George Eldred

wake

Why does that still clear lake remind her of the sea. Why does she stand on the scree at its edge with the wind scouring down from the heights, raw and bitter in the – failing light? Dawning light? – in the slanting light that consents to touch only the edges of this dark valley. Why does she long for it. Why does that longing –

ache

in her throat. The rip-tide roar of fire through the still-green wood. The wood is always green; it has no time to cure. The dead don’t know. It’s only the living. The water is skinned with ice, but she knows where the ice is thinnest, and when she takes the hatchet in hand -

---

she is dreaming. This is the dream, the same dream that she always dreams. The same sky, the same waters. The same wind, the same cold. Where she lives it is spring now, and warmth gathers in the lowlands, radiant, but when she dreams, the pale mountain lake is still framed with ice.

Cinder Song

The girl fey-blooded with a wolf under her skin and a wolf in the marrow of her bones and a monster that men and women should and do run screaming from run mad away from that girl here she is in a dream again the same dream it is always the same dream and they who share it or seem to share it have discussed it yes and the Fianna tries to pull meaning from the slant of light from a premonition of disaster from bitter salt on her tongue that stayed for weeks that she could not cease tasting although this is not a sea-place but she has yet to pull meaning, does she, and here she is with a hatchet in hand and it is about to splinter as it always does before she wakes but instead she doesn't wake and it doesn't splinter because she doesn't sink it into what ice perhaps or more wood. The wind takes her hair and blows it into her face and she cups one hand around her mouth and yells into it - " - what do you know? Where are you?"

wake

Everything in the dream is always the same until it is not, and then it changes; or it ends. Everything rises and then falls see and the last change that was not her own was a voice, shouting, insistent, absolutely insistent that they had ruined EVERYthing and should get OUT GET OUT get OUT and now the voice is gone,

and she is here again, axe in hand.

There is a half-cord of wood piled on the spare graveled flats of the shallow lake and the sky reflected on its icy surface, this mottled melange of many-colors of raw grays and choked corals, every stage of filtered, impermanent golds.

She shouts:

there is no answer; just the echo of her voice against the high peaks, which narrow into a couloir that leads to this glacial lake, which in turn trickles further down the slope, beneath the low-swept, shrouding branches of a dark wood. Fir trees, that perfect and impenetrable green, too dark to suggest anything like spring. No: no cycle here. Just a sort of wintry permanence to the wood, the light scrawl of snow across the narrow track that leads -

down.

Smoke somewhere, and she can smell it. It tickles the back of her throat.

And this too; and this somehow, and this:

this sense (when she shouts) of awareness, all around her. Above, below, within.

Waiting. Waiting.

From below, the sound of footsteps. Climbing up the track.

Cinder Song

"I know you're - " Tamsin begins to say, shout, Fianna-thing wants words, wants to speak wants a tongue to unriddle and unrule everything, but then there is the crunching and crunching of footsteps and she knows that there's a fire and she knows that there were matches bought by somebody else and she knows that somewhere else there was a light-filled room full of anticipation and she knows there was a path of thresholds with ash falling and sorrow and she knows:

not who the crunching footsteps belongs to but isn't that an answer of sorts to where are you. Maybe it's Erich or Melenatha or Thomas or Keisha; Tamsin doesn't set the ax down but she quick quick takes a pocket mirror from her pocket and unsnaps it to look herself in the eyes; to find her eyes, arrest herself still for a moment wondering what will happen if; then hurry toward the track and the sound and -

"Is that finally you?"

wake

A man: pale-skinned, shadow-eyed, older than he looks, older than you'd think. Tired but with a threaded determination that Tamsin can sense somewhere beneath the threshold of his skin, a sort of grit that has not made itself entirely manifest here. That is sloughed-off and held back; that is dammed but not damned. He has a yoke over his shoulders from which fall two rough-hewn and hempen ropes, and two roughly shaped buckets.

Bristle on his face is gray and dark. The hair on his head, too: iron-threaded and his hands are old and his knuckles are oft-broken and his nails are split and dirty.

"Aye," he says, as he emerges from the track and the dark march of trees to the spare shore of the icy-choked lake. He always says that.

He always says this, too, after a long moment's winding pause. Somehow it startles him. The frame or shape of it, but - "Were you waiting long?"

Cinder Song

"Hours," she says, and it is strange, remembering things as she does in these dreams, this sort of knowing which is beneath her skin and does not mean knowledge; just a visceral knowing.

"I fell asleep and had a terrible dream," she says: "A wood was on fire; people died or were going to die and I didn't know who I was. I opened my mouth and I tasted the sea and I wanted to cry; maybe that's what I was tasting."

"Did you yell at me?"

wake

"I don't remember my dreams anymore." The man returns, a wry sort of shrug cresting over the shadow of his mouth in the shadow of his beard. His eyes are weary, bloodshot. The closer they are the worse he looks.

And he's working while he speaks. Lifting the yoke from his shoulders and the empty buckets with it, lowering them - with a degree of care that must come from regular repetition - to the ground.

"They were so intrusive when I first came here." And here, a moment's odd consideration. He - smiles - but it is as spare as the land feels, and older than it seems like he might ever be. Older than the trees that shiver over the flanks of the peak. Older than the bones of the earth beneath.

Old as a dream.

Knowing.

Known.

A breath out; his breath mists in the cold air and this is laughter, wry. "They seemed to devour the edges of everything. Now, though, I can hardly remember what they were. This hallway that moved like water. The lights above my head, rushing, with this rhythm like a train. That intercepted regularity. Anyway - "

And he shrugs, and he gets to work, carries the buckets to the lake's edge, where she has broken through the ice with her small, splintering hatchet. Where water skims over the ice through a small, jagged hole.

"I didn't yell at anyone and there's no one up here. Could've come from the house, though. Sound travels strange up here."

Cinder Song

"You look like you could use some sleep," Tamsin says, now that he's close; now that she's looking into his eyes. Her own eyes are still somewhat narrowed; watches the yoke and the bucket without offering to help. Perhaps she has no idea what the hell they're for, city girl that she is; or she thinks he's some sort of sisyphus and he's going to go down to the smoke or this house and then -

He's still an answer. Even if he says he didn't yell at anyone. They ruined something. Maybe -

- her eyes are dark. This wary alertness cupped within them. Tamsin does stay at the man's side, pacing him to the lake's edge. He looks like he could use some sleep.

"Maybe you are still dreaming and that's why you don't remember them anymore. Maybe you came here and your body said finished lay me down this is a good bed of bones. You know, um, what's better than sleep?" she says. He looks like the kind of person who'd say work, so she cuts that off at the pass with: "Stories."

Wistful: "Will you tell me a story? Tell me a story about me. About us. Me n' you."

wake

His laughter and it is a kind of laughter is also: nothing more than a breath, exhaled, a sort of sliding sigh, a sort of sighing slide. He is kneeling, somehow, one knee down and the other bent, rough hands ripping the lip of the bucket beneath the water, and doesn't this feel like rote, like ritual, like a prayer to the heavens.

Pauses in his work to hold out his rough hands. Swollen red knots at his knuckles.

"Pretty sure I wouldn't get chillblains from a dream. You sound like - "

But he does not have a word for what she sounds like and he glances back at her; the lifting look has his irises briefly framed in the slanting light, all illumined, all illuminated. His breath, doesn't it suddenly feel rattly, as if he were drowning, as if he were already drowned.

"A story."

Another laugh. Another smile - genuine - as bright as the light in his eyes, but also so polished-worn around the edges that if seems to below to an age ago. Two. Three.

"A story," indulgent though. See: he wants to please her, wants to satisfy that wistful note in her voice. " - alright, a story. Let's see."

Pause.

"Let's see."

He's glancing away from her, the moment spooling out from him, and a note of consideration slips between his brows. He looks like somone remembering everything he has forgotten or nothing that he has forgotten but merely the act of forgetting, the fact of forgetting.

Brows narrow together and he gives her a glance, skinned and strange. Inhales.

"Well. I climbed up with the buckets and you were here with the axe. You cut the wood and you cut the water and I climb up after to ferry the water and the wood back to town. They use it to wash the dead or sometimes the living. For the hearths or the pyres. That's the story about us.

"That's what we do." Another noise in the back of his throat. "Strange, that's the only one I remember."

Cinder Song

Tamsin reaches for and picks up one of the buckets. The one he hasn't dipped into the lake already; maybe she's going to help. He did just tell her a story, watch it thread chill into her eyes more surely than the wind; a spark of anxiety, sublimated by a little persuasive crescent moon sharpness of a smile -

" - you made it sound like a fairytale. You didn't give us names. You should give us names."

Tamsin still has that axe; now she has an axe and a bucket. She looks at both, considering.

wake

He gives up the bucket easily enough; lets it go, allows it to be taken from his hand. It is cold up here, and his breath mists and the lake mists and the seems to be wreathed in it; or is that smoke. How do you tell the difference, except for the flame.

The ash in the back of your throat.

The flash of his teeth in his rough-hewn face, the way that expression settles into the remarkable network of lines framing his eyes. The depth of the look.

"I'm George Eldred." His catches her eyes, still smiling. He knows her. He has always known her. He has known her since time before time and in measure beyond measure. They have always been here; she is as familiar as his shadow, and as changeable. He knows her, he meets her eyes with that knowledge in his, and opens his mouth, and looks away, away, away -

"You're - " another glance back; such recognition. And yet, " - you know, I don't know your name."

Cinder Song

"I'd like it if you called me Éowyn - no! Idril Celebrindal," Tamsin says, and then her shoulders hunch forward. "But it's Tam actually." See how cagey she is: just part of her name. And she would like to be called Idril. "Somebody did yell at me; maybe it was from the house. Let's go there right now!"

Tamsin reaches like she's going to help George Eldred stand but her hand's are full, aren't they - she frowns at the bucket but keeps it - keeps it - then throws it onto the ice as far as she can.

"I'll do the work later. Double. Just once." The just once tacked on quickly like just in case the devil's listening and it's a contract. "I mean um double the amount of work the one time."

wake

"Well, alright [name-slew]," George Eldred seems relieved to have a name, to have three names, to have any names to give to the girl at his side, but also all the more tired. There's no way for Tamsin to know what name he gave her, what name he named her. Éowyn or Idril or Tam, any or all of the above. When he says her name to her, whatever her name, it all smears together like a word-sludge.

"Except, we don't go to the house. The boy does sometimes, no one can stop him, but even he doesn't get close. No

"You know where it is. You can't see it from town, but it's just over the rise. No one does.

"Except the dead. But we can't stop them.

"No. I'll do my work. That's what I'm here to do."

Cinder Song

"Don't you want to remember another story?" Tamsin says, urgent, reaching out to pluck at his shirt - cautiously: "Please come with me, George Eldred; please? Come away from here just once. If you went away from here, you'd be there to do something too, you know?"

Cinder Song

[Manip + Expression! Manip Specialty: Persuasive. C'mon bro. You're clearly in an evil dream trap or something.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

wake

He's standing up.

George Eldred is standing up, there's a creak in his knees and a crick in his back but he is, listen, rising. Watching her cantwise and then cutting a glance back to the rough-hewn bucket as it skitters across the thin-ice of that glacier-fed lake and breathing out see like a sigh or a song. He regrets the loss of that bucket.

It will be back the next time he dreams this dream.

Or - no, see. Come away from here just once she says and something plaintitive in her voice cuts through the fog of his awareness, and he feels like if he comes away from here just once he might cease to exist, he might disappear or he might die, his heart might be carved through with a thousand wormling holes and filled and then retracted, sapped, collapsed. He might consume himself, he might be consumed, he might find himself devoured he might -

It is painful for him and Tamsin can read all of his in the framework of his body and thw twist of his mouth, but - but -

A deep sigh out.

"Alright. I'll come with you as far as I can."

Cinder Song

Tamsin doesn't smile bright; she isn't a bright sunlight girl, somebody with a hearth burning in her bones. Tamsin was born as the light waned from the moon; leeched into darkness, but still full enough to slant poetry across the land - and her smile is a quiet thing, and the caution in her fingers when she plucked at his shirt is behind her smile, the plaintive whatever, that's there too, a certain darkness which is aware of what she can read in the wry twist of his mouth and his body; but she's glad he said he'll come anyway. She doesn't think he'll disappear. She doesn't know what she thinks except she wants him to come with her and maybe he's caught and maybe well she doesn't know - yet?

"Thank you. You'll see. It'll be good to do I bet. Over the rise you said? That one there?" she gestures to it with her chin and, another lick of caution, offers George her hand, the axless one. Maybe she thinks he's so old he needs it; that's what she read from his shape.

Once he indicates yes or no off she (they) set.

"What boy goes sometimes? Do people try to stop him?"

wake

"The boy. No on tries to stop him. He does what he wants, when he wants, how he wants, here."

No. No, not over that rise there.

They have to go down before they can climb.

They have to descend before they can rise,

and so they do, down the narrow track beneath the weight of the limbs of the fir-trees, the heavy branches, the steep slope, the suggestion of a streambed gamboling alongside. Down they go to a place where the track intersects with another, a place of crossing, a cross-roads. This road is wider, is made for more than two men to walk abreast. Three or perhaps four could comfortably walk here and the woods are silent all around them, except for the occasional flush of a bird from the treets.

The birds are always crows: the beat of great black wings against the snow.

There is a fire somewhere close and now she can smell it, and they have been walking for hours or days or moments, three beats of her heart, time slews until it has no meaning beyond the immediate: this is now, this is now, this is now.

--

And the track descends as the road descends and perhaps they speak, perhaps Tamsin tells George Eldred some stories, perhaps she tells him old stories or made-up stories or faerie stories. He feels, he tells her half-way down, very, very strange. Light-headed and contrary but maybe, he is thinking, maybe this is right, correct, proper. Maybe -

The road descends, see, through the woods still, shouldering it on either side, down to a long, spare line of white clapboard houses all same-like, marching in rows and wreathed in mist, and if it was winter above, doesn't it feel like autumn here, the neverending edge of it, wet pavement, strange skies. Here are there, silent faces in the windows, behind the doors.

And here, here, after they have descending so far, here is the ridge. Here is the rise, beyond the houses, behind them, rising, see, the shoulder of another mountain that sweeps upward and casts half the long-hollow in shadow. They are climbing, climbing, climbing, George slower, and slower.

Up there, he tells her.

Just let me catch my breath.

---

Down below, in the town, a door swings open.

Two young men emerge from the house,

at a run.

--

When Tamsin turns around, George Eldred, he is gone.

Cinder Song

Tamsin wants to know how the boy looks. How old the boy is. What boy? Tamsin doesn't remember a boy; she describes Thomas and Erich, testingly, but that was as they were descending.

Tamsin does tell George Eldred stories since he only has one. She makes something up; then the made-up something becomes a fairy story that First Light told her the night they met; then it becomes something quoted from Tolkien because she loves Tolkien because Tolkien, man, because fighting against impossible odds and darkness. It's hard for George Eldred to leave his work; he doesn't want to; feels he might disappear. Tamsin; she can't leave her work either, really, and she is disappearing; she doesn't want to do it. It's hard.

The point is: she does talk.

Her eyes are narrow on the faces in the windows; her eyes are narrow on the crows, which she tries to count. Her eyes are even narrow on the town; she waves to somebody to see what happens. Looks for Keisha, Melantha, Erich, Thomas -

George Eldred feels very strange. Tamsin asks him if it's his heart. Wants to feel it; she doesn't know how to heal anybody but maybe if his heart is beating fast that'll tell her one thing maybe if it's slow it'll tell her another thing.

He wants to catch his breath; below, in the town, two young men emerge from the house at a run.

Up there. The house where the dead go? Where nobody goes? Tamsin does turn to look at it; when she turns around, he's gone and she almost drops the axe, a lick of rage-fury-alarm, breath sucked in suddenly -

- she spins around in a tight circle, looking for some sign, something, and then she shouts,

"GEORGE ELDRED!" a beat. "GEORGE?" another beat. Lonely: "ERICH MELANTHA KEISHA." Another beat. Her grip on the axe tightens; up there, he'd said, and Tamsin squares her shoulders: sucks in another lungful of air - autumnal air.

She's going to go into the house; going to go up there. Going to disappear, too? It's just a dream but it feels so real and she still wants to go to the house that maybe the insistent shout earlier came from. She calls - deliberately; seething, rimmed in tension the way the lake, see, was rimmed in ice -

"Hey! Hey, boy! Boy are you here? Was it you? I'm coming in, by - " - a pause; it sounds like an oath " - by the black in a crow's feather and the heat in a pyre burning in winter, I am, I want to - "

- plaintive; perhaps she's just yelling at an abandoned house in a dream and she'll wake up and it will be with a sense of loss. Tamsin wants to know.

Anyway: that's what she does and that's what she says.

Cinder Song

ooc: shit, there should be "THOMAS?" pause. "ERICH MELANTHA KEISHA." in that post.

wake

Tamsin waves and Tamsin tells stories and Tamsin wants to feel his heart: how is it beating, what is its speed, how fast does it pound, and Tamsin is in a strange place with a strange taste on her tongue and George Eldred is gone and down below two young men emerge from a house (a white house) onto a sidewalk (a gray sidewalk) and somehow the morning light is gone. Somehow the morning is gone.

Somehow the morning,

shifts.

Two young men are coming out of a house, they are named Thomas and they are named Erich and they hear a young woman shouting:

"GEORGE ELDRED!" a beat. "GEORGE?" another beat. Lonely: "ERICH MELANTHA KEISHA."

from up above.

--

They wake.

"Hey! Hey, boy! Boy are you here? Was it you? I'm coming in, by - " - a pause; it sounds like an oath " - by the black in a crow's feather and the heat in a pyre burning in winter, I am, I want to - "

- plaintive; perhaps she's just yelling at an abandoned house in a dream and she'll wake up and it will be with a sense of loss. Tamsin wants to know.

Anyway: that's what she does and that's what she says.

Tamsin wakes.

With, yes, a sense of loss. Something shifting. Something changed. Something moving underneath. Something, somewhere, slumbering see:

but waking up to her presence, too.

Cinder Song

- and Tamsin wakes up and curses the fuck out of everything.

[Manipulation + Expression: CURSING ELOQUENTLY.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Arrogance and Immaturity (A Pride and Prejudice Trick)

Grace

Something shifting and sharp walks into An-Arch-Key Books (or Night Owl Books as the case may be). It's a store with two names, and sometimes Grace wonders whether there's a Point to that. Like, some kind of mystical symbolism behind it. But then, maybe it's something as simple as not being able to decide on a name. And then, maybe there's some kind of symbolism to that. Hermetics always have too many names. This from the one with at least four in regular use, but no mind the hypocrisy.

She's wearing that red coat that Kalen got her -- soft red suede, the color of fox fur. It almost seems out of place on the woman who otherwise doesn't seem to care much about how she looks, or the relative expense of what she wears. She wears that coat with jeans and sneakers and a mess of hair and a laptop bag slung around her that was also chosen for substance over style. And yeah, there's something symbolic there. It's a sign of just how much Kalen rubs off on her.

And Grace rubs off on others. Even Pan now has a phone through which he can send ALL CAPS messages to the rest of the Denver mages like some kind of freakish, glowing grandfather. She's sure he's going to start spamming them all with 'FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: GOD'S LOVE REVEALED IN POTATO CHIP' any time now.

Someone recently told her to focus on the goal at hand. Don't go after all the distracting heads. They're part of the goal, but not the goal. Keep your eyes on that, please. Go for the heart. And the heart? To birth the future. To be a beacon of information as much as Pan is a beacon of God's Love as revealed in potato chips or whatever his game is.

Delivering Ginger? It's not just a software installation. It's a calling.

"Hey, Kit? You here? I texted you earlier."

Adam The front door to An Arch Key is unlocked. The pages of the books are beginning to saturate with his resonance he spends so much time here. Turn a page and it is valiant. Turn a page and it is relentless. Unfolding, the story. Never-ending, ceaseless, so brave, a flashing of -- the place is beginning to, very faintly, feel like Adam. Like the smell of fresh-sap in a maple forest or a candle after it's been blown-out somewhere, a lingering.

Bells, bells, bells as she enters. He had responded favorably to her text but at first her voice doesn't get an answer. Even after, when Adam wakes up, he is slow to stir, and he doesn't throw a shadow down the stairs when he drags himself off of the lovesac on the second floor, rolls across the well-trodden carpet and trips over a paperback somebody left on the floor, catches himself on the stair's balustrade which wobbles (entropy [soon]) as he leans down, and Grace:

Once he calls attention to himself, he's just a mass of dark hair, red-rimmed just-woken up eyes, "'Allo," he says, and then lets his body come down the stairs too, combing his hair back with his fingers, smothering a yawn.

"Is it, erm," mumble, "thirty already?"

There doesn't seem to be anybody else in the store.

Grace

After a life-and-death battle with her own Avatar while arrayed like a knight, Grace doesn't exactly find Adam's resonance quite so... out of place anymore. She is sharp and intense herself now. Perhaps not chivalric, though, because who interrupts the dragon mid-speech with a scream and a sword-slice? You're supposed to wait, to let them speak their last words or whatever other nonsense. There's lots of things that you're supposed to do that Grace just doesn't understand.

The place feels kinda all right, you know?

And then Adam descends in sleepy unsteadiness, and it puts a grin on Grace's face to watch. "Yeah, mumble thirty alright. Listen, you have a back room or something, so I don't get pestered by people who are actually here to buy books?"

"And ah, you're okay with this right? No... reservations? If you have questions, now is the time to ask."

As much as Grace does want everyone to adopt her systems, she's not going to force the issue on anybody. To free people is her goal, not control them. Not force them. Just... show them what they could be doing with her distributed networks, and let convenience do all the work. You don't win a revolution at gunpoint. Oh you can, but they rarely last. You win this kind of anarchy by it simply being the easiest, simplest, most beneficial course to take. Let water flow downhill. Let people access the network. Let the walls come down.

Adam The Virtual Adept wants to go into the backroom just in case patrons come by who might pester her. There are no crickets in An Arch Key Books, not right now, but one could imagine crickets chirruping in response. How quiet it is; used bookshops just don't get the foot traffic they did once, if ever they did have a lot of foot traffic. His eyebrows are up the way people who just wake up lift their eyebrows, as if by doing so they can tell their eyes to stay open, they can stretch their faces into wakefulness. Sleeping doesn't make one need to shave in and of itself, but the shadow of Adam's facial hair is thicker now than it was before. He could stand to trim it, neaten the edges, so it's less coaldusty. How he yawns again, or wants to yawn, but exerts some determination to avoid it. If he has questions, now is the time to ask.

"Can you or will you use Ginger to do mass castings on those connected by her or track our movements?" He's wary, isn't he. "Say someone on the network disappears. You go into Ginger, do your," he wiggles his fingers, hacker-style, "thing, and approximate a location? Of the device she is installed on at least I suppose."

Yawn, again, although his eyes are more alert now, the sea-colour gleaming forth. "Yeah. There's a back room. This way," and it's toward the door behind that desk of Adam's, the one that says employees only.

Grace

Grace looks thoughtfully (at the books, not Adam). "It would be difficult even for me. I mean, I can do such things now, but the way Ginger's designed, there's no direct connection between any two people, only to the server, and the server doesn't broadcast. It doesn't reach out to your device, your device reaches out to it.

"That's intentional. It's meant to stop such types of attacks, where one could use Ginger to suss out our entire network. That would be bad."

It's a common explanation. Lots of people ask her that question. Few implicate her as the one with nefarious intent, however. It puts out a bit of the lightheartedness she may have had in coming here. Grace follows him into the back room, pulls out her laptop and starts setting up. Her laptop bag is also stuffed with cables of varying types. USBs for Androids and iPhones and whatever else someone might come to her with. When her rig boots up, it's got a colorful background wallpaper that looks like tangled string or carefully twirled smoke, although it was clearly mathematically generated. "I've already had to tell Eleanor that she couldn't set up private messaging for that reason. There can't be a direct connection between two users. Now, if I really tried, could I? Probably. I mean, if someone were to go to the other side or whatever, and I needed to boot them off the system, I have a couple ways I could go about it. Could kill this version of Ginger and start over. She has a kill switch. I could change the encryption, and only give trusted people the right password again. I could also try to find the one device and kill its installation, though that would be the hardest method, and I'd probably use something else to trace it. Emails, or phone calls or whatever. Does that make you feel better?"

Grace spits out the technical details and fixes like Adam can actually understand all the topics. That might be stretching it a bit, especially since he just woke up and is missing coffee. But still. Adam [Does he follow? Adam is tired. Intelligence +1 diff, just to see.] Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 5, 6) ( fail ) Adam "Do you want something to - ?" Eat or drink. The backroom has more bookshelves, but they are less organized (there's organization out there?) than in the other rooms and only against two of the walls. They are also less stocked. There are boxes everywhere, haphazzard, a labyrinth of a maze of a thing, a curio cabinet with all sorts of curious things in the wooden niches, a bulletin board with a schedule and some handwritten notes, post-its, detritus; just what you'd expect. There is a couch that looks good for napping on, though Adam wasn't napping on the couch. A round table with rings of old coffee-stains, and, if Grace looked, perhaps some sigils scribed into the wood near the bottom, grooves on the floor scratched. He doesn't practice back here but somebody did once upon a time and there are signs of this practice in the strangest places. There is also a sink and a counter with an electric kettle and a mess and a refrigerator. Box of ferret treats. Bowl of chocolate covered espresso beans, a handful of which Adam crunches on. His eyes hood as Grace explains how Ginger works. "I didn't feel poorly before," Adam says, and then he smiles; it's a contained smile, and sweet, and also very solemn, but it filters towards his eyes while he scruffs his hair again. "But I was and am curiou... Hm, here?" Focus, Gallowglass. He holds out a handful of chocolate-covered espresso beans as if he just realized he hadn't actually given her anything yet. There are mugs, too. He's filling the mugs with coffee instead of tea. There's a pot. It's kind of cold, but it's coffee. Why is it sticking to the bottom of the? Hmm. Maybe a fresh pot is in order. "What do you recommend if something happens to you? Does Kalen have a, erm, way to shut it down or..."

Grace

It takes Adam's offer of chocolate before Grace looks up from her laptop (now settled in on that napping couch) and lo her face does light up. "Solid caffeine! Oh you're the best."

That does help her mood somewhat. Chocolate and coffee? Yes please. She takes his offered handful and munches it with a satisfied expression.

And then, her eyes wander back up from her screen again when he begins talking about what would happen were something to happen to her. "Kalen's an admin. For that reason. So yeah, I gave him instructions."

It's never easy to talk about disaster plans. Oh, if you die, how will we do X? It's tempting to respond with some kind of solipsistic remark about how the universe will stop if that happens, so no-one need worry. Grace's actual response is solemn and true, but her mouth's still full of chocolate-covered espresso beans.

Adam "Very well," he says, and his expression shifts off to the left. Far-searching, far-seeing, seeking; a considerate expression, which shifts into something blacker, wryly amused, private. He is an expressive creature: Adam. Especially when he has just woken up.

"I suppose you will want the, erm, hardware, just a moment," and is there a warning? Does Adam grin at her? No. Adam leaves the backroom.

Disappears out front.

He returns with his vintage mint-green typewriter, which he sets down on the table with its coffee-stained rings, and he pats it fondly. "This will work just as well, won't it? It has keys just like a cellphone."

An old cellphone.

"More elegant."

Grace

Grace slowly bends her laptop screen down to give Adam a fake withering glare. Hers is a sarcasm-laden face. "It's precious. Wouldn't want to corrupt it with programming. Heaven forbid.

"Actually, it is rather interesting. I could build you a keyboard out of it," and at that, she gives him a wicked grin. Yes Adam, let me take your keyboard apart piece by piece, infect it with electronics, and then piece it back together.

"Alas, even a keyboard isn't enough to house Ginger. Needs a processor of some sort. Some memory to hold the program."

Adam

He puts both hands over the typewriter's platen knobs, as if those knobs were ears, and he could shield the typewriter from Grace's harsh words. His eyes are still hooded, eyelids purpled from sleep, but there's an amused edge to the slant of his mouth now.

"A keyboard? What would I do with that? She works just fine as she is."

He takes his hands away and pats his pockets down. Brings out a cellphone, instead. An iphone, of course. There aren't even any keys.

"Tech, tech, tech," he says, and hands it over. "Don't you want to separate yourself from it? I don't mean go back to the farm and medievalism," a self-aware almost-smile here, "but something else. Something other. Oh erm," a blink. "Should I hold my tongue while you do your thing?"

Grace

She snorts at his trying to protect his poor typewriter from hearing evil. Yes, she does the same to her computers sometimes. Gives them a gentle pat when they're being good, etcetera.

She takes his cellphone, inwardly peeved at the Apple-nature of the thing. Why do so many Mages use iPhones? Are they being purposefully obtuse? She digs into the laptop bag for the white cable (has to be white, couldn't possibly have a cable that looks plebian, can we, Apple fans?)

It's not really the focus on looks that annoys her the most about this. It's just that Apple devices are the hardest to install Ginger on. Takes forever. And all because the company is a prick.

Proprietary as hell. They have a term for Apple products: the Walled Garden. Fuck that shit. Almost as bad as Micro$oft. Worse, if you consider that they've conned everybody in to believing them the good guys.

"No, I really don't want to separate myself from it. I spent a good few weeks separated from it when I joined the Virtual Adepts, and I just about drove myself crazy."

She's suddenly very focused, very busy, as she plugs Adam's phone into her laptop and starts typing away. She's got to trick the damn thing into accepting an unauthorized program. Good thing she's had lots of practice with this on varying styles of iPhone so far, because Mages in Denver love the hell out of Steve Jobs.

Adam

[Hee. Does Adam sense the inward peevement re: Apple things? Percept (People) + Awarepathy] Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

Grace

[Last couple of posts!!]

Adam

He smirks; it's a faint smirk, almost more of a suggestion than an actual expression. But it touches his eyes; changes the way they look, if one is paying attention.

"You spent weeks separated from it when you joined the Virtual Adepts? Virtually a hacker wizard, I suppose. Virtual tools. Why don't you want to separate yourself from it?"

He goes to check the coffee. Putter around, while watching Grace every now and then, keeping her in his eye but trusting that she's not going to suddenly cast some sort of shifting wall-crumbling revolutionary wall that'll strike him at his heart and turn his bones to gold. Or something. Coffee smell begins to fill the room. He pours into one mug. Pauses; was that mug clean? He can't remember.

This miniscule shrug: see? He pours into a clean mug, hands one off to Grace, eventually takes a seat in one of the chairs on the table by the typewriter.Grace

"Because, it would be like cutting off a limb," Grace says, absently, like she's not talking to Adam, but to herself. Off in her own world now, with just her and the problem at hand. Focused, but not on him.

"Why don't you want to separate yourself from how you do magic?" she says, with similar intonation to the last statement. "No more sigils, no more of Angelic tongues..."

She puts it in terms he can hopefully empathize with.

"Why separate yourself from anything at all? It's not even possible, I don't think. Everything's connected, whether you want it to be or not."

Adam

He breathes the coffee in. Holds the mug in front of his mouth; skulks over it, not at all like a bird of prey, but more like a vampire - that pale skin, those shadow-bruised sleepy eyes, that wild dark hair, that clear need for sunlight. Or maybe an owl, night owl's own wizard. Just smelling the coffee is waking him up, and Adam is not very diplomatic. He attempts to be, but he isn't.

"Because angelic tongues are sigils don't add to the wonderlessness of today's world; and who's to say the goal - one of many - isn't to transcend the need for sigils and angelic tongues?"

"'Everything's connected,' well, certainly, but use that idea as you just did and why not say sacrifice babies to demons because somebody somewhere is probably doing it and why bother separating yourself from it."

Beat. "Obviously I don't think using technology is synonymous with baby-sacrifice but relying on tools developed by the Union for sleepers in order to do magick - " a sigh. "On the one hand, bravo. Fuck them. Watch their ideas be turned into wonder regardless of intention. On the other hand, chancy. Helpful to them."

Grace

"Developed by us, you mean. The Virtual Adepts created the computer to begin with, back when we were called the Difference Engineers," Grace says, obviously hooked into at least some of the history of her people by now. "And then the Union killed Turing."

"Technology is a wonder, Adam. As much as you might hate to think so. They killed Turing not because he was corrupting their wonderless shit, but because Turing was trying to liberate tech. To free it. To make it what it truly is. They are the corrupters."

She looks up at Adam then, little humor in her eyes, because he's being somewhat of a little annoyance with his obvious anti-tech. "Yes. Fuck them. They try to take technology and science and put them in a straitjacket. They try to control it. It's outrunning them, but they don't even see it. They think they have some kind of easily tamed, linear beast on their hands, when it's headed for an asymptotic singularity.

"Are you sure you want Ginger? Or do you really want to burn your cell phone? I'm not going to force anything on you that you don't want."

Adam

"If I didn't want you to install the doohickey, I wouldn't have said 'install the doohickey,'" Adam says. His voice is wry; the mug of coffee now held two-handed, because he's taken a long draught of it. "Technology is a wonder. It's a wonder that is so taken with itself that it has stifled other wonders. I'm not an uncivilized bastard," Adam says, a certain emphasis on uncivilized.

"I'm not unsympathetic to the Virtual Adepts - or 'Difference Engineers' - plight in wanting to be separate from what they see - you see - as a stultifying atmosphere. Heck, I enjoy being able to skype with mum and dad, for a given value of 'enjoy.' I like driving." Which is something he'd never say if he'd driven recently or was thinking about how may stupid drivers are on the road. "But I'd better enjoy being able to say a word and talk to them in a pool of water - harder to bill, wouldn't you say? And I simply don't understand how a complete reliance on tools that the Conventionalists use and develop is..."

He trails away. He's relentless, Adam, however: he's also fresh woken. "Well, isn't something you'd want to work around. That's all I mean by... Why don't you want to separate yourself from it? I thought separating yourself from it was the point. Transcend. Ascend."

Grace

She had gone back to typing while he was talking, but then her eyes flick up to his in a glare when he says 'That's all I meant by...'

No, Adam, that is not what you meant by it. You didn't mean Ascending through technologic means, you meant abandoning technology as a means. Say what you mean.

"If we all worked around it, then we would have no one with any idea of how to keep them at bay. It's not the tools that are inherently evil, it's the control. We free the tech, we free minds. We free people. And we can only do that through breaking the Union's control over it. You want to break that hold, you have to use the kinds of methods we do. Illegal downloading of television shows is how a growing segment of the population gets its media anymore. People are now allowed to create their own media and distribute it themselves, and that too is getting more popular. People who are really free to think are capable of doing amazing things, like talking through water puddles. If we don't dismantle their system from inside, the Traditions may as well give up entirely, Adam."

As she... well, let's put it bluntly, rants to Adam about how backward his ideas are, her voice gets progressively tenser. He's getting to her, to be certain, but also getting her riled up about the evils of Technocracy. A double whammy if ever there was one. She despises Them.

And then, she grunts and stares at a proprietary bullshit interface, trying to convince it that she's totally the App Store.

Adam

He sets his coffee cup down at some point during her rant. He folds his arms across his chest, planting his feet more firmly on the ground. Grace's glare had met a pair of unrepent eyes; after all, he meant what he said. Perhaps he isn't eloquent enough for diplomacy; certainly, he isn't. Ask his father. Ask most of the Hermetics who know him, and the other Traditionalists too.

"For the love of," he says, irritation a sharp edge that exasperation gleams on, somewhere after 'it's not the tools that are inherently evil.' He doesn't try to talk over the rest of her rant; he seems interested, not least because he doesn't feel she's engaging with what his ideas are. He's not that eloquent. And after she's said her piece, grunted, stares at his phone, he preserves silence for a space. He's diplomatic enough for that.

Grace

She types away, a grimace on her face at Adam and at Apple. It's hard to say which is more annoying at this juncture. Probably Apple. It has farther reach, more adherents, more actual danger in its ideals.

And it's also losing to her. She's jailbreaking the thing without it even knowing. Such a great term that -- jailbreaking.

Anyway, her program installs quickly after that.

"It's done," she announces, and unplugs the vile thing to hand it back to Adam.

And then, she starts packing up, sour of mood. It's not that she didn't know there were Mages who would hate her whole shebang because Virtual Adepts use technology. She knew that. They have their reasons, too. But still.

Adam

He knows himself well. He doesn't want to provoke himself into a similar rant, so he takes the phone back and plays with it a little, running his thumb over the screen and: "So how do I - ?" Unless it's self-evident, in which case Adam reads some of the older Ginger posts.

"Is there a way to see who all has access to Ginger? So if, say, one posts to her, one knows who did not receive the word?"

Grace

"I've set it up so that you have the contact in your list. Just call Ginger, and then say the password. It's 'Hello, Ginger'. From there, it's pretty self-explanatory. She'll tell you what to do," she says, cold and still quite annoyed. "There's a list of people with access in the Ginger archives once you get there."

She's putting the laptop in her bag, wrapping the cord up and... And then it's over.

No reason to stay where she's surely not wanted. Not even sure why Adam even wanted Ginger in the first place, unless he's the worlds largest hypocrite. Heh. Probably.

When Adam calls the number, he gets Ginger on the line, in all her sexy robot glory. She'll tell him to remember that 'Love is just a dial away' and proceed to list the numbers he can press to read, listen to, or leave messages. It's the voice she hears, tinny and distant, that gets to her in the end. Gadfly was going to make her sound more real...

"The guy who decided she should speak with that voice, he was the one who taught me how to do magic in the first place. He was being hunted by the MIB because his ideas were dangerous," Grace says, and the tone of her voice is a hard thing -- sharp. "They played cat and mouse with him for weeks, and he always stayed a step ahead, until he didn't. I fucking hate them. Don't get on to me for using 'their' tools again."

Adam

[Temper, temper.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Adam

"You - " Adam says, and his voice is heated: could cut skin from a body and leave the body beneath the skin whole. He leashes his temper quite forcibly; yanks it back.

"I wasn't 'getting on' you; I was asking you why. Why you don't want to separate yourself from technology, since it seems your own vaunted revolutionary people gave you the opportunity." He has mostly leashed his temper. "When I don't understand somebody's position, I ask them to explain it; I ask why, and try to reveal some of my own fucking thoughts, but since a technophile like you can't seem to listen to any thoughts that don't -- "

No. He leashed his temper. "Look, let's just agree never to discuss Foci again, I'll continue to not presume that you love the Union, and I'll thank you not to presume that I'm anti-progress or anti-technology just because I don't look at people downloading free movies as a big fuck you to the Techs. Thank you for installing Ginger."

"And I hope you find the guy who first taught you again; there's nothing worse than not knowing what happened to your teacher."

He hustles her out. Well. He is trying to hustle her out; he's easy prey for hitting, though.

Adam

ooc: not since it seems --> as it seems

Grace

She slings the laptop bag across her body as she stands, as he hustles her out. And she's not fighting him in such hustling. But she's also not shutting up.

"I don't think you're anti-technology, I know you are, because you said tech adds to the wonderlessness of the world, and don't try to tell me you didn't. Your point is not about transcending the need for Foci, it's specifically about how you don't think technology makes a good one, because some assholes fucked up the world with it. I got your point about the sacrificed children, thank you very much," she says, and maybe Adam isn't the only one with a short fuse. Maybe it's just that he's stepping ungracefully on each and every one of her nerves whilst having the temerity to own Apple products.

"Well, excuse me for trying to put it back to rights the best way I know how, huh? Screw me for not just fucking burning my laptop and walking away, right? I'll just cut off my damn arms, that'll show them. They'll really be scared then, huh?"

She actually hustles her own self out. Maybe the last bit of her rant falls on deaf ears, because she's out the door by then. But she doesn't really care if he's around to hear by that point.

Adam

[Doo-dee-doo.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Adam

You said tech adds to the wonderlessness of the world.

"It does."

Your point is not--

"Don't tell me what my point is. I know what my point is."

I got your point about sacrificed children, thank you very--

"Clearly, you did not."

He starts to hustle her and she hustles her own self and there is some mutual hustling; this they can agree on. This also means that, although Grace is hustling herself out, Adam is still present, part courteous host and part just: time for us to go to our separate corners, so clearly I will be walking you to yours.

Well, excuse me for trying to put it back to rights the best way--

"Will you stop leaping to conclusions?"

Screw me for not just fucking burning my laptop and walking aw--

"Tell me, does the chip on your shoulder control you 100% of the time or only 100% of the time somebody isn't stricken by the wonderful possibilities of technomancy?"

And there's the door. The door to the backroom and the front door. Adam doesn't follow her all the way to the front door; he stops at his desk. Maybe she slams it and the bells ring in her wake. Maybe she rounds on him to glare once more before leaving.

"Fucking crazy women," Adam, his player is very sad to report, says once Grace is actually gone.

Meet Delilah

Lucy

Friday night. First Friday night. The sun has just dipped beyond the still snowy peaks of the mountains to the west, but the sky is still light, a dusky shadowed blue full of promise. The air is warm, the oncoming nightfall will be comfortable until the darkness finally leeches out the heat of the day. But now? Now. Now the night is comfortable. Pleasant, even.

And Santa Fe is packed because of it. It's the first night of the warm summer season of the art walk, and the masses have flooded from their homes in droves to pour down the street, into galleries, into the little half-hidden gardens between galleries. Somewhere there is music playing loudly, but all anyone can hear is the beat, thump-thump-thumping lightly in the veins of those who hear it at this distance.

Lucy feels alive. It's her time of day, that inbetween time when the sun gives way to the night. And there are so many people in this new city. It hadn't seemed this full before, but it feels almost like there are too many people. Too many bodies, too many lives crowded on this one-way street. She smiles, wide full lips painted a vibrant red just a shade off from the maroon-red of her hair. She's dressed in a black cardigan, unbuttoned to reveal the line of her milk-white cleavage and then the red of a tank top. Over her left breast, embroidered into the sweater are the words Be Still My Heart, along with the image of an ornate pair of silver scissors stabbing a heart. They look a little like Lucy's scissors, the ones she keeps in a dark and velvety bag inside her slouching canvas bag. Her pants are black, sit low on her hips, and are adorned with more zippers and straps than may be strictly necessary, along with a pair of black suspenders left hanging at her sides. There are boots beneath that, the same ones she always wears though their height is hidden by the legs of the pants. It's a warm outfit for a cold woman on a pleasant late spring/early summer evening.

They've been in the city for a little over a week now, and they've spent their time together of course, but this is the first time that Lucy and Delilah are out exploring together. Not running to the fast food place across the street from their motel, not running to the 7-11 down the block because fuck I ran out of deodorant should we get razors, too.

"Ooh," she says, pausing before the doorway to a gallery with stark white walls lined with large photographs. The people inside are milling about, shifting slowly from one picture to the next, some hmming, some pointing out some detail that caught their eye, but Lucy? Lucy spies a table spread with snacks. Brownies and carrots and cookies along with plastic champaigne flutes. "This place has food, Del."

Delilah

There are so many stories about sisters. These young women do not look like sisters but they look like sisters, don't they? Aren't they sisters in someody's heart, in some artist's eye? Lucy with her vibrant mouth and her vibrant hair and just now as the day weaves (threads, stitches, in and out, in and out, mingles) into night and night pulls the threads (mingles, out and in, out and in, stitches, threads) free so there's just this one tapestried space-between this gloaming-time twi-light time dusk settling soft as ash with its caressing light its promise of a pleasant spring night just a bit of a nip just now as all that Lucy in her element. Rose Red. Dusk Bright.

This time of day-night isn't Delilah's element. Delilah would mistrust it if she weren't so certain of herself and if she didn't feel comfortable in spite of her dislike of endings, in spite of a certain restlessness which works under her skin like a pebble or a pea yes a pea under how many mattresses or a lentils scattered in ashes.

Del: she's the other sister. Two young women and you want them to be sisters even if they don't look related. Delilah's hair is golden and in Santa Fe's uncertain and fading (tapestry) dusk-light it's a darker and more barbaric blond than it might otherwise seem. We say barbaric and we mean just that: it conjures up antiquities, wants to be sun-dappled, wants to be paler - would be in another light. Del: she has on a rush-woven black-and-white luma woven fedora with a broad black band. Around her throat, hanging negligently, is a scarf, which is as pink as a blush and almost as translucent (how translucent is that?), embroidered in white lacey designs. Her jacket is a light spring thing of a blazer, gray. Beneath it she's wearing a teeshirt with a design silkprinted across the chest. Her jeans ride low on her hips, are belted by a thick belt. Her shoes are ballet flats patterned like something out've the Arabian Nights, embroidered and dusty and so worn that the heels are unravelling.

She is looking around half-mistrustfully, but half again surprisedly and curiously and though she doesn't smile there is an open look to the smooth arches her eyebrows make and the heart of her mouth pursed in consideration and she is dreamily distracted or perhaps a bit discombobulated by all the clamor when

She turns so fast she almost gets whiplash; narrowly avoids hitting somebody with her hair.

"Food? An artful spread!" Her smile is sly or could be sly if she knew how to be sly, but she doesn't; her eyes are too telling. "We should look it over carefully. Wouldn't want the people who put it out to feel unappreciated."

Sail in. Abrupt pause; she reaches out to touch Lucy's hip or wrist or some part of her which is near. "What do you think about," a pause, as she stares at the photographs, "Do you think about, ah, here? I bet there are apartments. Be better than squatting in the motel."

Squatting, 'paying in theory,' it is the same thing: right?

Lucy

Sisters. They fit together like sisters, somehow, in some nameless way. They don't move in unison, but there's something about them that seems in synch, that seems like two halves, one whole. Two sides, one coin. Light and dark, oh but no, not quite. Lucy mentions food, Delilah whips, and Lucy seamlessly moves into a space, the chill frost of her presence pushing at the crowd moving around them. Not enough to force anyone off their path, but just enough to make someone cringe, someone twist, someone miss an eyeful of blonde hair. Like a dance, but not quite. There is no stage, after all, hasn't been for years.

Her smile is wide. It narrows her narrow slits of her bright green eyes. "No, we wouldn't," she replies. Slide in, then, into the gallery. Slip through the crowd. If Delilah is a bright, bold ship, Lucy is its shadow in the water. See how she stops quickly, alert to Delilah's sudden pause even though her eyes were on the spread. She steps to her sister's side like she belongs there, like there's no other place where it's right for her to be.

She turns, tilts her head, the fall of her hair shifting over her shoulders as she takes in the photographs. They are of people, some of them. Up so close that in some the depths of their pores, the grit in the creases of their face are clearly visible. Some are of places, things. The mountains frozen in a sunset in shades of grey.

"Here?" she echoes, turning back to look at Delilah, surprised and also hopeful (but trying not to be that last one). She's told Delilah about the people she's met here already. The coffee shops, the girl with the laptop, the place with the alert for other Awakened (other oracles, she put it, is how she always describes their kind). An impossibly tall man she ran into (literally) in a club the night her senses went haywire and then went quiet. He gave her an address that, given it's location at least, suggests it's the nearest Chantry. Maybe. Could be some other gathering place, of course. Of particular note was the boy she met when she and Auggie played a coffee shop somewhere. Tall and funny and a little weird. They seem cool, she said. He seems cool, she meant.

She shrugs. Unlike her sister, Lucy can lie. Lucy can shrug things off like she's actually shrugging them off. Sometimes. She's better at persuading, but if she needs to hide something (or push it down, stop it stop it, interest never ends well) she can.

"It'd be cheaper." In theory. "It'd be cool to have a place that's ours."

Delilah

And for a moment her smile is almost prim: a Valentine of a mouth it curls up with even more presentiment of sly (shy, but that's not right: careful, tremulous). Bold, yes, but at the whim of the waves beneath; get? All light-catching sails, all just-waking gold creeping across the ship's deck and - let's lay the metaphor to rest. For a moment her smile is almost prim at that Here? of an echo, though it's easy to read the sudden rearing of uncertainty in the dark flash of her eyes. Delilah doesn't straighten; her posture is excellent, often remarked upon by strangers - women of a certain age or young men who want to leer at a dancer's back. But she does lower her head like a bull about to spear the sky with its horns, her nostrils flare and she settles herself where she's standing - or would if there weren't fucking carrots and brownies right there. Lucy's hope. She doesn't want to dash it. She shouldn't dash it. She shouldn't have brought it up. But at the same time, shouldn't she have? Because -

"Mmn. Yeah. Though I guess," hint of a drawl, "that it might be more Auggie and December's if we really did find a place. A real place. A place to close the gate and hang the key - " - this shadow of confusion, she rubs her palm across her forehead. Her head is still bull-lowered, stubborn, "But who knew Denver had stuff to do huh?"

"This does seem cool. We should do a reading. Ask the needle and thread."

Lucy

Lucy knows that uncertainty. That uncertainty has kept them bits of dandelion fluff, barely settling in one place for longer than a breath before that breath sends them sailing on to some other place. It's not just Delilah's uncertainty. They share a good many things, these sisters, and one of those things is - for whatever reason, for good or for not so good - is more than a touch of uncertainty. It always seems to hit them strongest in the off-times. The morning will bring Lucy's turn, for instance.

Which is why the suggestion of a reading is met with a raising of Lucy's sweeping eyebrows and a widening of bright green eyes. Her eyes are not the jewel-bright green of emeralds. They're the green of fresh spring grass, of newly unfurled leaves and all those other green growing-type things that Lucy herself can never touch again.

"We could, yeah. Should, I mean." A place with a gate and key, wouldn't that be nice? Of course, Lucy's mind goes to overgrown gardens secreted away behind wrought-iron fence posts. The gate would take some kind of special sort of key, something old and rusted that - stop. Stop stop stop.

She looks around like she's casing the joint, when really she's just looking at the crowd of people. Too many to settle things in the here and now. But later, maybe, in the quite closeness of their current living situation. Picking up a brownie, she looks at the photographs all huge and too-real on the walls as someone bumps into her side.

"That guy," that guy. Lucy somehow manages to bring him up once (and only once) almost every single day. "He said he knows some musicians in the area. Somebody's an agent. I could play for..." she pauses, mouth hitching over to the side, nose scrunching. Because Lucy likes to sing and she likes to play guitar and she love love loves performing. But her body was trained to do other things. Her shoulders shrug, one after the other, like a wave through her body as she rolls them out. "I'd probably get paid more. Or at all."

Lena Reilly

Normally on Friday nights, Lena's working. DJ Halcyon has spent the last several months rebuilding her reputation after she had to no-show several gigs, and she's finally back to the point where she can set her own schedule a bit. She's secure enough in her position among Denver's deejay scene (high, for the record) that if she wants to take a night off she can without people figuring she's a flake and start thinking about booking her less.

And tonight, for whatever reason, she's decided it's a good night to take off. Maybe it was just a feeling she had, or maybe she was a little worn down. She does that sometimes; gets worn down. Not that she considers her job a monotony; far from it. But when you're a caffeine junkie there are nights that you get a little tired in the mind and soul, and some of her meds sometimes have energy-sapping side effects. She always makes sure to schedule some nights off so she can rest up a bit, go be around people (if not part of them) and get a life high off the energy.

And that's what brought her to this place. She loves Santa Fe; it's her favorite part of the city. It's free, creative, buzzing. It's her vibe. And that Withering Pules of her energy perhaps finds a bit more strength as she walks along, heading toward the same gallery that Lucy and Delilah are in. It's another twist of fate, perhaps, that they're heading to this place, and she slips inside wearing a little grey tank top and jeans, a couple tiny braids the only twists in her otherwise free-flowing hair.

Lucy

Lena walks into a gallery, following a small crowd, and even if she doesn't have her mind open to the presence of other Willworkers, she can feel something. Something different in the air. Something cold and softly creeping, threading, weaving. Whispering over bare skin and over the naked toes of the sandal-wearers.

A moment more and perhaps she sees its source. The tall woman with the brilliant (bottle) red hair stands out, as does the blonde beside her, and besides. They're standing near to a table covered in a black plastic tablecloth and boasting a spread of finger foods and little desserts.

"No," she says, correcting herself, turning to reaching behind Delilah to snag a bit of brownie, which she tears roughly in half. One piece is held out to Delilah, the other is brought up toward her mouth. "Manager, that's what he said. Somebody's a manager."

It's as she's turning back toward the conversation that she catches sight of the deejay making her way in with the crowd. Lucy's brows lift and then her chin, and with the motions she almost seems to grow. Like Delilah, Lucy's posture is excellent, straight and tall she is, and graceful is the arm (with fingers carefully holding onto that chocolate square) that rises up to signal to Lena that she's seen her.

"That's Lena," she says, and then louder, "Lena!"

Serafíne

'Course Sera's around. Of course she knows people. She knows people who know people who know people, and - in turn - she is known. The gallery with food is a hole in the wall sort of place. It is not precisely a side street but somehow it looks like it should be a sidestreet. It has that element, concrete and glass, all unfinished, that make it feel like it sprung up yesterday and will be gone tomorrow.

Some things are better that way.

There is food though and there is wine; cheap wine from a box but the better sort of cheap wine from a box and either way it'll get you drunk if you stick with it. Either way it'll get you drunk and the rest of it seems all haphazard. Canapés that have the exquisite delicacy of a well-worked miniature next to brownies next to a bowl of Lay's Garlic Bread Potato Chips and those chips taste like garlic bread, you want them to be bread, is how much like garlic bread they taste, and some clever bastard has left the bag nearby so that you know ahead of time that These Aren't Your Standard Chips.

Sera is around but not here yet.

Her friends are here, though.

They're normal. Dan, with a plastic glass of red wine leaning back against a support pillar beneath the largest piece in the room, a sweep of reds and grays that feels industrial without defining a single angle. He is talking to the artist and flirting with the artist with a certain degree of familiarity, and the flirting is intense but casual, like they might hook up tonight or some other night or maybe they've hooked up before, but it isn't and will never be a big thing.

But Dan, tall, surfing above the crowd. Dee with her black hair in a flouncy dress that is black with a cherries print and 1950s inspired with a liquid movement and a petticoat edged in eyelet lace beneath the skirt. Others, you know.

No one you'd notice.

Lena Reilly

She gets that little breath of cold tickling at her consciousness like the frayed ends of an icy cloth, and a little shiver runs down her spine at it. There's a furrowing of Lena's delicate brows, warm brown eyes seeking out the source of that cool sensensation and then...

She sees it. She remembers Lucy from that little place where they ran into each other along with Grace and Yun. And from the small but glowing smile that hits her expression, she came away with a good impression of the woman. She raises a hand to Lucy and begins walking forward in strapped sandals, making her way in that direction. Delilah is given a friendly smile, though a bit more reserved since of course they have not yet been introduced.

"Hey Lucy. Nice to see you again." She stops close enough to them to be with them, but not so close as to invade personal spaces. "You come down here often?" She means the Arts District.

Delilah

Delilah takes the brownie-half offered without thought; as if it's rote; as if it's some little swiss clock precision-timed habit right on the hour every hour or maybe right on the twenty minute mark every twenty minute mark although that doesn't seem very Swiss clock-ish or precise. Then she looks at the brownie and her expression turns from stubborn bull-lowered (she could hold the fading moons in her horns, couldn't she) something or other into something more guilt-touched. Considering. If she eats this brownie, then she can still eat later if she- Delilah nibbles on the edge and looks guilty as she does so guilty but with this frisson-edge of pleasure not at the rebellion oh no but at the taste at finding a certain balance or thinking she's found one. That guy, Lucy says.

That guy, that guy, that guy.

Does that guy have a name? Del smirks, but her smirks have no sharpness and dissolve before they're even half-formed because she'd rather smile even if the smile is rather demure and sly (coy?), because that's how she looks: syrup-sweet mouth and eyes that are dark but might as well be a shallow pool look right through them.

"This guy," she starts to say, but then that's Lena. LENA! There are good chips that taste like garlic bread. It's okay to have one, right?

Maybe two. Yes, two. Nibble on the brownie, fastidious, and there's a little smear of brownie on her front tooth when she smiles back at Lena, this flash of a quick smile that's a little nervous and a lot curious.

"Hi," she says, introducing herself, "I'm Del, Delilah, and we've never been here before ever. But it's kind of cool, yeah? Is it always this crowded?"

ooc: I am aghast that took so long; this post is typed in WIND!

Serafíne

Is it always this crowded? Delilah asks Lena and no it is not always this crowded. Sometimes it is more crowded than this. Sometimes the crowd dissolves into itself before it has entirely formed. There is something organic to it, some hidden movement that is defined by the cracks in the sidewalk and the brush-strokes on that collection of miniatures made to look like those stiff, cardboard-y 18th century portraits from rural and revolutionary American, with sugar-skulls substituted in the midst of those unnatural poses.

Those are on the other wall, so tiny you have to get up close to see them, so tiny that displayed on brick as they are, getting up close to see them is nearly the point.

Oh, hello. Here is Serafíne, inside the door see, and hugging several someones you-don't-know, and even though she has not yet managed to get anywhere close to the refreshments, she already has a glass of wine in hand, is how good she is at First Fridays and Gallery Openings and Drinking. She is holding that glass with a sort of careless care as she wraps her leather-clad arms around strangers and drws them in and exclaims and spins and is pulled in a half-dozen-directions because don't you want to pull her places, too.

She pulls herself toward those miniatures or perhaps she is so-steered by the artist, a middle-aged woman of moderate height with long, straight hair threaded with gray in a long tunic and a long skirt and some chunky jewelry, who is otherwise remarkable except: look at those things.

There are people in the place (most people in the place) who are unwilling to break that gallery barrier. Who stand back and sort of look because isn't a gallery like a museum and aren't you meant to stand like that in a museum and aren't the only people getting close occasionally art students talking about brush strokes who the fuck talks about brush strokes.

Sera is does not give a fuck about distance and holds her wine in both hands and slides right up to the miniatures and starts to peruse them, nearly nose-to-point.

There are others mounted too high for her to see.

She would hop but: wine.

Oh, clever girl, Sera pulls out her phone and starts texting.

Lucy

Delilah is health conscious. Truth is, Lucy is, too. That training, you know. That life before. Don't eat that, don't eat this, do this and you'll lose five pounds you don't need to lose five pounds but really if you want that part you need to lose five pounds. And there is the simple health of it. Carrots or a brownie, hm. Could have both. Could deny the short-term pleasure of the one for the long-term benefits of the other. Could could could. Which is part of why Lucy shares. A half for one and a half for the other, that's better, yeah?

This guy. That grabs her attention back from where she's watching Lena make her way through the crowd to get closer. This guy. Lucy gives Delilah this look from the corner of her eye, all yeah? Where is that going? To a tease? To a warning? To a reminder of what happens when Lucy gets her hopes up about boys?

But then Lena is there, and then it's the three of them making a little three-person island next to the snack table. There are others in the crowd, but even if they're noticeable Lucy doesn't notice them. She's standing next to her sister, the night is falling softly outside, and she is surrounded by people. Lifting so slightly toward the balls of her feet (hard to tell because those boots she wears are heeled), she practically vibrates with a quiet, intense but subdued excitement. The calm before a storm, or the last clear night before a snowstorm.

She does not take any chips that taste like garlic bread because fuck she's all out of gum and the nearest gas station is the Conoco down at 6th which is blocks and blocks from where they are.

"Hey," she says back. And did she ever mention to Lena in that brief encounter that she had a sister? If she did, well, here she is. Here they are. Two sisters like night and day, dawn and dusk. Light and dark.

Delilah tells the deejay that they've never been here before ever and Lucy gives a nod to that. "We're still pretty new around here."

Lena Reilly

Delilah says they haven't been here, and Lucy says they're new. Lena remembers that last bit from the last run-in they had; Lucy said that she hadn't been around here long. But there is still information here; THEY'RE pretty new around here, which means that the two of them are a unit of some sort. So she smiles to Delilah, the warmth behind that bit of reservation. There was a point that she was like this, long ago. It's been a long time since Sera's seen this side of her; in fact, maybe she never saw it. They didn't interact much before the Hydra thing (she can think the word now) and so she may have not seen the friendly woman that Lena was before. But wass there, and it is there now.

"Nice to meet you, Del." Delilah gave a nickname, and Lena uses it. Nicknames are how we want to be seen usually, at least when we offer it. "I'm Lena, like Lucy said. And hey, we were all knew around here once."

She gets a feel for that familiar Resonance of Serafine; it tickles on the back of her mind. And the friendliness falters, just briefly, before it comes back up. That's a conversation she hopes she doesn't have to have now, here in public. Because they're not going to be able to be around each other until they have a conversation. But she lets it go for now, because she's not going to get worked up about it before it's time.

"Sister?" It's a question to the two; Lucy had mentioned a sister before. "So did we maybe run into each other in New York too, or just you and I, Lucy?"

Delilah

There is a striking young woman with half of her head shaved and the other half's a gold wheat-sheath spill of oh just gold and more gold at least to Delilah's eye and, did Delilah know it, that striking woman is also named for an angel but in a way which is more glorious. Delilah's wide-set eyes (her eyes are wide-set, generous and large, the liquid measure of which are all too too open; there is an air of surprise even when she is not surprised, or there would be if that weren't a lie) wander that-a-way. She's so close to the wall. Delilah stares in spite of herself, abashed. A yokel, though she is not a yokel: still.

She stares, misses any faltering of friendliness (no nervousness kicking higher), and the nervousness in her greeting diminishes a little when she looks back at Lena. Delilah reaches one hand casually for another chip but they're a little out of her reach so she has to really stretch her arm and she doesn't want to lean because that would be rude or no leaning is okay but turning that is what she doesn't want to do so she is desperately not turning and reaching and the bowl why is it so far.

Another demure flash of a smile, lights a candle in her eyes though she looks briefly at Lucy before back at Lena. "I like being new," she says like a confession. "I would be new all the time if I could be old too. We maybe," and the nervousness is back. Because what if they did. What if she doesn't remember. What if Lena doesn't remember. What about that night at that one club and it was five seconds. Or maybe there was no night. Either way, she looks a bit stricken, like she's going to be thought rude.

Delilah stops just because the question was technically addressed to Lucy. Delilah's fingers wiggle just over the chips so close; she realizes she can innnnch. And knock the bowl off the table.

Great. Delilah drops to the floor, not like somebody just told her to do push-ups, but with a measured and rather weary (brief hitch, one moment leaning that-a-way) grace, to shame-facedly pick them up.

Lucy

The gallery space is a shared space, it seems. One half brick exposed, paintings tacked into the wall. The other white, so white, with large black and white photographs of people, things, places, animals. Some macro some not. They're big, too. There's a man's face right there, all shades of soft grey and white, and that face is near as tall as Lucy in her bare feet. Sera's side has one artist. Lena-Lucy-Del have a balding man with skin like fresh-turned earth, wearing a colorful linen shirt untucked from an old pair of jeans. One can imagine he and the woman on the other side don't get along well. One would be wrong.

The table is shared between the spaces, the one with the snacks and such that is. The two sides, they are usually divided by a partition (it's cheaper to rent together, see, cheaper to go in as a duo in a space so large instead of a solo in something smaller), but tonight that partition has been pushed along its track in the ceiling. The place is huge now. Spacious.

But not, because people. People sweep in and people disappear back out again. They crowd in close around Lucy and Lena and Delilah, such that when Delilah, reach-reach-reaching for the bowl of chips and instead upends it, someone nearly steps on her hands. Nearly.

Delilah is worried about being perceived as rude. Lucy? "I don't know, you know, I don't quite remember seeing you there. I mean, I do but I don't, you know? It was-" crash goes the bowl of chips and Lucy is sweeping downward, every bit as graceful as her sister, vibrant red hair lifting from her shoulders as she drifts down into a crouch. She grins upward at Lena. "It was a long time ago, after all."

Shoulder to shoulder, she starts gathering up the chips back into the bowl, angling so that no one else comes close to thoughtlessly trampling Del's fingers. And so, shoulder to shoulder, she leans in closer to Delilah.

Serafíne

Sera is texting Dan to come pick her ass up so she can see the miniatures she cannot see from way down here, and it is way down here tonight because Sera is wearing her battered old Doc Marten's rather than a pair of the ridiculous heels she always sports and Sera wants to see the miniatures that are higher than her head.

And Dan, poor bastard, gets the text and rolls his eyes and shoots her a look across the crowd but of course he's going to stop flirting with another of the evening's artist and cut through the crowd and go pick her up because that is what he does: whatever she wants. And he does't even fucking mind it.

So Dan's cutting through the crowd past Delilah and Lena and Lucy when Delilah knocks over the bowl of chips and then ducks down to start picking them up and god knows what it is, chivalry or resonance or just human fucking decency, but there's a tall, skinny, tattooed hipster crouching beside Delilah as she picks up the chips. He grabs the bowl from where it skidded beneath the table (he is tall and his arms are both: long and tattooed) and hands it to her and grins through his beard.

"Here," handing her the bowl. "Don't worry about 'em. Let people stomp on them, right? Call it art."

And he doesn't touch her but he's sort of urging her upright with his hands framed around her though if she insists on picking them up well he will let her and go. But: either way he straightens. Says, "Lena, good to see you," to the DJ, and there's no evidence of awkwardness on Dan's part, no awareness of it, just a quick and rather polite smile, the sort you pass out like Nerds on Halloween, and then he's off through the crowd.

Finds Sera. Comes up behind her and picks her up. She is probably going to insist on something absurd like sitting on his shoulders right? But whatever happens next is left for later and they don't linger long.

Lucy

Leaning in so that it's just between them, Lucy nudges Del with her arm. "You okay?"

Lena Reilly

A bowl tips over. Chips tumble into the air and fall to the floor. And Delilah and Lucy drop to crouches in order to pick them up. Lena joins them without even a moment's thought; it's not because they're doing it and she feels obligated. It's because the chips fell and they need to be picked up and the two need help doing it and she helps people do things. It's just part of who she is, the soles of her sandals bending as she goes down with them to lend a hand.

And then there are hipster hands there, handing over a bowl. Dan's here. Of course Dan's here, because she felt Sera. But she doesn't have anything weird toward Dan, he's a nice guy even though they've never really spoken. And she smiles to him faintly, lets him go on his way as she scoops up chips and pieces of chips with nimble fingers. Art or not, chips are not for stomping and she likes a very different sort of performance art.

"Don't worry about it," she says to Delilah with a smile. "With the amount of wine that gets slung around these places, I'm sure they've had a lot worse." Shit happens, after all. It's how you deal with it that matters.

Delilah

[and what timing, phonecall that I need to take! BRB and skip me and Delilah is all quiet and obvious about everything. She probably stops picking up all the chips too, after an aghast look at Delilah and a grateful smile at Lena and Dan. I will really post that when I'm off the phone.]

Lucy

Everyone, even complete strangers (though the tattooed man seems to know Lena) tries to cheer up Del, tell her that it's okay, don't worry. Lucy offers her a hopeful sort of smile. Not really cheer up, so much as, eh? see? Maybe they don't need to do a reading to tell if this place is an okay place to settle into. Maybe the kindness of strangers will be enough of a sell.

Anyway, they get the chips cleaned up. Mostly. They went skittering everywhere, after all, farther even than the bowl had clattered. Someone crunches on one and their foot slides a little at the loss of traction, but no one falls down. No one ever died slipping on a fallen potato chip. Did they?

Anyway, no one does tonight at least. Lucy rises, offering a cold hand to either of the other women to brace them on their upward climb to standing straight and tall again. Whether they accept the assistance or not, Lucy wipes her hands off on her pants, leaving little pale crumbs like a sort of edible dandruff on the black fabric.

"Friend of yours?" she asks, meaning Dan, who is off across the room by now, collecting the woman looking at the paintings on the other side. Or perhaps they're gone by now, with the man shuffling the woman out the door.

Lena Reilly

Surely someone has died while slipping on the oils left by a potato chip. Someone, somewhere. You would think that it's not the least likely way to die; it's not like a space toilet falling from the sky and crushing someone. But no one dies tonight and all is well for the moment.

Lena looks at the offered hand, and after a moment's hestitation she takes it with an appreciative smile. She rises up and lets go quickly, rubbing her fingers against the palm of her hand to get those deadly oils (but not deadly tonight!) off. "Thanks," she says with a smile and a sigh. She looks over her shoulder where Dan went, watching him escort Sera out, and looks back.

"Sort of. It's...complicated. He's cool. She's the complicated one." But she's not here to gossip about someone Lucy and Delilah don't even know. They'll meet Serafine and have their own judgment calls to make.

"Santa Fe's my home away from home," she says, switching gears there. "I love it down here. The vibe, the energy, the atmosphere. It's great. Reminds me of parts of New York, a little. If you want, I'll show you both around some time."

Lucy

[manip+subt]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Lucy

[five suxx for a quintuple botch I'LL ALLOW IT, JOVE, YOU ARE FORGIVEN]

Lucy

[let's pretend she was being PERSUASIVE]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Lena Reilly

[[I guess she could technically succeed! Unlikely, but...Per+Subt!]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Lucy

Lena accepts that hand, that cold cold hand. Lucy is also generally averse to physical contact with others, but for reasons other than the ordianry. Her touch is so cold most expect to pull their hand away and see frost limning their fingers, or to feel a certain kind of stiffness. Holding Lucy's hand is like sticking their own inside a freezer, only in this case there's a body inside. Sure, her skin is soft, pliant, is everything that living skin should be. But it's cold.

It's something that she's not really used to. How does one become accustomed to the look people get when they touch you? That look of surprise, or sometimes disgust. That look of ick ick ick what was that?? So, while she is usually careful not to make that contact, she is still polite and thoughtful, and she offers her hand to Delilah who she's known for ages, and Lena who she has not, but who is cool all the same. And Lena, oh. Lena Lena what are you doing, she takes that hand.

And she rises and she lets go quickly and she rubs her hands together and Lucy's eyes, those bright green things, they drop to the motion and then slip back to Lena's face. Not even a falter. Remember, we said that if she wanted to Lucy could hide the things she wants hidden? She is a daughter of the darkening twilight, after all. A child of the dark times, a woman with no few mysteries to keep hidden away.

She smiles. The man is cool but the woman is complicated, and oh look a subject change. Lucy is not about to press. A glance to Delilah, taking in her appearance but not lingering there, and then it's back to Lena.

"You already said you would," she says. "And I can see that. It reminds me of SoHo."

Delilah

Maybe the chips will later be re-imagined as a rune-casting, as a chance-tumbled oracle; they are all oracles, aren't they? Lena crouched; of course Lucy crouched; Dan, tall man with long tattooed arms and his smile; Lena's smile, oh, Delilah's lashes dart down and she ducks her head a little, brim of her woven-up black and white fedora sloping low, though she tips it up with her thumb a moment later when they all get up, and she's a bright little wash of gold, peering back up with rue, though some of the mortification accompanying that aghast look she'd cast Lucy have faded. Everybody is so friendly; maybe the chips were a sign, moon-wise.

She doesn't straighten until after Lucy; maybe if it were earlier, it would be the other way around those unconscious Swiss clock time measured urges but it's not earlier so one has to follow the other, do you see?

She's the complicated one, Lena says, and Delilah says, "She didn't say it to me, too, Lucy." Delilah puts one finger under the eyelid of her left eye and tugs it down, sticking her tongue out (kitten-neat), then she crinkles her nose like she's going to sneeze, golden girl biting her lip not to laugh.

"I'd be happy to take you up on that, Lena. I mean, Del's the one who's going out and meeting," boys, she almost says, but they're not actually teenagers, "all sorts of people. I feel like I've done nothing but sleep since we got to Denver, even though," puzzlement, confusion, "that isn't true."

"Is this a good place to stay?" There's something very earnest about that word:

Stay.

Delilah

ooc: LUCY'S THE ONE. gosh darn it fingers, they're not ONE PERSON.

Lucy

[[OH AREN'T THEY??]]

Lena Reilly

Whatever Lucy might think from the rubbing of her hands, the cold doesn't bother Lena one bit. As a Cultist she's a woman of extremes, although her extremes are different from Sera's extremes or of any other Cultist's for that matter. They're all their own, and that's what makes the Cult what it is. The point is, freezing skin doesn't get to her. It would perhaps be different if it was particularly warm, perhaps. Lena prefers the winter. Viruses are usually stymied by cold; heat gives them life, lets them grow. And what's more, cold is a particular sensation. Where heat can sap strength sometimes, cold braces. Reminds you that you're alive.

She laughs, a bit sheepishly, when Lucy notes this is the second time she's made the offer. She can cover it though, even if it's that kind of cover when you know you were caught forgetting that you had, but you're giving an excuse that everyone knows isn't legit. "Well yeah, but that was just you..."

Yes, she and Delilah basically say the same thing at the same time. She blinks a bit and laughs, and that allows her to relax a bit. Not that she was tense, but...well, Lena being relaxed is a thing by degrees when the crowd is this size. (We mean the others in the gallery around them, not these three.)

Del asks if this is a good place to stay, and Lena...she nods. There isn't any hesitation there, though the quirk in her smile, the wry twist there, says it's more than just a Yes or No. "The people here are good, mostly. Almost entirely. The energy is good. The city is fantastic. There are things that have happened that are less good. You two may hear about them, or see some people who are affected by them." She pauses there, as if unsure of what she wants to do next, and then goes for it...places a hand on her breastbone to indicate herself as one of those people. "But I'm still glad that I'm here. If that helps."

Lucy

They may not actually be teenagers, not anymore (and what a time that was for each of them), but Del pulls down an eyelid and sticks out her tongue at Lucy, and Luce answers by crinkling her nose and sticing out her own tongue right back. They may not be teenagers, and they may not always act like adults. Some part of them will always be children, in a way, with each other at least.

Even though there's a New Friend right there, and strangers milling all around them. The look melts into a grin, because Delilah and Lena are right, the offer was made to one half, not the whole of the pair. It makes her happy to hear the clarification echoed from two different voices. More signs, she thinks. More signs for the better.

She hopes. Maybe this time her hope will not be misplaced.

Lena explains that the people here are good, the energy is good, and Lucy nods a few times, looking from one oracle to the other. It's something she's already picked up on. When she says that some things happened that are less good, Lucy's gaze slants over to Delilah. They've been around, they've seen things. They are things. They have caused things to happen or be fixed or or or. They are Awakened. They are what they are, and things happen around them, just as they happen around all of their kind. When Lena assures them that she's glad she's still here, Lucy can't help but grin.

"Well yeah," she says, a tease in her voice, "but that's mostly 'cause you got caught in the Hotel California, right?" Did she tell Delilah that part of that conversation? About Kalen who settled in and Grace who settled in and even Lena who settled in. Drifters, wanderers, they all settled in. And a joke about a place that no one can leave once they've checked in. She's joking and she's also trying not to give Delilah puppy pleading eyes. Because it may be her time to lead, but she'll never lead Delilah anywhere she wouldn't follow, and vice versa.

Still looking at Delilah, she asks Lena, "Do you know where there might be some decent, inexpensive, pet-friendly housing?"

Lena Reilly

She grins a little at the little interplay between the two. It seems like a familiarity between them that she finds endearing, albeit in a somewhat wistful way. The strangers around them...for Lena right now, they've faded away. Not that they're not present for her, but she's okay in crowds. It's the close one-on-one contact that she sometimes finds to be too much, too close. With these two though...she likes them.

She notes that look over to Delilah when Lena mentions things. They all have them, of course; you can't be part of their world and not have had something happen. It's the way of things; the good and the bad, it's all that much more intense for them because they're connected together. One heartbeat, one life force, but separate. And knowing that--no, not knowing. Feeling it. That makes things stronger.

The grin quirks a little bit when Lucy makes the 'Hotel California' joke again, and she shrugs as if to say, What are you gonna do? "Long as I get my free coffee and a continental breakfast every now and then...eh. I can deal. And I might be able to help you out with that, actually. I've been looking around for apartments, I had to break my lease a little while back. So I've got a lot of data saved up about places to live."

Lucy

"That would be so great," Lucy replies, attention peeling away from Delilah to land entirely on Lena. They have done their sort of casting, and it seems like it was a favorable reading. The people are nice, good, friendly and helpful. Lucy already knows where to find the nearest Chantry house (she thinks, she's pretty sure, she'll find out soon enough) and people are always really secretive about that sort of thing for some reason. She understands the reasons, that doesn't mean she doesn't like them.

But it's nice, and this street feels like SoHo, and not that Lucy needs a place to feel like New York to like it, but it certainly doesn't hurt her opinion of the place.

"Maybe we could make a day of it sometime. We could!" she starts, lighting up before she catches herself (no, stop, shh), tugs on the string and brings herself back down to earth again. When she continues she sounds more sedate. "Maybe we could be neighbors. Do you like cats? Or dogs?"

Lena Reilly

Lena sympathizes with Lucy's reaction. It's the kind of sympathy that under the wrong light could look like a jaded Been there, seen that, saw it go wrong situation. But that's not it; she has been there before, but it's not the same. She sympathizes because she gets the feeling (right or wrong) that Lucy is looking for connections. People to have that sort of tie to, but she seems guarded. Maybe because of the cold, maybe for other reasons. But that's how Lena reads the situation, and she understands.

"Well, I don't have a cat or a dog, or any pets really. But I like them all." She reaches up, runs a hand through her hair. Talk of animals makes her think of the bird she and Sid rescued. She wonders how he's doing. She hopes he's well. "And you never know, maybe we could. Long as you don't mind strange hours from your neighbor. My work means that I tend to be a night person and I don't sleep much in any situation, so..."

She shrugs. It is what it is.

Delilah

Delilah has been quiet. Her quiet isn't an uncomfortable quiet; far from it. Lucy is right there; how could she be uncomfortable? Lena seems quite nice. Delilah isn't difficult to make happy, but she is quiet. Watching Lena and Lucy, trying to avoid that hopeful look in Lucy's eye, her own expression more wary, still yet cautious, mouth set and chin set too, and look at her. She just grows so solid; she could be solid, even quiet as she is - quiet as a lick of light, just-encroaching, pale against sere grasses. She's watching Lena and Lucy, trying to avoid that hopefulness, so she's also watching the rest of the crowd, remembering the brownie she's still holding which she tears into little pieces and eats, crumb by crumb, licks her tooth clean of chocolate at last.

"That would be very helpful," she says. "Some advice on where to look. It's always cool to meet a Map-keeper. And..." As to neighbors, and strange hours. "We're used to all manner of comings and goings; they don't bother us. Not likely."

"Lena, it was so, so nice to meet you. Lucy, I'm going to go look at that over there." Her smile curves into its demure little scimitar; it lifts her cheekbones and there's an uncontained wash of color, pale brightness, to accompany the smile. "Sorry," for drifting away,

which is what she does. It's not her time, and she is restless.

[ooc: and I fell asleep at the computer, gagh, I am sorry! So here is Del out, but NPCable by Lucy for necessities :D]