At A Classy Bodega

Adam Gallowglass

The Magus is never in his native habitat. His native habitat is something he creates from the fire in his mind, the divine gift of free will and mastery; it is a philosophical exercise and a tangible effort; it is imaginary and it is real. And it isn't a place one is likely to see a Magus. Magician. Wizard. Mage. So many words, so many names. They're mysterious, Mysterious with a capital M, cloaked from notice when they're outside their native habitat by Arcane Mysteries. Here's one, shopping at the corner store. Observe how he passes unnoticed by most and unglanced at by many, eyes might touch on his face but then they dismiss it. Don't care. Not interesting. Absorb an impression and then the impression changes, rewrites. He's just not that memorable, the young man with dark hair and an inner sense of valiancy, of relentlessness, a signature to his Will that makes most people conjure up knightly tales and associate him with chargers -- scrawny, tallish young man with a reader's hunch and sea green-blue eyes and expressions that are contained and then poised and a neatly trimmed beard and a desperate need for a comb and maybe somebody to take him in hand and teach him how to dress. Not that there's anything wrong with a gray button-up and khakis with red hightops, but he's rumpled. All over rumpled. Ink stains on his pants and something else, too. Powdered arsenic traces on his knee, chalk under his fingernails, a burn mark the palm of the hand he uses to pull open the bodega door.

Enter, Adam Gallowglass. He's here to buy salami and cheetohs and matches and he's forgotten to eat for a while so he might just be buying other things, too. 

Alicia Romero

The girl who came into his shop last month skittish and unsure of what she was looking to buy is standing in front of the beer cooler trying to decide whether she wants a twelve-pack of something cheap or a six-pack of something delicious. It's a tough call. She's been here for nearly thirty seconds by the time Adam Gallowglass wanders in.

Outside the day is warm. Her shoes are beach sandals and her shorts are very short denim and her shirt is a white crocheted halter top. She wrangled her mane into two braids and they would both drape down her back were she not twirling the end of one in her fingers as she decides.

Her lack of height and the darkness of her complexion make her easy to pick out of one's memory. Her resonance helps. Chaotic even after so long in the city with so long to sort out everything. Resonance never goes away. She will feel like disorder for the rest of her life.

Adam Gallowglass

He has a basket. Is it that kind of bodega? It is that kind of bodega now. He has a basket and he grabs a couple of beef jerkey sticks and drops those into it. That looks good. He begins wandering down an aisle that is full of bread and spices and peanuts and at the end of that aisle is the hum of chaos and a lack of order. There are willworkers who have near identical signatures, but to the sensitive, to the keen and the aware, there's a difference -- it's like a connoisseur wine-tasting, sure they're all red, but -- but. There's a difference. The Hermetic looks over the shelf. He's by a refrigerator that has ice which is by an open refrigerated area with a selection of ready made sandwiches and meats and cheeses and dips.

He adds some tilamuk cheddar to his basket and some guacamole. He has no shadow and no shadow falls long across the young Mage, but now he says -- that not-quite hint of foreign to the polite clip of his voice. Thoughtfully pushes the metaphorical hood of Mystery back from his face to speed things up.

"Hello," that tone people have when they run into one another. "Alicia, wasn't it? Carl Sagan's Cosmos."

Bookstore clerks never forget. At least: not when the foot traffick is slow and Mages are involved.

Alicia Romero

He doesn't startle her. Alicia isn't that kind of child. Got that going for her even if when she first showed up she looked about ready to bolt like just talking to another person who felt off like she felt off was a reason to run. She could run in thongs if she had to but the fact that she's wearing thongs instead of running shoes or combat boots or whatever the hell lace-up footwear she had on that day that's a sign she's slowing down.

As she turns towards him she reveals herself to be chewing on a thumbnail. She smiles around the nail and then takes it out of her mouth. Turns towards him all the way.

"Good memory," she says. Meets his eyes for a second before crossing her arms over her chest. She wears a thin-strapped purse crosswise over her torso. Has to elbow the bag itself out of the way. "They teach you that trick in bookseller school?"

Adam Gallowglass

Adam is perceptive when it comes to people, though he doesn't really seem the sort. He had to be. But he doesn't notice what women are wearing unless they're wearing it, say, the way certain Cultists wear what they wear inappropriately while sitting themselves on his desk. He sure notices then. Sandals in summer. Less running. Absorbed. 

"They teach us all kinds of tricks in bookseller school, but I can't confirm or deny anything." Pause; his expression is friendly, if reserved. His smile is easy, but not big, neither open-hearted or desirous of anything in particular. A smile is a smile; it crinkles his eyes and lends them warmth. "Of course I do try to remember the faces of people who have accounts opened up for them by other people. I'm surprised you haven't been back."

"Doing all right?"

Alicia Romero

She looks as if she wants to smile but the guy feels like some sort of wandering knight and even if he's friendly he's just as closed off as she is. Easy to just circle around each other without either one drawing too close.

"Yeah," she says. "I dunno, Sid being in the hospital and everything, I thought it'd be kind of rude to just be like Hey, what up, let me put a bunch of books on your account while you're in a coma, you're the best."

Adam Gallowglass

"Heard about that and the others then?"

The smile transitions into a frown -- a smoke-curl thread of regret and concern there and gone again in his eyes. Easy to miss, because as fleeting as the expression is, and as expressive as his eyes are, they're water; they're the sea; they're opaque. Get it? Not inscrutable, but expressions are tricky things.

"A tough break, but they're tough. You should put a bunch of books on her account while she's in a coma anyway. I'm certain she'd like that much better than flowers when she's out and about again."

He sounds guileless the way people do when they're about to smirk. Because what woman doesn't like to have their credit cards used for book-buying instead of being given flowers? But there's a pensive edge.

Alicia Romero

The suggestion makes her laugh. It's not a boisterous laugh. They're indoors and Alicia is small but she looks like she could laugh loud as hell if she wanted to. Nineteen-year-old girls are capable of making as much noise as a creature thrice their size. It multiplies when they travel in groups. She's alone. It's made her demure.

"Yeah, she might," she says. The laughter dies. A stitch tugs between her brows. "Wait... 'others'? Did Lena not come back from meeting that guy?"

Adam Gallowglass

The lines around his eyes deepen in response to her laugh; there's the smirk - and now it's dissolving, sublimating into another expression. Pensive. He has to think for a moment about the Ginger update about this particular subject and these particular Magi on this particular quest. As he thinks, his gaze stays on Alicia, a steadied and steadying thing, though he's looking less at her and more at his memory. Memory palace; full of symbols within symbols attached to other symbols, a mental palace of angels. 

"Not yet, but it was more than a 'meeting.' What exactly have you heard?" He shifts the basket from one hand to the other. 

Alicia Romero

Her eyes tick away for a moment as she tries to gauge their surroundings and judge how much is safe to say here without pausing too long. She shifts her weight between her feet and adjusts the way her arms lock over her ribs. This isn't a giant supermarket with air conditioning and soft rock crooning over a PA system. They can still hear the city outside and the distant banter of the men behind the counter busting the balls of the men come in to buy lottery tickets and cigarettes.

"Lena and I met up a few weeks ago and she said Kalen and some guy named Ian were at a club with Sid when this happened. And that she was meeting this guy who might know something about it and it might be related to. You know. Them?"

She says Them like it's capitalized.

"But I haven't been able to get ahold of her since then and I don't know who else to ask about stuff like this. I haven't heard much of anything at all, exactly."

Adam Gallowglass

"The Mirrorshades?" Adam says, after Alicia's capitalized Them. A nod or a paranoid flicker of the eyes will do for answer; he's just seeking confirmation. Human language is imperfect but connotations make it into something approaching divine. 

"Hmm." When Alicia is done. The Hermetic glances toward the men behind the counter as well, guaging their relative nearness, then he leans a shoulder against the frost-edged glass door closest the corner. An artful arrangement of chips doesn't conceal either of them; by the beer? No way, mirrors are watching them. Slow:

"Well... You can come by the shop and ask me about stuff like this. Lena and a few others placed their bodies into voluntary slumber so that they could go into a constructed reality Sid, Kalen, and Ian's minds were dragged into. There's a trusted member of the community keeping an eye on their physical well being and ... erm, if anything had gone wrong with their quest we'd be aware. As yet, a lack of updates appears to mean progress as usual with these sorts of things."

Now, let's not mistake things. Adam sounds quite interested in all of this. He's not being glib or oh la dee da everybody's fine. It's a concerning thing, isn't it? And he's concerned, but he's also (arrogant) sure it's going well.

After all, there was a Hermetic leading the way.

Alicia Romero

The Mirrorshades?

She's still young and new to all of this and though she can guess at who he's referencing Alicia has to stop and think if their shades were so reflective she could see herself in them. Everything is so '90s Matrix goth-punk with these people. She was born in the wrong decade. But she figures it out. Context is important. A scant nod and they continue on.

Adam does sound interested. Alicia looks distracted but she's a teenager. Young adult. Whatever the designation is. In certain cultures she'd be a full-fledged adult but the United States always have felt the need to treat their citizens like children for as long as possible.

"That's good," she says. "Honestly, I wasn't like... a hundred percent sure you were... whatever the word is, until just now. When you mentioned the others. I kind of suck at this whole thing."

Adam Gallowglass

He is thoughtful.

That's what he is, the dark haired young man. He puts his arcane back up, lets it filter across him, a wash; they're already conversing, and it's a memorable conversation: Alicia won't be touched by it, now, will she? But other people might come in.

He is thoughtful.

"Do you really not know the word?" 

Alicia Romero

His thoughtfulness makes her uncomfortable. She isn't a very good liar and she hasn't ever played poker. Things you can tell just by looking at a person. Her arms have been crossed this entire time and she keeps fidgeting. Has a good amount of distance between them not because she doesn't trust him but because she has to tilt her head back to meet his eyes and she wants to meet his eyes. Thinks meeting people's eyes makes her look brave.

Alicia is not brave. Maybe she wants to be but she hasn't learned how not to show fear when she feels it. That's the first step.

"How would I know the word?"

Adam Gallowglass

Adam's good enough at reading people that they don't usually have to be as open with their body language as Alicia is. Little things betray them. Things they don't even know they're doing, or he gets a hunch and then something confirms the hunch. He has a lot of empathy for his fellow man; or at least understanding.

His eyes don't slide away from hers, but when he's lost in thought he's lost in thought. His expression is present enough not to be accused of woolgathering or inattentiveness; he is not a daydreamer.

Yes he is. House Bonisagus. What else have they to do?

His expression shifts at her question; a faint smirk. "I don't know," he says. "I know nothing about you except that you have read Carl Sagan's Cosmos, go by Alicia, and are fairly new to the community. I take it 'fairly new' means 'extremely new' then?"

Lena wrote something about inroads, didn't she? She did. 

"Are you interested in learning about what you can do for it's sake or just rather," here's that hint of foreigenness again, "worried about the whole thing?"

"The word is 'awakened.' Awake. And the word is also 'traditionalist.' A traditionalist. Practitioner of one of the Nine Traditions."

Alicia Romero

Once the fidgeting has stopped she's come to stand still and if she didn't look like someone who's been caught doing something she shouldn't be doing she does now. Like for all she doesn't mind taking books from people and talking about space and black holes and what she does and doesn't know about them it's embarrassing to have to explain what she does and doesn't know about everything else.

You give people one fact about yourself thinking it'll answer that one question and all it does it find space for more questions.

Alicia holds tighter to her ribcage and chews her lower lip before she speaks again.

"I wasn't sure if 'awake' was right or not," she says. "My dad..." She looks away again but this time it's her whole head and not just her eyes. A longer look than the last one but she comes back in time. "I'm sorry. The end of January is when I woke up. They... the mirrorshades took my dad the beginning of May. He didn't think a vocab lesson would do me any good, I guess."

Adam Gallowglass

"Ah," he says. He sounds sincere when he says: "I'm sorry to hear that. My first teacher's master was lost in the final days," wry, "of the major conflict." 

He doesn't sound embattled or as if he expects them (ahem, Them) to appear right now from above. He also doesn't sound as if he's going to ask Alicia to tell him all about it here and now (or ever). Although: "Are you planning on continuing to follow in his magickal path? Erm, his course of study I should rather say. Your father, erm... an Orphan? Capital O."

His tone is -- not searching or probing, nor precisely uncertain, but there's a piece of information he feels that he lacks and that lack is evident in his tone of voice or perhaps just the faint puzzled crease of his forehead. 

Alicia Romero

Sympathy from a stranger. Few other things prick at the lacrimal glands like sincerity and Alicia looks bereft like she hasn't looked bereft this whole time. Her eyes take on a luminous quality not quite misty but threatening mist before he offers up his own anecdote. A hint of one.

History was more important than vocab it seems. Alicia is sniffing and swallowing to clear the gathering tears from her head but she manages to nod her understanding at the terminology. The major conflict. He's talking about the War.

Of course he wants to know about her plans. She's of that age.

"No, he was a scientist. I don't know if the S was capitalized."

Adam Gallowglass

He tried to be delicate with the subject; it didn't work. Or it did work. His expression grows very still when she begins to sniffle and her eyes get all luminous. He is not as chivalrous as his resonance might lead one to expect; still, he is a young man of a certain age raised in the context of certain social norms. All of which to say that he's glad she doesn't start to weep and he doesn't need to pat her shoulder.

"Ah! I see. What did he say when you opened your eyes? Did he proscribe a course of study?"

That missing piece; it's still missing. His tone is still sympathetic, and he doesn't sound as if he's drawing away from the subject of her father's disappearance. If Alicia wants to talk about that, he won't stop her.

But he's not as gentle as if there's a dying person in the room either. 

Alicia Romero

"He, um..."

Hashtag: things she doesn't like to think about let alone talk about whilst standing in a bodega with a guy she doesn't know anything about other than his name is Adam and he works in a bookstore and he's cute in that harmless way certain sloppy-haired scruffy guys are cute. Harmless from a distance. Most things are harmless from a distance. Other things can hurt you across distances and dimensions.

Adam doesn't look like he can hurt anything or anyone but Alicia looks like someone who's been hurt. No dying person in the room. If he was going to die her father's gone ahead and done it already.

"It's kind of foggy. Right before I was looking at this book he'd left laying out. And then there were people outside the house where we were staying trying to get in the house. And afterwards, he said, You've never stayed. You're supposed to run. Which didn't make any sense, but... like, a lot of things he said didn't make sense. Later he... I mean we were running from Them by then, like they were seriously after him, so when we weren't running, he would talk to me about what was in this book he'd left lying out, and he was teaching me how to... see properly, I guess. Now that my eyes were open. There're all these gaps, though. Like spaces where I can't remember things?"

Sniff.

"So... I don't have a clue what I'm supposed to be doing. But I don't think they're after me. I think they were just after him."

Adam Gallowglass

Adam does look harmless. He's far too thin and his head is far too big (with all that hair, ahem) and his neck long and his shoulders small and his height while not negigible, especially with someone as short as Alicia, would not have ever made him one of the tallest guys in the room, and if he is intense (relentless, valiant), if there is a certain sense of self-assurance (arrogance) which is deeper than skindeep, which is in the marrow of him (even his bones wouldn't leave a shadow; where's the darkness?), then it's nothing close to a glittering or dangerous intensity. He usually looks exhausted. He looks pretty exhausted now. Some women find him charming and think he's adorable in a fixer-upper way. Some women are easily pleased.

He doesn't look like anything special. He doesn't look like a Magus; what's a Magus look like? What's a modern-day wizard supposed to wear?

"Did you have to leave the book?" Of course the book is what has him curious (no, it all does, but that's what he is focusing on). "What did it look like?" And here, look, flash of a self-amused glance -- touch of aware irony. "I'm sorry. Books, you know." Beat. 

"Would you like somebody's opinion on what you're supposed to be doing? A bit heavy for shopping day," a glance at the beers she was looking over. His tone is neutral; if she wants to talk about philosophy and magick and opinions on supposed to do this or that of course Adam (an opinionated man) has no complaints. 

But she's a skittish little girl, so he leaves the implied offer and whether or not they talk about it now up to her. See? Or something like that.

Alicia Romero

The apology nets him a thin smile. One of the blessings of youth is the persistence of one's healthful glow in the face of sleep deprivation and emotional stress. She doesn't look tired or wan. Sad but she's got plenty to be sad about. All the false bravado in the world won't rid her of the urge to break down in tears thinking about the past.

A bit heavy for shopping day.

"I just came in to buy beer. Um... I can bring the book by to show you, sometime. The title's in Arabic, I think, I don't know how to pronounce it."

This could be a trap for all she knows. Adam can feel her wariness even as she gives him that much.

Adam Gallowglass

"I'd like that!" Adam says, brightening. He starts to move toward one of the other aisles, though he's not leaving Alicia abruptly or quite yet. He did come here to grab some snacks, after all. "Arabic, hmm? Do you know many languages?" 

Alicia Romero

His brightness is almost contagious but only almost. Alicia isn't sure if she'd like that. Could be an acquired taste. His departure isn't abrupt so she doesn't turn away from him just yet but it's clear this conversation isn't going to end until Adam decides it's time to end it.

"Just enough to swear at people and ask where the bathroom is," she says.

Adam Gallowglass

"Any interest in? In, erm, knowing more."

Alicia Romero

Another thin smile. Oh Adam you're so cute your cheese is going to get warm and Alicia still doesn't know what kind of beer she wants.

"Why?" she asks. "You offering?"

Adam Gallowglass

"I strongly support the learning of languages and the attainment of more knowledge," Adam says, and see: here is that smile again; poised, a shadow of a thing, but this time deep enough to carve lines in his cheeks that somebody might call dimples were the beard not present to obfuscate this fact. "You do know where to find me." 

Here's the aisle he wants. It has pastas. Pastas are good. Is that a jar of curry somebody left? And are those tostadas? Add to the basket.

Before going back to shopping in a dedicated and devoted stomach-is-growling fashion, which is to say, not paying any attention to Alicia, his body language -- sure -- is a listening sort of body language. 

He doesn't like this center aisle. A glance at the lights overhead.

Alicia Romero

He wasn't a difficult man to find when she wasn't looking for him. Lord willing and the creek don't rise she can find him again. Dangling the promise of knowledge in front of her and with a smile this time.

"Yeah," she says. "I do."

So that's how they leave each other. Adam wanders off towards the center of the store to look through their dry goods and Alicia decides she's going to grab a six-pack of craft beer instead of a twelve-pack of swill. Bottles jangle and her sandals clap as she makes her way up to the register. Has her ID ready with the ten-dollar bill and she doesn't get any change back. If she keeps coming here as often as she has been they'll stop carding her. It isn't as if bodegas have a high employee turnover rate.

Just before she steps through the door Alicia glances back. She makes nothing of his war with the overhead lights. Alicia is alert but not very aware. There's a difference.

And away she goes.