Here's how the interaction went: text chatting about further discussion, a joking invitation to River when she said she missed having a yard and garden, acceptance, Nick worriedly clarifying that it was a joke and he wasn't just trying to rope her into work, and a little while later here they are.
The House of Mars and Hyde, as it has come to be called, is a battered old Victorian in northeast Denver perched on the top of a small incline. Its wood siding and the yellowgold paint, the color of fields in autumn, have both seen better days, but it still speaks to a sense of Oldness. At least, as old as anything in Denver can rightly be called. Trees surround the house, steeple over the top and lean in to meet each other like gathered ritualists. On the roof, a plucky metal rooster quite unlike other plucky metal roosters, with a claw raised in defiance and a hood of spiked feathers, both a nod and an answer to the other type.
Somehow, there is this resplendent sort of grandness about it, in spite of everything. It stands proudly on that hill.
There are soil beds in front of the house that seem to have recently been worked, and a few of the bushes she saw the other Chakravanti buying have taken up residence there, lining the front porch. Two chairs sit on the front porch, and though River will be able to sense the house's other denizens upon her approach (there's ardence here too, see, and daring, and this other whisper of something luminous, fainter and less settled in.)
Nick, though, is the one waiting for her out front. He has already been working, and there is a shovel laid out and a rake and a wood frame for a planter and...well, whatever River thinks she might need, it's here. Nick is wearing a pair of heavy canvas pants and an old faded brown cardigan. If his hair weren't such a striking charcoal shade of black, he could look like a man thirty years his senior, dressed like that.
He waves a hand to River when he sees her coming, and Nick, he doesn't emote much, but he's pleased to see her: this she can tell.
River Vasquez
She missed having a yard so much. In the house in Chula Vista, they did have a yard. Ish. They had a yard ish because their "yard" was on top of their apartment and their apartment was on top of the restaurant. Her family owned the whole building. Outright. Wroked their tails off and finally were able to have something in the United States they could call their own. The rooftop was a source of organic produce, but also happened to be a source of a lot of plant life.
The restaurant seemed draped in pink and vibrant green, like it was all just a formality for whatever Babylonian goodness was resting on top of it.
When she showed up, the car that she parked out front was new. It was most assuredly not what she had been driving when she got here, but it was in decent shape and still smelled like a new car and had a dozen little fingerprints on the windows where other people had looked into it. She won it at a casino. She didn't necessarily brag or broadcast the things that she does to make money, but it doesn't necessarily always involve taking her clothes off. Sometimes, it involves just staring at a deck of cards and being able to remember a little better than the average person.
She gets out and she's wearing a tank top and shorts. They're comfortable shorts, though. Looks like she had carpenter jeans at one point and cut them off after the hammer loop because she didn't need the legs but she did need the ability to hang things off of her pants. Brought her own gloves and had cheap sunglasses perched on her head.
"Ohhhh, Nick it's so much potential," she coos. Awe, such awe.
Nicholas Hyde
From the garage she can see his car: also relatively new, though the smell has faded. Something of a windfall in terms of financial fortune, moving to Denver: before his current job, in New England, he'd worked in a crisis center. There are people who make more in call center customer service jobs than he made in the crisis center. Love's labors.
As River compliments him on the house, he smiles and casts a look around the beginnings of the garden. Because yes, he is seeing all the potential here that she does, and he is so very recently out of an episode of Quiet: people like them find all sorts of ways to cope. "I think by summer it'll look pretty good," he says.
And awe, such awe. Deja vu is a strange thing, and it means more for them than others. There was another time and place, once, a chantry that was a temple that too was resplendent with carvings and hanging drapery and incense, where the Bodhisattva Anointed By Dark Water [her, then] greeted him [him, then] with cool dark eyes, and if the title is conceit he wouldn't know because: shock and awe, it was the name of this place and time.
It was not so long ago. Does she remember?
Nicholas has made a sweeping gesture toward the tools at hand, that smile still on his face, and there is something private and pleased about it still. And he goes back to shoveling the hole for the bush he is about to plant. "So how long have you been in town, anyway?"
River Vasquez
"It'll be fun seeing it in spring," she says, means it because she does think it's fun. Looks around and looks at the eginnings of what will be a garden and so many beginnings look at them all! Folds her arms across her chest and looks around like she isnt' sure where she is going to begin to help. She's got on a pair of well worn tennis shoes. Her standard work shoes, all things said. River, if she could get away with it, wasn't actually a big fan of shoes. Had to work very hard to keep from feeling the backlash of wearing heels all the time.
---
>He was not spring, then. Wouldn't have dared touch the ground because then this was all new. Then, he was different and was just sliding from autumn into the full force of the world where everything was dying- resting- dying- beginning. He did not see beginnings. Adam did not get to see beginnings, only the hints and potential of them that he would never live to usher into fruition.
She knew him when he was new. When he was young and when the world hadn't taken everything. She knew him when he was in love. When he showed up halfway across the world with a picture of a new baby in his wallet and an unabiding coldness in him that was not cold.
His Chinese was flawless. He'd wanted to meet her for so long; he had prepared.
---
"Since autumn? I moved here in September," she said, "I got to see the seasons change- Denver is really something. When did you come here?"
Nicholas Hyde
River gets to see the seasons change, and as she says this Nick has identified her as a dweller of - well, perhaps like him she is native to some warm desert, though it could be anywhere really. Florida? Texas? Regardless, his smile widens in this way that suggests that he understands what she is talking about.
"Just in December," he says. "My wife and I moved here from New England." There is this pause that is just long enough for him to scoop out and toss aside a spadeful of soil, clumped together and rocky. He has done a lot of work to turn the ground over in the past several weeks.
---
She was not Hallowed, then. She had not prepared to meet him, then, though there is a sort of cool courtesy about her here: she offered her name (Hai), or at least the one it is appropriate for her to be called by, rather than her title. There is humility still (or is it a veneer? this place, after all, is resplendent, glorious the way we say battle is glorious the way all warriors hope to die.)
"You've come a long way." Her small hands (killing hands) tucked into her sleeves. There is unrest in China just now: there will be for a long time, this battle between the ancient and the modern, though we all know now which side will win. "Your Mandarin is very good."
---
"I'm from Arizona originally, though. The first spring is...pretty amazing, really." If his tone is casual rather than fully encompassing the wonder he felt then, it is only because: they have only just met. Kind of. (This life.)
River Vasquez
She takes a few steps forward and gets on to doing whatever it is that needs to be done. She's watching him, taking notes, following leads because this is his house. Well, the house he and his wife have. Something about that makes her smile bright. "I've not been very far into New England," she tells him.
"Oh! But I have been to Arizona! My family passed through there on the way to California. We set up the camper outside of Yuma. Have you been to the Kofa Wildlife Refuge?"
---
Animals didn't particularly care for Adam. They shied away on account of the cold or the feeling of their presence not being welcomed even though he himself seemed just fine. But if there are cultural differences, his eyes are wide and his mind is open.
He'd introduced himself as Adam. Adam Vrabel. He looks at her like she is a thing of wonder; he does not know he will be a force to be reckoned with. Doesn't know that both of them will have to claw their way out of quiet. "My acarya told me that it's important to not live in a vacuum," he replies, "I..."
He's young. Wedding ring and bright eyes and idealism.
"You've done so much, and China is..."he pauses, "in the aftermath of such widespread famine, I... I felt like I needed to be here."
He didn't know why.----
Nicholas Hyde
"I'm mostly trying to get these bushes in the ground," he says, with a tilt of his chin toward the shrubberies that have yet to be planted. They look plain now, but will flower come spring in big white blooms. "The holes have to be pretty deep though," as evidenced by how thoroughly he is digging the current hole he is about to put a bush into.
There is a little smile that has touched his features, at the naming of this place that is from a period farther back in his history-as-Nick. "We went to Kofa once when I was a kid. I'm from outside Phoenix though."
---
This look, that she is a thing of wonder: she is used to this. She bears it with a quiet sort of tolerance, this patience that belies the passion and forcefulness she has brought with her to the battlefield. She has been called commanding, too, though there is less of that now; this is a place of sweet smelling incense.
It feels like benediction.
And he is young. His eyes are bright, and he is recently married. She has never married, and though she is rounding into middle age she still could; she will not. "Your acarya seems wise," she says. "You came here to help with the famine?"
She is untouched by Quiet, for now. One day they will both claw their way out of it; one day she will sink back in, and it will be the end. They don't know that now. Or maybe she does; who knows what sort of wisdom she holds.
---
Nick glances up at River through a fall of curls, and mark this: he studies her for a moment or two. Perhaps something has struck him; perhaps he wonders - well. Whatever it is, he doesn't say it. "Did your family move around a lot?" She mentioned a camper, see. Nick is sharp.
River Vasquez
"As best I can," Adam replies. Seems to know he can't change the world, seems to know tht he can't help millions of people starving and grieving because of what the government was calling poor crop management and drought. He spent a year studying international law.
After he leaves China, he'll switch to criminal law. Ride that out and actually get somewhere in his father's firm. Which becomes his wife's firm; Ginger was always the better attorney anyway.
---
"My parents were migrant workers," she tells him, "they came here from Cuba and we bounced across the United States."
She seemed pretty pleased with that, pretty content about it and didn't have any strange feelings about how her childhood had been, "we couldn't really stay in one place. You went where the work was- we lived in Yosemite for awhile until the park rangers figured out we weren't vacationing."
She picks up a shovel and readies it to get on to digging. There isn't a lot of River, but she doesn't seem to mind or think too heavily on that fact.
"I heard Colorado had some drought problems at one point."
Nicholas Hyde
This lingering look, then, at this mention of drought. River does not know Nick well yet, but she will eventually become well acquainted with the way his eyes quest elsewhere when he is thinking, when his memories drift back and sometimes back farther, when he goes somewhere inside himself. They are wandering around the garden just now, because he remembers -
---
"How much do you know about China?" This, a delicate thing. She is frequently delicate, her mannerisms and this almost-too-polite manner in which she speaks.
It is a test, Adam. Can he tell?
"Will you come and sit with me?" This has the air of indulgence, perhaps. And should he consent (of course he will consent), she leads him to this room behind a wooden lattice, a screen, something that offers the illusion of privacy if not privacy itself. The floor is cushioned here; and they will sit.
---
It's only after he has found words that he finds his way back to this conversation with her too. "I heard that. The soil here was still pretty rocky. I've had to add a lot of topsoil."
He is wiggling the bush into the hole he dug, dragging it over and carefully carefully easing it down. He is tender of it, even though it is just a bush. "Do you plan to stay in Colorado long, or does the wandering life suit you?"
A thousand things may be different, but a few remain the same.
River Vasquez
"I like Colorado," she confides, "I want to stay here as long as I can, but I do a lot of things that keep me moving. I like having a home base... but I love traveling."
She beams, again, all sunshine. Though, something about the way he asks makes her pause, makes her think for a second and she takes a moment, just a moment before wondering about something. "I've got a mountain picked out to climb in the Himalayas."
---
"I know enough to know that it is in my best interest to not be entirely public with my feelings regarding the incorporation of Tibet, that knowing Mandarin will not necessarily mean that I will be able to speak comfortably with everyone," a second, and then?
"And that what I know is nothing in comparison to what I should know of China."
He may have done his homework, but he goes back, he sits and listens to her, seems shocked that she is even humoring him over these affairs.
Nicholas Hyde
The Himalayas, she says, and Nick laughs, this quick little sound that still manages to be clear, a ringing bell, something that indicates his surprise. "That's ambitious." Then, thoughtful, "I've never been there. Or really even out of the country, other than for...well, I went to the middle east for Work last year."
Not a sightseeing trip. River can perhaps gather that. Nicholas does not seem the type for battle, but there are many roles in which people in their Tradition find themselves, despite common perception.
---
She sits, her spine straight and her hair a long dark coil, and there is still this very cool way she is eyeing him. There are things that are expected of her position, after all, and she was raised to this, in this wealthy family and groomed for this from the time she could walk.
Perhaps not for battle, but even the privileged have their surprises.
"It's wise of you to recognize that." A pause. "I assume you have questions. You may ask them, or you may stay as you wish until the afternoon meditation." Not too long from now, but, well. One assumes she is a busy woman.
River Vasquez
"Really?"
She looked at him, cocked her head to the side, "you just give the well-travelled vibe to me." He went to the Middle East for work last year and her response was to nod. It was work, Work even, and that much she understood.,
"I've never had the opportunity to go, I've heard the sunrises in Riyadh are astounding."
---
"What brings you joy?"
---
Nicholas Hyde
"Do I?" There is this amused look toward River then. There's no bite to it; Nick for all his cageyness is rarely sardonic. "I've lived in a couple of places, but my family didn't have a lot of money growing up. I'd never really even left Arizona, before I left for graduate school."
Sometimes, accidents of birth or power do a lot to alter a person. Or change them from who they might've been otherwise, from who they were.
"I was near Homs. Outside it, actually. The sunrises there were beautiful." He says this, because he has to find something that was.
---
She watches him, and there is no stirring here, just this meditative calm. His question has surprised her - in its temerity, if nothing else - but there is nothing of that there in her expression.
"Knowing I have served brings me joy. I often find joy, as well, in the quiet spaces in between. In this place, for example." She has come to equate joy with peace. This perhaps is telling.
River Vasquez
Do I?
"You do!" she laughs, digs a little further into the soil and stops, gestures to the hole. They're Chakravanti- they are, without a doubt- probably the one tradition that is best versed in digging holes to put things in.
"What do you think?" brows raise. Deep enough? Too deep? Not wide enough?
---
He takes a second. Listens and pays attention and from all the things he's heard, he takes away this one piece that makes her human. For all her capabilities and all her achievements and all of the pressures of the world he can take away the knowledge that this little moment of peace, this place- it can bring her joy.
"I should probably let you enjoy the down time," he says, "no need to interfere with sacred passions."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick raises his eyebrows and leans over to look into the hole she's dug. "That's deep enough," he says, and then leans back again to look at the bush she is about to place in, to survey its roots. And he gives a little nod.
And sacred passions: this is perhaps an odd echo, here. Between the mingling of his resonance and his wife's, that is perhaps exactly what this place feels like.
---
Adam takes this away, and perhaps she is glad that she has offered it. "It has been a pleasure to meet with you. I hope you find that China rises above all of your expectations, and that you find it welcoming."
---
Nicholas is not the sort who feels the need to fill a silence. He will work quietly for a while, and if she looks over at him during this time he does not seem uneasy; he is content simply to have River there. To be in the presence of another Traditionmate for a while, perhaps. Someone who gets it.
He will even verbalize this, in his way. "We should try to practice together, sometime. I don't...I feel like it's rare that I meet many other Chakravanti who really take care of themselves."
River Vasquez
(oops. Try again?)
Nicholas Hyde
Nick raises his eyebrows and leans over to look into the hole she's dug. "That's deep enough," he says, and then leans back again to look at the bush she is about to place in, to survey its roots. And he gives a little nod.
And sacred passions: this is perhaps an odd echo, here. Between the mingling of his resonance and his wife's, that is perhaps exactly what this place feels like.
---
Adam takes this away, and perhaps she is glad that she has offered it. "It has been a pleasure to meet with you. I hope you find that China rises above all of your expectations, and that you find it welcoming."
---
Nicholas is not the sort who feels the need to fill a silence. He will work quietly for a while, and if she looks over at him during this time he does not seem uneasy; he is content simply to have River there. To be in the presence of another Traditionmate for a while, perhaps. Someone who gets it.
He will even verbalize this, in his way. "We should try to practice together, sometime. I don't...I feel like it's rare that I meet many other Chakravanti who really take care of themselves."
River Vasquez
They are happy to work and work silently. One of the things that River had come to accept was that, in her own way, she was almost soft spoken. She didn't feel the need to take the spotlight, always considered what she was going to say before she said it. River took her time with things, as though, she was never really in a hurry to come to a conclusion. River waits her turn to speak. Waits her turn to act.
It isn't that she's dim by any means, just aware that when she is pressed to move quickly in situations that don't warrant, she slips up. Mistakes are made.
When people speak with her, she gives them her full attention. Like now.
"I would like that," she tells him, "and it is important. For people who are so focused on keeping the world healthy, we don't tend to take care of ourselves as whole beings, just fractions of one."
Nicholas Hyde
It's strange that for who they were Before, the people they have become are strangely similar: in what they do, in their general demeanor and in the rising (first blush of) Spring they both embody, and perhaps even in how they Work. Sometimes disparate paths can lead to the same place, and sometimes roads converge and diverge and meet again.
Nicholas may in some ways even remind her of Adam, initiate on the cusp of disciple as he is, newly married and flush with potential.
He has finished tamping down the soil around the bush he has settled into place. "What do you think of the War that might be coming?" Because, well, he knows she knows Grace; he assumes she knows about the missing apprentice.
River Vasquez
If she thought more of Adam when she met Nick, she would protect him more fiercely. Would be there in ways she knew she'd needed, in ways that would have never ushered her off to springtime. And she does think of him, for a second. Wonders if she should protect that potential because it's not her history that Nick may well repeat.
"I think," she starts after awhile, because whens he thinks she does think, "that this will make our jobs more difficult. And I think that people will pull through."
She purses her lips.
"I don't believe that the Technocracy is full of monsters, and I don't think that those in their ranks will blindly follow orders to commit atrocities... I think our lives will be different, but not so different that they will stop resembling what they are now."
Nicholas Hyde
He listens to her as she says this, and there is this slow breath that he releases. She cannot hear it, but perhaps if she is looking over at him just now she will see the rise and fall of his chest and shoulders, this slow deflation. He often works through meditation, still; it is this sort of intuitive understanding for him that he would not have otherwise been able to explain, were he not aware of who he was.
"I don't believe they are either. I think we may even have allies there if we were to look." He lifts his shovel, turns it over a few times in his hands and feels the grain of the wood. "These things often have a way of escalating, though."
And: if he is asking questions, it is only because he has to remind himself that he does not know River. Karma doesn't tell us where we're going, it only tells us where we've been. "How long have you been Chakravanti?"
River Vasquez
"A few years," she said, "I ended up dropping out of college... so it's been at least four years? I think?"
She doesn't do the best job of keeping track of time. She works through her body . Could have said any number of things about how things are going to get worse, because there is a knowing. A resignation that things will get worse, because some part of her sees the escalation of violence as a natural part of existence, just a piece of existence that has flowed outward so much further down the line.
"I'm an exotic dancer," she told him, "I did a private party when I was younger and there were vampires and it went down hill from there." Says the woman who feels like sunshine, who is standing here with him. Clearly, she can take care of herself.
"And before that, and before that... I know there are times where I haven't been a Chakravanti, but I've always been drawn to this particular calling."
