Ned
Ned's knocking on her door. Several raps, not exactly eager or nervous but genuinely loud enough to call on her should she be sleeping or showering. It goes once and would only come a second time if she didn't answer inside of thirty seconds or yell out that she was 'coming'.
She'd open the door to find Ned with his hands in jean pockets, jacket cinched tight against the cold outside, cheeks a bit flushed and eyes a bit wide.
"Hey. Update time."
Quick and to the point, he motions inside with a careful flick of a hand, moving past her threshold and reaching for the buttons of his coat.
"So the Doc and I are out on the town. I'm resisting the urge to use Analogies to explain my problems and he's being sarcastic when we go into Questor on Fifth. Little dive bar around the corner. We get inside and I'm looking for cheesie fries and there's this lady on a stool in a red jacket and the Doc's all "Hey look another Worker" and goes over to introduce himself..."
The jacket plops down across the back of the Sofa, his hands rubbing together for warmth, blown on between bouts of conversation.
"She gets a little weird, the Doc gets a little upfront-...he's just like that. Not just with us, apparently- and the pair square off and seem like they're almost ready to swear off one another permanently. A bit of paranoid fact-checking later...The Doc...pulled out this weird machine and the lady seemed to do the same on her phone....next thing I know she's introducing herself as a Mercurial Elite...or Virtual Adept as the Doc put it ."
He bends down to doff his shoes, plucking at the laces with slowly warming fingers.
"I ask her a bunch of stuff. What she can do, what she thinks of being what she is, what sleepers are like....and then she promptly turns to the Doc and warns him about the 'Technocrats' and the 'War' incoming...at which point I'm eating my cheesie fries and trying not to freak out because, War? We only just sorted out reality isn't all that it pretends to be!"
Shoes off, exhaling loudly, hands moving to scrub at his face.
"...And suddenly being on the ass end of this new lifestyle, with no real power to put to use, feels a whole lot more like we're destined for the Electric chair then any real sense of Destiny."
Finally coming up for Air, Ned turns to look at her, an apologetic smile on his face.
"How you doin'?"
Margot
Anxious knocking on one's door is an anxiety-inducing thing on its own. Often times those quick-paced worried raps on the door had come from another particular set of knuckles before now, and she had to remind herself that the owner of those knuckles not only owned one less set now, but was also locked up on the actual other side of the country.
"Hold on," came the call from the other side of the door, and some dozen seconds or so later Margot appeared at the door. Her hair was down and the side with the stronger part was swept behind an ear. She was wearing a white tank top, an open black sweater, jeans, and socks to protect her feet from the cool hardwood floors of her apartment. She looked surprised but relieved to see Ned standing on the other side of the door. Ned was better than the landlord coming to give her hell for bringing a rabbit into the building when she shouldn't have.
"Hey," she greeted and invited him in, and didn't have room to say much else because Ned had updates and immediately launched himself into story while working on removing his shoes and coat both. Margot stood back in the dead space of her small studio with her arms across her chest looking curious and listening well. When he reached the part about war her brow creased with worry and thought but she didn't say anything and let him continue instead.
When he finally scrubbed his face and got his breath back from dumping information, Ned would find Margot with that worry on her face still, but already it was beginning to twist into doubt and skepticism.
"Why would this woman know more about the state of magical politics than the Doc does? I mean, so she says there's war... The Doc told us that the war with the Technocracy already ended, didn't he?"
But how was she doing? She shrugged a shoulder and tried smiling back. It was mostly successful, but clearly distracted and put up. "I'm okay. I saw the Doc yesterday too. We didn't run into anyone, though."
Ned
"The Doc's pretty new here, isn't he? Maybe he hasn't been caught up to date with what anyone else knows. Hell, I'm not even sure who else is in the know or out there to be known."
Ned shrugs his way through the deluge of information he's laid out, already looking for a spot on her couch. Instead of sitting full, he pulls his legs up onto the couch to sit cross-legged, hands laid out on his knees and eyes focusing on some point on the coffee table. The burn mark Margot had left behind the last time he visited.
"He introduced himself and she did too and the Doc wasn't freaking out anymore than he normally did which suggests she was on the up and up. If not, a lack of threat. I'm inclined to believe her, because the Doc wasn't entirely unreceptive to the thought. They chatted a bit about things I wasn't clear on but...Yeah. Technocracy and War definitely got my attention."
He leans back on the couch, twisting to give her his attention.
"What have you been up to the last while? I haven't seen you for a bit."
Margot
The burn mark was left untouched, precisely as and where Ned would remember it. Margot hadn't tried to cover it up, but was leaving it as a reminder when she sat to work or Work or think. A black scorch in the dark wood of the tabletop, like a spot of acid dribbled from a beaker, telling herhey, this could have been you if you weren't careful.
While Ned sat himself cross-legged on her small loveseat that served as a couch in this cramped space, Margot remained standing on the other side of the coffee table with her arms still crossed over her chest.
"Huh," was all she had to say immediately after Ned further clarified. Her brow was pinched with thought, and she looked away from her fellow Apprentice and past her right shoulder, through the glass pane in the door that went out to her tiny balcony.
She mused quietly to herself, then blinked and looked back to him when he asked after her. It had been a little while since they'd spoken, he pointed out, and he was right.
"Ah...," she sounded hesitant, like she wasn't sure if she wanted to disclose or not, but realized soon as she made the sound that she'd already given away the game. You couldn't go on pretending nothing bothered you after starting up like that. So, with a relaxing of shoulders that came with unburdening them with confession, she tipped her head a little to the right and spoke with reluctance.
"I've been having an existential crisis, trying to process and sort all of this information and find where I'm supposed to be in it. Where you're supposed to be in it." She flicked her eyes back toward the door before continuing. "Maybe this War with the Technocrats is real, and maybe it means something to me. My Avatar might be a goddess of war. Maybe that's where I fit in?
"But first," she shook her head and swallowed. "I talked to the Doc, and I think I need to fix some things that I left back in Maine. I don't know how yet, but still."
Ned
"Fix?"
Ned offers, though doesn't push farther than that. He seems to register the discomfort she has on her mind and much as he had been thus far, he doesnt prod or push her to sort out the details any. She'd come to it in time. They all did eventually.
"I'm of a mind to think that this life and brand new sort of existence, is one big Existential Crisis. According to the Doc, that's how we grow, right? Progress through our understanding of reality to achieve something greater than ourselves...or a greater self...or a self of greatness." Ned frowns. "Fuck how did he put it again?"
He's shaking his head, dismissing the thought.
"As far as you and I are concerned, we're on the same path. Different perspectives, but same path. I'm not beholden or waging a moral war with some Goddess or other, but there's something that needs solving in my life and I'm not going to get it by sitting around quietly waiting. Half of this is terrifying. The idea of a War, an enemy we don't know anything about yet and...well if you had seen the Doc and that lady...her name was Grace...They looked like they couldn't even be bothered with one another most of the time."
A pause. A frown to match her own.
"Way I see it, our type's not made to work together very often. Which makes you and me and the Doc, something a bit unique. He puts on fronts and airs about how much of a pain we are, but he's still here. That counts for something."
He glances back up at her.
"You still want to go and find some Old Maleficent witch type and get some answers? Or is that on pause?"
Margot
Fix?, he had asked, and Margot nodded to confirm. But she seemed to be glad for a reason not to have to clarify further when Ned started talking about their existence and growth and paths and all of those philosophical things that you talked about when you could wield Reality its very self.
His last question had her pressing her lips together with displeasure, apparently not liking the idea of finding Old Maleficent.
"You know, I had something else in mind for who I was going to be talking to. But I don't know." She looked down at the spot on the coffee table from the short distance her height (or lack thereof) created from its surface and frowned. "Because you're right. About the The Doc, yourself and I."
She sighed a little and settled into quiet thought. Glanced distractedly over her shoulder and offered a beverage, and whether he accepted one or not she went and got herself a beer (thank you Doc for the altered ID) from the fridge. Came back and sat down beside him, either with her drink on her own or passing one off to him as well.
Only once she'd settled and taken a sip did she speak up again, sounding thoughtful and looking into the middle distance when she did.
"I feel like we need to get ready. I didn't know what for earlier, but if this War is real? I don't want to spend my life hiding."
Ned
"War." Ned repeats it.
"The idea doesn't...scare me as much as I thought it would. It's a purpose at least?" And Ned's frown returns, leaning out to catch the beer she offers with a nod and a murmur of 'thanks' before diving back into the discussion, free hand rubbing at the back of his neck.
"It's the lack of knowing. The Doc and Grace, kind of put me on edge about what it would be like to try and work together with others. They both seemed pretty strong and capable and comfortable with who they were but the differences there...were pretty significant and obvious. She was even using the same sort of tech...paradigm....similar...They were both using doo-dads and still...still tension."
His head shakes again, the frown turning to a grimace.
"To think we don't know anything yet about Technocrats, Nephandus, Marauders and Infernalists. We're blind and that's what I don't like. The Doc and I walked into a bar I goto quasi-regularly and Grace was there and I didn't even know it or think to look for it. She could have been something, done something or otherwise and I would have been some sitting duck." He gulps off his beer, hand coming down to wipe at his lips.
"That's gotta change."
He glances across his shoulder at her, a brow perked.
"The Doc said he's as much obligated to us about info. as we are to learning. So I think it's time we focused our questions and attentions on prioritized questions. Namely, keeping safe so we can achieve that greater self he's going on about." Another sip. "Starting with what we can expect to go up against..."
Margot
Margot nodded along and sipped her beer. Glanced back to him when he looked her way. She was frowning seriously. Leave it to a couple of Apprentices to catch wind of some Bad News and take it way too much to heart. Elsewhere in the city the good doctor probably sensed his shadow being walked on or a cluster headache start to bud. Having kids getting themselves into trouble always caused those kinds of tremors.
"You're right," she agreed. "We'll ask him about that. How he defends himself against these things would be good to know as well."
She paused, sipped again, then leaned forward to set her bottle on the table.
"I don't like how the Traditions can't get along. It makes me worry about how far that can stretch, from disagreement to hostility. Even if we are all banded against some united 'Bad' or 'Evil', if somebody on this side of enemy lines has qualms then..." She shook her head and frowned enough to wrinkle up her nose. "No, I don't like it. In-fighting only ever puts holes in boats."
Ned
"All the more reason for our little group to maintain cohesion."
Ned climbs to his feet, beer in hand. It's half-gone by now, the familiar buzz of alcohol in his system setting his thoughts up for analysis.
"It probably isn't as bad as all that but...given you need to have this firm belief? This structure to ensure you can work and craft and solve the way you do? It's understandable not wanting to listen to other people.You get stubborn and resolute that your way is how it works and you have these-" He gestures sharply "-fireballs and lightning bolts at your disposal so long as you're still believing. Can't afford to lose that or diminish it. Paradox comes along and slaps you for the weakness. Or someone out there with a bigger stick comes along and starts taking you apart."
Another gulp.
"I doubt we can count on anything from the Traditions to provide for us but that doesn't mean we have to be completely cut off. I'll work my job to earn the money to survive, but that doesn't mean I like my job. Just make compromises where it's safe to. I think that'll get us through." A pause. "I hope, anyway."
"...The other thing is, as much as I think these capabilities have potential, it doesn't beat knowing how to throw a punch." He looks at her, a touch amused. "Our zombie fight could have gone a bit better."
Margot
She frowned and sipped with a look on her face that told Ned she agreed with him but still didn't necessarily feel great about the entire situation.
"Yeah, I'm trying to decide on my degree now too. If I should even...," she trailed off, thoughtful, content to listen to Ned move on to self-defense. How to throw a punch. His amused look was answered with a small smirk and a light of sheepishness.
"Hey, it did the trick didn't it? Neither of us got hurt."
She thought for a moment, then spun off that thought.
"My brother taught me a couple of things about self defense. I think that you were on the right track with that zombie, looking for and finding the weak point. We can use things like that." She frowned and added, reluctantly: "Or guns..."
Ned
"Not a fan of guns and trying to sort out getting one, nevermind bullets and licenses is...well, it gives me a headache thinking about it. I can show you some boxing and I used to take Kendo back when I was in College. Sword fighting's not the most practical of efforts but you learn how to hold your wrists and not hurt yourself swinging things around wildly."
He takes a minute to assess what she says about identifying the weak-point, nodding as he goes.
"That was Life. The Sphere. I can scan for signs, symptoms and weaknesses in the body, but Matter will work the same way for inanimate objects. Knowing how to apply the knowledge we have is pretty important and we can make sure we're safe in a pinch at least. Getting a handle on our perceptual capabilities will also do a lot for preventions sake. I want to talk to the Doc about recognizing resonances. There's gotta be some easy way of detecting that we can use to at least safe-guard against being caught unawares and you've been sighing and nursing your beer for the last five minutes now."
He exhales, loudly and tilts his head to look at her from a new angle.
"You're also not finishing a lot of your sentences. So how's about in the interest of maintaining our little collective, you tell me what's really bothering you."
Margot
[wp]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Margot
His dissent with guns was accepted just as easily as she would have accepted an agreement to the idea. Margot had seen the zombie and the goblin and she truthfully wasn't sure how she felt about that thing still roaming the city planting fungus in people to grow. It made her stomach a little sick whenever that occurred to her.
The talk of spheres and resonances all made sense, but soon the subject changed and the metaphorical lamp was turned bright and hot onto her face. Okay, you, what's the problem? Out with it. She looked up, wide-eyed and startled with being on the spot and for a moment looked ready to fret from it entirely.
Instead she sighed after a second and looked down at her hands wrapped around the beer bottle which now set upon one knee.
"Okay. I told the Doc what I ran away from yesterday at coffee and it's been eating at me that he knows and you don't and I can't really explain why but..." Breath whooshed out and she kept her eyes sternly on the bottle.
"Look, I ran off from circumstances that were written off on paper but probably drew a lot of attention from these... people that we've gotta be worried about. My brother, he..." Her voice shook and she paused to swallow, but just as she managed not to dissolve into tears the day before when speaking to the Doctor about this very thing, Margot again kept her composure well enough to carry on. Looking at the bottle and hiding behind her hair helped.
"He wasn't in his right mind and he killed my mom. I took off his arm and then resurrected my mom. I was worried about the questions I'd get asked so I came out here soon after."
A pause, and she concluded: "I just left her there, incomplete, and my brother remembers it all. I shouldn't have just left that."
Ned
"...You have to make yourself right first before you can fix it."
Spoken like an inevitability. Like she would. It's almost off-hand the way Ned says it and one has to wonder how he maintains the composure he does when she offers up the story finally. Car crashes, Hospital work, Cancer patients and battling with drunks. Not to mention the Awakening thing and dealing with reality not being at all what it actually was. All of these add up to a particularly thick skin. If he seems unphased, that'd be a lie. He's just grown more comfortable with this sort of insanity in the last few weeks.
That said:
"I'm sorry about your Mother. And your brother." He sighs, the sound as...well, helpless as the apology was. He moves back over to the couch to sit down, a touch closer then before and sets the beer on the table, brow perked at her with that careful sort of expectation.
"All things considered, I think anyone who might have asked any questions probably understands why you bolted. Most normal folks wouldn't know what to do with that sort of situation to begin with nevermind having to cope with being all Witch hazel in the meantime. Unique and unprecedented circumstances yeah?"
He wraps an arm around her shoulders, a comforting gesture, gaze returning to the odd burn mark on her coffee table.
"You said you're gonna have to go back. I don't see why we can't go with you. Well...I can't speak for the Doc, but I'm willing to make the trip. We can sort it all out as best we can and maybe get your Brother some help in the meantime as well." A pause. "Being able to alter reality has to be good for something, right?"
Margot
Margot the Morose. That's how she had to look. She sat upon the couch with her knees together and her head down, hair come loose from behind her ears to hang in brown sheets on either side of her face. She was leaned forward, curved in like an armadillo weathering uncertain circumstances.
She stayed still when he said that she'd need to make herself 'right' before going back, and sighed quietly along with hem when he apologized about her small and broken family. His apology felt helpless, but Margot wasn't the sort of person to consider a 'sorry' to be worth nothing. It would be callous to disregard a gesture of comfort, even if it had no tangible aid in the situation.
When he came to sit nearer her hip and wrapped an arm about her slender shoulders she closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Maintained that grasp on her composure, but admittedly did have to release that death grip on her beer to reach up and hastily swipe a tear out of her eyelashes with a knuckle.
In a small, thick voice she spoke, reaching up to push the hair back out of her face as though suddenly aware of it being there. "The Doc already offered to go back and help. I told him no then, but maybe it's not so bad an idea. Just... not yet. I feel like I've got more to learn first.
"Besides, Luke's not going anywhere anytime soon."
Ned
"Definitely have more to learn."
He gives her shoulders a squeeze, jostling her pent up ball of muscle and tension slightly in the process before reaching for his beer again. The last minute or so was worth draining off the last of the contents, the bottle set back on the coffee table with a soft thunk.
"Luke...Brother? Like I said before, reality altering power should have it's upswings. The Doc made mention of a Mind Sphere. As well as several others. I see no reason your brother can't be made to 'forget' what he did. New identity or some such. Maybe the Doc can even bring your Mom back." A pause. That one was a little...blunt and Ned seemed to realize that a moment after he said it. Enough to make him wince. He carries on though.
"I've been thinking some about it and half of what makes reality are the rules that convince us to believe they are true. Obviously with how things work now, we wouldn't necessarily be pigeonholed to believing that we die inside of a hundred years, require food and and water to keep living or even that the dead need to remain dead. When I said 'Fix' things, I meant it. Not some reconcilliation but an actual correction. It'll take time, sure but once you get there..."
Another pause, Ned exhaling slowly again, this time his gaze settled on a distant point somewhere directly infront of him.
"This all hinges of course, on your ability to stand toe to toe with this Goddess of yours. Above any and all facts, War, Family or Learning." He looks at her from his place on the couch, beer bottle held between both hands. "Maine can wait, absolutely but...I'm not sure She can."
February 27, 2016
February 10, 2016
February 6th, 2016 - Coffee [The Doc]
Margot
It was some ungodly hour on a Saturday morning when Margot's phone chirped like a bird to announce that she'd received a text message. Margot was always one of those 'rise with the sun' people, and slept with the blinds of her window open to let the light in come morning. She'd already been laying in bed considering what her next move was. She worked the afternoon shift today, but her morning was wide-open.
Was being the operative word in that sentence.
Coffee? (cup emoji)(cup emoji)(cup emoji) -- and so on, for about fifteen of them.
Margot was a morning person, but she wasn't even close to the level on which The Doc existed. She scrubbed at her face and sat up in bed, considered whether he'd even slept yet from the night before, and texted back.
Sure. Where?
The 'where' turned out to be the little coffee house just a few blocks up from the University-- someplace she was of course familiar with. She'd ordered herself a latte and croissant and sat to wait for the Doc. Unless he was there first, in which case she'd wave and go to join him instead. However they came to sit at the same table, Margot would greet him the same way.
"Did you even sleep last night?"
Presumptive Polly, wasn't she?
Sepúlveda
Though this had been his idea for the first time in their admittedly short history together Dr. Sepúlveda arrived after his pupil.
When he steps through the door the spritely Etherite brings with him the brisk chill of the morning. The day will warm up. His resonance has always been cold and will always be cold and it reminds people of the inevitability of - well little in life is cold besides death. He is wearing two-toned Oxfords and jeans that may well be as old as his student. A red t-shirt underneath the cardigan she's already seen him wear for poking around the house. His hair is a mess and he hasn't shaved his face. Glasses in place.
Oh there she is.
At the register he orders a bananas foster latte after grilling the barista as to what the hell was in it. Banana syrup? Seriously? Yes okay what's the worst that could happen. He pays and steps away from the line of screeching milk and hissing espresso shots to crash land at Margot's table.
Did you even sleep last night?
He frowns.
"What?" Like he didn't hear her. It registers a second later: "No, god no, why sleep on a Friday night? You only get four of them a month, Margot."
Margot
"Jesus Christ." Margot sounded quietly exasperated and shook her head. She looked down to tear an end piece off her pastry, and spoke as she did this delicately with her fingertips (so as not to litter the entire table with croissant flakes).
"Is that what happens when you figure out how to hit the reset button on your need to sleep? You just opt not to?"
Her free hand found the plain white mug that her coffee had been served in, and she paused to ask, curiously: "What were you up to?"
She popped the pastry into her mouth and listened quietly while eating what would account for her breakfast.
Sepúlveda
For not sleeping last night he doesn't look any worse for wear than he normally does. Disheveled sure but that's because he doesn't comb his hair and though he trims his beard he doesn't do much to keep it in order. After their run-in with the goblin Margot knows what he looks like when he's in bad shape. It would probably take a disastrous injury to get the man to stop talking once he gets going.
"Well..." He leans back in the wooden chair and knits his fingers together on his lap. Starts joggling his knee beneath the table. "I went to the office--" The morgue. "--around eight o'clock, did two autopsies, put on a suit, went to court, testified in a, ah, murder trial for an hour, maybe? Went back to the office, talked to the DA for another couple hours about an inquest they want to open up, did two more autopsies, left around, ah... seven? Eight? Eight o'clock. And then I had a date. With a woman. We went to dinner and then she wanted to go out dancing, so what the heck. Dancing. We went back to her place."
Hey, you asked.
"Anyway, after she fell asleep, I went back to the lab, my lab, and I worked on my research for a few hours, and then I thought to myself--"
Banana foster latte!
He gets to his feet.
"--I should see what Margot is doing!" He points at her. "Hold that thought." And then goes to retrieve his ridiculous beverage.
Margot
So she heard everything that the Doc was up to, and as it turned out it was less interesting than she'd expected. She figured he spent the time in a laboratory or in his library, whitting his extra hours away on magical-- excuse her, scientific things. As it turned out he did several autopsies and testified his findings in a murder case and then went out with a woman and danced and --
Margot's nose wrinkled at that point of the story. Gross. She'd get over it, because hey, she asked, and the Doc was moving on anyways.
"Well thanks for thinking of me amid all that, I suppose," she said after him as he left the table to fetch his drink. She spent the time waiting for him to come back finishing more of her croissant and drinking more of her latte before it became too cool.
When he returned, she seemed to have thought better of asking open-ended questions like that and instead inquired: "So, what'd you want to talk about then?" Her expression and posture (stiff, appropriate) said that she didn't really think that the scientist would just want to hang out for the sake of her company. She was expecting an assignment or something.
Sepúlveda
The closest he has come to giving the kids an idea of what happens in that laboratory came in the form of a warning shared with Ned: you don't belong in there.
His extra hours come in the form of his weekends. If she explores the rest of the traditions she may find some of them manage to work around or eschew professional lives in pursuit of their own studies. There are folks in this very city who are much younger than Sepúlveda who are progressing much faster in their magical studies than he is. His work and his Work are intertwined.
He also hasn't spoken much about himself to her. His focus has been on them and their questions. Their lack of direction.
When he comes back he comes back with a colorful mug that belies its contents with a mountain of whipped cream and cinnamon. He plunks it down and reminds everyone in the room that this is a shitty dark world we live in by moving the ashtray into the middle of the table and lighting a cigarette as Margot cuts to the chase.
Everyone else in the café this time of day is wearing comfortable clothing for studying. Their hair is in ponytails or trapped by headphones. Some of the couples are sitting on the same side of the table even as they ignore each other to finish assignments or papers. Most everyone in here is a couple. Folks will make assumptions looking at the two of them sat together. Professor-student is chief among the assumptions. It degenerates from there.
Cigarette lit he throws down the match he'd used and says, "You." Dun dun dun. "Well, you and your friend Ned, but for right now, you. This is the only time in your life when you can be completely selfish and do whatever it is you want--" He's talking with his hands. Drawing gray smoke lines in the air with his cigarette. "--and correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't... liberating, for you, or exciting. As I was Working, last night, I kept coming back to the thought of you, not knowing what it is you want to do or how to go about doing it, and I wondered, Is she overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities open to her, or is it something else? I find it troubling, knowing you're troubled and not knowing if the trouble is impeding your progress. Does this make sense?"
She only has time to nod or frown. Vocalize to a degree. He's hurling a question at her a moment later:
"What do you hope to accomplish this year?"
Margot
As she listened, Margot's expression became flat like soda left out in open air for too long. He wanted to talk about what she wanted to get out of life, and that made a pit in her gut start to form that had nothing to do with hunger and could be filled with no pastry.
What did she hope to accomplish this year?
Thoughts of career and school all leaped to the forefront, ingrained as they were into her for as long as they had been. Margot was a smart girl from a poor family, so she was always encouraged to focus on her academics and her participation in school sports. Scholarships were her way out of the life that her poor mom had to live. To avoid becoming like her brother.
But now this was more than a freak happening and a couple of nightmares to boot-- it was magick, and she could learn to do anything if she could just dredge up the understanding and practical application.
But over the course of a year?
She swallowed and tucked her face behind her coffee mug. "I hadn't thought much beyond surviving. I always figured I'd get a degree and make enough money to live in a nice house some day. But things have changed." She glanced up to the doctor, then back down at the space above her mug.
After a moment more, she stated more definitely: "I want to get ready to go back home. To clean up."
Sepúlveda
[manip + subt: let's try not to let our expression give away that you totally know more about what a mess that situation is than she's told you]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 8) ( success x 1 )
Sepúlveda
Something passes behind his eyes when she says she wants to go home.
They live in an age of networks. Everyone connected and information available all the time always and all she had to do was tell him she was from Maine and he could ask the Internet for news sources. The Freedom of Information Act is a real bitch. Her brother and mother's conditions are not exactly readily available but neither are they private either.
He sets down his cigarette for the sake of trying his ridiculous beverage. This is not an appropriate time to make an appreciative noise so he doesn't. He just pushes the mug towards her.
"Try this." Picks up the cigarette again. "What do you need to do to get ready?"
Margot
Of course the Doc would have ways of finding out what her thus-far undisclosed history was. She'd unwittingly left a clue and he followed it. He didn't even need magic to do so. All the same, it didn't occur to her that he might be savvy to what she left in the wake of her Awakening. She still shrouded herself in ambiguity.
When the mug was passed her way she glanced at it, and its hat of whipped cream on top. Conceding, she set her own mug down in favor of the offer and took a sip. Lots of sugar, but hey sometimes that was just fine. She nodded appreciatively and slid the mug back to him. Still had whipped cream on her upper lip, which she licked away before finally coming up with her answer.
"I think I need to learn more about the spirit. Maybe find a way to make somebody... forget." She furrowed her brow and thought about that for a moment, like something had only just occurred to her as a possibility.
She also had some demons to get over, but she didn't really want to talk about that in the coffee shop.
Sepúlveda
He crushes out the cigarette and leans his forearms in the edge of the table. Moves the ashtray and the mug so nothing on his end at least serves as a physical barrier between them.
"Altering other people's memories is a knowledge even I don't possess," he says. If she detects a grimness in his tone that isn't her imagination. "You must be very careful when you undertake Work that will affect another's Pattern. It goes against the natural order of things. You have within you the seeds of godlike power, but if you wield them as such, you won't retain your Self for very long. I need you to understand this before we go any further."
That said: she has demons. That isn't a secret. And he has things he hasn't told her. Trust is a two-way street and so on and so forth. He didn't call her out because he wanted to play Show Me Yours I'll Show You Mine but he can't expect her to open up if he doesn't do so himself. One of his psychology books says as much.
"When my wife died, I could not accept it. I... well, the details aren't important. I attempted to... bring her back, in a manner of speaking, but I did so using tools that are incompatible with my paradigm. Yes? The procedure failed, badly, and..." He scratches his beard. "Well, things are as they were before, and I learned a lesson I do not think man was meant to learn."
He takes a big swallow of his latte. It's good but damn is it full of sugar.
"I tell you this because whatever you wish to have happen when you go home, I implore you to ask for help. Recognize your own limitations and don't take on anything that you can't undo. I am here to help you."
Margot
[PTSD/WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Margot
A sort of sympathy-- empathy? A bit of both, actually-- grew in her wide hazel eyes when the Doc told the story of when his wife died. How he'd tried to bring her back and, though he didn't say as much directly, how he had to 'put things right' again.
She smothered her hands together down into her lap to stop them from fidgiting or reaching for the mug, not wanting to haul something into the space that he'd cleared between them deliberately. Instead she considered what he'd told her for a while, thinking if over carefully and taking some time to digest what all she'd learned.
When she finally spoke again it was softly, quiet enough that even in his proximity he'd have to focus to catch what she was saying. She didn't want people overhearing.
"My mom was dead. I knew it. I brought her back, though, but I don''t... I didn't..." She faltered, voice cracking, and swallowed again. Stared resolutely down at the tabletop because looking somebody in the eyes would be to dissolve. So she swallowed a second time and almost whispered through eyes that tried to well up but managed not to spill into tears just yet.
"It wasn't right. She's not all there. I mean sure, she's breathing and her heart beats but they have to feed her every meal and she doesn't even know her own name and--" her voice cracked there, and this time with a finality to it. Her lip started to tremble too bad to go on and so she ducked her head and closed her eyes and hastily brought a hand up to swipe tears off her cheeks like she could dispose of the evidence of them fast enough that people wouldn't start to stare at the crying girl in the cafe.
Sepúlveda
Though she isn't looking at him Sepúlveda is looking right at her as she tells him what happened to her mother.
He removes his glasses and clips them to the front of his shirt. Not exactly adept at emotions or the interpretation or handling of them. With the cracking of her voice and the welling of tears the doctor hauls in and releases a breath. Swipes his hand over his hair to hold it back from his brow a moment. It doesn't seem as if she's going to continue crying but he's willing to sit and let her pull herself back together.
"That happens, sometimes. This was your Awakening, yes?" He rummages through his pockets for a moment before finding a folded-up handkerchief. Quick inspection to determine its cleanliness before he offers it to her. "You don't have to answer right this moment, but if you decide you want this, I'll take you home, at least for a visit. I may be able to help her." A beat. "Not in a euphemistic sense."
Not like she's surmised he had to 'help' his wife.
Margot
There was a bit of sniffling and perhaps two or three more tears to be swept away, but at no point did Margot lose her composure entirely and begin crying openly. After a dozen or so seconds she exhaled shakily but completely, and breathed normally after that. When the handkerchief was offered she accepted it meekly and wiped at her eyes, dabbed at her nose.
She nodded to confirm that he was right-- that was her Awakening. Had finished dabbing at her nose and finally glanced up at the Doc when he said that he could see what he could do to help her mom. She looked surprised, like she was reflexively going to protest against the offer. But then she stopped, looked a little surprised by herself now, and had to wonder just why she would want to refuse help for her mom as a gut instinct.
She looked back down again, to the handkerchief she had folded as small as it could go in her lap.
"I'm the one that wrecked the Pattern, though. Doesn't that mean I'm the one who's supposed to fix it?"
Sepúlveda
Though his reflex is to scowl he suppresses it to the point that all Margot sees is a confused frown. That's a face he pulls frequently. At least he doesn't have alcohol to push at her now.
"What are you, Catholic?"
It seems a moment to be a serious question. He retrieves his glasses from the neckline of his t-shirt and inspects them with the same cursory sharpness with which he inspected the handkerchief before hooking the arms over the backs of his ears.
"What happens at the moment of your Awakening is entirely beyond your control. Call it a burst of... Wild Talent, eh? This happens when you Awaken, and it happens when you die. The more powerful you are at the time of your death, the more spectacular the Wild Talent. Hopefully you won't witness this any time soon."
If the Doc had died the night of the goblin attack it would have been like a nuclear bomb going off in the neighborhood. Not a huge one but his Science has its destructive capabilities. That is what happens when one deals in matters outside of normal human control. Death and Time.
Anyway:
"You didn't know what you were doing, and it wasn't your fault."
Margot
What are you, Catholic?
The question took Margot by surprise and she looked up at The Doc with confusion written plainly on her face. How earnest she sounded when she answered had to be child-like. "No, but my mom was Protestant. Why?"
Irrelevant. On to the Awakening-- it was an indication of power, and she couldn't have helped what happened. It wasn't her fault. She frowned a little and looked down at her fingernails. They were plain, she hadn't put polish on them in a while, and trimmed short and kept clean. They tapped lightly on her mug mutely.
"I know that. The councelors told me that. Called it 'survivor's guilt'." She sighed and shook her head, but continued to finish the thought. "They said that I couldn't do anything about it, so I left it behind and tried not to look back. But now I know that I can do something. Well, maybe not yet, but I'll be able to."
Sepúlveda
"With Prime, you would be able to make that rabbit of yours into a Familiar."
This sounds like a non sequitur and he says it with a faraway sort of distraction. Like he's thinking of a conversation they had last time or the time before last. That story about Boudica and her army's interpretation of a hare's movement as an augury.
He still isn't entirely convinced Margot cannot learn to coexist with a warrior Avatar without resorting to a path of destruction. Not all warriors fight for glory. Protection and renewal are as much a part of the Verbena paradigm as anything else.
Focus, Doc.
"No, of course, with time and training you'll be able to affect others' Patterns and to heal them. If you can live with the state your mother is in for as long as that will take--" He holds up his hands. Shows her his palms. "I'll leave it alone." His hands lower. "But it will take years, Margot, and that is if pursuit of the healing craft is the bulk of your focus. You're studying ecology now, in college, yes?"
Margot
Eyebrows hopped up on her face when Familiars were suddenly brought into the equation. "What, Yorick?" She looked confused by what her rabbit had to do with Awakenings and going back to fix broken Patterns.
But he went on, explaining that she may learn to heal her mother but it would take years and if she wanted to go back and play caregiver then hey that was on her head.
Margot scowled thoughtfully. She wasn't entirely certain if she wanted to become a healer, much as she'd never really considered medicine as a part of her academic pursuit. She felt in the depths of her heart like her Avatar's idea of a battlefield had no medics and left no men alive to take prisoner.
Pulled from that train of thought by a question about her current studies, Margot blinked and blushed, just a little. She sounded sheepish when she confirmed that for him.
"Yeah, for now. I thought that I'd grow up to do something about global warming but.... I don't know, that seems a little hollow compared to learning more about what I can actually do, now."
Sepúlveda
One eyebrow quirks. He doesn't agree with her and he doesn't take any pains to conceal that from her but neither does he outright announce his disagreement either.
"Expound."
Margot
She took her time to think about it, but didn't pause for quite as long as she had before. She spoke like a ball of yarn unraveling, slow at first but picking up momentum and more certainty in what she was saying along the way.
"I didn't pick ecology because it was something that I wanted to do. I picked it because it seemed like the right thing to do-- I'm good at science, I've always been good at school, so of course I would become a scientist. Ecology because, well, it linked with global warming and something has to be done about that but..." She shook her head before continuing.
"I can't actually see myself going through eight years of school anymore, or living the life of a scientist or teacher, or going in front of Congress to argue science. It sounds too much like a life on a railroad track."
She thought about it, then smirked just a tiny bit, the expression weak and ironic but better considering that she was starting to cry a few minutes ago.
"I want to learn more about magic. The supernatural, the occult. About Us and Everything Else and what this world actually is. Everything else is just... distracting."
Sepúlveda
"Kids..."
Of course he was a teenage boy once. He did not want to stay in school if school was as extraneous as history has proven it to be to the pursuit of knowledge and the forward momentum of Science. It gave him and Eloise plenty to debate when he did decide to stay in college and go on to medical school. Eloise was smart too and had been on a track before she Awakened. Then she went Fuck it and dropped out.
It isn't himself of which Margot reminds him. It's another Verbena girl who was more interested in uncovering the mysteries of the universe than accepting the burden of scientific responsibility.
"You realize if you don't continue on with school, you won't have 'I have class in the morning' as an excuse anymore. Whatever will you do then?"
Margot
Margot's answer came with a shrug, and she spoke in a tone that made her sound precisely her age. Exactly like a freshman who was disenchanted with the idea of continuing school any longer now that it was actually a choice instead of a requirement.
"I don't know. Live?"
Margot took a last sip of her latte before the cup was down to its bottom. She took it as a sign, and glanced at the face of a modest little watch she wore on her wrist (the head on the inside of her wrist rather than the outside, so it changed how her arm turned to display the time).
"I've got to work tonight, though. That excuse still stands. I do have some stuff I need to finish up before work, but thanks for inviting me out and talking..." She trailed off there with a silent I guess... attached. She was having an okay morning, and here toed the line with her own PTSD by dredging up painful and scary memories with her mentor.
Sepúlveda
That teenaged uncertainty nets her a smile. He doesn't want to get attached to his students on account of their wing-spreading and their impending flight towards traditions better suited to them but there is a small amount of fondness there. Not a lot. Enough.
But she has to work tonight.
"Go," he says. Stands though he has only consumed about half his drink. "Live your life." He waits until she's standing and then he does something unheard of in the history of mentor-apprentice relationships.
He hugs her. Hard. The way people who do not like physical contact tend to hug other people trapping the recipient's arms so they themselves and not the recipient can end the damned thing when they've had enough. Sepúlveda is a solid man for being so short. It's a strong if awkward hug.
Margot
Margot was standing and getting ready to grab her coat so she could head back out into the world when her mentor descended upon her with a hug. She was a little taken aback-- Margot didn't think that he was much of a hugger to begin with. It showed in the delivery of affection, too-- how his arms pinned hers with a hard strength that was masked in his smaller frame, how there was nothing soft or warm in the gesture (but nothing about the Doc was warm by his nature, was it?)
She blinked once, then patted his ribcage for it was the only place she could reach with her arms pinned as they were. "Thanks," she told him, and when the hug ended she smiled at him. Grateful for his willingness to try, if nothing else at all.
"I'll see you later," she told him, and grinned a little as she finished buttoning up her coat. "If you see Ned before I do, tell him I said hi, okay?"
And thus concluded one of many morning coffee dates that would have probably been improved with mimosas as well.
It was some ungodly hour on a Saturday morning when Margot's phone chirped like a bird to announce that she'd received a text message. Margot was always one of those 'rise with the sun' people, and slept with the blinds of her window open to let the light in come morning. She'd already been laying in bed considering what her next move was. She worked the afternoon shift today, but her morning was wide-open.
Was being the operative word in that sentence.
Coffee? (cup emoji)(cup emoji)(cup emoji) -- and so on, for about fifteen of them.
Margot was a morning person, but she wasn't even close to the level on which The Doc existed. She scrubbed at her face and sat up in bed, considered whether he'd even slept yet from the night before, and texted back.
Sure. Where?
The 'where' turned out to be the little coffee house just a few blocks up from the University-- someplace she was of course familiar with. She'd ordered herself a latte and croissant and sat to wait for the Doc. Unless he was there first, in which case she'd wave and go to join him instead. However they came to sit at the same table, Margot would greet him the same way.
"Did you even sleep last night?"
Presumptive Polly, wasn't she?
Sepúlveda
Though this had been his idea for the first time in their admittedly short history together Dr. Sepúlveda arrived after his pupil.
When he steps through the door the spritely Etherite brings with him the brisk chill of the morning. The day will warm up. His resonance has always been cold and will always be cold and it reminds people of the inevitability of - well little in life is cold besides death. He is wearing two-toned Oxfords and jeans that may well be as old as his student. A red t-shirt underneath the cardigan she's already seen him wear for poking around the house. His hair is a mess and he hasn't shaved his face. Glasses in place.
Oh there she is.
At the register he orders a bananas foster latte after grilling the barista as to what the hell was in it. Banana syrup? Seriously? Yes okay what's the worst that could happen. He pays and steps away from the line of screeching milk and hissing espresso shots to crash land at Margot's table.
Did you even sleep last night?
He frowns.
"What?" Like he didn't hear her. It registers a second later: "No, god no, why sleep on a Friday night? You only get four of them a month, Margot."
Margot
"Jesus Christ." Margot sounded quietly exasperated and shook her head. She looked down to tear an end piece off her pastry, and spoke as she did this delicately with her fingertips (so as not to litter the entire table with croissant flakes).
"Is that what happens when you figure out how to hit the reset button on your need to sleep? You just opt not to?"
Her free hand found the plain white mug that her coffee had been served in, and she paused to ask, curiously: "What were you up to?"
She popped the pastry into her mouth and listened quietly while eating what would account for her breakfast.
Sepúlveda
For not sleeping last night he doesn't look any worse for wear than he normally does. Disheveled sure but that's because he doesn't comb his hair and though he trims his beard he doesn't do much to keep it in order. After their run-in with the goblin Margot knows what he looks like when he's in bad shape. It would probably take a disastrous injury to get the man to stop talking once he gets going.
"Well..." He leans back in the wooden chair and knits his fingers together on his lap. Starts joggling his knee beneath the table. "I went to the office--" The morgue. "--around eight o'clock, did two autopsies, put on a suit, went to court, testified in a, ah, murder trial for an hour, maybe? Went back to the office, talked to the DA for another couple hours about an inquest they want to open up, did two more autopsies, left around, ah... seven? Eight? Eight o'clock. And then I had a date. With a woman. We went to dinner and then she wanted to go out dancing, so what the heck. Dancing. We went back to her place."
Hey, you asked.
"Anyway, after she fell asleep, I went back to the lab, my lab, and I worked on my research for a few hours, and then I thought to myself--"
Banana foster latte!
He gets to his feet.
"--I should see what Margot is doing!" He points at her. "Hold that thought." And then goes to retrieve his ridiculous beverage.
Margot
So she heard everything that the Doc was up to, and as it turned out it was less interesting than she'd expected. She figured he spent the time in a laboratory or in his library, whitting his extra hours away on magical-- excuse her, scientific things. As it turned out he did several autopsies and testified his findings in a murder case and then went out with a woman and danced and --
Margot's nose wrinkled at that point of the story. Gross. She'd get over it, because hey, she asked, and the Doc was moving on anyways.
"Well thanks for thinking of me amid all that, I suppose," she said after him as he left the table to fetch his drink. She spent the time waiting for him to come back finishing more of her croissant and drinking more of her latte before it became too cool.
When he returned, she seemed to have thought better of asking open-ended questions like that and instead inquired: "So, what'd you want to talk about then?" Her expression and posture (stiff, appropriate) said that she didn't really think that the scientist would just want to hang out for the sake of her company. She was expecting an assignment or something.
Sepúlveda
The closest he has come to giving the kids an idea of what happens in that laboratory came in the form of a warning shared with Ned: you don't belong in there.
His extra hours come in the form of his weekends. If she explores the rest of the traditions she may find some of them manage to work around or eschew professional lives in pursuit of their own studies. There are folks in this very city who are much younger than Sepúlveda who are progressing much faster in their magical studies than he is. His work and his Work are intertwined.
He also hasn't spoken much about himself to her. His focus has been on them and their questions. Their lack of direction.
When he comes back he comes back with a colorful mug that belies its contents with a mountain of whipped cream and cinnamon. He plunks it down and reminds everyone in the room that this is a shitty dark world we live in by moving the ashtray into the middle of the table and lighting a cigarette as Margot cuts to the chase.
Everyone else in the café this time of day is wearing comfortable clothing for studying. Their hair is in ponytails or trapped by headphones. Some of the couples are sitting on the same side of the table even as they ignore each other to finish assignments or papers. Most everyone in here is a couple. Folks will make assumptions looking at the two of them sat together. Professor-student is chief among the assumptions. It degenerates from there.
Cigarette lit he throws down the match he'd used and says, "You." Dun dun dun. "Well, you and your friend Ned, but for right now, you. This is the only time in your life when you can be completely selfish and do whatever it is you want--" He's talking with his hands. Drawing gray smoke lines in the air with his cigarette. "--and correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't... liberating, for you, or exciting. As I was Working, last night, I kept coming back to the thought of you, not knowing what it is you want to do or how to go about doing it, and I wondered, Is she overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities open to her, or is it something else? I find it troubling, knowing you're troubled and not knowing if the trouble is impeding your progress. Does this make sense?"
She only has time to nod or frown. Vocalize to a degree. He's hurling a question at her a moment later:
"What do you hope to accomplish this year?"
Margot
As she listened, Margot's expression became flat like soda left out in open air for too long. He wanted to talk about what she wanted to get out of life, and that made a pit in her gut start to form that had nothing to do with hunger and could be filled with no pastry.
What did she hope to accomplish this year?
Thoughts of career and school all leaped to the forefront, ingrained as they were into her for as long as they had been. Margot was a smart girl from a poor family, so she was always encouraged to focus on her academics and her participation in school sports. Scholarships were her way out of the life that her poor mom had to live. To avoid becoming like her brother.
But now this was more than a freak happening and a couple of nightmares to boot-- it was magick, and she could learn to do anything if she could just dredge up the understanding and practical application.
But over the course of a year?
She swallowed and tucked her face behind her coffee mug. "I hadn't thought much beyond surviving. I always figured I'd get a degree and make enough money to live in a nice house some day. But things have changed." She glanced up to the doctor, then back down at the space above her mug.
After a moment more, she stated more definitely: "I want to get ready to go back home. To clean up."
Sepúlveda
[manip + subt: let's try not to let our expression give away that you totally know more about what a mess that situation is than she's told you]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (3, 8) ( success x 1 )
Sepúlveda
Something passes behind his eyes when she says she wants to go home.
They live in an age of networks. Everyone connected and information available all the time always and all she had to do was tell him she was from Maine and he could ask the Internet for news sources. The Freedom of Information Act is a real bitch. Her brother and mother's conditions are not exactly readily available but neither are they private either.
He sets down his cigarette for the sake of trying his ridiculous beverage. This is not an appropriate time to make an appreciative noise so he doesn't. He just pushes the mug towards her.
"Try this." Picks up the cigarette again. "What do you need to do to get ready?"
Margot
Of course the Doc would have ways of finding out what her thus-far undisclosed history was. She'd unwittingly left a clue and he followed it. He didn't even need magic to do so. All the same, it didn't occur to her that he might be savvy to what she left in the wake of her Awakening. She still shrouded herself in ambiguity.
When the mug was passed her way she glanced at it, and its hat of whipped cream on top. Conceding, she set her own mug down in favor of the offer and took a sip. Lots of sugar, but hey sometimes that was just fine. She nodded appreciatively and slid the mug back to him. Still had whipped cream on her upper lip, which she licked away before finally coming up with her answer.
"I think I need to learn more about the spirit. Maybe find a way to make somebody... forget." She furrowed her brow and thought about that for a moment, like something had only just occurred to her as a possibility.
She also had some demons to get over, but she didn't really want to talk about that in the coffee shop.
Sepúlveda
He crushes out the cigarette and leans his forearms in the edge of the table. Moves the ashtray and the mug so nothing on his end at least serves as a physical barrier between them.
"Altering other people's memories is a knowledge even I don't possess," he says. If she detects a grimness in his tone that isn't her imagination. "You must be very careful when you undertake Work that will affect another's Pattern. It goes against the natural order of things. You have within you the seeds of godlike power, but if you wield them as such, you won't retain your Self for very long. I need you to understand this before we go any further."
That said: she has demons. That isn't a secret. And he has things he hasn't told her. Trust is a two-way street and so on and so forth. He didn't call her out because he wanted to play Show Me Yours I'll Show You Mine but he can't expect her to open up if he doesn't do so himself. One of his psychology books says as much.
"When my wife died, I could not accept it. I... well, the details aren't important. I attempted to... bring her back, in a manner of speaking, but I did so using tools that are incompatible with my paradigm. Yes? The procedure failed, badly, and..." He scratches his beard. "Well, things are as they were before, and I learned a lesson I do not think man was meant to learn."
He takes a big swallow of his latte. It's good but damn is it full of sugar.
"I tell you this because whatever you wish to have happen when you go home, I implore you to ask for help. Recognize your own limitations and don't take on anything that you can't undo. I am here to help you."
Margot
[PTSD/WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Margot
A sort of sympathy-- empathy? A bit of both, actually-- grew in her wide hazel eyes when the Doc told the story of when his wife died. How he'd tried to bring her back and, though he didn't say as much directly, how he had to 'put things right' again.
She smothered her hands together down into her lap to stop them from fidgiting or reaching for the mug, not wanting to haul something into the space that he'd cleared between them deliberately. Instead she considered what he'd told her for a while, thinking if over carefully and taking some time to digest what all she'd learned.
When she finally spoke again it was softly, quiet enough that even in his proximity he'd have to focus to catch what she was saying. She didn't want people overhearing.
"My mom was dead. I knew it. I brought her back, though, but I don''t... I didn't..." She faltered, voice cracking, and swallowed again. Stared resolutely down at the tabletop because looking somebody in the eyes would be to dissolve. So she swallowed a second time and almost whispered through eyes that tried to well up but managed not to spill into tears just yet.
"It wasn't right. She's not all there. I mean sure, she's breathing and her heart beats but they have to feed her every meal and she doesn't even know her own name and--" her voice cracked there, and this time with a finality to it. Her lip started to tremble too bad to go on and so she ducked her head and closed her eyes and hastily brought a hand up to swipe tears off her cheeks like she could dispose of the evidence of them fast enough that people wouldn't start to stare at the crying girl in the cafe.
Sepúlveda
Though she isn't looking at him Sepúlveda is looking right at her as she tells him what happened to her mother.
He removes his glasses and clips them to the front of his shirt. Not exactly adept at emotions or the interpretation or handling of them. With the cracking of her voice and the welling of tears the doctor hauls in and releases a breath. Swipes his hand over his hair to hold it back from his brow a moment. It doesn't seem as if she's going to continue crying but he's willing to sit and let her pull herself back together.
"That happens, sometimes. This was your Awakening, yes?" He rummages through his pockets for a moment before finding a folded-up handkerchief. Quick inspection to determine its cleanliness before he offers it to her. "You don't have to answer right this moment, but if you decide you want this, I'll take you home, at least for a visit. I may be able to help her." A beat. "Not in a euphemistic sense."
Not like she's surmised he had to 'help' his wife.
Margot
There was a bit of sniffling and perhaps two or three more tears to be swept away, but at no point did Margot lose her composure entirely and begin crying openly. After a dozen or so seconds she exhaled shakily but completely, and breathed normally after that. When the handkerchief was offered she accepted it meekly and wiped at her eyes, dabbed at her nose.
She nodded to confirm that he was right-- that was her Awakening. Had finished dabbing at her nose and finally glanced up at the Doc when he said that he could see what he could do to help her mom. She looked surprised, like she was reflexively going to protest against the offer. But then she stopped, looked a little surprised by herself now, and had to wonder just why she would want to refuse help for her mom as a gut instinct.
She looked back down again, to the handkerchief she had folded as small as it could go in her lap.
"I'm the one that wrecked the Pattern, though. Doesn't that mean I'm the one who's supposed to fix it?"
Sepúlveda
Though his reflex is to scowl he suppresses it to the point that all Margot sees is a confused frown. That's a face he pulls frequently. At least he doesn't have alcohol to push at her now.
"What are you, Catholic?"
It seems a moment to be a serious question. He retrieves his glasses from the neckline of his t-shirt and inspects them with the same cursory sharpness with which he inspected the handkerchief before hooking the arms over the backs of his ears.
"What happens at the moment of your Awakening is entirely beyond your control. Call it a burst of... Wild Talent, eh? This happens when you Awaken, and it happens when you die. The more powerful you are at the time of your death, the more spectacular the Wild Talent. Hopefully you won't witness this any time soon."
If the Doc had died the night of the goblin attack it would have been like a nuclear bomb going off in the neighborhood. Not a huge one but his Science has its destructive capabilities. That is what happens when one deals in matters outside of normal human control. Death and Time.
Anyway:
"You didn't know what you were doing, and it wasn't your fault."
Margot
What are you, Catholic?
The question took Margot by surprise and she looked up at The Doc with confusion written plainly on her face. How earnest she sounded when she answered had to be child-like. "No, but my mom was Protestant. Why?"
Irrelevant. On to the Awakening-- it was an indication of power, and she couldn't have helped what happened. It wasn't her fault. She frowned a little and looked down at her fingernails. They were plain, she hadn't put polish on them in a while, and trimmed short and kept clean. They tapped lightly on her mug mutely.
"I know that. The councelors told me that. Called it 'survivor's guilt'." She sighed and shook her head, but continued to finish the thought. "They said that I couldn't do anything about it, so I left it behind and tried not to look back. But now I know that I can do something. Well, maybe not yet, but I'll be able to."
Sepúlveda
"With Prime, you would be able to make that rabbit of yours into a Familiar."
This sounds like a non sequitur and he says it with a faraway sort of distraction. Like he's thinking of a conversation they had last time or the time before last. That story about Boudica and her army's interpretation of a hare's movement as an augury.
He still isn't entirely convinced Margot cannot learn to coexist with a warrior Avatar without resorting to a path of destruction. Not all warriors fight for glory. Protection and renewal are as much a part of the Verbena paradigm as anything else.
Focus, Doc.
"No, of course, with time and training you'll be able to affect others' Patterns and to heal them. If you can live with the state your mother is in for as long as that will take--" He holds up his hands. Shows her his palms. "I'll leave it alone." His hands lower. "But it will take years, Margot, and that is if pursuit of the healing craft is the bulk of your focus. You're studying ecology now, in college, yes?"
Margot
Eyebrows hopped up on her face when Familiars were suddenly brought into the equation. "What, Yorick?" She looked confused by what her rabbit had to do with Awakenings and going back to fix broken Patterns.
But he went on, explaining that she may learn to heal her mother but it would take years and if she wanted to go back and play caregiver then hey that was on her head.
Margot scowled thoughtfully. She wasn't entirely certain if she wanted to become a healer, much as she'd never really considered medicine as a part of her academic pursuit. She felt in the depths of her heart like her Avatar's idea of a battlefield had no medics and left no men alive to take prisoner.
Pulled from that train of thought by a question about her current studies, Margot blinked and blushed, just a little. She sounded sheepish when she confirmed that for him.
"Yeah, for now. I thought that I'd grow up to do something about global warming but.... I don't know, that seems a little hollow compared to learning more about what I can actually do, now."
Sepúlveda
One eyebrow quirks. He doesn't agree with her and he doesn't take any pains to conceal that from her but neither does he outright announce his disagreement either.
"Expound."
Margot
She took her time to think about it, but didn't pause for quite as long as she had before. She spoke like a ball of yarn unraveling, slow at first but picking up momentum and more certainty in what she was saying along the way.
"I didn't pick ecology because it was something that I wanted to do. I picked it because it seemed like the right thing to do-- I'm good at science, I've always been good at school, so of course I would become a scientist. Ecology because, well, it linked with global warming and something has to be done about that but..." She shook her head before continuing.
"I can't actually see myself going through eight years of school anymore, or living the life of a scientist or teacher, or going in front of Congress to argue science. It sounds too much like a life on a railroad track."
She thought about it, then smirked just a tiny bit, the expression weak and ironic but better considering that she was starting to cry a few minutes ago.
"I want to learn more about magic. The supernatural, the occult. About Us and Everything Else and what this world actually is. Everything else is just... distracting."
Sepúlveda
"Kids..."
Of course he was a teenage boy once. He did not want to stay in school if school was as extraneous as history has proven it to be to the pursuit of knowledge and the forward momentum of Science. It gave him and Eloise plenty to debate when he did decide to stay in college and go on to medical school. Eloise was smart too and had been on a track before she Awakened. Then she went Fuck it and dropped out.
It isn't himself of which Margot reminds him. It's another Verbena girl who was more interested in uncovering the mysteries of the universe than accepting the burden of scientific responsibility.
"You realize if you don't continue on with school, you won't have 'I have class in the morning' as an excuse anymore. Whatever will you do then?"
Margot
Margot's answer came with a shrug, and she spoke in a tone that made her sound precisely her age. Exactly like a freshman who was disenchanted with the idea of continuing school any longer now that it was actually a choice instead of a requirement.
"I don't know. Live?"
Margot took a last sip of her latte before the cup was down to its bottom. She took it as a sign, and glanced at the face of a modest little watch she wore on her wrist (the head on the inside of her wrist rather than the outside, so it changed how her arm turned to display the time).
"I've got to work tonight, though. That excuse still stands. I do have some stuff I need to finish up before work, but thanks for inviting me out and talking..." She trailed off there with a silent I guess... attached. She was having an okay morning, and here toed the line with her own PTSD by dredging up painful and scary memories with her mentor.
Sepúlveda
That teenaged uncertainty nets her a smile. He doesn't want to get attached to his students on account of their wing-spreading and their impending flight towards traditions better suited to them but there is a small amount of fondness there. Not a lot. Enough.
But she has to work tonight.
"Go," he says. Stands though he has only consumed about half his drink. "Live your life." He waits until she's standing and then he does something unheard of in the history of mentor-apprentice relationships.
He hugs her. Hard. The way people who do not like physical contact tend to hug other people trapping the recipient's arms so they themselves and not the recipient can end the damned thing when they've had enough. Sepúlveda is a solid man for being so short. It's a strong if awkward hug.
Margot
Margot was standing and getting ready to grab her coat so she could head back out into the world when her mentor descended upon her with a hug. She was a little taken aback-- Margot didn't think that he was much of a hugger to begin with. It showed in the delivery of affection, too-- how his arms pinned hers with a hard strength that was masked in his smaller frame, how there was nothing soft or warm in the gesture (but nothing about the Doc was warm by his nature, was it?)
She blinked once, then patted his ribcage for it was the only place she could reach with her arms pinned as they were. "Thanks," she told him, and when the hug ended she smiled at him. Grateful for his willingness to try, if nothing else at all.
"I'll see you later," she told him, and grinned a little as she finished buttoning up her coat. "If you see Ned before I do, tell him I said hi, okay?"
And thus concluded one of many morning coffee dates that would have probably been improved with mimosas as well.
February 2, 2016
February 2nd, 2016 - Essence [The Doc, Ned]
Sepúlveda
Previously:
Margot had called Dr. Sepúlveda when he had been in the midst of either a corpse or an experiment and he had dropped what he was doing to go pick her up. Both of them had walked away from the encounter with injuries. She her face and he nearly losing an arm. A little over a week has passed since then. Not as much time as passes for him to inform them that a symposium is occurring but time enough.
The same address for both this meeting and that one. He will forget or else the fact will escape his mind. If either of them get the impression that their temporary mentor is a bit absentminded no one will blame them.
His house is a blue-grey two-story Victorian in the Baker neighborhood. Easy enough to find but harder to park in. This night he does not bother telling them to park around back. They have to come up the front walkway. He is sitting outside smoking a cigarette when they arrived and he let them wrestle with the old wrought-iron fence before letting them in the front door.
This is a house built with a family in mind. His family has not revealed itself yet. Not to anyone but Margot who knows his wife's name - Eloise - and that she currently exists in the past tense. That he still wears his wedding band but not why or what happened.
He is wearing corduroys and a shabby cardigan buttoned up. Glasses. His hair is a mess. What they can see of his socks hint at a Christmas pattern.
He ushers them into the the living room. Hardwood floors and olive walls and a big suede sofa masquerading as a love seat. Leather armchair by a useless fireplace. White vinyl blinds over the windows. Idle tribal decorations on the walls. This does not feel like a place a person lives but rather comes to to visit in between tasks.
They can feel his resonance here. They will feel it stronger when they come here in a few weeks for a symposium. Unlike the symposium he drags a bottle of mescal and not red wine into the living room with them. Three shot glasses and not three wine glasses. He only fills his glass when they sit down.
He takes the armchair. They have to share the big-ass love seat.
"So!" he says bright like he's totally forgotten and forgiven Margot's midnight wakeup call and has no idea what the two of them got up to at the DU campus the other weekend. "Tell me, who can name all four Avatar Essences?"
Ned
"...What the fuck is...this...for fuck's...."
Ned does the wrestling. The fence gives him as much trouble as you'd expect, the young man leaning over the top and looking around the black iron security measure in search of the latch and how it functions for a solid few seconds before he flicks the necessary lever and sends it wheeling outward and away from them. The Doc is smoking and he offers a nod, hands stuffing into his pockets a moment after that.
They head into the house, through modest arrangements and the oh so obvious depictions of 'normalcy' that throw's Ned a bit. He didn't think of the Doc as an owner of Real Estate and yet...strange what certain allegations and knowledge of someone will do to your perceptions?
So!
Ned perks up sharply at the announcement, half-way to sitting in the loveseat, slowing for the second half to consider the question a moment. He glances at Margot like she might know but turns back to the Doctor after that brief hesitation.
"Last I checked, I barely understood what an Avatar is, let alone it had an 'Essence'. By the way, Avatar? I'm calling that a 'Guide'. Makes more sense and is intuitively understandable to the new or uninitiated."
Sepúlveda
Deep deep deep sigh. At least he doesn't make the kids take a shot. He sips his. Leaves some in the glass when he sets it down.
"Whatever," he says. "Note to self: Ned calls it a 'Guide.'"
Sounds like sarcasm but as absentminded as this guy is they may be beginning to think that what sounds like sarcasm is just a lack of empathy and a focus on greater issues. That he affords them time counts as care. If he did not care about them at all he would not answer their calls at midnight. He would not tell them to get their asses over to his house to check in on their progress.
"Okay: you barely understand. If I ask you 'what is an Avatar,' what is your answer?"
Sorry Margot.
Ned
"...My sherpa through this Mirrorhouse..."
Ned grunts it, adjusting his position on the couch a moment, before settling in, one arm draped over the arm-rest.
"Honestly, I'm not sure specifically, but I'm guessing you mean in general. So just what I said. It's a guide. I learn, trial and error, through use of Solving the Puzzle. That puzzle rewards me with new pieces to try and solve and so and and so on. It's a Legend, a Map and a Compass all built into one and so far, is the only thing that's keeping me grounded in the rest of this..."
He was about to say insanity. He re-thinks it for a moment.
"...Well, fantasy."
Not much better, really.
Margot
Margot had let Ned bang and fiddle around with the iron-wrought gate, standing back far enough as not to catch errant elbows or the swinging recoil of a gate finally come loose with one good jerk. When they were up on the porch she greeted the doctor accordingly and moved on inside out of the cold soon as they were able.
Inside she settled onto the couch beside Ned and leaned onto the arm, legs pulled up and folded to her side so that toes were pointed toward her fellow apprentice. She'd dressed in a pair of jeans and a simple black long-sleeved shirt, and tucked her hair back behind her ear habitually while they sat and spoke.
As for essences, all Margot did was shake her head. Ned answered and made the doc sigh and shift topics to Avatars. When Ned finished describing his, Margot looked back to the Doc to see what he had to say next. She didn't feel a need to describe her own Avatar, they both already knew the answer to that.
So instead she twisted a modest silver band on one finger and listened.
Sepúlveda
"Christ."
They know what's coming. Both of their shot glasses are full and they may have an idea of what will happen to them if they use crappy analogies to describe their situations in front of this man. He draws a breath after that invective then flicks his eyebrows and smooths his eyebrows with his middle finger and thumb before indicating their shot glasses.
"Both of you. Drink."
Mescal is not as harsh as tequila. It has a smoky flavor not shared with tequila with the same stringent alcohol burn of any other high-octane beverage. It does not burn as bad going down as does tequila.
If either of them hesitate he sighs again and says, "Para todo mal, mezcal, y para todo bien, también. Let's go." Like he doesn't have time for pussyfooting in his house.
Once their shots are gone he goes on, "Listen. Every Awakened person has an Avatar, and every Avatar belongs to one of four types. Only four. I hear rumors of a fifth, but those are about as good as the rumors of a tenth Sphere. Don't listen to them until you are strong enough to find out for yourself, eh?" A beat. "If you want to take notes, take notes."
He waits if Margot wants to fish out his notebook. Then he ticks them off on his fingers:
"Dynamic. Pattern. Primordial. Questing." Leaves the four fingers standing while he looks them in the eye in turn. "You can surmise the natures of the four?"
Ned
Ned pauses halfway through his shot glass being upturned, eyes rolling over the edge of the rim to regard the Doc when he invokes the Jesus and tells them to imbibe.
"I'm pretty sure narcotics are one of my tools by the way..."
Gulp.
He sets the glass back down, face screwed up in preparation for the sting, only for it to relax a bit. His tongue darts out to take the rest of his lips and he nods appreciatively.
"Not half as bad as the Strip club stuff."
As for the Avatar Essences:
"Dynamic...ummm...active? Really active? Pattern...Full? Complete? Primordial sounds archaic. Ancient. Beginnings of life and existence. Questing..." Like Frodo and Sam-
"...Searching or Helping to find your way."
Margot
When reprimanded with a shot, Margot made a bit of a face and shook her head a little. She still had qualms with how she felt about drinking as punishment for doing or saying something unwise-- while alcohol may lubricate Ned's process through Magic, it didn't seem to do the same for Margot.
But, all the same, she leaned forward and picked her shot glass up from the table, tipped her head back and drank the whole thing down in one go. Pinched her face up as the burn went down into her belly and the strength of the drink faded away, then relaxed once more with the emptied glass placed back onto the table.
The pause and pointed comment about taking notes had Margot grinning just a little. She had, in fact, brought the same little notebook in and put it on the table for using when it was time to get down to the nitty gritty. So she plucked it up, stationed it on the arm of the couch she leaned against, and scrawled down what the Doc explained about essences.
While the pen was still scratching paper, she chimed in ast last.
"Questing is probably as it says on the tin. The Avatar has quests in mind, so you're... you know, always looking for something more. Driven.
"Pattern is more organized-- taking things and putting them together again, making sure everything fits and makes sense."
The other two she didn't quite answer, but glanced over to Ned at what he had to say on them instead. That seemed about as good as she could do, no point in repeating further.
Sepúlveda
[prime 1: the fuck essence are you two? may extend this next round if he dicks it up. base diff 7. only needs 2 successes for the both of them. -1 quint for shits.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Sepúlveda
"The strip club stuff probably came from California. It did what I paid it to do."
That is all he had to say to the matter of the well tequila. The mescal goes down smooth and does not punish them for what they've done. If they drink enough of it it will but their mentor hopes the burn of the alcohol will do that well enough for him. They move on quick enough for him.
As Ned enters his guesses Sepúlveda frowns hard and bites his lower lip. Bites hit harder when he lands on 'Complete' as his guess for Pattern. Breathes in deep and lets it go for 'Ancient.' Lets it go for 'Beginnings.' Lets go his lower lip for 'Searching.'
When Margot starts to share her two cents' worth he actually sits back in the armchair.
"Good," he says. "No, this is good, you're capable of lateral problem-solving, this is good, yeah." A beat. He draws a breath and sits up. Picks up his shot glass and tosses back the half he had left behind like doubting them was the grounds for his punishment. He refills all of their glasses before sitting back and twisting the wedding band and going on with a sharpened focus: "Primordial. Before light and order, there was Chaos. Your Avatars strike you both as sinister, yeah? Shadows. Half-heard cries. Swirling vortices of pulsating energy." A pause. He considers Margot harder than Ned: "Blood-thirsty warrior women." A break. "The depthless reaches of cosmic potential, this is what your Essences mean. Your people are abrupt, secretive. Seductive, sometimes, in a way the Fallen can appreciate. You ever stand by the ocean at night and think it would be good to dive in? That is your Avatar. Your Avatar has had sway over you since before you opened your eyes."
Ned
"....Clockwork of the universe."
Ned leans forward after saying it and taking a moment for the Doc's none too subtle indication as to what their Avatars are. He pushes the shot glass forward with two figures and an equal level of subtle indication in the gesture.
Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda's eyes tick up to the left side of his head as if he's considering this. Or pretends to consider this. Then he pushes the shot glass back toward Ned. Punishment for analogies.
"Pulse," he says. "Pulse of the universe. Clocks are made by man to measure the aging of the universe. This is not how the Primordial Essence works."
Margot
The sound of words being scratched onto paper were a near constant whisper from Margot's corner on the couch, but they again paused as he began to describe what a Primordial essence was like. He identified both of them as having one. It made sense, as he pointed out, that the war-goddess she knew was of a Primordial nature.
The vision of leaping into a dark ocean struck a chord of homesickness in the girl, and she frowned just a little with thought on the subject.
"So then Dynamic must be more of a raw energy. Like Questing but less steady, and less directed."
Her eyes followed the shot glass being pushed Ned's way, and she hoped to herself that she could prove efficient at dodging the punishment drinks. She had to drive and didn't want to leave her car parked on the curb all day after leaving in an Uber.
Ned
"...Alright. So on a scale of one to ten, one being pictionary and the other being Astro-physics, how much about this Primordial presence are we meant to understand vs. just accept?"
Ned's not frustrated. He's curious and irritated about the value of this information. It's moments of clarity interspersed in a variety of barren landscape. Trying to suss out the use and validity of any of it, versus the actuality that it was possible. Part of him had said once that this was all a delusion or some mad dream and he had, more than several times, considered this was all just some elaborate after-life and he'd really died during that accident. Skepticism was strong.
Sepúlveda
[perc + empathy: MARGOT GIRL ARE YOU HOMESICK.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Margot
[Ain't even contesting that, doubt that Margot'd be trying to play tough anyway]
Sepúlveda
"On what planet do you live that Pictionary and Astrophysics belong in the same sentence? Santo Cristo..."
He pushes a fresh glass of mescal in Ned's direction and tips back his own fresh one just so they're on the same level. If neither of them have ever been to a party comprised of only scientists or Scientists or any level of capitalization therein they have not experienced the level of shittedness men of Science can achieve.
Anyway:
The Doc has bright green eyes that don't always appear so bright for how far lost in his own thoughts he can get. How often they are hidden behind his black-rimmed spectacles. He left them folded on the countertop tonight. They bore into Margot for a moment when she reacts to his approximation of the feeling of having a Primordial Essence. Then he folds his hands between his knees and takes a deep breath as he prepares to unfold another episode of the lecture on them.
"The Dynamic Essence is that of Change. Eh? Those whose Avatars possess a Dynamic Essence tend to be... mercurial. Passionate. Restless. These Avatars drive their Awakened when they seem as if they are stalled. There are times, with a Dynamic Essence, you will not sleep for several days, but when you return to your dormitory room, you will have so many stories, so many experiences..."
He is speaking of his own Avatar. He who prefers to keep his autobiography in the shadow. He takes a deep breath and blows it back out. Takes a shot like to keep in line with the rules as he's laid them out.
"Pattern and Questing Avatars are just fine. To get along with a person with a Pattern Avatar, or a Questing... it's easy." Flinch. "'Easy.' So easy as you make it. They are the same. A Pattern Essence, their Avatar wishes for stability. Order. You know? The Avatar of the Dynamist is fire, is passion, is--" Another breath. "Pattern is stone. Questing is air. Think of it as the elements, if you must." You witch. You orphan. He leaves much unspoken. "But to go forward, to speak of Seekings, of Awakenings, of the..."
Now he's speaking with his hands. Maybe he started drinking before they came over. He makes a globe shape with his frigid bird-like hands.
"... the whole of the experience. Yeah? This is a foundation. Everyone you meet has an Avatar, and the Avatar wants a different thing, but if you break it down--" A motion with his hands. "--only four different things. Does this make sense?"
Margot
"So that would make us water. Like the water of veins." She pointed the pen-cap end of the pen to herself, then pointed it over to Ned as well. "How water drowns."
She cleared her throat and set her pen down, temporarily, on top of the notebook.
"So do the Four Elements work together here, like they do in any other tale of the Elements? Like, do all of us with The Sight work together toward something?"
Ned
"None. It just ensured another shot-"
Ned tips it back quickly, sucking the air in through his teeth and putting the glass back on the table. He leans away once more, coaching himself into the love seat's corner, the mescal dragging fresh ripples of contentment in the back of his throat.
"...Sounds like Freshman year..." Ned offers of the Dynamics. "...Or Senior, depending on your major..." He mutters after, before tuning in for the other definitions without further interruption.
"It makes sense. Four definitions. Four...paths to follow to work outside of reality?" And then round at Margot. "Oceans. Deep, dark, still unknown even in our tech advanced age. Last great earthly frontier and home of some of our biggest fears and hollowing." Primordial. The only one of the four Ned seemed to be comfortable with. Or at least, unwilling to poke fun at.
"...How about Conflicts? What if an Avatar is looking for you to harm or hurt something/someone? How do you reconcile that with your own morality?" If this hit a little close to Margot's issues, that was perhaps...purposeful. Or it could be the Mescal talking.
Sepúlveda
He sits up straight with a clap of his hands minute considering how loud one could clap one's hands minute but sudden all the same and then:
"Aha!"
Like he was waiting for this question or already knew about Margot's issues. Meant to address them later if not now. Had they been led into a trap? How would they know? Their mentor doesn't tell them shit until he means to tell them shit. He reaches for his shot glass. Does not take it yet.
"Listen: the very nature of the relationship between the scholar and the... Guide..." Christ he hates that word but he wants to use words his students will retain make of that what you will. "... it is antagonistic. At first. You don't understand them, they want very much of you to fulfill needs of theirs you do not understand, they go about demanding these things in ways that are like riddles, or like nightmares..."
He understands. He explained his Avatar as being a shadow he had to follow. That shadow made him walk through a wall. He didn't say whether that wall led to a hallway or a sharp drop off a cliff.
"... I wish for you, when we part tonight, to understand that there are only four known ways for the Avatar to manifest itself, and that somehow, of four ways, nine have created Traditions. Paradigms. Ways of Working. Those who do not fall into Traditions, they are called Disparates. Eh?"
Margot
A sharp glance was cast Ned's way when he inquired about her predicament specifically. It wasn't exactly classified information by any means, but still caught sharp and particular interest in her all the same. The clapping of Doc's hands caused a small startled jerk in her shoulders, and Margot looked to him once again. He took the position of somebody about to explain something, so she picked up her pen again and paid close attention.
When he asked if they were keeping up he'd find her with her brow furrowed, looking at what she'd just written like she didn't really understand it after all.
"Hold on. What are the four ways the Avatar manifests? And what are these Traditions? How is somebody supposed to, y'know, communicate with a Tradition? Those keep coming up in particular-- it seems to be an important thing to figure out before we keep going forward. I mean, for example..."
She pressed a hand to her own breastbone in indication. "I think of myself as something of a witch, so I don't think that how my craft works is going to be the same as your making medicines and salves, Doc. If I needed to learn something about, say.... sacrifice or rituals or runes, it sure wouldn't be from you."
Ned
"...Four ways are the Essences, we just went through. Dynamic, Primordial and such. Through those, the various numbers of us got together and decided to form more rigid rulesets to follow on their way to...wherever their Avatars led them. Those would be the Traditions?" He glances at the Doc to test to see if he's gone off track any.
"Yeah I'd like to know more about these Traditions as well, personally." It's the one sticking point that's been giving him issues. Everytime a new one crops up, it tells of a dogma to follow. Something to pick apart your inner self and mold into the best possible shape. That didn't sit well with him at all and it showed in the vague frown creasing his features.
Sepúlveda
Previously:
Margot had called Dr. Sepúlveda when he had been in the midst of either a corpse or an experiment and he had dropped what he was doing to go pick her up. Both of them had walked away from the encounter with injuries. She her face and he nearly losing an arm. A little over a week has passed since then. Not as much time as passes for him to inform them that a symposium is occurring but time enough.
The same address for both this meeting and that one. He will forget or else the fact will escape his mind. If either of them get the impression that their temporary mentor is a bit absentminded no one will blame them.
His house is a blue-grey two-story Victorian in the Baker neighborhood. Easy enough to find but harder to park in. This night he does not bother telling them to park around back. They have to come up the front walkway. He is sitting outside smoking a cigarette when they arrived and he let them wrestle with the old wrought-iron fence before letting them in the front door.
This is a house built with a family in mind. His family has not revealed itself yet. Not to anyone but Margot who knows his wife's name - Eloise - and that she currently exists in the past tense. That he still wears his wedding band but not why or what happened.
He is wearing corduroys and a shabby cardigan buttoned up. Glasses. His hair is a mess. What they can see of his socks hint at a Christmas pattern.
He ushers them into the the living room. Hardwood floors and olive walls and a big suede sofa masquerading as a love seat. Leather armchair by a useless fireplace. White vinyl blinds over the windows. Idle tribal decorations on the walls. This does not feel like a place a person lives but rather comes to to visit in between tasks.
They can feel his resonance here. They will feel it stronger when they come here in a few weeks for a symposium. Unlike the symposium he drags a bottle of mescal and not red wine into the living room with them. Three shot glasses and not three wine glasses. He only fills his glass when they sit down.
He takes the armchair. They have to share the big-ass love seat.
"So!" he says bright like he's totally forgotten and forgiven Margot's midnight wakeup call and has no idea what the two of them got up to at the DU campus the other weekend. "Tell me, who can name all four Avatar Essences?"
Ned
"...What the fuck is...this...for fuck's...."
Ned does the wrestling. The fence gives him as much trouble as you'd expect, the young man leaning over the top and looking around the black iron security measure in search of the latch and how it functions for a solid few seconds before he flicks the necessary lever and sends it wheeling outward and away from them. The Doc is smoking and he offers a nod, hands stuffing into his pockets a moment after that.
They head into the house, through modest arrangements and the oh so obvious depictions of 'normalcy' that throw's Ned a bit. He didn't think of the Doc as an owner of Real Estate and yet...strange what certain allegations and knowledge of someone will do to your perceptions?
So!
Ned perks up sharply at the announcement, half-way to sitting in the loveseat, slowing for the second half to consider the question a moment. He glances at Margot like she might know but turns back to the Doctor after that brief hesitation.
"Last I checked, I barely understood what an Avatar is, let alone it had an 'Essence'. By the way, Avatar? I'm calling that a 'Guide'. Makes more sense and is intuitively understandable to the new or uninitiated."
Sepúlveda
Deep deep deep sigh. At least he doesn't make the kids take a shot. He sips his. Leaves some in the glass when he sets it down.
"Whatever," he says. "Note to self: Ned calls it a 'Guide.'"
Sounds like sarcasm but as absentminded as this guy is they may be beginning to think that what sounds like sarcasm is just a lack of empathy and a focus on greater issues. That he affords them time counts as care. If he did not care about them at all he would not answer their calls at midnight. He would not tell them to get their asses over to his house to check in on their progress.
"Okay: you barely understand. If I ask you 'what is an Avatar,' what is your answer?"
Sorry Margot.
Ned
"...My sherpa through this Mirrorhouse..."
Ned grunts it, adjusting his position on the couch a moment, before settling in, one arm draped over the arm-rest.
"Honestly, I'm not sure specifically, but I'm guessing you mean in general. So just what I said. It's a guide. I learn, trial and error, through use of Solving the Puzzle. That puzzle rewards me with new pieces to try and solve and so and and so on. It's a Legend, a Map and a Compass all built into one and so far, is the only thing that's keeping me grounded in the rest of this..."
He was about to say insanity. He re-thinks it for a moment.
"...Well, fantasy."
Not much better, really.
Margot
Margot had let Ned bang and fiddle around with the iron-wrought gate, standing back far enough as not to catch errant elbows or the swinging recoil of a gate finally come loose with one good jerk. When they were up on the porch she greeted the doctor accordingly and moved on inside out of the cold soon as they were able.
Inside she settled onto the couch beside Ned and leaned onto the arm, legs pulled up and folded to her side so that toes were pointed toward her fellow apprentice. She'd dressed in a pair of jeans and a simple black long-sleeved shirt, and tucked her hair back behind her ear habitually while they sat and spoke.
As for essences, all Margot did was shake her head. Ned answered and made the doc sigh and shift topics to Avatars. When Ned finished describing his, Margot looked back to the Doc to see what he had to say next. She didn't feel a need to describe her own Avatar, they both already knew the answer to that.
So instead she twisted a modest silver band on one finger and listened.
Sepúlveda
"Christ."
They know what's coming. Both of their shot glasses are full and they may have an idea of what will happen to them if they use crappy analogies to describe their situations in front of this man. He draws a breath after that invective then flicks his eyebrows and smooths his eyebrows with his middle finger and thumb before indicating their shot glasses.
"Both of you. Drink."
Mescal is not as harsh as tequila. It has a smoky flavor not shared with tequila with the same stringent alcohol burn of any other high-octane beverage. It does not burn as bad going down as does tequila.
If either of them hesitate he sighs again and says, "Para todo mal, mezcal, y para todo bien, también. Let's go." Like he doesn't have time for pussyfooting in his house.
Once their shots are gone he goes on, "Listen. Every Awakened person has an Avatar, and every Avatar belongs to one of four types. Only four. I hear rumors of a fifth, but those are about as good as the rumors of a tenth Sphere. Don't listen to them until you are strong enough to find out for yourself, eh?" A beat. "If you want to take notes, take notes."
He waits if Margot wants to fish out his notebook. Then he ticks them off on his fingers:
"Dynamic. Pattern. Primordial. Questing." Leaves the four fingers standing while he looks them in the eye in turn. "You can surmise the natures of the four?"
Ned
Ned pauses halfway through his shot glass being upturned, eyes rolling over the edge of the rim to regard the Doc when he invokes the Jesus and tells them to imbibe.
"I'm pretty sure narcotics are one of my tools by the way..."
Gulp.
He sets the glass back down, face screwed up in preparation for the sting, only for it to relax a bit. His tongue darts out to take the rest of his lips and he nods appreciatively.
"Not half as bad as the Strip club stuff."
As for the Avatar Essences:
"Dynamic...ummm...active? Really active? Pattern...Full? Complete? Primordial sounds archaic. Ancient. Beginnings of life and existence. Questing..." Like Frodo and Sam-
"...Searching or Helping to find your way."
Margot
When reprimanded with a shot, Margot made a bit of a face and shook her head a little. She still had qualms with how she felt about drinking as punishment for doing or saying something unwise-- while alcohol may lubricate Ned's process through Magic, it didn't seem to do the same for Margot.
But, all the same, she leaned forward and picked her shot glass up from the table, tipped her head back and drank the whole thing down in one go. Pinched her face up as the burn went down into her belly and the strength of the drink faded away, then relaxed once more with the emptied glass placed back onto the table.
The pause and pointed comment about taking notes had Margot grinning just a little. She had, in fact, brought the same little notebook in and put it on the table for using when it was time to get down to the nitty gritty. So she plucked it up, stationed it on the arm of the couch she leaned against, and scrawled down what the Doc explained about essences.
While the pen was still scratching paper, she chimed in ast last.
"Questing is probably as it says on the tin. The Avatar has quests in mind, so you're... you know, always looking for something more. Driven.
"Pattern is more organized-- taking things and putting them together again, making sure everything fits and makes sense."
The other two she didn't quite answer, but glanced over to Ned at what he had to say on them instead. That seemed about as good as she could do, no point in repeating further.
Sepúlveda
[prime 1: the fuck essence are you two? may extend this next round if he dicks it up. base diff 7. only needs 2 successes for the both of them. -1 quint for shits.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Sepúlveda
"The strip club stuff probably came from California. It did what I paid it to do."
That is all he had to say to the matter of the well tequila. The mescal goes down smooth and does not punish them for what they've done. If they drink enough of it it will but their mentor hopes the burn of the alcohol will do that well enough for him. They move on quick enough for him.
As Ned enters his guesses Sepúlveda frowns hard and bites his lower lip. Bites hit harder when he lands on 'Complete' as his guess for Pattern. Breathes in deep and lets it go for 'Ancient.' Lets it go for 'Beginnings.' Lets go his lower lip for 'Searching.'
When Margot starts to share her two cents' worth he actually sits back in the armchair.
"Good," he says. "No, this is good, you're capable of lateral problem-solving, this is good, yeah." A beat. He draws a breath and sits up. Picks up his shot glass and tosses back the half he had left behind like doubting them was the grounds for his punishment. He refills all of their glasses before sitting back and twisting the wedding band and going on with a sharpened focus: "Primordial. Before light and order, there was Chaos. Your Avatars strike you both as sinister, yeah? Shadows. Half-heard cries. Swirling vortices of pulsating energy." A pause. He considers Margot harder than Ned: "Blood-thirsty warrior women." A break. "The depthless reaches of cosmic potential, this is what your Essences mean. Your people are abrupt, secretive. Seductive, sometimes, in a way the Fallen can appreciate. You ever stand by the ocean at night and think it would be good to dive in? That is your Avatar. Your Avatar has had sway over you since before you opened your eyes."
Ned
"....Clockwork of the universe."
Ned leans forward after saying it and taking a moment for the Doc's none too subtle indication as to what their Avatars are. He pushes the shot glass forward with two figures and an equal level of subtle indication in the gesture.
Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda's eyes tick up to the left side of his head as if he's considering this. Or pretends to consider this. Then he pushes the shot glass back toward Ned. Punishment for analogies.
"Pulse," he says. "Pulse of the universe. Clocks are made by man to measure the aging of the universe. This is not how the Primordial Essence works."
Margot
The sound of words being scratched onto paper were a near constant whisper from Margot's corner on the couch, but they again paused as he began to describe what a Primordial essence was like. He identified both of them as having one. It made sense, as he pointed out, that the war-goddess she knew was of a Primordial nature.
The vision of leaping into a dark ocean struck a chord of homesickness in the girl, and she frowned just a little with thought on the subject.
"So then Dynamic must be more of a raw energy. Like Questing but less steady, and less directed."
Her eyes followed the shot glass being pushed Ned's way, and she hoped to herself that she could prove efficient at dodging the punishment drinks. She had to drive and didn't want to leave her car parked on the curb all day after leaving in an Uber.
Ned
"...Alright. So on a scale of one to ten, one being pictionary and the other being Astro-physics, how much about this Primordial presence are we meant to understand vs. just accept?"
Ned's not frustrated. He's curious and irritated about the value of this information. It's moments of clarity interspersed in a variety of barren landscape. Trying to suss out the use and validity of any of it, versus the actuality that it was possible. Part of him had said once that this was all a delusion or some mad dream and he had, more than several times, considered this was all just some elaborate after-life and he'd really died during that accident. Skepticism was strong.
Sepúlveda
[perc + empathy: MARGOT GIRL ARE YOU HOMESICK.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Margot
[Ain't even contesting that, doubt that Margot'd be trying to play tough anyway]
Sepúlveda
"On what planet do you live that Pictionary and Astrophysics belong in the same sentence? Santo Cristo..."
He pushes a fresh glass of mescal in Ned's direction and tips back his own fresh one just so they're on the same level. If neither of them have ever been to a party comprised of only scientists or Scientists or any level of capitalization therein they have not experienced the level of shittedness men of Science can achieve.
Anyway:
The Doc has bright green eyes that don't always appear so bright for how far lost in his own thoughts he can get. How often they are hidden behind his black-rimmed spectacles. He left them folded on the countertop tonight. They bore into Margot for a moment when she reacts to his approximation of the feeling of having a Primordial Essence. Then he folds his hands between his knees and takes a deep breath as he prepares to unfold another episode of the lecture on them.
"The Dynamic Essence is that of Change. Eh? Those whose Avatars possess a Dynamic Essence tend to be... mercurial. Passionate. Restless. These Avatars drive their Awakened when they seem as if they are stalled. There are times, with a Dynamic Essence, you will not sleep for several days, but when you return to your dormitory room, you will have so many stories, so many experiences..."
He is speaking of his own Avatar. He who prefers to keep his autobiography in the shadow. He takes a deep breath and blows it back out. Takes a shot like to keep in line with the rules as he's laid them out.
"Pattern and Questing Avatars are just fine. To get along with a person with a Pattern Avatar, or a Questing... it's easy." Flinch. "'Easy.' So easy as you make it. They are the same. A Pattern Essence, their Avatar wishes for stability. Order. You know? The Avatar of the Dynamist is fire, is passion, is--" Another breath. "Pattern is stone. Questing is air. Think of it as the elements, if you must." You witch. You orphan. He leaves much unspoken. "But to go forward, to speak of Seekings, of Awakenings, of the..."
Now he's speaking with his hands. Maybe he started drinking before they came over. He makes a globe shape with his frigid bird-like hands.
"... the whole of the experience. Yeah? This is a foundation. Everyone you meet has an Avatar, and the Avatar wants a different thing, but if you break it down--" A motion with his hands. "--only four different things. Does this make sense?"
Margot
"So that would make us water. Like the water of veins." She pointed the pen-cap end of the pen to herself, then pointed it over to Ned as well. "How water drowns."
She cleared her throat and set her pen down, temporarily, on top of the notebook.
"So do the Four Elements work together here, like they do in any other tale of the Elements? Like, do all of us with The Sight work together toward something?"
Ned
"None. It just ensured another shot-"
Ned tips it back quickly, sucking the air in through his teeth and putting the glass back on the table. He leans away once more, coaching himself into the love seat's corner, the mescal dragging fresh ripples of contentment in the back of his throat.
"...Sounds like Freshman year..." Ned offers of the Dynamics. "...Or Senior, depending on your major..." He mutters after, before tuning in for the other definitions without further interruption.
"It makes sense. Four definitions. Four...paths to follow to work outside of reality?" And then round at Margot. "Oceans. Deep, dark, still unknown even in our tech advanced age. Last great earthly frontier and home of some of our biggest fears and hollowing." Primordial. The only one of the four Ned seemed to be comfortable with. Or at least, unwilling to poke fun at.
"...How about Conflicts? What if an Avatar is looking for you to harm or hurt something/someone? How do you reconcile that with your own morality?" If this hit a little close to Margot's issues, that was perhaps...purposeful. Or it could be the Mescal talking.
Sepúlveda
He sits up straight with a clap of his hands minute considering how loud one could clap one's hands minute but sudden all the same and then:
"Aha!"
Like he was waiting for this question or already knew about Margot's issues. Meant to address them later if not now. Had they been led into a trap? How would they know? Their mentor doesn't tell them shit until he means to tell them shit. He reaches for his shot glass. Does not take it yet.
"Listen: the very nature of the relationship between the scholar and the... Guide..." Christ he hates that word but he wants to use words his students will retain make of that what you will. "... it is antagonistic. At first. You don't understand them, they want very much of you to fulfill needs of theirs you do not understand, they go about demanding these things in ways that are like riddles, or like nightmares..."
He understands. He explained his Avatar as being a shadow he had to follow. That shadow made him walk through a wall. He didn't say whether that wall led to a hallway or a sharp drop off a cliff.
"... I wish for you, when we part tonight, to understand that there are only four known ways for the Avatar to manifest itself, and that somehow, of four ways, nine have created Traditions. Paradigms. Ways of Working. Those who do not fall into Traditions, they are called Disparates. Eh?"
Margot
A sharp glance was cast Ned's way when he inquired about her predicament specifically. It wasn't exactly classified information by any means, but still caught sharp and particular interest in her all the same. The clapping of Doc's hands caused a small startled jerk in her shoulders, and Margot looked to him once again. He took the position of somebody about to explain something, so she picked up her pen again and paid close attention.
When he asked if they were keeping up he'd find her with her brow furrowed, looking at what she'd just written like she didn't really understand it after all.
"Hold on. What are the four ways the Avatar manifests? And what are these Traditions? How is somebody supposed to, y'know, communicate with a Tradition? Those keep coming up in particular-- it seems to be an important thing to figure out before we keep going forward. I mean, for example..."
She pressed a hand to her own breastbone in indication. "I think of myself as something of a witch, so I don't think that how my craft works is going to be the same as your making medicines and salves, Doc. If I needed to learn something about, say.... sacrifice or rituals or runes, it sure wouldn't be from you."
Ned
"...Four ways are the Essences, we just went through. Dynamic, Primordial and such. Through those, the various numbers of us got together and decided to form more rigid rulesets to follow on their way to...wherever their Avatars led them. Those would be the Traditions?" He glances at the Doc to test to see if he's gone off track any.
"Yeah I'd like to know more about these Traditions as well, personally." It's the one sticking point that's been giving him issues. Everytime a new one crops up, it tells of a dogma to follow. Something to pick apart your inner self and mold into the best possible shape. That didn't sit well with him at all and it showed in the vague frown creasing his features.
Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda knit his fingers together again like to keep himself from fidgeting as the youngest of them realizes she hasn't been keeping up. Or becomes overwhelmed. Or else loses track of what the Scientist is going on about.
Magic and science have been at odds with each other since the dawn of time. She's not wrong in the presumption that in order to learn the ways of her own craft she cannot learn from someone whose paradigm does not prescribe to primal ways of doing things. Not when his entire worldview revolves around the concept of progress.
No more mescal for the two of them. Him either. He's wound up enough as it is.
"Come," he says. "Come come, get your coats on."
If they're going to talk about dusty things like history and politics he wants to be outside while they do it. Pictionary and Astrophysics. They can exist in the same sentence sometimes.
Sepúlveda waits for the kids to collect their coats and leads them through the kitchen and out the back door. Slips his feet into a pair of banged-up old-man loafers on the way out into the yard and cloudless sky above.
His breath plumes. His hands go into the pockets. His eyes lift for theirs to do the same.
"So long as man has known darkness he has tried to light it. Yeah? And so long as the Awakened have known of others, they have tried to find ways to coexist. Some of those ways involve war. You ask two Awakened to describe, eh, say--"
He holds up a hand to indicate a constellation to the west. Thin fingers frame it in a thought he does not vocalize and then drag themselves down his beard.
"Well, there is the problem. Humans have no universal language. Never have. Possibly never will. Uniformity is not the ideal, eh? That we have differences, this is how we have evlution of ideas. The Traditions, this is the faction into which you two have found yourselves Awakening. There are others. The Technocracy is one of them. We fought in a very long war that ended when the Traditions lost in the year 2000. Then you have Nephandi, Marauders, Infernalists... people you never want to encounter. Their Avatars have inverted, or they are divorced from reality, or they have made deals with demons."
He is getting off track again.
"We'll come back to them later. Everyone you meet will wish to know if you belong to a tradition, and which one. Some ask because they are looking for their own tribe, so to speak, and others are paranoid, and they ask because they think if you are not with us, you are against us, and this is a crazy way of thinking, but it comes from a place of powerlessness, you understand. This is why I told you, when we first met, you were to tell those who ask that you are students of Doctor Sepúlveda of the Society of Ether, because I am known to the community for seventeen years and have a reputation and can vouch for you until such time you are initiated, and so on and so forth."
Though he clears his throat he does not give them time yet to interject.
"The Traditions make up what we call the Council of Nine. Nine Traditions for nine Spheres." He begins to count them off on his fingers. "For Correspondence, the Virtual Adepts. For Entropy, the Chakravanti. Euthanatos, we used to call them. They don't like that term much, not all of them believe their calling involves administration of the Good Death. Forces belongs to the Order of Hermes, but they have many Houses within their Traditiion and some of them specialize in other Spheres and I have heard rumors--" A breath. "I have heard rumors. Life, the Verbena." A glance to Margot. "Matter, the Society of Ether. Obviously the most intelligent and most talented and most good-looking of all the traditions, so we are, ah, difficult to join, without having read the Kitab al-Alacir before Awakening. Mind, the Akashayana. Akashic Brotherhood, but they have many women in their ranks, so 'Brotherhood' is not accurate. Prime, the Celestial Chorus. Spirit, the Kha'vadi .Dreamspeakers. And, ah, Time, the Sahajiya. Cult of Ecstasy."
He waggles his fingers and puts his hands back into the pockets of his cardigan.
"As I said, those who do not undergo an initiation to become part of a tradition, we call Disparates." He frowns. "I never liked this term." Anyway: "Some Disparates form Crafts, and these have their own names and Spheres for which they have an affinity, and they are very much like traditions which already exist, in some ways. In other ways, no. Other Disparates never find their tribe or they;re more comfortable, eh, owning the fact they choose not to subscribe to an ideology others share, and everyone calls them Orphans, themselves included." To Ned: "You, with drink being an instrument of focus, I would suspect would find your... Guide steering you towards the Sahajiya, but..."
A thought. He lets it go.
"Bah, you'll freeze before I have the chance to bore you to death."
Margot
Margot went and fetched coats from whatever closet or racked they were stored on and brought all three back to the living room. She was glad to do so-- she felt sly for having escaped with aggravating the Doc well enough to drive them outside for fresh air, and with only one shot under her belt too. Felt pretty proud for relying on being able to drive home tonight after all.
Once outside, Margot stood with a beanie pulled down over her head and ears and kept her hands in her coat pockets. She stood still while listening, but looked up at the sky for much of the lecture about the traditions, eyes remaining there after having been directed in the first place. She only looked back down again at the word Verbena, but that was only to make brief eye contact with their mentor before she found herself considering how the yard may look in the warmer months to come. Next, to Ned when the Doc suggested he be aligned with the Sahajiya (Cult of Ecstacy?), pondering that on her own. She hadn't stopped to think where her friend would end up, having been much too wrapped up in working her own shit out up to now.
"Look," Margot said and looked toward Sepúlveda once more. "I'm not trying to bail out on you in a hurry or anything. I appreciate what you've... y'know, helped with and all." She was, of course, referring both to the information and structure he's provided thus far, as well as bailing her out of a stupid situation past midnight on a weeknight.
"But I don't think this has to be an exclusive relationship. Like, how are we supposed to land on a Tradition without actually speaking with one of them?"
Sepúlveda
He's still looking up at the sky when Margot asks her question. He chews his lower lip and frowns before looking back over at her.
"'Exclusive'? Nah, girl, live your life. I don't do 'exclusive.'"
Says the man wearing a wedding band.
Margot
This is followed by a sigh that could be construed as long-suffering. Chances are that she's had practice at it-- they don't really know much about her history after all, do they?
"Okay, good. So how about helping me know how we're supposed to find people from the other Traditions?"
Sepúlveda
"Heh."
He scratches his beard then pats down his pockets in search of a pack of cigarettes.
"That depends. It's usually the other way around. My mentor, she--hah." They're in his hip pocket. He lights one before taking a step back from their young pink lungs and going on: "I know some people. They're not local. But Denver, she's always had Verbena and Chakravanti around. There was a Chantry here, couple years back, but the Technocrats burnt it down." A beat. A frown. "Where'd you say you're from?"
Ned
"Hold on."
He turns to look at Margot, brow perked and scrutinizing. Ned's been quiet since the shots and they had ventured out into the cold of the Denver streets. Sorting his thoughts out and forming new opinions over time. Now he's direct in interrupting the pair discussing terms.
"We talked about that." He doesn't make any bones about conversations Margot and he have had. "There is no guarantee outside of the Doc that others aren't going to try and be avidly manipulative and/or demanding. Don't you think we should at least get a basic understanding of the Traditions before courting? What about emnities between traditions or the threats the Doc is talking about? Even if he gives us names there's nothing to say those names will look at us or interact with us the same way they would with the Doc." He isn't infallible in his opinions in other words.
"Free education. It's what this is about. We're dealing with dangerous stuff and even if the Doc doesn't speak anything but Tech and Gizmos doesn't change the bare bones of what we're learning."
Margot
"Yeah, but I want to look into this Verbena thing."
Margot was quick to defend herself, and looked back to Ned with a small frown on her face. She shook her head and took her hands out of her pockets. Fished out a pair of cheap black gloves with them and pulled them on while she spoke further.
"I think we're both smart enough to know if somebody's trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Or I'd like to hope we would have an idea of it. I'm just saying, maybe a part of learning is taking more than just one class. This isn't elementary school, after all."
Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda pulls a face they've seen in meme form on the Internet before. <I> Not bad. </I> Ned oscillates between impressing and aggravating him. Both of them do. Thus is the nature of an apprentice-mentor relationship.
He lets Margot tackle this one since she brought it on herself.
Ned
"We're both smart enough to know that ghosts don't like us, unless we've broken their necks. Being able to see or smell differently doesn't make us more badass and there are things people like him-" He points directly at the Doctor "-can do that you and I don't have any clue about. Power corrupts. Can see that everyday with those who hold onto paper and metal coins and call it profit or folks who believe in imaginary all-fathers living in the sky. Power corrupts,Margot. This is a whole new field of play and a whole new ballgame and until we know the rules we-" He pauses, catching himself in an analogy spiral. A deep breath taken because he can hear the agitation in his voice...concern? Irritability? The Alcohol?
"In order to learn Calculus we have to learn how to add. Or even what numbers are. Right now I get 2 + 2, if that. You get 3 + 3 because unlike me you've seen what the...Paradox can do." A frown escapes him, turning now to face her fully, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets. "Why don't you at least let the Doc explain more about how he views the Verbena and maybe describe the individuals he has had contact with from the Tradition. Form your own thoughts off those rather than just pluck at his Rolodex and hope the next guy has a care not to push you too much on what happened..."
Cause let's face it folks. Everyone and the next door neighbour's dog, knew Margot was having some avoidance issues.
Molly
The irritability in Ned's voice was easy to notice, but Margot didn't think it unjustified. For a 19-year-old girl who was being told she was wrong and reckless, she did a pretty admirable job of not puffing up defensively or cutting in to snap back and defend herself. Her ears were hidden under her beanie so whatever they were doing was masked but her cheeks had bloomed pink patches on them that seemed very sudden to have anything to do with the cold.
All the same, by the time he was finishing up his caution with a warning of how she's bound to end up pushed for more details than she wants to give soon, especially if she goes asking around other Mages for advice, she was displeased regardless of how good a job she was doing of reigning in her own temper and pride.
"So, what, do you think all three of us are doomed for a path of corruption?" Her nose wrinkled, bothered by the idea. "Or should you and I just put down our instruments and give up now, to avoid the challenge of corruption altogether?"
Now, shaking her head, she continued. "We're lucky we found Doc, and that the first guy we wandered after turned out to be him. But come on, we can't go about this scared out of our wits and presuming the worst in everyone else. I'm not saying that we should go and sniff out an Infernalist and get their point of view on the world. I'm asking about <i>Traditions</i>, people with structure enough to be a part of something bigger, and with structure comes rules. I wouldn't be surprised if one of those rules isn't 'try not to murder the new kids or we're never going to recruit anyone again'."
Then, with a sigh as though that was settled, she glanced almost sheepishly back at the Doc. Like she just remembered that he'd asked something before she and Ned started getting into it, and that could be used as a change of subject.
"I'm from Maine."
Sepúlveda
Right now his question may seem like a non sequitur. If they come back to it it won't be until the conclusion of this train of thought if not the conclusion of the night itself. Not all of the answers he seeks present themselves on the night he asks and science has always been a lifelong endeavor for the ones who really want to change the world.
"A lot of Verbenae in Maine."
That's the end of that. In the meantime:
"We've been over this before, have we not? You two are so impatient!" He sounds amused. Charmed even in the way that abrasive men sound charmed when they aren't sure how else to sound. Like he's been watching toddlers try to navigate spiral stairs before they can even walk. "You want to shop around and learn about each of the nine traditions from someone in the tradition, this is what I'm hearing."
He pinches off the cherry of his consumed cigarette and blows out the dying breath. Pockets the filter. Maybe he'll use it for fuel later. The back yard is not littered with butts as one would expect from a habitual smoker.
"Okay, if I may interject a few minutes, I'm going to tell you a story: the Society of Ether began with the philosopher Aretus of Troy, who, it goes, became a pupil of refugees from Atlantis. Atlantis, as in the island which exists now only as an allegory of the hubris of nations, having sunk into the sea, supposedly. Supposedly, also, it had harnessed the Aether, which... I will explain later... but the society harnessed the Aether to its full potential, and then... sank. Aretus recorded what the refugees told him, and this became the Kitab al-Alacir. The Book of Ether. It survived the sacking of Troy because of Aretus's pupil Parmenesthes, and then later Aristotle, who translated Parmenesthes' recordings and from them deduced the fifth element.
"It remained forgotten in a library until the Arabs translated it, and two mages who became aware of its existence separately, Lorenzo Golo and Simon de Laurent, met together in Paris to try to decipher the book. This is where House Golo of the Order of Hermes came from. Twelfth century. The traditions are very very old, which makes them crotchety and hard to reason with or change. House Golo only lasted a couple decades because of internal problems... I'm not as familiar with the problems they had with House Verditius. The two later founded the Natural Philosophers' Guild.
"This is where the Order of Reason comes in. We know them now as the Technocratic Union, or the Technocracy. Golo and Laurent, they came into conflict with the Church during their studies, and Laurent was excommunicated for heresy, which led to the guild seeking a patron who could protect them from mortal religious authorities. Golo later died while attempting to create an airship, and the Natural Philosophers' Guild became known as the Voltarian Order sometime during the Victorian Age, and then later the Electrodyne Engineers, when the Order of Reason came together as the Technocratic Union, but there was a schism between the two when the Union moved against a Croatian named Nikolas Tesla."
He waves his hand.
"The point: throughout history you will hear stories of the Traditions and the Technocracy being or not being, and the Traditions and mortals working together or not working together. Some of the Traditions have fought against each other, in the case of the Akashayana and the Chakravanti, or the Chorus and the Society, as I just told you. The Order of Hermes has always had infighting and Houses rising and falling. There is an entire world of which you are only just becoming aware, and that's fine! There is nothing wrong with not knowing, or with not knowing what you don't know. But to go out into the world, and seek out members of these traditions, and to say to them 'We are new-Awakened, we don't know what the hell we're doing, we wish to know more before we make a decision,' you may find yourselves, ah, lucky, and those you meet will encourage this and find it all well and good. Others will not. If this is what you wish to do, to speak to others of the traditions you're interested in, I have people I can call. If not..." A beat. "Well, time. Practice. Experience. These are the things you need. You're going to get a little banged up while you're learning."
He pats his left shoulder with his right hand in an illustrative move maybe only Margot will understand. He almost lost his damned arm recently and he's been doing this for almost twenty years.
Ned
Ned's a bit flustered. Or maybe just a bit fed up as Margot rants off about where she wants to be and how she wants to go about it. Enough that his hands jam into his pockets and his frown doesn't falter or bleed away at her finalizing statement. He becomes internal for the Doc's speech, words filtering through his mood over the course of time, though many of the names and identities (Was that Indian he was speaking at some points?) go through without leaving much of an impression. Ned was never one for history lessons or classes.
It isn't until he gets tot he tail end of things, about the Technocracy and the Traditions. About how infighting happens, how there are complex politics and how claiming to be newly-awakened could potentially end badly. It might not? But Lucky was not something to count on. Ned didn't feel lucky. Exactly the opposite. It made him nod in affirmation, foot kicking gently at the edge of a rock.
"Last I checked, this thing that happened to us was a statement. Reality, or the Guide or whatever purposeful thing tapped us to wake up. It didn't hand us ultimate power and a destiny, just some new tools that I don't know how to use properly. Or even what the hell to use them for but..." And he glances at The Doc, lips and jaw tucking a little deeper into his high collar. "You said it wasn't a choice. We were sort of forced into it. If I have to deal with this non-choice thing I've got then I want to be prepared or as prepared as possible, before I go making choices or shaking hands with anyone. Faust, Gandalf or Caeser though they may be..."
Margot
Margot looked over to the Doc when he began his history lesson on his own Tradition. Enlightenment, bestowed by the people of Atlantis who had tapped something powerful and knowing, passed down through survivors accounts into transcripts and translated a few times over. They feuded with the church, but of course they did. The Church was also founded by a several-times-over translated story recalled by survivors. They were too alike to not disagree with one another.
But fighting existed within the traditions, and the point was they were trying their luck just floundering about seeking the next person who just happened to belong to a tradition that were to come along. However, the Doc knew some people, and he could put in some phone calls if they wanted. "That'd be nice," Margot added, but quieted down for him to keep going.
When he finished and Ned spoke up, Margot glanced to him, then down to the ground between the three of them as she listened. He wanted to do his own thing, feel it out before letting any doctrines influence his own personal mantra. She could respect that, but all the same...
Well, she didn't argue any further anyways. Instead, Margot looked over to the Doc and brought up, out of left field:
"I got that rabbit, like you suggested. His name is Yorick."
Sepúlveda
His eyebrows wing up. "Yorick." Not judgment. Delight. Thank you, Alcohol or innate hyperactivity or whatever it is that makes him act the way he acts. Some combination of substances and traits. The world is not black and white. "'A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.' Good name. I look forward to meeting him."
And when he inevitably dies they can use him for a practical lesson on reanimation. Brilliant.
As for Ned and his conundrum:
"May I make a suggestion?" He's going to anyway. "... actually, first, both of you." He jerks his head towards the house. "Come. I want to show you something."
They're going into the basement. Prepare yourselves.
Margot
Margot smiled a little bit at the doctor's praise in her choice of a name. She was pretty pleased with herself too, especially since her initial name for him was going to be Albus but she decided she didn't want to be shouting Albus! into a goddamn graveyard while chasing rabbits who chased spirits any time soon. Yorick seemed way more suited to such adventures.
The Doc wanted to make a suggestion, but he wanted to show it to them rather than just tell. Margot was thankful for the opportunity to go back inside where it was warm, and glanced briefly--searchingly, really, in Ned's direction. First, to give him the chance to walk in first so she could bring up the rear. Second, to meet his eyes and ask silently, with a raise of eyebrows: We okay?
They'd end up back inside and paused at a door that opened into the basement. Margot had read enough books and seen enough movies in her lifetime to know that basements were exactly where mad scientists kept shit like laboratories and floating Frankenstein projects. She made an anxious face and hesitated, but would ultimately wind up going down the stairs along with them all the same.
Ned
Ned's attentions are...not present and accounted for during their exchange. He's lost in thought and considering something distant and indistinct to this moment. When the Doc calls for them to proceed back inside, intent on showing them something, his attention half-forms to catch it, digest what's expected of him and follow along at a clip that'll take up the rear.
Margot's glance is caught and it shakes him out of the reverie, pausing slightly to motion her forward in the Doc's wake, a quick smile flashing over his features. Whatever was bothering him or running through his head, didn't seem to register around her or about her. The smile was passive, but genuine and handled with the sort of care and dismissal one attributes to getting past or over it quickly and efficiently. Guilt, hurt feelings or otherwise were...irrelevant? Or problematic?
"So Atlantis was real. That mean there's a Kraken living on the bottom of the ocean somewhere?" He chuckles, obviously a joke. Then, as the front door opens and he considers it, it forces him to pause in the threshold and stare at the Doc's back. "Seriously, is there a Kraken out there?"
Sepúlveda
They go back in through the door that leads into the kitchen but instead of heading up and into warm he shoulders open a painted wooden door that has seen better days and reaches into the darkness to fumble on an overhead light. The shoestring attached to its cord wiggles with decaying energy for a few moments and then Sepúlveda leads them into the basement.
"Kraken?" he asks. "What do I look like, a malacologist? I have no idea. Probably."
A comforting thought for their trip to the Mad Scientist's library.
The basement itself is half finished and not intended to support human life. Storage mostly. It is cold down here but dry at least. The vestibule in which they find themselves has been turned into a library. Not a mundane library like they're like to find upstairs but a mystical and scientific one. Shelves line the walls and crammed into those shelves they may very well find something useful.
Straight ahead from the stairs is another door. He indicates the door with his ring-bearing hand.
"Never try to go in there," he says. "You don't belong in there, and the door knows this, and it will electrocute you if you try to pass through it." Anyway: "This is a library. Not like you'll find at the university or the public branch. A proper arcane library. Most of it pertains to Forces and Matter and Life, you know, physical Patterns, things of that nature, but... I have been meaning to learn Correspondence, myself, as I don't know it and I feel it would be useful. You're welcome to come over and use it whenever you'd like, provided I'm... well, I suppose I can give you keys. But I think this would be a useful exercise, yeah? Learning together? Not tonight, but, eh... going forward."
Looking at Ned even if the statement pertains to both of them: "You're welcome to practice using your tools here, as well."
Margot
Downstairs everything got Margot's careful regard, from the titles scribed on the spines of books visible to the door he indicated. The door in particular got special regard, consideration for whatever quiltwork of protective magic may lay over the wood and hinges. She wondered how that may look, through a scope of Seeing Resonance. She bet that it was chilly to try to touch the knob.
He was thinking about using Correspondence, and Margot perked up. She'd been considering this recently as well, for many of the rituals in the tiny cache of books that she owned took place from afar. Concoctions and chants and what-have-you all taking place out in the woods or in the safety of your own kitchen with the wood of your table as the canvas and altar. But the target? Afar. Anywhere in the world. Curses were more insidious that way.
She had listed off to the side to look at one book in particular. She'd plucked it off the shelf and cautiously flapped the pages, making sure they too wouldn't electrocute her before curiously opening to the title page.
"I'd like to learn about distance," she chimed in thoughtfully.
Ned
Ned's face drains a little at mention of a Kraken potentially existing, thus eliminating any need or requirement for him to ever go near the ocean ever again.
Ned's attention is everywhere at once. This is an arena that he and Margot share like-minds on. He pauses with the library, eyeballs the door briefly, lip vanishing between his teeth as he considers the length and space of it. Considers where the current might actually be running from and by extension, how to get around it. Cursory, hypothetical and safe considering he'd never make the effort to try (The safest dreams are the ones never to be).
The Doc offers his warnings and indications and Ned offers nods and acceptance in return. This was his realm and landscape, afterall.
"I think exposure to information should proabably be done in tandem with someone else present. At least to begin with but...I would...be interested in exploring Distance as well. It seems like a solid extension of safety, precaution and planning." Ned doesn't follow Margot's immediate reaction to the books. He peruses but doesn't touch, reading titles to himself if any while frowning those without titles.
"...But I'd like to hear about the Boogiemen, first." He turns, eyes hardlining toward the Doc. "You said you'd explain them and really, out of all of this, I want to know what I'm going up against. Traditions fighting are one thing, at least I have a hope of understanding them from the inside someday. I get the feeling if I'm on the inside circles of the others though, it's already too late."
Sepúlveda
This library is not yet set up to support group efforts but in time it may be. Their temporary mentor is a Disciple of Matter and an Initiate of Prime. If he decided he wanted to completely redecorate the place it would take some time but it would happen.
In the meantime there are a couple of banged-up old armchairs that have absorbed another's resonance. They are not consecrated but enough magick occurred there that they can hear the echoes of elemental and temperamental forces. Ned wants to hear about the boogiemen before he goes on speaking of history and things for which the two apprentices have no frame of reference.
The Etherite flops down into one of the armchairs and begins pulling what looks like detritus from his pockets. Paper clips and bits of paper and empty pill bottles. Idle as he does so.
"Yes," he says as his eyes are on his exploration of the contents of his own pockets, "once you undergo an initiation, the rest of the tradition tends to ostracize you if you decide you don't want to sit at their table anymore." The pill bottle loses its top and he begins to pack everything else he finds into it. "The universe is not all darkness, Ned."
A small unlabeled vial of clear fluid next. He removes a dropper from the vial and drips a bit of fluid into the pill bottle. That doesn't do what he wanted it to do.
"Son of a bitch," he says without enthusiasm. Does not give up yet. "And it's good for you to ask questions, but I think you also need to just... experience things. Open yourself up. Observe. Explore. Eh? I already told you, there isn't a handbook for this. What, in your life, have you ever tried to master and found yourself able to do so overnight?"
There it goes. A couple more drops of the clear fluid and the orange bottle full of pocket-junk becomes Quintessence. Pure Quintessence. A flickering will o' wisp of energy. He blinks and sits up straighter in the chair. Energy sure but it is the stuff of the universe and it will do as it damned well pleases if he isn't careful.
"Come here. Come here, look at this." His eyes leave its morphing color to find their faces. "I'll show you a boogieman in the morning. Quintessence, the stuff reality is made of, that's what this is."
---
Denver @ 3:01PM
For the Dedicated Dicing Den is dark and full of Sepúlvedas
Sepúlveda @ 3:01PM
DAMN IT WHY DID THE ROOM CLEAR OUT I HAVE TO DO THE ROLLS AGAIN
matter 3/prime 2 grumble grumble
Roll: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 10) ( success x 1 )
Sepúlveda @ 3:01PM
Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Sepúlveda @ 3:02PM
LAST TIME HE FAILED AND THEN GOT 1 SUCCESS AT +1 DIFF FOR A RETRY FOR THE RECORD THANKS JOVE
Margot
Experience things, learn by doing, live life a little. This was what the Doc was trying to tell them now. They could stay there and talk and read until they were blue in the face and red in the eyes, but doing was how they really learned things. Margot had to confess, she learned more about ghosts and what their binding laws of existence may be by her experiences in the frat house than she did from her two books on the subject tucked away onto a bookshelf at home.
When the Doc started messing with things including a dropper and a vial of fluid, Margot stilled and watched carefully. Eyebrows lifted and eyes widened when the pill bottle began to glow.
When bade forward, Margot moved to the armchairs as well and took the bottle so she could peer inside. Offered it to Ned after she'd taken a good look and swished it around just a little bit.
"It looks like Energy, and Everything. What would happen if we touched that? Or drank it?"
Ned
Once again, Ned is the more hesitant of them. He doesn't immediately approach the glowing container when offered for perusal but studies it from what must be a safe distance. Carefully, at that. Reality as they knew it was dependent on a number of variables and laws that before the awakening, they didn't fully grasp. That new rules had just been introduced contradicting the current laws or even subverting them made the foundations brand nee. New legs, new equilibrium and new respects.
Operate like you're an infant, in need of education and process recognition.
Glowing pill bottles defined itself as potential hazard before they did actual benefit. The Doc's assurance was not proof of a law as much as it was assurance from a parent you could do this.
Reality vs assurance. Caution proved them both with minimal risk.
So Ned keeps his distance, sticking behind Margot to observe how it interacted with her and listened as she questioned. His frown had abated slightly in time for him to voice a single question of his own.
"What can be done with it?"
Sepúlveda
"When you begin studying Prime, you can perceive and channel Quintessence. You'll find it in Nodes, Tass, Wonders, and Effects. You can use it to read others' resonance signatures, and absorb it into your own Pattern. As you learn to control Prime energies, you can divert it. Conjure new physical Patterns from thin air or, ah, enhance existing items so that they are stronger than they were. For protection and destruction both."
He considers the contents of the bottle. Shifts it a bit in his hand so that the flickering light washes against the inside of the plastic and then consumes it. The plastic disappears. Now the light is resting in the palm of his hand.
"It won't hurt you." As if Ned needs reassurance. He stands and holds out his palm if either of them want to try and touch it. "If you were to poke it, hold it in your hands, drink it, nothing would happen if you are not schooled in the Sphere. It would go back into the Tellurian. Reality. The Tellurian is everything. This includes our world, the spirit world, the world of dreams. You have to know what you're doing with it for it to be dangerous, eh?"
Margot
A short glance was cast over her shoulder when Ned came up behind her to peer past at the Quintessence. Margot stared with wonder as the pill bottle vanished, eaten up by the light that it contained. The sight of the little glowing orb in their teacher's hand had the young witch all wrapped up. She leaned forward, one hand on one knee, and reached out slowly with the other hand with her index finger extended. Paused just short of touching it and looked back up to Sepulveda.
"So if I touched it while you were holding it, it would just go back to a bottle filled with pocket refuge?"
She watched it thoughtfully, and added: "I've sensed this before. Went for a hike from one of the rest stops when I was driving out here, and I think I found one of those places you were talking about? I thought I sensed it."
[ We all know Mages will sit and talk about spheres and resonance and all of that mumbo jumbo for hours so let's just fade this right now.]
Magic and science have been at odds with each other since the dawn of time. She's not wrong in the presumption that in order to learn the ways of her own craft she cannot learn from someone whose paradigm does not prescribe to primal ways of doing things. Not when his entire worldview revolves around the concept of progress.
No more mescal for the two of them. Him either. He's wound up enough as it is.
"Come," he says. "Come come, get your coats on."
If they're going to talk about dusty things like history and politics he wants to be outside while they do it. Pictionary and Astrophysics. They can exist in the same sentence sometimes.
Sepúlveda waits for the kids to collect their coats and leads them through the kitchen and out the back door. Slips his feet into a pair of banged-up old-man loafers on the way out into the yard and cloudless sky above.
His breath plumes. His hands go into the pockets. His eyes lift for theirs to do the same.
"So long as man has known darkness he has tried to light it. Yeah? And so long as the Awakened have known of others, they have tried to find ways to coexist. Some of those ways involve war. You ask two Awakened to describe, eh, say--"
He holds up a hand to indicate a constellation to the west. Thin fingers frame it in a thought he does not vocalize and then drag themselves down his beard.
"Well, there is the problem. Humans have no universal language. Never have. Possibly never will. Uniformity is not the ideal, eh? That we have differences, this is how we have evlution of ideas. The Traditions, this is the faction into which you two have found yourselves Awakening. There are others. The Technocracy is one of them. We fought in a very long war that ended when the Traditions lost in the year 2000. Then you have Nephandi, Marauders, Infernalists... people you never want to encounter. Their Avatars have inverted, or they are divorced from reality, or they have made deals with demons."
He is getting off track again.
"We'll come back to them later. Everyone you meet will wish to know if you belong to a tradition, and which one. Some ask because they are looking for their own tribe, so to speak, and others are paranoid, and they ask because they think if you are not with us, you are against us, and this is a crazy way of thinking, but it comes from a place of powerlessness, you understand. This is why I told you, when we first met, you were to tell those who ask that you are students of Doctor Sepúlveda of the Society of Ether, because I am known to the community for seventeen years and have a reputation and can vouch for you until such time you are initiated, and so on and so forth."
Though he clears his throat he does not give them time yet to interject.
"The Traditions make up what we call the Council of Nine. Nine Traditions for nine Spheres." He begins to count them off on his fingers. "For Correspondence, the Virtual Adepts. For Entropy, the Chakravanti. Euthanatos, we used to call them. They don't like that term much, not all of them believe their calling involves administration of the Good Death. Forces belongs to the Order of Hermes, but they have many Houses within their Traditiion and some of them specialize in other Spheres and I have heard rumors--" A breath. "I have heard rumors. Life, the Verbena." A glance to Margot. "Matter, the Society of Ether. Obviously the most intelligent and most talented and most good-looking of all the traditions, so we are, ah, difficult to join, without having read the Kitab al-Alacir before Awakening. Mind, the Akashayana. Akashic Brotherhood, but they have many women in their ranks, so 'Brotherhood' is not accurate. Prime, the Celestial Chorus. Spirit, the Kha'vadi .Dreamspeakers. And, ah, Time, the Sahajiya. Cult of Ecstasy."
He waggles his fingers and puts his hands back into the pockets of his cardigan.
"As I said, those who do not undergo an initiation to become part of a tradition, we call Disparates." He frowns. "I never liked this term." Anyway: "Some Disparates form Crafts, and these have their own names and Spheres for which they have an affinity, and they are very much like traditions which already exist, in some ways. In other ways, no. Other Disparates never find their tribe or they;re more comfortable, eh, owning the fact they choose not to subscribe to an ideology others share, and everyone calls them Orphans, themselves included." To Ned: "You, with drink being an instrument of focus, I would suspect would find your... Guide steering you towards the Sahajiya, but..."
A thought. He lets it go.
"Bah, you'll freeze before I have the chance to bore you to death."
Margot
Margot went and fetched coats from whatever closet or racked they were stored on and brought all three back to the living room. She was glad to do so-- she felt sly for having escaped with aggravating the Doc well enough to drive them outside for fresh air, and with only one shot under her belt too. Felt pretty proud for relying on being able to drive home tonight after all.
Once outside, Margot stood with a beanie pulled down over her head and ears and kept her hands in her coat pockets. She stood still while listening, but looked up at the sky for much of the lecture about the traditions, eyes remaining there after having been directed in the first place. She only looked back down again at the word Verbena, but that was only to make brief eye contact with their mentor before she found herself considering how the yard may look in the warmer months to come. Next, to Ned when the Doc suggested he be aligned with the Sahajiya (Cult of Ecstacy?), pondering that on her own. She hadn't stopped to think where her friend would end up, having been much too wrapped up in working her own shit out up to now.
"Look," Margot said and looked toward Sepúlveda once more. "I'm not trying to bail out on you in a hurry or anything. I appreciate what you've... y'know, helped with and all." She was, of course, referring both to the information and structure he's provided thus far, as well as bailing her out of a stupid situation past midnight on a weeknight.
"But I don't think this has to be an exclusive relationship. Like, how are we supposed to land on a Tradition without actually speaking with one of them?"
Sepúlveda
He's still looking up at the sky when Margot asks her question. He chews his lower lip and frowns before looking back over at her.
"'Exclusive'? Nah, girl, live your life. I don't do 'exclusive.'"
Says the man wearing a wedding band.
Margot
This is followed by a sigh that could be construed as long-suffering. Chances are that she's had practice at it-- they don't really know much about her history after all, do they?
"Okay, good. So how about helping me know how we're supposed to find people from the other Traditions?"
Sepúlveda
"Heh."
He scratches his beard then pats down his pockets in search of a pack of cigarettes.
"That depends. It's usually the other way around. My mentor, she--hah." They're in his hip pocket. He lights one before taking a step back from their young pink lungs and going on: "I know some people. They're not local. But Denver, she's always had Verbena and Chakravanti around. There was a Chantry here, couple years back, but the Technocrats burnt it down." A beat. A frown. "Where'd you say you're from?"
Ned
"Hold on."
He turns to look at Margot, brow perked and scrutinizing. Ned's been quiet since the shots and they had ventured out into the cold of the Denver streets. Sorting his thoughts out and forming new opinions over time. Now he's direct in interrupting the pair discussing terms.
"We talked about that." He doesn't make any bones about conversations Margot and he have had. "There is no guarantee outside of the Doc that others aren't going to try and be avidly manipulative and/or demanding. Don't you think we should at least get a basic understanding of the Traditions before courting? What about emnities between traditions or the threats the Doc is talking about? Even if he gives us names there's nothing to say those names will look at us or interact with us the same way they would with the Doc." He isn't infallible in his opinions in other words.
"Free education. It's what this is about. We're dealing with dangerous stuff and even if the Doc doesn't speak anything but Tech and Gizmos doesn't change the bare bones of what we're learning."
Margot
"Yeah, but I want to look into this Verbena thing."
Margot was quick to defend herself, and looked back to Ned with a small frown on her face. She shook her head and took her hands out of her pockets. Fished out a pair of cheap black gloves with them and pulled them on while she spoke further.
"I think we're both smart enough to know if somebody's trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Or I'd like to hope we would have an idea of it. I'm just saying, maybe a part of learning is taking more than just one class. This isn't elementary school, after all."
Sepúlveda
Sepúlveda pulls a face they've seen in meme form on the Internet before. <I> Not bad. </I> Ned oscillates between impressing and aggravating him. Both of them do. Thus is the nature of an apprentice-mentor relationship.
He lets Margot tackle this one since she brought it on herself.
Ned
"We're both smart enough to know that ghosts don't like us, unless we've broken their necks. Being able to see or smell differently doesn't make us more badass and there are things people like him-" He points directly at the Doctor "-can do that you and I don't have any clue about. Power corrupts. Can see that everyday with those who hold onto paper and metal coins and call it profit or folks who believe in imaginary all-fathers living in the sky. Power corrupts,Margot. This is a whole new field of play and a whole new ballgame and until we know the rules we-" He pauses, catching himself in an analogy spiral. A deep breath taken because he can hear the agitation in his voice...concern? Irritability? The Alcohol?
"In order to learn Calculus we have to learn how to add. Or even what numbers are. Right now I get 2 + 2, if that. You get 3 + 3 because unlike me you've seen what the...Paradox can do." A frown escapes him, turning now to face her fully, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets. "Why don't you at least let the Doc explain more about how he views the Verbena and maybe describe the individuals he has had contact with from the Tradition. Form your own thoughts off those rather than just pluck at his Rolodex and hope the next guy has a care not to push you too much on what happened..."
Cause let's face it folks. Everyone and the next door neighbour's dog, knew Margot was having some avoidance issues.
Molly
The irritability in Ned's voice was easy to notice, but Margot didn't think it unjustified. For a 19-year-old girl who was being told she was wrong and reckless, she did a pretty admirable job of not puffing up defensively or cutting in to snap back and defend herself. Her ears were hidden under her beanie so whatever they were doing was masked but her cheeks had bloomed pink patches on them that seemed very sudden to have anything to do with the cold.
All the same, by the time he was finishing up his caution with a warning of how she's bound to end up pushed for more details than she wants to give soon, especially if she goes asking around other Mages for advice, she was displeased regardless of how good a job she was doing of reigning in her own temper and pride.
"So, what, do you think all three of us are doomed for a path of corruption?" Her nose wrinkled, bothered by the idea. "Or should you and I just put down our instruments and give up now, to avoid the challenge of corruption altogether?"
Now, shaking her head, she continued. "We're lucky we found Doc, and that the first guy we wandered after turned out to be him. But come on, we can't go about this scared out of our wits and presuming the worst in everyone else. I'm not saying that we should go and sniff out an Infernalist and get their point of view on the world. I'm asking about <i>Traditions</i>, people with structure enough to be a part of something bigger, and with structure comes rules. I wouldn't be surprised if one of those rules isn't 'try not to murder the new kids or we're never going to recruit anyone again'."
Then, with a sigh as though that was settled, she glanced almost sheepishly back at the Doc. Like she just remembered that he'd asked something before she and Ned started getting into it, and that could be used as a change of subject.
"I'm from Maine."
Sepúlveda
Right now his question may seem like a non sequitur. If they come back to it it won't be until the conclusion of this train of thought if not the conclusion of the night itself. Not all of the answers he seeks present themselves on the night he asks and science has always been a lifelong endeavor for the ones who really want to change the world.
"A lot of Verbenae in Maine."
That's the end of that. In the meantime:
"We've been over this before, have we not? You two are so impatient!" He sounds amused. Charmed even in the way that abrasive men sound charmed when they aren't sure how else to sound. Like he's been watching toddlers try to navigate spiral stairs before they can even walk. "You want to shop around and learn about each of the nine traditions from someone in the tradition, this is what I'm hearing."
He pinches off the cherry of his consumed cigarette and blows out the dying breath. Pockets the filter. Maybe he'll use it for fuel later. The back yard is not littered with butts as one would expect from a habitual smoker.
"Okay, if I may interject a few minutes, I'm going to tell you a story: the Society of Ether began with the philosopher Aretus of Troy, who, it goes, became a pupil of refugees from Atlantis. Atlantis, as in the island which exists now only as an allegory of the hubris of nations, having sunk into the sea, supposedly. Supposedly, also, it had harnessed the Aether, which... I will explain later... but the society harnessed the Aether to its full potential, and then... sank. Aretus recorded what the refugees told him, and this became the Kitab al-Alacir. The Book of Ether. It survived the sacking of Troy because of Aretus's pupil Parmenesthes, and then later Aristotle, who translated Parmenesthes' recordings and from them deduced the fifth element.
"It remained forgotten in a library until the Arabs translated it, and two mages who became aware of its existence separately, Lorenzo Golo and Simon de Laurent, met together in Paris to try to decipher the book. This is where House Golo of the Order of Hermes came from. Twelfth century. The traditions are very very old, which makes them crotchety and hard to reason with or change. House Golo only lasted a couple decades because of internal problems... I'm not as familiar with the problems they had with House Verditius. The two later founded the Natural Philosophers' Guild.
"This is where the Order of Reason comes in. We know them now as the Technocratic Union, or the Technocracy. Golo and Laurent, they came into conflict with the Church during their studies, and Laurent was excommunicated for heresy, which led to the guild seeking a patron who could protect them from mortal religious authorities. Golo later died while attempting to create an airship, and the Natural Philosophers' Guild became known as the Voltarian Order sometime during the Victorian Age, and then later the Electrodyne Engineers, when the Order of Reason came together as the Technocratic Union, but there was a schism between the two when the Union moved against a Croatian named Nikolas Tesla."
He waves his hand.
"The point: throughout history you will hear stories of the Traditions and the Technocracy being or not being, and the Traditions and mortals working together or not working together. Some of the Traditions have fought against each other, in the case of the Akashayana and the Chakravanti, or the Chorus and the Society, as I just told you. The Order of Hermes has always had infighting and Houses rising and falling. There is an entire world of which you are only just becoming aware, and that's fine! There is nothing wrong with not knowing, or with not knowing what you don't know. But to go out into the world, and seek out members of these traditions, and to say to them 'We are new-Awakened, we don't know what the hell we're doing, we wish to know more before we make a decision,' you may find yourselves, ah, lucky, and those you meet will encourage this and find it all well and good. Others will not. If this is what you wish to do, to speak to others of the traditions you're interested in, I have people I can call. If not..." A beat. "Well, time. Practice. Experience. These are the things you need. You're going to get a little banged up while you're learning."
He pats his left shoulder with his right hand in an illustrative move maybe only Margot will understand. He almost lost his damned arm recently and he's been doing this for almost twenty years.
Ned
Ned's a bit flustered. Or maybe just a bit fed up as Margot rants off about where she wants to be and how she wants to go about it. Enough that his hands jam into his pockets and his frown doesn't falter or bleed away at her finalizing statement. He becomes internal for the Doc's speech, words filtering through his mood over the course of time, though many of the names and identities (Was that Indian he was speaking at some points?) go through without leaving much of an impression. Ned was never one for history lessons or classes.
It isn't until he gets tot he tail end of things, about the Technocracy and the Traditions. About how infighting happens, how there are complex politics and how claiming to be newly-awakened could potentially end badly. It might not? But Lucky was not something to count on. Ned didn't feel lucky. Exactly the opposite. It made him nod in affirmation, foot kicking gently at the edge of a rock.
"Last I checked, this thing that happened to us was a statement. Reality, or the Guide or whatever purposeful thing tapped us to wake up. It didn't hand us ultimate power and a destiny, just some new tools that I don't know how to use properly. Or even what the hell to use them for but..." And he glances at The Doc, lips and jaw tucking a little deeper into his high collar. "You said it wasn't a choice. We were sort of forced into it. If I have to deal with this non-choice thing I've got then I want to be prepared or as prepared as possible, before I go making choices or shaking hands with anyone. Faust, Gandalf or Caeser though they may be..."
Margot
Margot looked over to the Doc when he began his history lesson on his own Tradition. Enlightenment, bestowed by the people of Atlantis who had tapped something powerful and knowing, passed down through survivors accounts into transcripts and translated a few times over. They feuded with the church, but of course they did. The Church was also founded by a several-times-over translated story recalled by survivors. They were too alike to not disagree with one another.
But fighting existed within the traditions, and the point was they were trying their luck just floundering about seeking the next person who just happened to belong to a tradition that were to come along. However, the Doc knew some people, and he could put in some phone calls if they wanted. "That'd be nice," Margot added, but quieted down for him to keep going.
When he finished and Ned spoke up, Margot glanced to him, then down to the ground between the three of them as she listened. He wanted to do his own thing, feel it out before letting any doctrines influence his own personal mantra. She could respect that, but all the same...
Well, she didn't argue any further anyways. Instead, Margot looked over to the Doc and brought up, out of left field:
"I got that rabbit, like you suggested. His name is Yorick."
Sepúlveda
His eyebrows wing up. "Yorick." Not judgment. Delight. Thank you, Alcohol or innate hyperactivity or whatever it is that makes him act the way he acts. Some combination of substances and traits. The world is not black and white. "'A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.' Good name. I look forward to meeting him."
And when he inevitably dies they can use him for a practical lesson on reanimation. Brilliant.
As for Ned and his conundrum:
"May I make a suggestion?" He's going to anyway. "... actually, first, both of you." He jerks his head towards the house. "Come. I want to show you something."
They're going into the basement. Prepare yourselves.
Margot
Margot smiled a little bit at the doctor's praise in her choice of a name. She was pretty pleased with herself too, especially since her initial name for him was going to be Albus but she decided she didn't want to be shouting Albus! into a goddamn graveyard while chasing rabbits who chased spirits any time soon. Yorick seemed way more suited to such adventures.
The Doc wanted to make a suggestion, but he wanted to show it to them rather than just tell. Margot was thankful for the opportunity to go back inside where it was warm, and glanced briefly--searchingly, really, in Ned's direction. First, to give him the chance to walk in first so she could bring up the rear. Second, to meet his eyes and ask silently, with a raise of eyebrows: We okay?
They'd end up back inside and paused at a door that opened into the basement. Margot had read enough books and seen enough movies in her lifetime to know that basements were exactly where mad scientists kept shit like laboratories and floating Frankenstein projects. She made an anxious face and hesitated, but would ultimately wind up going down the stairs along with them all the same.
Ned
Ned's attentions are...not present and accounted for during their exchange. He's lost in thought and considering something distant and indistinct to this moment. When the Doc calls for them to proceed back inside, intent on showing them something, his attention half-forms to catch it, digest what's expected of him and follow along at a clip that'll take up the rear.
Margot's glance is caught and it shakes him out of the reverie, pausing slightly to motion her forward in the Doc's wake, a quick smile flashing over his features. Whatever was bothering him or running through his head, didn't seem to register around her or about her. The smile was passive, but genuine and handled with the sort of care and dismissal one attributes to getting past or over it quickly and efficiently. Guilt, hurt feelings or otherwise were...irrelevant? Or problematic?
"So Atlantis was real. That mean there's a Kraken living on the bottom of the ocean somewhere?" He chuckles, obviously a joke. Then, as the front door opens and he considers it, it forces him to pause in the threshold and stare at the Doc's back. "Seriously, is there a Kraken out there?"
Sepúlveda
They go back in through the door that leads into the kitchen but instead of heading up and into warm he shoulders open a painted wooden door that has seen better days and reaches into the darkness to fumble on an overhead light. The shoestring attached to its cord wiggles with decaying energy for a few moments and then Sepúlveda leads them into the basement.
"Kraken?" he asks. "What do I look like, a malacologist? I have no idea. Probably."
A comforting thought for their trip to the Mad Scientist's library.
The basement itself is half finished and not intended to support human life. Storage mostly. It is cold down here but dry at least. The vestibule in which they find themselves has been turned into a library. Not a mundane library like they're like to find upstairs but a mystical and scientific one. Shelves line the walls and crammed into those shelves they may very well find something useful.
Straight ahead from the stairs is another door. He indicates the door with his ring-bearing hand.
"Never try to go in there," he says. "You don't belong in there, and the door knows this, and it will electrocute you if you try to pass through it." Anyway: "This is a library. Not like you'll find at the university or the public branch. A proper arcane library. Most of it pertains to Forces and Matter and Life, you know, physical Patterns, things of that nature, but... I have been meaning to learn Correspondence, myself, as I don't know it and I feel it would be useful. You're welcome to come over and use it whenever you'd like, provided I'm... well, I suppose I can give you keys. But I think this would be a useful exercise, yeah? Learning together? Not tonight, but, eh... going forward."
Looking at Ned even if the statement pertains to both of them: "You're welcome to practice using your tools here, as well."
Margot
Downstairs everything got Margot's careful regard, from the titles scribed on the spines of books visible to the door he indicated. The door in particular got special regard, consideration for whatever quiltwork of protective magic may lay over the wood and hinges. She wondered how that may look, through a scope of Seeing Resonance. She bet that it was chilly to try to touch the knob.
He was thinking about using Correspondence, and Margot perked up. She'd been considering this recently as well, for many of the rituals in the tiny cache of books that she owned took place from afar. Concoctions and chants and what-have-you all taking place out in the woods or in the safety of your own kitchen with the wood of your table as the canvas and altar. But the target? Afar. Anywhere in the world. Curses were more insidious that way.
She had listed off to the side to look at one book in particular. She'd plucked it off the shelf and cautiously flapped the pages, making sure they too wouldn't electrocute her before curiously opening to the title page.
"I'd like to learn about distance," she chimed in thoughtfully.
Ned
Ned's face drains a little at mention of a Kraken potentially existing, thus eliminating any need or requirement for him to ever go near the ocean ever again.
Ned's attention is everywhere at once. This is an arena that he and Margot share like-minds on. He pauses with the library, eyeballs the door briefly, lip vanishing between his teeth as he considers the length and space of it. Considers where the current might actually be running from and by extension, how to get around it. Cursory, hypothetical and safe considering he'd never make the effort to try (The safest dreams are the ones never to be).
The Doc offers his warnings and indications and Ned offers nods and acceptance in return. This was his realm and landscape, afterall.
"I think exposure to information should proabably be done in tandem with someone else present. At least to begin with but...I would...be interested in exploring Distance as well. It seems like a solid extension of safety, precaution and planning." Ned doesn't follow Margot's immediate reaction to the books. He peruses but doesn't touch, reading titles to himself if any while frowning those without titles.
"...But I'd like to hear about the Boogiemen, first." He turns, eyes hardlining toward the Doc. "You said you'd explain them and really, out of all of this, I want to know what I'm going up against. Traditions fighting are one thing, at least I have a hope of understanding them from the inside someday. I get the feeling if I'm on the inside circles of the others though, it's already too late."
Sepúlveda
This library is not yet set up to support group efforts but in time it may be. Their temporary mentor is a Disciple of Matter and an Initiate of Prime. If he decided he wanted to completely redecorate the place it would take some time but it would happen.
In the meantime there are a couple of banged-up old armchairs that have absorbed another's resonance. They are not consecrated but enough magick occurred there that they can hear the echoes of elemental and temperamental forces. Ned wants to hear about the boogiemen before he goes on speaking of history and things for which the two apprentices have no frame of reference.
The Etherite flops down into one of the armchairs and begins pulling what looks like detritus from his pockets. Paper clips and bits of paper and empty pill bottles. Idle as he does so.
"Yes," he says as his eyes are on his exploration of the contents of his own pockets, "once you undergo an initiation, the rest of the tradition tends to ostracize you if you decide you don't want to sit at their table anymore." The pill bottle loses its top and he begins to pack everything else he finds into it. "The universe is not all darkness, Ned."
A small unlabeled vial of clear fluid next. He removes a dropper from the vial and drips a bit of fluid into the pill bottle. That doesn't do what he wanted it to do.
"Son of a bitch," he says without enthusiasm. Does not give up yet. "And it's good for you to ask questions, but I think you also need to just... experience things. Open yourself up. Observe. Explore. Eh? I already told you, there isn't a handbook for this. What, in your life, have you ever tried to master and found yourself able to do so overnight?"
There it goes. A couple more drops of the clear fluid and the orange bottle full of pocket-junk becomes Quintessence. Pure Quintessence. A flickering will o' wisp of energy. He blinks and sits up straighter in the chair. Energy sure but it is the stuff of the universe and it will do as it damned well pleases if he isn't careful.
"Come here. Come here, look at this." His eyes leave its morphing color to find their faces. "I'll show you a boogieman in the morning. Quintessence, the stuff reality is made of, that's what this is."
---
Denver @ 3:01PM
For the Dedicated Dicing Den is dark and full of Sepúlvedas
Sepúlveda @ 3:01PM
DAMN IT WHY DID THE ROOM CLEAR OUT I HAVE TO DO THE ROLLS AGAIN
matter 3/prime 2 grumble grumble
Roll: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 10) ( success x 1 )
Sepúlveda @ 3:01PM
Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Sepúlveda @ 3:02PM
LAST TIME HE FAILED AND THEN GOT 1 SUCCESS AT +1 DIFF FOR A RETRY FOR THE RECORD THANKS JOVE
Margot
Experience things, learn by doing, live life a little. This was what the Doc was trying to tell them now. They could stay there and talk and read until they were blue in the face and red in the eyes, but doing was how they really learned things. Margot had to confess, she learned more about ghosts and what their binding laws of existence may be by her experiences in the frat house than she did from her two books on the subject tucked away onto a bookshelf at home.
When the Doc started messing with things including a dropper and a vial of fluid, Margot stilled and watched carefully. Eyebrows lifted and eyes widened when the pill bottle began to glow.
When bade forward, Margot moved to the armchairs as well and took the bottle so she could peer inside. Offered it to Ned after she'd taken a good look and swished it around just a little bit.
"It looks like Energy, and Everything. What would happen if we touched that? Or drank it?"
Ned
Once again, Ned is the more hesitant of them. He doesn't immediately approach the glowing container when offered for perusal but studies it from what must be a safe distance. Carefully, at that. Reality as they knew it was dependent on a number of variables and laws that before the awakening, they didn't fully grasp. That new rules had just been introduced contradicting the current laws or even subverting them made the foundations brand nee. New legs, new equilibrium and new respects.
Operate like you're an infant, in need of education and process recognition.
Glowing pill bottles defined itself as potential hazard before they did actual benefit. The Doc's assurance was not proof of a law as much as it was assurance from a parent you could do this.
Reality vs assurance. Caution proved them both with minimal risk.
So Ned keeps his distance, sticking behind Margot to observe how it interacted with her and listened as she questioned. His frown had abated slightly in time for him to voice a single question of his own.
"What can be done with it?"
Sepúlveda
"When you begin studying Prime, you can perceive and channel Quintessence. You'll find it in Nodes, Tass, Wonders, and Effects. You can use it to read others' resonance signatures, and absorb it into your own Pattern. As you learn to control Prime energies, you can divert it. Conjure new physical Patterns from thin air or, ah, enhance existing items so that they are stronger than they were. For protection and destruction both."
He considers the contents of the bottle. Shifts it a bit in his hand so that the flickering light washes against the inside of the plastic and then consumes it. The plastic disappears. Now the light is resting in the palm of his hand.
"It won't hurt you." As if Ned needs reassurance. He stands and holds out his palm if either of them want to try and touch it. "If you were to poke it, hold it in your hands, drink it, nothing would happen if you are not schooled in the Sphere. It would go back into the Tellurian. Reality. The Tellurian is everything. This includes our world, the spirit world, the world of dreams. You have to know what you're doing with it for it to be dangerous, eh?"
Margot
A short glance was cast over her shoulder when Ned came up behind her to peer past at the Quintessence. Margot stared with wonder as the pill bottle vanished, eaten up by the light that it contained. The sight of the little glowing orb in their teacher's hand had the young witch all wrapped up. She leaned forward, one hand on one knee, and reached out slowly with the other hand with her index finger extended. Paused just short of touching it and looked back up to Sepulveda.
"So if I touched it while you were holding it, it would just go back to a bottle filled with pocket refuge?"
She watched it thoughtfully, and added: "I've sensed this before. Went for a hike from one of the rest stops when I was driving out here, and I think I found one of those places you were talking about? I thought I sensed it."
[ We all know Mages will sit and talk about spheres and resonance and all of that mumbo jumbo for hours so let's just fade this right now.]
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)