Adam
This happens in a museum hall. The museum of nature and science, during one of the after hours mixers or after some event that focuses on the planetarium. Party. Live music. Small scattering of people. The entirety of the museum isn't open, just a segment of it. The rest of the museum is hushed. If the muses dwell here, they're staying well back. Also staying back, if not well back, is a man in a dark coat with dark, tousled hair and a long neck. He is leaning his shoulder against a floor-to-ceiling window, holding a cup of something alcoholc in one hand. The cup is red plastic, rimmed in white, and he holds it low, near his waist. His fingers just curl against the glass. His reflection is a solid thing, stark against glass that doesn't show outside, unless one is leaning against it like the man is, unless one looks through their own reflection like the man is. He's thinking about who knows what, because while his reflection has an almost knowing expression from certain angles, that's an untruth brought on by different values of shade in the mirror-world; in reality, the man has the blank-eyed expression of someone who is years away, and he looks anything but knowing.
For those aware of the otherness which touches the world, there is a certain otherness to him: a relentless valor, armor or a sword flashing unceasingly to cut the dark. Fancies, these, that's all.
And though he is looking past his reflection and through his glass, it's cold out there and the cold is seeping through and beginning to make him uncomfortable. He exhales, breath fogging up the glass, then takes a rocking step backward, lifting the sleeve of his other arm to wipe the fog away.
Patience Mason
[Per+Aware]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Adam
[No roll for Adam, because he is a playtesty playtest. Woe.]
Patience Mason
The planets was something that intrigued Patience, she'd been to a few a couple decades before and she often wondered how they got along these days if they did at all so a place such as the Museum with its event with a focus on the planetarium was enough to pull her away from her work on her farm those many miles away from the city. She is dressed for a social event, of course in this circumstance it only makes her otherworldliness seem all the more poignant, that feeling of her having stepped free of an old lithograph or tin type photo all the more forceful. The skirt she was almost swept the floor its many layers pressing out from her hips to from a subtle bubble about her legs, she wore a simple and tasteful white shirt beneath a blue woman's vest layered beneath a fine black coat of a velveteen fabric. Her hair was swept up into its victory rolls and she strode along the same passage in which Adam currently found himself.
If the man himself had not drawn her sea blue eyes, then the man's resonance surely would and as she closed the distance towards him the click of practical heels upon museum tiling would herald her approach almost as much as her otherworldliness.
"Appropriate sociological and temporal salutations, idiosyncratic gestures and postural modes sir." She said in a polite and learned manner as she looked to the glass, and then the world beyond. "Is some intrinsic element of the external environment beyond this geo-physical structure of suitable note or temporal worthiness?" She inquires casually.
Kalen Holliday
[Nightmares]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
[Awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Adam
Appropriate sociological and temporal salutations, Patience says in the wake of the leading edge of her own uncanniness. Adam pauses, mid-swipe of his sleeve across the glass, and he looks at her. That eldritch edge; that itch of strangeness. Surely, it would've snagged Adam's attention, even insensate as he is tonight, if her voice didn't. If her appearance didn't. If, wait a second, rewind, if her mode of expression didn't. The corner of the man's mouth had slanted upward in a sedate but easy caught-out sort-of half-smile; it pauses, his expression balances somewhere between two different expressions, then (beyond this geo-physical structure of suitable note of temporal worthiness) decides on frank interest. He enjoys being interested. He enjoys uncanny things, strangenesses. How else is he going to be a valorous thing in the dark? What will test his edge, and make it ever-sharp? What will he pit himself, relentlessly, against? And so,
the slant of a smile has faded, but not into a less friendly expression. Say a rather more friendly expression.
He knocks his knuckles against the glass he'd just been wiping, leaving behind a ghostly impression of his knuckles and then a smear that refracts the dark without. The alcoholic-whatever (probably beer) in his cup goes slip-slosh. He says, "Of course. The world is interesting when seen from the perspective of a window or an open door. I might even say more interesting, but only for the sake of argument. It's at least different."
"But I was just looking at the winter. Looks like it's going to snow, doesn't it?"
Kalen Holliday
Kalen has loved museum functions since he learned, years ago, that sneaking into them would score both free food and entertainment. Now, he looks much more like he belongs here, dressed up as such in charcoal gray slacks and a dark purple suit coat in touchable, touchable velvet. That inviting fabric is at odds with the distance he maintains as he strolls through the event, leaning heavily into his cane.
Sensing other Mages, he moves in that direction. His coming is audible, for the tapping of the cane and the heavier steps on his off-side.
He smiles and waves to Patience as he draws close. "Hey, Firefl-" And then he stops when he sees Adam. Stops speaking. Stops moving. Stops breathing.
"Fancy meeting you here."
Patience Mason
Adam was talking about the weather, the most small of small talk, the thing you talked to cashiers or service attendants while you waited for them to ring up your purchases or service your car. To most it was about as exciting as a stale piece of bread, but in truth Patience was not most people and as she looked beyond the glass at which the man rapped his knuckles she smiled knowingly and nodded.
"Concurrent temporal estimations indicate towards a 92.581 percentile probability in a positively aligned atmospheric matrix to allow for the formulation of necessary lower atmospherics to precipitate a semi solidified H2O conglomerate traditionally identified as Snow." She said quite pleased it would seem before she went on.
"As to your previous verbal dissemination regarding the interaction between the speculative lens of the homo sapien sapien iris and that of a physical structures variety of portal devices, I can make no clear distinction save for metaphysical one's." She shrugged folding her hands beneath her breasts as Kalen suddenly found his way to them.
When he stopped moving, stopped speaking even stopped calling her by her apparent nickname her gaze shifted from Kalen to Adam and then back again a interrogative look settling upon her features. "Disseminate Kalen."
Adam
Kalen in purple velvet and a cane that hits the hard museum floors with a sound like a one cloven-hoof, rap, rap, rap, tap, tap, tap. The sound a blind man makes as he goes through the world. Adam hears it, but Patience's unique mode of communication has absorbed most of his attention. The man in the dark coat -- and it is a good coat, thick and woollen, with rather an air of timelessness, not quite as obvious as Patience's own throw-back sense of fashion, conjuring up antique loveliness, oh no no, not that. Just: back when coats were made to last a long time, were made to withstand all manner of weathers. That man, Adam, he has a wondering cast to his features now, which certainly give him an open and expressive look, while keeping yet some shadows at his eyes, and his eyebrows are up, he licks his lips in order to say Can you make metaphysical distinctions? Let's please hear them with the air of a boy figuring out a new toy, but Kalen has stopped and Kalen is staring, and Adam looks over at Kalen.
The man in the dark coat straightens; his gaze sharpens, takes on a narrow, questioning cast; a cautious sort-of self-possession creeps into the line of his shoulders. Yet: At the heart of this straightening is something cousin to bewilderment.
"Ghosts," the young man says, "Or escapists. The world is brave, if not new."
The bewilderment is sublimated by something else, as he looks between Kalen and Patience, and then -- why, then, he grins, this thing that creases his face up, squints his eyes, and reaches over to thump thump Kalen's shoulder: "You sonofa. Who are you here to see? Is it me? Are you two friends?"
Kalen Holliday
"Friendly, at least. We hardly know each other. I just came here to see the universe. I suppose you're technically part of that, though, not the part of it I expected. How have you been?" Now that his initial surprise is done with, Kalen seems intent on carrying on as if he hadn't disappeared into the ether a year ago. As if he had not let everyone simply assume he was dead.
"We...we're old friends, Firefly. I knew him a long time ago. When I was someone else."
Patience Mason
Kalen speaks to the situation, and Adam's own assertions seem to indicate towards a general association between the two magi and Patience seems to look between the two her eyes working to break down the differences and similarities in the two men as if seeking common markers and identifiers to ascertain their bond.
But something Kalen says triggers a raise of one brow and causes Patience to tilt her head towards the man in inquiry as she said. "At some previous alligned temporal juncture you assimilated or transubstantiated your metaphysical and noospheric matrix into a divergent and alternate bio-physical construct Kalen? Or are you inferring a generalized temporal alterate of sociological and noospherical basis?" She asks for clarity, in her rather muddled way and she looks towards Adam for additional confirmation.
"Do you, at this concurrent temporal juncture have an index rated identifier with which I may collate your individualized paradigmic personage sir?"
Adam
When I was someone else. Adam holds his peace until Patience has said her piece. But his eyebrows had responded to that statement thus: leapt upward, as if they were magnets faced with their repelling mate. The echoes of that sonofa grin are diminishing, just dregs of remembered light now, the crinkle of the grin the last thing to go, a certain lucent quality to the eyes replaced by another expression that straddles the line. It is a measuring expression, understand. A searching expression, the expression someone who spends his days and nights searching, looking through windows and doors, peering through glass, one of those. It isn't warm, though a half-chuckle rising at I came to see the universe, I suppose you're technically a part of it lends warmth to it again. Adam would've taken Adam Kadmon as his craft name if, in a rare moment, wiser heads hadn't prevailed on him to choose something more unique, something that was more essentially him.
He adds onto the tail-end of Patience's question to Kalen: "Or ... What type of someone are you now?"
But finds his gaze pulled, after a beat, away from the ghost or escapist, back to Patience. He smiles at her, this sedate half-thing that flirts with being a smirk but would never be one, and says, "Adam; how should I collate your individualized paradigmic personage, miss?"
The echo of her words seems more for ease of communication than snark. There's not much about Adam which seems snarky; not right now. (One never suspects it.)
Kalen Holliday
"Somewhere in between," he says to Patience quietly. "Though closer to the second than the first." It isn't even, really, an answer.
His eyes track back to Adam's. "Same as ever. Knight errant. Hopeless romantic. And never quite the same twice." He frowns a little. He knows Adam. He has no reason not to trust Patience. "I just got here. I don't really know."
Patience Mason
Patience continues to listen to the interplay between the two gentleman and it becomes all the more evident to her that they are indeed old friends, men who had known each other well at one point or another, and as this realization dawns on her she steps to the side, preparing to leave them to reestablish their connection.
"My heritalogically and parentalogically assigned index is Patience Mason." She said with a gentle nod and a slight curtsy to the man as she stepped off moving to leave. "It has been a positively alligned temporal frame work in which to recognize and collate your individualed personage within my noospheric relativity matrix Mr. Adam, however for the remainder of this temporal juncture I shall negate my physical presence to allow for further dissemination between your dissociated personages."
At that she starts walking, a friendly wave of goodbye offered to Kalen as she moved off into the museum, leaving the pair to whatever words they might share.
Adam
The man in the dark coat watches Patience leave. He takes a sip from his red plastic cup, having remembered it. He waits until she has mingled again with the other young (twenties and early thirties, mostly) people who've come to the museum's mixer. There are a few scattered forty-somethings, but young ones. Not everybody has paired off or found their group, but most have. The cookies are other hors d'evours are less than half what they were earlier, the bread just beginning to stale on a platter where someone has forgotten to put the lid. He was looking out the window. Now most of his back is to it and his hair is dark enough that the outline of him disappears into the general glassome darkness, outline more a suggestion of a ghostly person than the solid thing in another world when he was still leaning. The smudge his knuckles made stands out like a wrong-thing, a smear of dirty light.
Now it's just the two Hermetics. Two Hermetics who knew one another. Escapist and ghost. Adam waits a beat before looking back at Kalen, studying him. He doesn't look obviously at the cane and he doesn't immediately launch into a series of questions designed to pull a more satisfying tale of his recent history from him.
Instead, he asks as if somewhat amazed, "What in the world is she?"
Then, as if it's an after-thought (and with a Mystery at hand, it very well may be, though Kalen is himself a Mystery right now), "Come on. Let's find some privacy."
Kalen Holliday
"Firefly," Kalen says with a smile. "I've met her...three times now, I think. She's always like that. I don't know where she comes from or why she's like that, but she's brilliant." He glances toward where Patience returned to the crowd, smiling a little.
"Privacy sounds good. Amazing if it has chairs." He starts walking, slowly and carefully. "Or you could back to my place, but you always insist you're just not that kind of man...."
Adam
"Hmm." The 'hmm' sounds noncommittal and almost absentminded, but it as good as a promise. Hmm means answers forthcoming. Hmm means a quest. There are no horns to call the hunt, not these days, not these nights; there are no speeches. There is a hmm, resonant behind the long-necked young man's adam's apple. But his verdigris envy-green arctic-green gaze doesn't follow Patience again. The daguerrotype lady can disappear, for now; he hmmed, so he'll find out what she is later.
Kalen starts walking. Adam observes him do it. The damaged leg, the whole damned thing wrong now. Adam isn't very tall, but he isn't very short either. He catches up with a stride and then lets an often brisk pace become a more meandering one. If a pace could be conversational, Adam's clearly is - Adam, who seems to be in one of his social fits. That self-possession that wicked through his shoulders has remained, though the caution that accompanied it seems to have been sheathed. The right weapon for the right moment, hm? He scruffs his fingers through his hair, making the mop messier, and says with a clearing of his throat that sounds one-part congestion one-part cobwebs-clearing out and one-part another hint of surprised chuckle, "Now that's where you're wrong, Kal. I'll go back to anybody's place. It's 'come back to my place' that I'm damned if I do."
"We could go to your place. Or there's a coffee shop on the other side of the park. Let's go to the other side of the park." Decisive, suddenly. "How long have you been in Denver? A year?"
Kalen Holliday
"Two months? Three? Something like that. It's the longest I've been anywhere since Flagstaff. I seem to be staying." He smiles, real, if weary. His eyes are still that same pale green as glacial ice, though their color is drowned out by the shadows under his eyes.
"It's never boring. And...once we're somewhere quiet...it comes with warnings." There is a new tightness to his voice and around the corners of his mouth now that they're walking. When they last met, he'd have jogged across the park, dared Adam to keep up. Now, he'll probably be half breathless by the time they get there.
Adam
[A PAUSE]
[and a fade]
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