She could destroy him with a word, with her killing instrument pointed between his eyes like that. He watches her with the expression of an owl at the crest of daybreak as she holds her laughter in, perhaps trying to interpret her restraint.
"I think so," he says, and again that slow flutter of his eyelashes. "She was kind to me."
lake-light
"How?"
Under a copse of sycamore trees, their branches inter-laced, running water in the distance; leaf-litter crunches, dry grasses too and the plains spread out all gold and the sky full of the heart ache of emptiness and they are all airy climes now as the path twists and turns. The easy path. He might have come this way if he hadn't been will o wisp led.
Pen's voice is still lullaby pitched; enticement. Low. She wants the answer. "Hyde, your eyes are like the heath under a storm, a magician's, an occultist's, your lashes long to hide them," and Pen is not often one for luring Nick into sleep. Truth: when they go to bed at the same time, she is more likely to fall into it first than he is. Fair's fair.
crow
He is watching the path ahead of them, his eyes still occasionally fluttering shut; each time he blinks they stay shut just a little longer than they did moments before. "Mm," he says, and sways a little farther to the side, and
wakes, in enough time to catch himself before he can fall off the robe-thing. There is another sleepy blink at Pen. "She, um. She...we talked. She smiled at me like she was pleased."
lake-light
The robe adjusts; he is in no danger of falling off. What, is Pen some penny mystic, and her control a shoddy half-shamble thing? No. Pen's robe is enchanted; it is her Will moves it. When Nick seems as if he'd sway to the side and fall off it, the robe abandons the ground entirely; drifts like a hammock in the air.
"Were you pleased?"
crow
The robe adjusts, and Nick, we are sad to say, drifts right into it almost without being aware that he is swaying to the side. Soon enough he is nestled in its depths, horizontal, his awareness of the world around him growing quite dim. The scent of the robe is familiar (Pen, their house) and he hasn't slept in more than two days. (And ah, remember: they stayed up later than they should have by the firelight, that night before.)
There is a murmur of assent. It will be the last sound from him for a long while.
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