Margot
The day had been sunny and the air still, free of stiff breezes or blustery winds to steal the warmth from the sun-soaked earth. Many of the city's people had rejoiced and doffed their jackets and hats in anticipation of the even warmer weekend to come. This Friday afternoon Washington Park was full to the brim with life-- joggers, people on a friendly stroll, the playground areas swarming with children and parents alike, college kids and dogs out in the grass playing frisbee and reading books.
Margot Travers was one of many bodies here today, but quite unlike the rest. Not in any way that someone could put their thumb down on, though. She was dressed no differently than other joggers that had come here for their run-- in a black exercise tank top and dark gray sweatpants designed particularly for exercise (as opposed to lounging), with a sweater tied about her waist by its arms and her brown hair back in a short ponytail. She wasn't behaving any differently, sitting on the edge of a commemorative statue for some historical figure in the founding of Denver, Colorado (there were certainly many Anglo-Saxon men to be thanked for this city's existance). There were a few tacos she'd purchased from a food cart on the ledge next to her, one in her hand that she was eating carefully so the contents wouldn't spill out onto her shoes.
But there was something, and oh was it unsettling.
Sleepers may not notice it, but people whose eyes were truly Opened would take notice. Around that statue, seeping into the air and creeping out like vines and roots aiming to overtake, was a sense of visceral gore and guts and rot. Carnage. Like a battlefield was trying to seep its way in through the Gauntlet and stain the Physical world with deep crimson.
The Awakened who were quite Aware would be able to figure out that the clinging discomfort wasn't coming from the Spirit World, but rather resonating from the petite girl that sat by the foot of a founding father.
Silas
It's somewhere on the cusp of late afternoon and early evening and Denver is experiencing a heat wave. It is warm, and so of course Silas is outside enjoying it. He's completed his run, and examined the flower gardens (and taken mental notes), and now he's rounding up near the statue where Margot sits and eats. He wears comfortable work out clothes - nothing fancy here - and his visible arms are covered with tattoos. He's a friendly sort, offering nods and smiles for anyone who's near enough to bother with.
More important, perhaps, than the way he looks or even his attitudes is the way he feels, the impressions he gives off. He is predatory, feral, and calls to mind old gods and old pacts. Some say, in fact, he seems as if there should be horns affixed to his brow - and Seeming was ever an interesting thing, wasn't it? He also seems radiant and tempestuous, for those with fine-honed enough senses to feel it.
He is also usually quite aware, and so perhaps he has an excuse for greeting Margot with a smile, this thirty-something man with a notebook tucked under his arm, with nice trainers and normal workout clothes. Or perhaps he's just a smiley, greeting sort.
"Hello. I've found, since arriving here, that Denver has some of the best tacos with which I've been acquainted. Do you find the same?"
His accent is vaguely English and vaguely southern hills and vaguely something else entirely. His eyes are the blue of sky on a clear spring day, not that different than today. His skin is the darker white of someone of north western European ancestry who spends a lot of time outside, and his hair is a nice chestnut brown. And there, we have both the appearance and the Seeming of Silas.
Silas
[And here's the Awareness roll that I meant to attach to that post. Oops. Because rolling dice gives justification for upping stats eventually, right? Something like that.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Margot
[apprentice awareness activate!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Margot
Margot was a girl simultaneously wrapped up in her own world and watchful of those who walked alongside it. She wasn't expectantly glancing about with the air of someone waiting for a friend or partner to join them, and was not lost in the screen of a phone as somebody killing time may be either. She was focused on her food, and glanced up only every so often when somebody walked by near enough to catch in her peripherals and warrant checking.
Once when she glanced up to check the movement of a person passing by, that person turned out to be a man with tattoos on his arms and a sense that something was bright and beaming from within him-- regal? no, not quite the same, but it was more than just a glow under the skin from sun and sweat. This time the person didn't pass by, but instead smiled and greeted her directly.
For her part, Margot appeared taken aback. She gave the impression of a small owl, ever-watchful with big eyes that tended to look that much bigger if they were widened even a little (as they were now, with surprise). She was built small, with a young face that would betray the fact that she just couldn't possibly be old enough to buy a drink legally. She'd stared up at Silas for a moment, like she was trying to figure out what could have possessed him to approach, then swallowed what food she had in her mouth.
"Uhhh," she vocalized in a voice small and light enough to match her frame. "I guess?"
No immediately noticable accent beyond American, so perhaps she was a local. She was looking at Silas like he was a puzzle. Like she was sorting out whether she should be preparing for fight-or-flight or if she should recognize him as an ally she'd already been introduced to. It made for a incredibly suspicious cast to her expression.
After a few moments she cleared her throat and lowered the partially-eaten taco she was holding so it was near her lap instead of in front of her face awaiting the next bite. "I'm sorry, I don't think I know you. I mean, I think I know why you came over here, I can feel that much, but..." She trailed off, cleared her throat again, and blushed just a little. Poor social tertiary.
"I'm Margot."
Silas
"I'm Silas," offers the fellow whose social skills are only surpassed by his physical. When he moves, he stalks - a hunter on the prowl. "And no, we don't know each other yet. Though I suspect we have acquaintances in common." His mode of speech is at least moderately archaic, though that's hardly uncommon among their social circles; at least he stops short of a full introduction to a stranger in a Sleeper-public place. But then, she is fairly obviously younger than he. Perhaps he's making assumptions as to her experience or knowledge levels.
"I've only been here a few weeks - since the beginning of March. Haven't met many people yet, though a few I have are particularly interesting. A woman called Grace, one called Sera, and one called Pen? And a gentleman called Nick." Other, deeper ties are saved for last. "And Arianna. Do you know any of them?"
It's curious, this, and Silas watches Margot's face closely, subtly. For all intents and purposes, this could simply be casual conversation - hell, maybe it is. Maybe he's looking for patterns where there is only coincidence.
Margot
Poor Margot. Silas could see right away that he put the girl in a perdicament, because the conflict was worn plain on her face while she struggled with on-the-spot decision making.
He could be genuine. He seems pretty genuine. But what if he only just seems genuine?
"I...."
Oh Christ now he's just staring say something.
"I do..., " she said slowly and cautiously. Her brows were stitched together-- the typical paranoia of an Apprentice, worn on a person who was dispositioned to worry already. Finally, she took a breath, exhaled, and came out and said:
"Look, I'm sorry, but I'm having a real Stranger Danger moment right now-- you could be after any of them, or have a grudge against one of them." Given what she's seen, she figured it couldn't be that uncommon. "You're not going to blow up reality at me because I know any of them, right?"
Silas
It's an effort to school his face away from the amusement he feels; he's not that much older than Margot in that a decade isn't so terribly long, and he remembers how he would have felt were someone to laugh at him in such a way when he was in his late teens or early twenties. So he's careful in his answer, both wording and tone.
"I assure you, I won't. Arianna is a childhood friend, and I've only recently made the acquaintance of the rest." The way his voice lingers on Arianna's name hints at more than a childhood friendship, but not at what there is between them - nothing more than a far greater knowledge of her than the others. "You are wise to be wary; there are those who might mean you, or any of them, harm. But I am not one."
He's friendly and open, in the kind of way that's difficult to resist, to not respond to. He is, in short, good company in which to find oneself.
Arianna
[Go go gadget awareness!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Margot
To begin, Margot's eye remained wary upon him while he spoke. But he spoke Arianna's name with a familiar fullness that she didn't think would be very easy to fake-- it was too specific a thing to be forging, in her opinion. So the wariness subsided and, placated, Margot relaxed.
"Oh," she said simply. Then nodded, and conceded in conversation as though his question initially hadn't missed a beat.
"I know all of them-- well, except Sera. I know of Sera, but haven't ever met her. They're good people, though. Pen and Nick in particular, they've been good to my friend and I."
She glanced to her left, where a paper plate held three more tacos. She thought for a moment, then picked up the plate and held it out to offer him one. He just got done jogging, from the looks of it, and she knew as well as anyone that running made a body hungry.
"I'm pretty sure my eyes were bigger than my stomach-- you want the one on the end?"
Arianna
Speak of the devil and she will appear?
It is early on in evening, early enough the sky is dip-dyed into twilight and the only stars that have begun to appear are not stars at all. They are planets and satellite, closer neighbors in the cellestial neighborhood. There are earthbound stars out tonight as well, and one of them is strolling the pathways of Washington Park without an escort or any apparent aims.
Having had a few days off from her Drinking with Andres exploits, Arianna is (regrettably?) sober, but that does not leave her dispossessed of other charms. Her transits bring her near enough to Margot and Silas for her to feel something familiar in the air around them; the squelch of something that does not speak to her of tacos and dinner time, and the cadence of the hunting drums perhaps?
There is the click of the heels of her shoes to announce her, boots that loft her a few scant inches -- though that does not help her attain Silas's height. She has not been jogging. One does not think of Arianna and jogging in the same sentence, ever. She has been strolling -- her light sweater and perfectly hemmed slacks show no sign of the duress of more physical activity. Somewhere on her person is a wand, undoubtedly, though it is left to the imagination where she may have stashed that.
When she comes near enough them to be overheard, or to overhear, the Bonisagus lifts her chin in greeting to them both. She stands, just outside of the circle of their gathering, waiting on some marker or movement to welcome her in. It is not exactly a thing demanded of her by her Echoes, but it is close enough for politeness's sake.
"Good evening, Silas. And Margot." There is equal warmth in her eyes for the both of them. She gives no sense of favouritism away just yet.
Silas
"Are you sure?" It's the polite thing to ask when offered one's food and so Silas does, but he takes the taco without giving Margot time to demure. The satisfaction on his face is nearly a palpable thing as he bites into it - his enjoyment is a nearly tangible, palpable thing. He is a Hunter and speaks not just of the Hunt butt he Revel after, and all the things that one might enjoy therein; his appreciation for food (and drink, and touch) is merely a manifestation of that. When Arianna steps close (his eyes are already following her because he is even more Alert than he is Aware, and because he knows the feeling of her, the sound of her step.
It's absent, the wiping away of an errant drip of grease at the corner of his mouth before he nods in return.
"Good evening, Arianna. I think I've made a new friend, if this," he gestures with his food, "is any indication. Though! Margot doesn't know if Denver holds the best tacos she's experienced, unfortunately. I suppose I'll have to keep experimenting and experiencing. With good company, I hope," he finishes and this expansive assertion seems to have room to include them both.
Margot
Was she sure? A nod of the head confirmed it, even as Silas's hand was already reaching, snatching, claiming. She set the plate back down and finished the taco she'd been working on while he ate the same.
Then, as though summoned by the power of her very own name, Arianna came into sight with a click of boot heels on the sidewalk. Margot's dark eyebrows raised up-- again, that owlish look of surprise. She was considering with much sincerity whether names actually did hold power or not, though she'd declared aloud in previous conversation that she doubted they did.
"Hi Arianna," she greeted in return, that surprised look still lingering (tinged a little bit impressed now, though). "We were just talking about you. Or, well, your name came up anyways."
Arianna
Her glance flicks from Silas, who is wiping something away from the corner of his mouth, to the half-eaten taco in his hand, and back to him with a flicker of amusement in the slick of grey-green to her eyes. Then to Margot, all faux-concern and mischeif in the gloaming.
"You fed him, didn't you?" Deadpan. Mock concern bordering on something believable. "It's like a, what is it, Gremlin? If you feed him, then he is yours. Forever." A pause, to add the solemnity and gravity required for this warning. "Believe me: I would know."
But the curl of her mouth is playful; the warning in her eyes does not carry the sharpness of something real. They are in the liminal space between day and night, and even between Winter and Spring, and it is all about jesting -- tap dancing across a threshold.
"Are you well?" she asks the bloodwitch. Silas is fed, so she knows he is happy. This is what the look she casts him seems to say, or says upon its surface.
Arianna
Then, to Margot, a little wink. And a smile that broadens when Margot says they had just been speaking her name. There is, with this, a little shadow of a curtsey and it is easy to imagine Ari as a page or princess of a far away court. Not the best behaving of them, but some sort of far-flung royalty all the same.
And for Silas: "But, Si," his name foreshortened is a sort of intimacy all its own, though intimate may not be the adjective that comes to mind with the quickness of her smile. "Is it the best you've ever had?" Glancing up through lashes. Coquettish. And his hands and mouth are full, so, grin! "And by what metrics... really. Superlatives should attain some standard, shouldn't they?"
Because Hermetics never. Stop. Talking. At least not when they are as pleased with themselves as she seems.
Silas
In this, Silas is a simple fellow; with food in his belly he is pleased. This means that he stalks slightly less, that his eyes are slightly less hooded and predatory. That when Arianna speaks sideways and loosely, he is free to grin in response, even as he finishes chewing. At this rate, the food truck fare will be gone in another bite or two. And when he's finished chewing, he answers with a wink, and, "The best I've ever had is better than I deserve, and not entirely of this world."
They're still talking about tacos, yes? Of course they are.
"But at least it is well before midnight - we can't have me reproducing in such a problematic manner, can we?"
Margot
The look of concern at Arianna's warning was genuine at first-- the concern bordered on believable and for just a moment Margot had believed. But then she went on and the concern bled away into understanding. Oh, okay, we're joking around. She grinned a little, but the expression was quick to fade to uncertainty.
The two were back and forth for a moment, jesting about what was or wasn't the best ever experienced and whether those experiences were culinary or fornicatory was left up in the air (both at the same time, the sides of a coin ever spinning and even if it did land, the other side would still be there underneath wouldn't it?). The girl glanced down at her plate of tacos and picked one up, ate it quickly as that served as a great way to do something besides sitting there looking awkward.
But, Arianna had a question for her there didn't she? Margot recalled, blinked, swallowed her food, and nodded. She spoke from behind her hand while wiping a bit of grease from the corner of her mouth with her wrist.
"I've been fine, yeah, thanks." It was believable, Margot didn't look unshowered or unfed. She could probably use more sleep but who couldn't? Arianna could be assured that she was meeting basic needs if nothing else
Arianna
"We just will not get you wet." This is for Silas. Decisively. And we have now exhausted Arianna's pop culture references for the evening, and even these are decades old.
"I celebrated Easter with the Doctor," she says, and this is for Margot. The overtones say that it was entirely the sort of celebration his Apprentice would suspect. Then she confirms it: "The man drinks like a fish; I am surprised he doesn't swim more."
Ari keeps her attention on Margot. It lingers. "He complains a lot, but he seems to think well of you. Not all Masters are quick to say so; but you should know." And this, Andres, is why you do not go drinking with Ari. She spills your secrets; she spreads around due praise. She stands closer to Silas than to Margot, but Arianna's hands are in her pockets, elbows akimbo. She is easy between them two of them; content.
Silas
"I told Margot," comes smooth and easy, as does the completion of his thought, "that you were a childhood friend. And that I'd met your Pen and Nick recently." This explains the slight spinning weight on 'childhood friend', perhaps, at least to Arianna if not to Margot. Perhaps it also explains not rising to the bait on thoughts of what might and mightn't be moist in the not too distant future. He is, for the most part, casual and at ease as well, though he is never entirely still. And this . . .
"Grace mentioned a Doctor - Andrés Sepúlveda. Is he truly here? I haven't heard that name in over a year."
His tone is curious, and of course it begs the question of how he might know Sepúlveda. Goodness knows, he hasn't been in Denver long.
Margot
A story was to be told, when the Gremlins references had come to an end, of how Arianna had spent Easter with the Good Doctor. Margot paid attention, curious about where the tale was going. When it landed on an expression of how the Doc seemed to think rather highly of her (despite his complaining), she blinked a few times, then looked back down at her taco plate. A faint pleased pinkness touched her cheeks. Praise was nice even through the grapevine.
"He is," she said to Silas with a curious glance in his direction. He knew the Doc too, huh? It seemed her mentor was a well-travelled and well recognized. Her gaze lingered there, curious about that story whatever it may be, but looked back to Arianna to respond.
"Thanks for saying so. I wouldn't think that the Doc would suffer a student that he didn't think was worth the time, but...." She paused and made a face to suggest that she was unsure of how she felt about this next bit. "...I wouldn't expect him to be talking us up. He must have been reallydrunk."
Arianna
"The same," she confirms for Silas, and her mild surprise registers clearly enough for them both to see it in her eyes. The Doctor and Arianna as drinking buddies is a strange enough preponderance, but add Silas to the Etherite and Ari comes up blank on explanations.
There is warmth from her toward the Apprentice -- perhaps that is equally odd to Silas, as Margot is clearly canted away from their Tradition in her aura and her interests.
"He was also praising the Good News of the God-Child who is risen," Arianna says, with steepled eyebrows and a smirk-shrug to her. She is not, apparently, the religious sort herself. "In Italian, though, so..." A hand over her heart, faux-swoon, as her accents cants hard toward her native tongue. "Perhaps he was feeling more sentimental than usual?"
Kiara
[So many new flavors of Mage. Awareness, yo.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )
Silas
"When I knew him - fleetingly, to be fair - he didn't seem prone to outbursts of sentimentality. Though I suppose alcohol and religion can have that effect on one." It's amused, and look - the taco's gone. Four bites, perhaps a record of some sort. "And, of course, I knew him through his daughter. So there may have been aspects of that in our knowledge of each other."
Silas, there with Margot and Arianna feels like the old ways - he feels like the Hunt and like the Rite and like the coming of light. He is radiant and tempestuous, and looks like, perhaps, he should have antlers. He is, quite clearly, a predator, and marked by an old god of some pantheon or another.
"You're his apprentice, then, Margot? I wish you the best."
Margot
To some a man finding religion and sentiment would be a positive thing, especially to know that the words 'alcohol' and 'asshole' were commonly associated with him. But Margot's brow was creased with worry to hear the news of the man praising the God-Child and Good News and all.
"...I don't know how much Italian he speaks. I don't think he believes--...," but she cut herself off there with a quick shake of her head. The thought that clouded her eyes cleared, and the worry was smoothed away from her face and replaced with resolve instead-- the duty of a sentry. "But then, his beliefs aren't exactly my business. He's a Scientist, they'll never match anyways."
And then Silas explained what he knew of this Etherite, and it wasn't sentiment. At the mention of a daughter Margot's eyes widened and eyebrows skipped up with surprise. Her lips pressed tight, though, she said not a word on that subject. Instead, moved to the next.
"Yeah, he was good enough to take us in when he found Ned and I floundering for understanding. We won't be Etherites, but still..." Then, a small smile in return for Silas's good wishes. "Thanks."
Kiara
Kiara Woolfe was no stranger to traipsing through the myriad of winding pathways that made up Washington Park. Her particular favorite, as much as her jogging pursuits were concerned, took her on a twisting route by the lake. The surface glinted in the sunlight in a particular manner that suggested it was quite aware it had many secrets beneath it and would offer them up to anyone with the cunning to delve beneath and uncover them.
Once the sun set, though, the lake and the park itself, became a far more mysterious (and, at times, dangerous) prospect.
Tonight - the danger feels less an insistent pressure and far more - a murmur. A possibility. It feels, after a certain point - when the brunette's footfalls draw close enough - rather like a wash of rejuvenating energy. Here then, came Spring.
Spring, with her gentle pulsing heartbeat. Spring that - when the Verbena in question ascends a small hill, came in a package with black boots; wild dark hair with bangs cut that fell across equally dark eyes and a mouth painted in a blood red shade of lipstick.
There's a brief pause, where the pagan's momentum draws to a slower half-step before it resumes; a shifting of a bag over a shoulder and arms sliding across a thin chest.
If Silas was radiance itself; this creature felt like some elemental of nature; a verdant apparition of eyeliner and bright; intent consideration. One approaching their small gathering with very little appearance of uncertainty.
Arianna
This matter of tacos, and Andres, and Apprentices aside, gives Arianna a moment to circle back to something said in passing.
"You've met Nick and Pen?" Pleased, then. It brightens her considerably. And this comment about childhood friends, well, it passes for now, water running under, something like a bridge -- it will be crossed(or burned) later.
And, for Margot -- "Oh, he speaks no Italian at all, and I no Spanish. Which makes it so very much fun when we both slip homeward." The warmth in her eyes shifts slightly, that mercurial something in her shifting toward attentiveness ever so very slightly as Kiara approaches.
It is the way the Verbena's resonance and Silas's intertwine that catches her by surprise. Ari stands a little straighter; pulled a little back from her semblence of comfort and easy company. It draws her just a bit away from Si; a little more toward Margot. Let's not mistake this for protectiveness over the Apprentice; Arianna is not that sort of do-gooder; she has cabalmates for that. There is a stillness to her, the wash of something bright and fleeting: like starlight, those nature-borne around her might think, brilliant and remote and watchful.
Silas
The way Silas reacts to Kiara's nearness is, perhaps, not so different than the way flora reacts to his; the Verbena, more than the others, may note how spreading out from the ground where he stands, the grass is a little greener. There are hints of buds on the nearest trees and flowers. He is an aggressive force of Life, is Silas, and he turns as to something familiar though he's never met the source. There's a twist of his lips that's akin to a smile, or perhaps a smirk, of acknowledgement as she approaches, and he adjusts his position in the circle (look, symbols and patterns everywhere) to make room for her. This makes room for Kiara between Silas and Arianna, or around the other side of Silas, between him and Margot.
"A friend of either of yours?" This is directed at the two with whom he's been conversing for the last while, and quite probably audible to Kiara.
Kiara
There was, to a degree, a certain possession of self confidence to the way the Verbena approaches them - some might have called it brazen, after that first hover of surprise when she'd glimpsed the trio; felt the modest stir of new energy.
"You must be some of the new kids on the block."
This Kiara's greeting, with a curl of her mouth at one corner; a crooked thing, that expression but coupled with the warmth and inviting charisma the brunette seems rather generous with. She's wearing a small fitted leather jacket that matches her boots, the Verbena, her blouse beneath open enough at the collar that a thin silver chain was visible; a rather striking quartz pendant housed at its end.
Several of her fingers bore rings and nail polish to match her mouth.
Her eyes returned to Silas after a tick over both Margot and Arianna, head to foot with an open appraising air that could have felt a little more intimate than seemed appropriate from a stranger. Her smile widened a little.
"I'm Kiara." A flash of white teeth. "Woolfe." Maybe, at least for Margot, the name will register as one she's heard a decent amount about in recent days from a certain Doctor.
Margot
On the approach: Kiara-- dark boots, dark hair, bold lips and eyeliner and pulsing living Life seemed to hum and throb through the air around her. Arianna gravitated more toward her, while Silas's intrigue turned him more toward the approaching Verbena.
Margot, after watching Kiara for several moments (cued in largely by how the other two were watching her approach), looked down and snatched up the last taco on the plate. Ate it quickly in a way that suggested she was trying to finish and be on her way. She made no glance to a phone screen or watch for the time, but perhaps the sun was good enough for her. Perhaps she could just Sense Time already.
Was she a friend of either of theirs? Margot shook her head, mouth too full to answer verbally.
By that time Kiara was near enough to greet and introduce-- she was Kiara Woolfe, and indeed the name did spark recognition as a small light in the girl's big bright eyes. She finished chewing with a wrist over her mouth, and only once she'd swallowed and made sure she didn't have any food debris or grease left behind did she speak again.
"Oh, you're Kiara! I'm Margot, hi."
Arianna
The Verbena is brazen, and her connection with the natural world is wreathed all around her; it is as strong as Silas's connection to something older. The three of them, Silas and Kiara and Margot, seem cut from similar cloth and it is not the cloth in which Arianna has been dyed, though she is adept with symbols and she understands thresholds and the stars peeking through the celestial tapestry over head echo her brilliance.
She is a different sort of Other than they three are. Silas will mark it: Ari does not know this other. Margot may not until introductions come around. Arianna's manners are impeccable.
"It's a pleasure, Kiara," she says, taking less intimate stock of the newcomer. Her gaze is more gentle, mildly disinterested and casual-seeming. It is a trap, this sense of nonchalance. "Arianna," she pulls a hand from her pocket, offers it across the gap to the stranger. A warm smile accompanies it. There is a thin silver band on the ring finger of her right hand.
Silas
Silas, too, looks like he may be preparing to leave; though his attention had, for a moment, been drawn so completely to the verbena he is again in something akin to perpetual motion. Dressed casually in clothes most appropriate for a workout, it seems likely that that's why he was here, before he found his way to this impromptu gathering.
His exposed arms are covered in intricate tattoos - one arm is covered with a delicate balance of earth and starry night sky, while the other displays a knot worked representation of Herne, or Cernunnos, or some similar gods. Or all of those gods. He wears no jewelry but for a thin gold band on his right ring finger. His hair is brown, and his eyes are blue.
"Silas Arthur," is the proffered name. "And I should be going. My hounds will be wanting out."
Kiara
I'm Margot.
"Oh right, you're one of Andrés' kids." A statement that, not a question. Kiara's dark eyes taking an interest in the younger woman. They linger there for a pause and the smile she cants her seems genuine; open and interested before her focus is redirected to Arianna.
The hand offered is taken and Kiara's fingers close around the other woman's in a warm press of her palm. "Arianna and - " Silas receives another lingering, intent study. Her smile widens and she echoes this name, too. " - Silas. Nice to meet you all, it's about time the city had a little bit of new blood." There's a particular way that Kiara's attention lingers on the male of the party that speaks more than anything could perhaps, of her Tradition.
Silas has to be going, his hounds will want out. A groomed eyebrow arches, a glint entering Kiara's eyes. "Best not keep the hounds waiting. Maybe we'll run into each other again soon."
Easy flirtation from the pagan, that seems to want very little in return for its appearance. Her eyes ticking back toward the others. "I figured with everything going on lately, I'd at least make an impression."
(Something about the way Kiara says this, with that lingering smile, suggests she's well aware she typically does. Whether its intentional or not).
Margot
"Me too."
Margot hopped in on the end of Silas's bowing out of the convening of minds in the park. She stood up and folded the paper plate up into quarters in her hand, so it took the shape of a shell and wouldn't spill when she carried it with her to a trash can. After a moment she added to clarify: "No hounds, but a rabbit." That, with a grin.
For Kiara: "Yeah, that's me. You helped him spring the Brandt man, so I want to say thank you real quick, before I go. I don't know the details of what happened and who did what but you helped make sure he got out of there okay, so thank you."
Funny how pronouns work, it was hard to say if she was thanking Kiara for getting Alexander or Andres out in one piece. She didn't hang around to clarify, though, and was soon on her way walking with a wave over her shoulder.
"I'll see you around no doubt. Bye!"
April 5, 2016
March 27th, 2016 - Verbenae [Thane, NPC'd by Jess]
viscera
Margot got a text:
My friend is here for the week. Can you meet us? I'll introduce you then get out of your hair, if that is okay.
There were a few times offered. Most of them during the day but a couple more toward the gloaming hour. During the day, one of the possible locations was Chatfield Farms, another was the Stag Hollow Winery. During the twilight, Stag Hollow Winery came up again, but so did a café in a mining town outside Denver proper, closer to the mountains proper; some ways up one of the mountains to be honest. The easiest to get to is Stag Hollow, but the choice of where is left up to Margot.
Margot
A text containing an invitation for a playdate with a Verbena. A couple of times and locations made available as options, and Margot was left hesitating for quite some time on how to answer. She had a habit of overthinking, and was trying to make connections to significance in these places. Why a winery? Why so close to the mountains? Why a farm?
A daytime option was chosen. She'd rather go to the farm than the winery, regardless of proximity. The cafe by the mountains was a longer drive than she wanted to make and felt ominous in a way she couldn't explain.
So, the text back:
Absolutely. Let's do the farm, I'm available then.
And so, it should be.
Margot
[Perception 3 + Awareness 1]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5) ( fail )
viscera
Margot does not sense Penelope (or friend) when she pulls into the parking lot at Chatfield Farms. There was a warning of a five dollar charge in order to enjoy the grounds, but it seems like a pittance to help maintain the area. Chatfield Farms is truly Chatfield Denver Botanical Garden, not the site closest to the city and most popular with tourists, but the one with seven hundred and sixty acres of a working farm, nature trails leading into the foothills (spare now, not quite Spring-kissed, still blanched from the surprise snows, withered gold and the beginning of hardy plant-life, birds coming out dark-eyed and song-throated, and meanwhile and also there is a wild flower garden and a small white house gift shop with a coffee and hot chocolate cart. There is a maze of corn to the back, just now spring-green/beginning, and of course some animals, and since this is day time and there are no school groups just yet, it's very quiet. Hardly anybody there, except a woman in her thirties who sells Margot the paper ticket.
She will find Penelope at a low wooden park table outside the wild flower garden, seated on its top with her boots planted on the bench that belongs to it. The tree casts a shadow over her and her companion (we'll get to him), so her hair is vibrant, autumnal, but not yet on fire; a dark and bloody red. She is wearing something very typically Penelope: a long tunic which somehow gives the impression, vaguely, of a shift; something Joan of Arc might have worn, or some Saint set loose on a boat with her child to drown in the deep wild sea, or something a lady in Camelot might wear, has a bracelet on her wrist like a bracer for armor, some metal thing set with a stone.
She is speaking, easily, to the man seated on the bench. His name is Thane, but Margot knows this already, and he is leaning forward with his elbows on the knees of his workman's trousers, canvas things that will hold sturdy when they are torn, and one hand held out to a magpie which has wandered in his direction. The magpie is a bright-eyed, inquisitive looking creature, a black and white invasive species, cocking its head this way and that as it hops closer and closer toward his hand. There's a bracelet on Thane's wrist, a slender thing of metal, set with a stone.
Thane has crow dark hair, like Nicholas but not like Nicholas, for where Nick's hair is curls and curls, Thane's hair is thick waves. His build is hearty, hale; not quite bulky, but he looks as if he has some strength to him, as if he is rooted. His profile gives a hint of his ethnicity, something from the Cradle of Civilization, where their eyelashes are very long (their eyelashes are very long everywhere, in truth) and straight and thick. Where Pen is pale and even when she gets sun won't be anything but pale and maybe a bit foxed, Thane has dusty skin.
He says something over what Penelope is saying, and Penelope looks beyond Thane and sees Margot and lifts a hand, bounding to her feet.
The bird takes flight; wings out-stretched.
Margot
Today Margot could not sense the resonances of the Mages she was coming to visit, or the tingling magickal-spiritual electric something in the air that was left behind when anything dared to defy textbook reality, really. Perhaps it was because she was tired-- leading a double life was hard enough but she went to school full time and worked thirty hour weeks on top of that. She was conflicted, having missed a few classes was taking its toll on her academics but thankfully she was quite smart and did not worry for the tests to come. Today, even, she was skipping a class to come out here for this visit (she spoke with the professor ahead of time, would have to make it up, would probably endure a lecture about taking school seriously when she saw them next).
But the chewed ear and five dollars to get into the farmland would be worth it, no doubt. She'd parked her car where indicated and wandered inward from the parking lot with her gaze cast sweeping about for familiarity. Luckily, Penelope was both easy to recognize and already waving to catch her attention. Margot smiled, raised a hand over her head to hail the pair, and approached.
Today her brown hair was left down but twisted and pinned away from her face in the front, and a pair of sunglasses were lifted from her face and rested upon her crown. She was petite in frame, barely more than five feet tall, with a brisk gait and sense of caution about her. That caution would probably leave her one day, when she was no longer an Orphan Apprentice and had better footing in the world. She dressed in blue jeans and a pair of hiking boots, with a gray hoodie zipped up over a black T-shirt underneath.
The magpie flew away as Margot drew near, and she smiled to Penelope, glanced a little nervously (and quite curiously) to Thane. "Hey Penelope." Then, "You must be Thane?"
viscera
[Thane Aware?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
viscera
[Thane very aware.]
Margot
[Dayumn]
viscera
"I am it is good to meet you," Thane replies. Close by, Margot can see that his eyes, while dark, are a paler brown than his hair; there is some contrast there, and in the frame-work of his eyelashes. They are looking at Margot with as much curiosity as she is looking at him, but no nervousness; he does not seem like he would understand nervousness.
"Thane Owens, bani Verbenae," and Margot, she knows what Pen feels like, and also Andrés, but she has no sense of Thane. He seems whole-hearted, somehow; cheerful, even, attractive. Penelope is beguiling; Thane is a force of vigorous energy. "Pen told me that you feel a call and there are few here to tell you whether or not the call is true but you call, ha ha," he grins, "sorry, I'm jumping right into things and I said call a lot didn't I, but you call your Craft uh craftwork?"
Margot
Margot appeared taken aback by Thane, to a mild degree. Her eyes were large on her face by nature, giving her a perpetual expression of surprise, so whenever they actually did widen the effect was almost owlish. She blinked at Penelope for a moment, then looked back to Thane and cleared a small chuckle from her throat.
"Uh, yeah." Glanced about, but they were more or less alone. No school groups or crowds of families with children come to see. This wasn't a zoo or anything central to the city, after all.
"It feels more like a craft than anything. Very... raw and old. I work with blood more than anything else."
Unsurprisingly-- he could feel her resonance, and bloody was a very good way of describing it.
viscera
"Hmm hmm hmm that's an interesting thing to say," Thane says, batting a lash, and he braces his hands against the wooden bench like he's going to stand, but remember Pen had bounded to her feet, which means she is standing on the bench, and now she jumps down and cuts in, "Thane, remember that Margot doesn't know you, okay?"
Thane smiles at Pen and it is a sweet smile Thane is a person of contradiction and dichotomies somebody who and mark this who might have been around forever might be Merlin really might be something Other some bard some old king sleeping re-risen and he is visceral and he can also be sweet as a puppy dog right sure maybe right, "I remember," and he cuts a glance to Margot, seeking to meet her eyes and share it, then instead of standing claps his hands together elbows back on his knees intent gaze roving from woman to woman, "Want to walk through the wild flower garden, Margot? Nobody's there and we can talk."
Pen could also see them, not that that's a concern for Thane, and maybe not Margot either, but strange people and strange days.
Margot
Eyes hopped back and forth between the two other magick-wielders. Pen seemed to be trying to help remind Thane to keep himself in check, in a way. Remember, Margot was still unfamiliar to him. Perhaps he got carried away, pried too deep and got too personal? Penelope was married to Nick and friends with Andres, and no doubt knew by now through hearsay that Margot was a bit, ah, sensitive sometimes.
An invitation to walk through the flowers, and Margot looked at them for a moment then rolled her head to gesture in another direction instead.
"Can we go see the animals instead?"
viscera
This quick intake of breath which is pleasure because animals and Thane grins at Pen this easy go lucky this satiated hah see animals see see SEE sort of grin and it is the kind of grin that might induce somebody to ruffle somebody else's hair, but Thane's hair stays unruffled for now, and he does stand now. "Sure, let's go see the animals. They're this way," and he nods satyr brow sort of nod toward the red barn which is further into the farm will take some walking down a dusty road to get to much not TOO much walking to not if they're going to see the animals that are there to be seen by school groups and the like. There is still silence and seclusion; no not silence, a farm makes noise, nature makes noise, the world is fucking noisy.
"I'll see you guys later," Pen says, a note of query; she could easily be summoned to stay, but her manner also says: this is (possibly) Verbenae business.
Every Tradition has its secrets; Pen tries to respect them.
Margot
She and Thane moved away from the bench and began walking toward the big red barn and the promise of privacy for conversation (and fluffy animals) it contained. Penelope would catch them later, and Margot glanced with a second of hesitation and remorse (wait!) over her shoulder. But, it is just a moment. Every Tradition had its secrets, after all. She would never ask to see the text that Awoke her Mentor, for instance.
So the moment passed and Margot turned and walked along by Thane's elbow, boots kicking up little clouds of dust on the beaten-down trail that they travelled.
Not much of a conversationalist, but Margot disliked walking in choked awkward silence with a brand new person more than she disliked talking about empty niceties like the weather and places of origin. So...
"...So, uh, where'd you fly in from?"
Good job, social tertiary.
viscera
They amble along, amble, amble, amble amble-amble-amble, and Thane keeps a sharp curious eye out on their surroundings, but most of his curiosity (and he seems to be a warm man) is for the young wide-eyed owl-eyed woman by his side who his ex-cabal mate (ex, ex, ex!) asked him to speak to and who feels like carnage on a battlefield even if that battlefield is just the battlefield between a fox and a mouse or a cat and a stoat all that viscera strewn out left somewhere smeared grisly and gruesome and grim and that's just life isn't it that's life all right. Margot has no idea what Thane feels like but maybe it's grisly, too, maybe it's some bloody center (no it's not; he makes his own bloody centers but they do not drive his Work the way it drives Margot's).
"Boston," he says, "And then Dallas, and then some other airport, they kept transferring us. I do not like flying by plane if it hadn't been such a whim this trip if Vernal Equinox hadn't fallen just before I would have just driven it in my truck. Have you ever done a road trip like that?"
Margot
Margot knew that she felt like the bright red dark red carnage that she needed for her magick to work. She knew her mentor felt like a crystal ball of ice, and that her companion Apprentice felt like a strangling grasp about your neck. She couldn't say what Thane felt like, though. This was an off day. So she just watched him with a glance cast to her right here and there while they walked. Spent much of the time looking around at the farm they walked through, though.
He was from Boston, and she nodded understanding to that (along with his other layovers). She nodded again to answer his question, too.
"Yeah, I drove out here from Maine last August, when I moved out. It didn't do the allure of a roadtrip any favors-- I'm no hurry to drive it again." She smiled a little, but the expression was small and lost to thoughtfullness. A wandering mind full of many questions. They were here to talk about the Verbena and he'd mentioned an Equinox and maybe she should grasp that and use it as a way to start prying this walnut open. But another question found its way to her tongue first, and fell from it abruptly.
"What happened that your Cabal with Penelope split up?"
viscera
Oh, a strike of sorrow through warm brown eyes but it is tempered sorrow Thane is not the most emotional has never been the most emotional of his (Ex) cabal mates and regret is an easy thing to feel he does not shrink from it shirk it he just feels it and his gaze wanders downward toward the dusty toes of his shoes and he runs his palm over his forehead then up through his thick thick hair deep breath other hand finding his waist for a second measure stop-skip falter and then okay back to walk walk walking stride as easy as ever but Thane darts a little sidelong glance Margot's way and says "Oh."
"Oh, well... it's a long story sort of, what do you know about cabals? You're very new I thought? Or were interested in forming one with another Disparate and a doctor from the Society of Ether?"
Margot
There was a visible cringing to Margot's expression when Thane reacted to her question. She realized at once that it was a dumb question to ask, if only for how insensitive it apparently was. Cabals probably didn't split up for the best reasons. Maybe they were a lot like marriages-- commonly ending with splitting up but seldom the friendliest or happiest subject to speak of. Always with the hurt and the regret.
"Sorry," she said quickly when he said it was a long story. Without skipping much of a step he was asking how much she knew about Cabals and what her intentions were. Her brow furrowed a little bit at something he'd said. He'd soon find what.
"He's only so much a Disparate as I am. Which is to say, I don't think either of us really are. We're new, we just haven't joined a Tradition yet. Doesn't mean we're planning on never doing so, otherwise we wouldn't even be here, I don't imagine."
She walked a few yards further quietly, hands in her pockets and pace unbreaking.
"...But, yeah, we'll be a Cabal I think. Which means we work together, learn from one another and keep each other safe."
Margot got a text:
My friend is here for the week. Can you meet us? I'll introduce you then get out of your hair, if that is okay.
There were a few times offered. Most of them during the day but a couple more toward the gloaming hour. During the day, one of the possible locations was Chatfield Farms, another was the Stag Hollow Winery. During the twilight, Stag Hollow Winery came up again, but so did a café in a mining town outside Denver proper, closer to the mountains proper; some ways up one of the mountains to be honest. The easiest to get to is Stag Hollow, but the choice of where is left up to Margot.
Margot
A text containing an invitation for a playdate with a Verbena. A couple of times and locations made available as options, and Margot was left hesitating for quite some time on how to answer. She had a habit of overthinking, and was trying to make connections to significance in these places. Why a winery? Why so close to the mountains? Why a farm?
A daytime option was chosen. She'd rather go to the farm than the winery, regardless of proximity. The cafe by the mountains was a longer drive than she wanted to make and felt ominous in a way she couldn't explain.
So, the text back:
Absolutely. Let's do the farm, I'm available then.
And so, it should be.
Margot
[Perception 3 + Awareness 1]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5) ( fail )
viscera
Margot does not sense Penelope (or friend) when she pulls into the parking lot at Chatfield Farms. There was a warning of a five dollar charge in order to enjoy the grounds, but it seems like a pittance to help maintain the area. Chatfield Farms is truly Chatfield Denver Botanical Garden, not the site closest to the city and most popular with tourists, but the one with seven hundred and sixty acres of a working farm, nature trails leading into the foothills (spare now, not quite Spring-kissed, still blanched from the surprise snows, withered gold and the beginning of hardy plant-life, birds coming out dark-eyed and song-throated, and meanwhile and also there is a wild flower garden and a small white house gift shop with a coffee and hot chocolate cart. There is a maze of corn to the back, just now spring-green/beginning, and of course some animals, and since this is day time and there are no school groups just yet, it's very quiet. Hardly anybody there, except a woman in her thirties who sells Margot the paper ticket.
She will find Penelope at a low wooden park table outside the wild flower garden, seated on its top with her boots planted on the bench that belongs to it. The tree casts a shadow over her and her companion (we'll get to him), so her hair is vibrant, autumnal, but not yet on fire; a dark and bloody red. She is wearing something very typically Penelope: a long tunic which somehow gives the impression, vaguely, of a shift; something Joan of Arc might have worn, or some Saint set loose on a boat with her child to drown in the deep wild sea, or something a lady in Camelot might wear, has a bracelet on her wrist like a bracer for armor, some metal thing set with a stone.
She is speaking, easily, to the man seated on the bench. His name is Thane, but Margot knows this already, and he is leaning forward with his elbows on the knees of his workman's trousers, canvas things that will hold sturdy when they are torn, and one hand held out to a magpie which has wandered in his direction. The magpie is a bright-eyed, inquisitive looking creature, a black and white invasive species, cocking its head this way and that as it hops closer and closer toward his hand. There's a bracelet on Thane's wrist, a slender thing of metal, set with a stone.
Thane has crow dark hair, like Nicholas but not like Nicholas, for where Nick's hair is curls and curls, Thane's hair is thick waves. His build is hearty, hale; not quite bulky, but he looks as if he has some strength to him, as if he is rooted. His profile gives a hint of his ethnicity, something from the Cradle of Civilization, where their eyelashes are very long (their eyelashes are very long everywhere, in truth) and straight and thick. Where Pen is pale and even when she gets sun won't be anything but pale and maybe a bit foxed, Thane has dusty skin.
He says something over what Penelope is saying, and Penelope looks beyond Thane and sees Margot and lifts a hand, bounding to her feet.
The bird takes flight; wings out-stretched.
Margot
Today Margot could not sense the resonances of the Mages she was coming to visit, or the tingling magickal-spiritual electric something in the air that was left behind when anything dared to defy textbook reality, really. Perhaps it was because she was tired-- leading a double life was hard enough but she went to school full time and worked thirty hour weeks on top of that. She was conflicted, having missed a few classes was taking its toll on her academics but thankfully she was quite smart and did not worry for the tests to come. Today, even, she was skipping a class to come out here for this visit (she spoke with the professor ahead of time, would have to make it up, would probably endure a lecture about taking school seriously when she saw them next).
But the chewed ear and five dollars to get into the farmland would be worth it, no doubt. She'd parked her car where indicated and wandered inward from the parking lot with her gaze cast sweeping about for familiarity. Luckily, Penelope was both easy to recognize and already waving to catch her attention. Margot smiled, raised a hand over her head to hail the pair, and approached.
Today her brown hair was left down but twisted and pinned away from her face in the front, and a pair of sunglasses were lifted from her face and rested upon her crown. She was petite in frame, barely more than five feet tall, with a brisk gait and sense of caution about her. That caution would probably leave her one day, when she was no longer an Orphan Apprentice and had better footing in the world. She dressed in blue jeans and a pair of hiking boots, with a gray hoodie zipped up over a black T-shirt underneath.
The magpie flew away as Margot drew near, and she smiled to Penelope, glanced a little nervously (and quite curiously) to Thane. "Hey Penelope." Then, "You must be Thane?"
viscera
[Thane Aware?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
viscera
[Thane very aware.]
Margot
[Dayumn]
viscera
"I am it is good to meet you," Thane replies. Close by, Margot can see that his eyes, while dark, are a paler brown than his hair; there is some contrast there, and in the frame-work of his eyelashes. They are looking at Margot with as much curiosity as she is looking at him, but no nervousness; he does not seem like he would understand nervousness.
"Thane Owens, bani Verbenae," and Margot, she knows what Pen feels like, and also Andrés, but she has no sense of Thane. He seems whole-hearted, somehow; cheerful, even, attractive. Penelope is beguiling; Thane is a force of vigorous energy. "Pen told me that you feel a call and there are few here to tell you whether or not the call is true but you call, ha ha," he grins, "sorry, I'm jumping right into things and I said call a lot didn't I, but you call your Craft uh craftwork?"
Margot
Margot appeared taken aback by Thane, to a mild degree. Her eyes were large on her face by nature, giving her a perpetual expression of surprise, so whenever they actually did widen the effect was almost owlish. She blinked at Penelope for a moment, then looked back to Thane and cleared a small chuckle from her throat.
"Uh, yeah." Glanced about, but they were more or less alone. No school groups or crowds of families with children come to see. This wasn't a zoo or anything central to the city, after all.
"It feels more like a craft than anything. Very... raw and old. I work with blood more than anything else."
Unsurprisingly-- he could feel her resonance, and bloody was a very good way of describing it.
viscera
"Hmm hmm hmm that's an interesting thing to say," Thane says, batting a lash, and he braces his hands against the wooden bench like he's going to stand, but remember Pen had bounded to her feet, which means she is standing on the bench, and now she jumps down and cuts in, "Thane, remember that Margot doesn't know you, okay?"
Thane smiles at Pen and it is a sweet smile Thane is a person of contradiction and dichotomies somebody who and mark this who might have been around forever might be Merlin really might be something Other some bard some old king sleeping re-risen and he is visceral and he can also be sweet as a puppy dog right sure maybe right, "I remember," and he cuts a glance to Margot, seeking to meet her eyes and share it, then instead of standing claps his hands together elbows back on his knees intent gaze roving from woman to woman, "Want to walk through the wild flower garden, Margot? Nobody's there and we can talk."
Pen could also see them, not that that's a concern for Thane, and maybe not Margot either, but strange people and strange days.
Margot
Eyes hopped back and forth between the two other magick-wielders. Pen seemed to be trying to help remind Thane to keep himself in check, in a way. Remember, Margot was still unfamiliar to him. Perhaps he got carried away, pried too deep and got too personal? Penelope was married to Nick and friends with Andres, and no doubt knew by now through hearsay that Margot was a bit, ah, sensitive sometimes.
An invitation to walk through the flowers, and Margot looked at them for a moment then rolled her head to gesture in another direction instead.
"Can we go see the animals instead?"
viscera
This quick intake of breath which is pleasure because animals and Thane grins at Pen this easy go lucky this satiated hah see animals see see SEE sort of grin and it is the kind of grin that might induce somebody to ruffle somebody else's hair, but Thane's hair stays unruffled for now, and he does stand now. "Sure, let's go see the animals. They're this way," and he nods satyr brow sort of nod toward the red barn which is further into the farm will take some walking down a dusty road to get to much not TOO much walking to not if they're going to see the animals that are there to be seen by school groups and the like. There is still silence and seclusion; no not silence, a farm makes noise, nature makes noise, the world is fucking noisy.
"I'll see you guys later," Pen says, a note of query; she could easily be summoned to stay, but her manner also says: this is (possibly) Verbenae business.
Every Tradition has its secrets; Pen tries to respect them.
Margot
She and Thane moved away from the bench and began walking toward the big red barn and the promise of privacy for conversation (and fluffy animals) it contained. Penelope would catch them later, and Margot glanced with a second of hesitation and remorse (wait!) over her shoulder. But, it is just a moment. Every Tradition had its secrets, after all. She would never ask to see the text that Awoke her Mentor, for instance.
So the moment passed and Margot turned and walked along by Thane's elbow, boots kicking up little clouds of dust on the beaten-down trail that they travelled.
Not much of a conversationalist, but Margot disliked walking in choked awkward silence with a brand new person more than she disliked talking about empty niceties like the weather and places of origin. So...
"...So, uh, where'd you fly in from?"
Good job, social tertiary.
viscera
They amble along, amble, amble, amble amble-amble-amble, and Thane keeps a sharp curious eye out on their surroundings, but most of his curiosity (and he seems to be a warm man) is for the young wide-eyed owl-eyed woman by his side who his ex-cabal mate (ex, ex, ex!) asked him to speak to and who feels like carnage on a battlefield even if that battlefield is just the battlefield between a fox and a mouse or a cat and a stoat all that viscera strewn out left somewhere smeared grisly and gruesome and grim and that's just life isn't it that's life all right. Margot has no idea what Thane feels like but maybe it's grisly, too, maybe it's some bloody center (no it's not; he makes his own bloody centers but they do not drive his Work the way it drives Margot's).
"Boston," he says, "And then Dallas, and then some other airport, they kept transferring us. I do not like flying by plane if it hadn't been such a whim this trip if Vernal Equinox hadn't fallen just before I would have just driven it in my truck. Have you ever done a road trip like that?"
Margot
Margot knew that she felt like the bright red dark red carnage that she needed for her magick to work. She knew her mentor felt like a crystal ball of ice, and that her companion Apprentice felt like a strangling grasp about your neck. She couldn't say what Thane felt like, though. This was an off day. So she just watched him with a glance cast to her right here and there while they walked. Spent much of the time looking around at the farm they walked through, though.
He was from Boston, and she nodded understanding to that (along with his other layovers). She nodded again to answer his question, too.
"Yeah, I drove out here from Maine last August, when I moved out. It didn't do the allure of a roadtrip any favors-- I'm no hurry to drive it again." She smiled a little, but the expression was small and lost to thoughtfullness. A wandering mind full of many questions. They were here to talk about the Verbena and he'd mentioned an Equinox and maybe she should grasp that and use it as a way to start prying this walnut open. But another question found its way to her tongue first, and fell from it abruptly.
"What happened that your Cabal with Penelope split up?"
viscera
Oh, a strike of sorrow through warm brown eyes but it is tempered sorrow Thane is not the most emotional has never been the most emotional of his (Ex) cabal mates and regret is an easy thing to feel he does not shrink from it shirk it he just feels it and his gaze wanders downward toward the dusty toes of his shoes and he runs his palm over his forehead then up through his thick thick hair deep breath other hand finding his waist for a second measure stop-skip falter and then okay back to walk walk walking stride as easy as ever but Thane darts a little sidelong glance Margot's way and says "Oh."
"Oh, well... it's a long story sort of, what do you know about cabals? You're very new I thought? Or were interested in forming one with another Disparate and a doctor from the Society of Ether?"
Margot
There was a visible cringing to Margot's expression when Thane reacted to her question. She realized at once that it was a dumb question to ask, if only for how insensitive it apparently was. Cabals probably didn't split up for the best reasons. Maybe they were a lot like marriages-- commonly ending with splitting up but seldom the friendliest or happiest subject to speak of. Always with the hurt and the regret.
"Sorry," she said quickly when he said it was a long story. Without skipping much of a step he was asking how much she knew about Cabals and what her intentions were. Her brow furrowed a little bit at something he'd said. He'd soon find what.
"He's only so much a Disparate as I am. Which is to say, I don't think either of us really are. We're new, we just haven't joined a Tradition yet. Doesn't mean we're planning on never doing so, otherwise we wouldn't even be here, I don't imagine."
She walked a few yards further quietly, hands in her pockets and pace unbreaking.
"...But, yeah, we'll be a Cabal I think. Which means we work together, learn from one another and keep each other safe."
ThaneHe has regained his equilibrium it seems Thane is steadfast in his way a rock besides life is hard that's just part of life life is pain and sap and sorrow and exhilaration and fucking and freedom and constraint life is bad times and good times and anyway Thane is present in this moment 2016 and there's a sense of observation and then good cheer when he replies, "Yeah, that's exactly what a cabal does. It doesn't mean you can't Work with other Wyck-touched but you have a Home to return to and people who have your back."
"I don't know how much you know about the cabal Pen and Nick and me had together, oh and Ari, do you know Arianna yet? She stayed with the Mars-Hydes, ha ha I don't think Nick took any part of Penelope's Craft Name, but it feels strange to call them the Hydes, what was I saying oh right, anyway. We were a pretty big cabal and had a very difficult year. We lost one of our own, and then ... well there was a lot of really heavy bad stuff, there usually is heavy bad stuff, but this was more harrowing, and after all that was done well we were okay for a while but it got a lot harder and there were a lot of arguments and finally a straw broke the camel's back. I think we all need a threshold time apart, pursuing different goals. Not Pen and Nick, they're good together, but the rest of us."
"Anyway, that's what happened. We're still friends who care about one another, see I came all this way and braved the airport! Motherfuckers searched me and called me a fucking towel head; no respect for consequences among airline security!"
"What Tradition do you think your friend is gonna be? His name's," and Thane, mellow brown eyes (oh, but it had sparked; a certain sort of knife edge resolution at some point during his ramble) soulful and blank, has clearly forgotten whether or not he ever knew Ned's name. "Follow in the Ether man's footsteps?"
MargotMargot was beginning to put together the broad pieces of the puzzle that was Thane-- at least, as far as surface Thanes go. He was talkative, and Margot thankfully had some experience with that. Doc was talkative. William was talkative. Ned could get so talkative that the Doc had actually limited to a 140 word count as though this were Real Life Twitter. Thane's talkative habits may have once had Margot floundering to keep up and interject in conversation, but she had experience now.
So Thane went on, with a few questions smattered here and there, and Margot just cast her eyes to the glimpse of cows behind a fence up ahead. When the Verbena man lost that moment's steam, the little witch piped up in a voice that was now, as it often was, soft and thoughtful.
"I did meet Arianna. She makes a good impression-- very regal. I've never met somebody who takes Traditions so seriously." As for her friend, his name...
"His name is Ned." Edward (one presumed, he's never told her outright), but he introduced himself as Ned and so Ned he was even if Doc insisted on using full names. Good thing her name was its own full name already. Nobody's gotten familiar enough to try shortening it on her yet.
Her head shook as she continued on, casting a shadow of doubt on the question of whether Ned would join the Society of Ether. "No, Ned's not a Scientist. He does Work, not Science. I suppose if I were going to take a guess, I would peg him for a Chakravanti. He's... closely tied to death and very intense. But a lot of his Work rests on Sensation, and that's a Cultist's trademark isn't it?" Her brow furrowed. She was having trouble picturing her partner-in-learning as a Cultist of Ecstacy, even though she'd seen him Work through inebriation several times before.
Thane"Ehhh. The Ecstatics would have you think so and I guess maybe it is, but every Tradition or most Traditions have some sort of practice which relies on Sensation, including mine, including the Dreamspeakers. If your pal Ned is closely tied to Death I wouldn't necessarily say the Wheel Turners are the Tradition for him as attractive as Nicholas makes it seem it can tarnish a person if they're not careful too much Death too much looking beyond Death and forgetting about the bloody viscera of now, I mean, uh, no I'm not saying it wouldn't work for him, just it's a mistake to think about Chakravanti as the Tradition that deals with Death or to focus on Death if that's what you're inclined to, or it can be a mistake, whatever, you get me I hope. Harder to pin down a Dreamspeaker though and they're so fucking different one from the other, lots of what I think of as mini Traditions. Uh, fuck, Kha'vadi, I'm an asshole I should remember that name. They changed it recently. A lot of us did, us Traditions."
He doesn't pause; but some gravitas (Primordial, see [older than old, before there were shadows]) creeps in.
"Not the Verbenae, though. We've always stuck by the Ancient Ways, we always will. Though there seems to be a push for the proper Latinized plural," Thane sounds amused by this push. "Dollars to donuts that some Verbena who caballed with a bunch of Hermetics decided to make that push."
Thaneooc: wait! change first sentence to: "including mine, including the Dreamspeakers, hell the Order has some crazy fun sex rituals. I don't think the Society or V-depts have any but Technomancers and me we haven't gotten along all that well."
MargotThane mentioned Dreamspeakers, and Margot shook her head. "No, Ned doesn't do spirits. That's my thing." As though she had a patent on it or something, when the truth of the matter was that she was the only one out of her small would-be Cabal who could sense the Gauntlet and Umbra and Spirits and Ghosts. They relied on her, and she felt something particularly in-sync with spirits anyways. Perhaps she would have been a goodDreamspeaker Kha'vadi herself if she hadn't gotten Verbena so lodged in her head.
"It's all just names," she assured him when he spoke of how he should remember the new Dreamspeaker Tradition and how the word Verbena should be pluralized through Latin formals. "I mean, I know there's plenty of power to a name for some of us, but hey-- there's plenty of power to a pile of shit to some of us too."
She paused thoughtfully, then asked:
"Do you think he would be a good Verbena?"
ThaneNed doesn't do spirits. "Well the Hermetics have a lot going on, you gotta be book smart as fuck though, or else you're kind of shit out of luck, and there's a lot of room for variety in the Cult too. Depends on how he uses Sensation, whether he can get down with their code. Everything's got a code you know."
He laughs, "That was a very Verbena thing you just said, that part about shit," and his eyes spark with this gold quality, this is a metaphor, right, but the golden quality it's heath all dredged with light all warmed by far and away, and now he looks sidelong at Margot.
They've walked. There are cows. "Oh, you mean Ned? I can't say I'm sure I mean I don't even know if you'd be a good Verbena yet though the signs do seem to be there I get it. What's a 'good' Verbena? But he might be, we deal with the full gamut, we're here now, we've been here for a while, but we you and I we are here right fucking now, and to Work you have to experience that. No shrinking. That's hard sometimes, but ehh..."
"So Margot, why do you want to be a Verbena? Do you still wanna be a Verbena? How'd you even fix on the idea Pen didn't say."
MargotThe Hermetics got another shake of the head, but she didn't explain herself on that one aloud. They came to a stop where the cows were penned up and Margot stepped up onto the bottom rung of the fence, hooked her arms over the top rung and rested her chin on her criss-crossed wrists.
"Because I'm a Witch. Or I feel like one. I'm not a Scientist, though, I know that much. I don't know what others may define themselves as... wizards? Saints? I don't think that words carry power, but I know that Blood and War do." She cleared her throat and explained further.
"My Avatar's a Goddess of War. She picked me out and opened my eyes. So the only things that work for me are what work for her-- Blood and War."
She looked matter-of-fact but quietly conflicted both. Margot didn't come across as particularly violent.
Thane"Okay and why do you think that matches up with the Verbena? Why not the Order? They have people whose Avatars manifest as goddesses of War. Why not the Chakravanti? Blood and War usually man Death, mean the Wheel is turning and winter is coming," a faint smirk because he gets the pop culture reference a moment after he makes it this somber whisper of a thing in his eyes. "What is it you know about the Verbena specifically which speaks to you?"
Thaneooc: ahem, 'man Death' = 'mean Death'
MargotIt was a valid question that Margot had to think long and hard about. She was quiet for a time before answering, soft and quiet and thoughtful as ever.
"I don't care about the cycle. Or the Circle. I suppose that it's obvious that there's a rhythm to Life and Death and everything inbetween, but I don't think that I'm supposed to be... guarding or maintaining or ushering along that cycle. Andraste's about War and Conquest and Victory-- It's not about killing or dealing Death, it's the affirmation of Life and Right that she has instead. She's also got domain over Love and Fertility, but I'm not quite there yet."
ThaneThane looks like he's about to say something when she says that she doesn't care about the cycle but he hushes himself shh good Thane quiet Thane Thane who listens to apprentices speak. He listens; they're at a fence; behind the fence are some sheep. He leans against the fence and looks at the sheep, their dirty faces, their thick rilled coats, woolly still from winter and in need of sheering. Sheep are the dumbest creatures and he watches them with pleasure, but his thoughts are for Margot and what Margot is saying.
"Are you willing to put work into becoming one of the Verbena?"
"Are you willing to make sacrifice, not just a hare here and there, a crow or a magpie, but personal sacrifice too?"
"What do you think about repercussions; about consequences?"
"We care about the cycle, though we don't give a shit about maintaining it or doing what it is the Thanatonics do. Well we give somthing of a shit, it's just there's a lot of Life to fuck around with Life's the gift that we're given and it's from Life we get our power. Life and Her, whatever form you think she takes."
MargotThane's first question had Margot raising one eyebrow with skeptical curiosity and turning her head to look at him directly. The expression didn't fade much while he continued with his other questions-- about sacrafice and consequence. About how she should care about the cycle because they do, just differently from how the Chakravanti do.
Her lips pressed together thin, holding back words until she'd thought them through a little more. Margot was very smart, very smart indeed, but the quick-on-the-spot wit wasn't her wheelhouse. She was quick enough, certainly. Didn't have to hesitate too terribly long.
"I'm not afraid of work. I'll work fingers away to bone... for the right cause." There's a hint of flint there. That sounds like a statement she's willing to carve onto stone and stand herself beside when pressed.
"The same goes for sacrafice. It depends on what the sacrafice is for."
Her gaze lingered on Thane's profile for a moment more before swinging out toward-past-over the sheep and into the horizon. "I don't know yet what the Verbenae are worth-- no offense," she added quickly, sounding like she was flinching a little for the possible careless insult. "Where are you driving with these questions, if that's not too forward?"
Thane"Nah it's not too forward of course not and don't worry," he grins, easy as anything, easy as the tide rolls in, easy as the wind combing through the distant fields, "I don't take offense easily, especially not when it's a Disparate trying to figure shit out. So. I'm not a college recruiter, I'm not going to woo you into joining the Verbena, I'm not a seducer of maidens, I'm going to answer your questions if you have any about my Tradition, I'm going to judge how well I think you would fit in my Tradition, whether or not you're just attached to the idea of being called 'Witch' and the idea of blood or if there's anything more to your desire, whether there CAN be anything more to your desire. I think if you wanted to pursue the Verbena I'd teach you or try to hook you up with a proper nearby mentor and help you work toward Initiation, but I'm not sure. You say you don't know yet what the Verbenae are worth; well every Tradition is worth the world. Except for fucking 'depts, you gotta take them on an individual basis, because they will hack your life and 'dox the fuck out of you. I don't like it; it's too overwhelming. I hope I'm not offending you. It's just people get all attached to this idea think they know what a Verbena is and does and then they get squeamish, or they just want the power and the trappings, none of the fucking responsibility and joy."
MargotMargot lifted a hand to push her hair back behind her ears, one at a time. She adjusted how she was standing on the fence and looped her legs overtop the middle rung instead of standing on the bottom. This let her sit in the fence instead of stand.
"Maybe I am just attached to the concept of a Witch. I feel like there's a big signifigance to the Earth. Like, I know that Andraste's a Goddess and that has to do with the realm of Spirits, but she's Here as well as There. More than that, part of the Earth as much as she is part of the Umbra.
"I feel a tug to the oceans. I feel a pull into the deep rich dirts under our feet. Like that's where all of Her and My magic would come from. Which seems very Earth Child but I don't think I'll be spending my time blooming botanicals and helping cure ailments by growing the Earth. That's a different realm, a different Goddess."
She looked down at her fingernails and before her and examined the lines and groves in them.
"I don't think I'll always be squeamish...," she said, sounding more than a little self conscious for a moment-- no doubt, her squeamishness had become an issue she was called out on recently. "I'm working on it."
Thane"Nobody expects you to be a stoic bad ass to start, or to be up to the elbows in sweat and shit right away," Thane says, encouragingly. "Being squeamish is part of it, at least at first. What you're not getting, and this is fine too by the way you don't have to understand everything or be drawn to all aspects of Her, especially not now, I mean, shit, you are fucking new, there are Disciples and Adepts still working on it, but what you're not getting is there's healing even to War. Maybe you're not going to a grower of things, that's fine. But there is a tradition of certain herbs for certain Craftworks for certain Goddesses for certain spirits. Andraste might hold some of these sacred too; even mistle toe was not just for kissing way back when. Mistletoe was for war. "
Thane runs his fingers through his hair, flopping it off his brow. And it stays flopped that way, a bouffant of dark wave. "I mean you practice in your own way, as long as you respect and believe in the Old Ways, can see the connection between your service to them and the rest..."
He trails away. What was he saying? He hmms and then says, "So yeah. I guess, you gotta make a choice. What do you need to know in order to decide about the Verbena?"
Margot"Old Ways," she repeated quietly. "I think that's why I was drawn in too. Doc said I'm Primordial. My magick feels very Old."
Then, the question. What would it take for her to know whether she was going to take the plunge? Her brow furrowed some, and she turned about at the waist and shoulder to look at Thane better when she answered.
"Well, I suppose what these Holy Days are, and what exactly I'm agreeing to worship. And what is all entailed in joining-- what do I have to do to join? What kind of hiearchy am I agreeing to follow? Are there leaders I'm supposed to be answering to, certain rules or codes I'm supposed to live by..." She frowned-- this was the part that she didn't like about Traditions. Trying hard to align her own understanding, loose as it was, within the boundaries of another's belief system.
"I don't know how much you know about the cabal Pen and Nick and me had together, oh and Ari, do you know Arianna yet? She stayed with the Mars-Hydes, ha ha I don't think Nick took any part of Penelope's Craft Name, but it feels strange to call them the Hydes, what was I saying oh right, anyway. We were a pretty big cabal and had a very difficult year. We lost one of our own, and then ... well there was a lot of really heavy bad stuff, there usually is heavy bad stuff, but this was more harrowing, and after all that was done well we were okay for a while but it got a lot harder and there were a lot of arguments and finally a straw broke the camel's back. I think we all need a threshold time apart, pursuing different goals. Not Pen and Nick, they're good together, but the rest of us."
"Anyway, that's what happened. We're still friends who care about one another, see I came all this way and braved the airport! Motherfuckers searched me and called me a fucking towel head; no respect for consequences among airline security!"
"What Tradition do you think your friend is gonna be? His name's," and Thane, mellow brown eyes (oh, but it had sparked; a certain sort of knife edge resolution at some point during his ramble) soulful and blank, has clearly forgotten whether or not he ever knew Ned's name. "Follow in the Ether man's footsteps?"
MargotMargot was beginning to put together the broad pieces of the puzzle that was Thane-- at least, as far as surface Thanes go. He was talkative, and Margot thankfully had some experience with that. Doc was talkative. William was talkative. Ned could get so talkative that the Doc had actually limited to a 140 word count as though this were Real Life Twitter. Thane's talkative habits may have once had Margot floundering to keep up and interject in conversation, but she had experience now.
So Thane went on, with a few questions smattered here and there, and Margot just cast her eyes to the glimpse of cows behind a fence up ahead. When the Verbena man lost that moment's steam, the little witch piped up in a voice that was now, as it often was, soft and thoughtful.
"I did meet Arianna. She makes a good impression-- very regal. I've never met somebody who takes Traditions so seriously." As for her friend, his name...
"His name is Ned." Edward (one presumed, he's never told her outright), but he introduced himself as Ned and so Ned he was even if Doc insisted on using full names. Good thing her name was its own full name already. Nobody's gotten familiar enough to try shortening it on her yet.
Her head shook as she continued on, casting a shadow of doubt on the question of whether Ned would join the Society of Ether. "No, Ned's not a Scientist. He does Work, not Science. I suppose if I were going to take a guess, I would peg him for a Chakravanti. He's... closely tied to death and very intense. But a lot of his Work rests on Sensation, and that's a Cultist's trademark isn't it?" Her brow furrowed. She was having trouble picturing her partner-in-learning as a Cultist of Ecstacy, even though she'd seen him Work through inebriation several times before.
Thane"Ehhh. The Ecstatics would have you think so and I guess maybe it is, but every Tradition or most Traditions have some sort of practice which relies on Sensation, including mine, including the Dreamspeakers. If your pal Ned is closely tied to Death I wouldn't necessarily say the Wheel Turners are the Tradition for him as attractive as Nicholas makes it seem it can tarnish a person if they're not careful too much Death too much looking beyond Death and forgetting about the bloody viscera of now, I mean, uh, no I'm not saying it wouldn't work for him, just it's a mistake to think about Chakravanti as the Tradition that deals with Death or to focus on Death if that's what you're inclined to, or it can be a mistake, whatever, you get me I hope. Harder to pin down a Dreamspeaker though and they're so fucking different one from the other, lots of what I think of as mini Traditions. Uh, fuck, Kha'vadi, I'm an asshole I should remember that name. They changed it recently. A lot of us did, us Traditions."
He doesn't pause; but some gravitas (Primordial, see [older than old, before there were shadows]) creeps in.
"Not the Verbenae, though. We've always stuck by the Ancient Ways, we always will. Though there seems to be a push for the proper Latinized plural," Thane sounds amused by this push. "Dollars to donuts that some Verbena who caballed with a bunch of Hermetics decided to make that push."
Thaneooc: wait! change first sentence to: "including mine, including the Dreamspeakers, hell the Order has some crazy fun sex rituals. I don't think the Society or V-depts have any but Technomancers and me we haven't gotten along all that well."
MargotThane mentioned Dreamspeakers, and Margot shook her head. "No, Ned doesn't do spirits. That's my thing." As though she had a patent on it or something, when the truth of the matter was that she was the only one out of her small would-be Cabal who could sense the Gauntlet and Umbra and Spirits and Ghosts. They relied on her, and she felt something particularly in-sync with spirits anyways. Perhaps she would have been a good
"It's all just names," she assured him when he spoke of how he should remember the new Dreamspeaker Tradition and how the word Verbena should be pluralized through Latin formals. "I mean, I know there's plenty of power to a name for some of us, but hey-- there's plenty of power to a pile of shit to some of us too."
She paused thoughtfully, then asked:
"Do you think he would be a good Verbena?"
ThaneNed doesn't do spirits. "Well the Hermetics have a lot going on, you gotta be book smart as fuck though, or else you're kind of shit out of luck, and there's a lot of room for variety in the Cult too. Depends on how he uses Sensation, whether he can get down with their code. Everything's got a code you know."
He laughs, "That was a very Verbena thing you just said, that part about shit," and his eyes spark with this gold quality, this is a metaphor, right, but the golden quality it's heath all dredged with light all warmed by far and away, and now he looks sidelong at Margot.
They've walked. There are cows. "Oh, you mean Ned? I can't say I'm sure I mean I don't even know if you'd be a good Verbena yet though the signs do seem to be there I get it. What's a 'good' Verbena? But he might be, we deal with the full gamut, we're here now, we've been here for a while, but we you and I we are here right fucking now, and to Work you have to experience that. No shrinking. That's hard sometimes, but ehh..."
"So Margot, why do you want to be a Verbena? Do you still wanna be a Verbena? How'd you even fix on the idea Pen didn't say."
MargotThe Hermetics got another shake of the head, but she didn't explain herself on that one aloud. They came to a stop where the cows were penned up and Margot stepped up onto the bottom rung of the fence, hooked her arms over the top rung and rested her chin on her criss-crossed wrists.
"Because I'm a Witch. Or I feel like one. I'm not a Scientist, though, I know that much. I don't know what others may define themselves as... wizards? Saints? I don't think that words carry power, but I know that Blood and War do." She cleared her throat and explained further.
"My Avatar's a Goddess of War. She picked me out and opened my eyes. So the only things that work for me are what work for her-- Blood and War."
She looked matter-of-fact but quietly conflicted both. Margot didn't come across as particularly violent.
Thane"Okay and why do you think that matches up with the Verbena? Why not the Order? They have people whose Avatars manifest as goddesses of War. Why not the Chakravanti? Blood and War usually man Death, mean the Wheel is turning and winter is coming," a faint smirk because he gets the pop culture reference a moment after he makes it this somber whisper of a thing in his eyes. "What is it you know about the Verbena specifically which speaks to you?"
Thaneooc: ahem, 'man Death' = 'mean Death'
MargotIt was a valid question that Margot had to think long and hard about. She was quiet for a time before answering, soft and quiet and thoughtful as ever.
"I don't care about the cycle. Or the Circle. I suppose that it's obvious that there's a rhythm to Life and Death and everything inbetween, but I don't think that I'm supposed to be... guarding or maintaining or ushering along that cycle. Andraste's about War and Conquest and Victory-- It's not about killing or dealing Death, it's the affirmation of Life and Right that she has instead. She's also got domain over Love and Fertility, but I'm not quite there yet."
ThaneThane looks like he's about to say something when she says that she doesn't care about the cycle but he hushes himself shh good Thane quiet Thane Thane who listens to apprentices speak. He listens; they're at a fence; behind the fence are some sheep. He leans against the fence and looks at the sheep, their dirty faces, their thick rilled coats, woolly still from winter and in need of sheering. Sheep are the dumbest creatures and he watches them with pleasure, but his thoughts are for Margot and what Margot is saying.
"Are you willing to put work into becoming one of the Verbena?"
"Are you willing to make sacrifice, not just a hare here and there, a crow or a magpie, but personal sacrifice too?"
"What do you think about repercussions; about consequences?"
"We care about the cycle, though we don't give a shit about maintaining it or doing what it is the Thanatonics do. Well we give somthing of a shit, it's just there's a lot of Life to fuck around with Life's the gift that we're given and it's from Life we get our power. Life and Her, whatever form you think she takes."
MargotThane's first question had Margot raising one eyebrow with skeptical curiosity and turning her head to look at him directly. The expression didn't fade much while he continued with his other questions-- about sacrafice and consequence. About how she should care about the cycle because they do, just differently from how the Chakravanti do.
Her lips pressed together thin, holding back words until she'd thought them through a little more. Margot was very smart, very smart indeed, but the quick-on-the-spot wit wasn't her wheelhouse. She was quick enough, certainly. Didn't have to hesitate too terribly long.
"I'm not afraid of work. I'll work fingers away to bone... for the right cause." There's a hint of flint there. That sounds like a statement she's willing to carve onto stone and stand herself beside when pressed.
"The same goes for sacrafice. It depends on what the sacrafice is for."
Her gaze lingered on Thane's profile for a moment more before swinging out toward-past-over the sheep and into the horizon. "I don't know yet what the Verbenae are worth-- no offense," she added quickly, sounding like she was flinching a little for the possible careless insult. "Where are you driving with these questions, if that's not too forward?"
Thane"Nah it's not too forward of course not and don't worry," he grins, easy as anything, easy as the tide rolls in, easy as the wind combing through the distant fields, "I don't take offense easily, especially not when it's a Disparate trying to figure shit out. So. I'm not a college recruiter, I'm not going to woo you into joining the Verbena, I'm not a seducer of maidens, I'm going to answer your questions if you have any about my Tradition, I'm going to judge how well I think you would fit in my Tradition, whether or not you're just attached to the idea of being called 'Witch' and the idea of blood or if there's anything more to your desire, whether there CAN be anything more to your desire. I think if you wanted to pursue the Verbena I'd teach you or try to hook you up with a proper nearby mentor and help you work toward Initiation, but I'm not sure. You say you don't know yet what the Verbenae are worth; well every Tradition is worth the world. Except for fucking 'depts, you gotta take them on an individual basis, because they will hack your life and 'dox the fuck out of you. I don't like it; it's too overwhelming. I hope I'm not offending you. It's just people get all attached to this idea think they know what a Verbena is and does and then they get squeamish, or they just want the power and the trappings, none of the fucking responsibility and joy."
MargotMargot lifted a hand to push her hair back behind her ears, one at a time. She adjusted how she was standing on the fence and looped her legs overtop the middle rung instead of standing on the bottom. This let her sit in the fence instead of stand.
"Maybe I am just attached to the concept of a Witch. I feel like there's a big signifigance to the Earth. Like, I know that Andraste's a Goddess and that has to do with the realm of Spirits, but she's Here as well as There. More than that, part of the Earth as much as she is part of the Umbra.
"I feel a tug to the oceans. I feel a pull into the deep rich dirts under our feet. Like that's where all of Her and My magic would come from. Which seems very Earth Child but I don't think I'll be spending my time blooming botanicals and helping cure ailments by growing the Earth. That's a different realm, a different Goddess."
She looked down at her fingernails and before her and examined the lines and groves in them.
"I don't think I'll always be squeamish...," she said, sounding more than a little self conscious for a moment-- no doubt, her squeamishness had become an issue she was called out on recently. "I'm working on it."
Thane"Nobody expects you to be a stoic bad ass to start, or to be up to the elbows in sweat and shit right away," Thane says, encouragingly. "Being squeamish is part of it, at least at first. What you're not getting, and this is fine too by the way you don't have to understand everything or be drawn to all aspects of Her, especially not now, I mean, shit, you are fucking new, there are Disciples and Adepts still working on it, but what you're not getting is there's healing even to War. Maybe you're not going to a grower of things, that's fine. But there is a tradition of certain herbs for certain Craftworks for certain Goddesses for certain spirits. Andraste might hold some of these sacred too; even mistle toe was not just for kissing way back when. Mistletoe was for war. "
Thane runs his fingers through his hair, flopping it off his brow. And it stays flopped that way, a bouffant of dark wave. "I mean you practice in your own way, as long as you respect and believe in the Old Ways, can see the connection between your service to them and the rest..."
He trails away. What was he saying? He hmms and then says, "So yeah. I guess, you gotta make a choice. What do you need to know in order to decide about the Verbena?"
Margot"Old Ways," she repeated quietly. "I think that's why I was drawn in too. Doc said I'm Primordial. My magick feels very Old."
Then, the question. What would it take for her to know whether she was going to take the plunge? Her brow furrowed some, and she turned about at the waist and shoulder to look at Thane better when she answered.
"Well, I suppose what these Holy Days are, and what exactly I'm agreeing to worship. And what is all entailed in joining-- what do I have to do to join? What kind of hiearchy am I agreeing to follow? Are there leaders I'm supposed to be answering to, certain rules or codes I'm supposed to live by..." She frowned-- this was the part that she didn't like about Traditions. Trying hard to align her own understanding, loose as it was, within the boundaries of another's belief system.
[To Be Continued]
March 24th, 2016 - Social Finesse [Arianna, Grace, Doc]
Arianna
The only way that Arianna Giametti and Andrés Sepulveda seem likely to colocalize is in establishments that are purveyors of fine (or cheap, cheap works too) alcohol. They are about as unlikely drinking buddies as ever the Awakened world has seen: he with the sense of cold foreboding wrapped around his pattern, and she with the sense of starlight wreathed around her. And today she has been drinking enough that her hands and words seem inexorably tied, and she is explaining to him something, as the door to said drinking establishment swings wide, something in one of those expressive languages, languages of the heart, romantic, some call them, she is saying something that requires large and sweeping gestures, and Italian is close enough to Spanish anyway.
What they are talking about doesn't matter much. The obvious sense of camaraderie and mischief to her, the easy way she seems to make very bad ideas seem logical and well within the bounds of reason? The absolutely impeccable quality of her dress, aspects of her appearance; this easy and uninhibited sense of privilege and wealth? Those are important. Those are critical.
It turns out, she is telling him about a recipe. It could be magical; or it could be a secret family pasta sauce. Her hands still a little, come up to wrap a pashmina around her neck against the cold of the Denver winter. Because it is Spring; and therefore there is a blizzard.
Andrés
[DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY: jamie has 90 minutes on her laptop battery and will have company in 15-45 minutes so her posts will not be top-notch]
Many airports and European bistros have instances where travelers from Spain and Italy have run into each other and had entire conversations without either having previously learned the other's tongue.
Mexican-Spanish is not his mother tongue. It was his mother's tongue and his father's tongue but his father was barely around and his mother -- well. Arianna has none of this information. She does know that he speaks Spanish with an immigrant's fluency and can understand about half of what she says when she lapses into Italian. A match made in Hell.
If she has not smacked it off yet, he has his arm around her waist. Not tight, not possessive, but like he, five-foot-six in his shoes, needs her for balance. He's wearing most of a suit. The tie is gone. He hasn't shaved his face since Saturday. His glasses are on his face. His wedding band is gone.
"Anyone!" he is saying. "Anyone who denies the change of the climate, they have never been to the United States!"
Arianna
She mostly understands him when he speaks; probably a fair bit better than he understands her, and so it brings the conversation back to English more than her tipsy multi-lingual tendencies would otherwise prefer.
"Tell me again, about this Climate Change -- and why, if you have done the proper cantrips; if you have the associated research; why would it be denied? Change is inevitable, right, this is how your English saying goes?"
There is a flush to her cheeks, a rosy-warmth and healthy looking thing. It is partly alcohol, and partly amusement. She hasn't shoved him off of her, rather slipped an arm around his shoulder, steadying him further. Or steadying herself off of him. Ari is taller by an inch; she is immeasurably more put together.
It is a small miracle that they are not debating the finer points of Hermeticism as they wander-weave down the street, in search of the next pub on tonight's ill-advised crawl.
Grace
She's bought her plant materials today. Those are stuck in the back of her car, waiting for the chance to be used. But then, she found herself in the general area of a number of bars. It's a good plan, right? Drunken hydroponic gardening? She can always get Kalen to drive her home. Or, possibly, just undrunk herself.
So, she walks into the place, and... finds that Andrés is here, by the way the cold slither goes down her neck. Fantastic.
No, it's good to see him, not... You know... I mean, hopefully he's not...
She walks up, squinting a bit, and then relieved once she actually gets a good look. She's got on her usual red (sharp-looking) coat, with jeans underneath. Accidentally fashionable, at best, Grace only teally cares that she's clothed.
"Oh, hey. Dr. Sepúlveda. Nice to see you not naked. Who's this? Also, it's denied somewhat because people don't understand the difference between seasonal changes and climate changes. Fucking senators throwing snowballs to 'prove' it's not happening..."
Andrés
"Gracia! Ignorance! Ignorance throws the snowballs!"
He neither releases Arianna nor addresses the part of her sentence that has to do with his prior nakedness. He does however speak with the hand that isn't latched onto the Hermetic's hip.
"Le presento a Arianna," he says. "Arianna, le presento a Gracia." Lightbulb! He isn't just trying to be a dick! He has a thick accent and is drunk half the time! "If you want to give each other your..." A flailing yet cyclical hand motion. "... your whatevers. Persuasions. What is the w--TRADITIONS. Yes. Do it. I'm not."
Arianna
Here Arianna is, enjoying the company of commoners, arm looped around the shoulders of a most unlikely friend, dripping with the sense of starlight, tripping over the toes of her multitude of languages. She is almost comfortable in how they discuss these pedestrian things like the fate of the global ecology when...
... Grace wanders up. Ari's eyes flicker over to her quickly; to the sound of a new and unfamiliar voice. There is a slick of quicksilver to them, something mercurial and unfathomable but clever, but quick, and all together too inviting. Sharp red, bright white, and what can only be assumed to be shades of what was black -- they are at least a complementary tangle of outerwear, if not resonances. The corner of her mouth curls, slightly, at some inward joke.
"Naked..." A look to Andres, and then, in something close to Spanish, she says, "You didn't seem to be the sort." Mirth here; approval or perhaps cleverly covered disdain. It is difficult to tell just now. Hard to see around the teasing in her eyes.
"It is a pleasure, Grace, to make your acquaintance," and though the words are formal, they are tinged with her mood and her slight inebriation. There is a playful pass at curtsey here, one that isn't going to drop the good doctor on his ass. She has manners, after all, however occluded they may be at most times.
Grace
Arionna's curtsey. Grace tries to mirror it, with a frown of concentration on her face. She was named Grace, but the name never suited her.
"Arianna. Nice to meet you. Also, yeah. He didn't really look like he had too much of a problem with it either..."
Grace though. A blush comes to her face just talking about it. She shakes her head.
"I guess not too many people can say The Union desperately wanted to make their clothes disappear. It's, you know, bragging rights."
Of a sort.
"I'm with the Elites. You? I've heard the name Arianna around.
Margot
Let us not worry about what Margot was doing prior to this moment. Let people presume what they will about the time of a 19-year-old girl and what she may dedicate it to (they're probably wrong anyways). What does matter is that this here was a hot spot tonight, a veritable leyline where Fates and paths crossed over into a patch of concrete and brick in front of a bar in the heart of Downtown Denver.
She was wearing a pair of black boots laced up the ankle, into which a pair of snug gray jeans were tucked. A heavy brown jacket warded off the chill from the last breath of winter-- accustomed though she may be to chilliness due in whole to her mentor's resonance, she was still human bodied and susceptible. She had her hands in her pockets and her hair down, left for the wind to tug and pull however it pleased when it whispered.
Ahoy! Up ahead! A zap in the air, a chill, a sparkle, a whoosh. Margot slowed and stopped several yards away, frowning, hesitating, hovering.
Grace, who walked away upset when she saw her last. The Doc, with his arm around the waist of a pretty stranger in a dress. He looked properly toasted, so did she. Her nose wrinkled and she hovered, unsure of if she wanted to come and play.
But that resonance, though.... They would notice, it was like having a battlefield full of carrion and sticky red crawling up behind you.
Arianna
Grace blushes. It draws a little more of Arianna's attention her way. This could be a good thing; it could be a very very bad thing. But these are not her usual circles, and so her usual games are held at bay, but only just so. When Grace says 'the Elites' one of Ari's eyebrows arches just so, lofted a measured amount.
"The Elites? I thought you were a faery race of nightmares made up just to scare good little Apprentices within the Order into behaving just so, lest their wands be taken away and fashioned in ... to...those memory things." Well, this is where it falls apart. She has likely never held a thumb drive in her life -- not one that livedto tell the tale.
This, though, with the curl of mischeif sharply intact.
"Though do tell, as I am always curious: from whom have you learned my name?" Oh yes, now, her Hermetic is showing. The grammar; the grammar always gives them away.
Andrés
"It is a popular name," says Sepúlveda.
What else is he supposed to say. He's on the sidewalk with his arm around the waist of an attractive woman who has her arm around his shoulder. Yeah it's well-known he was going to break into the Amaranthine Laboratories and retrieve Alexander Brandt. Yeah it's not so well-known that he contracted clothing-eating nanites and spent three days holed up in an invisible van outside the motel Serafíne the Cultist had cordoned off in case of cases like this.
And then here comes his apprentice.
It has nothing to do with the fact that something goes off in his pocket. It isn't his cellphone. It's blocky and weird and may or may not resemble something Grace saw in the back of the "ambulance" in which she first witnessed Sepúlveda's nudity.
"Shit," he says when he pulls the device out of his pocket. "I gotta go."
Arianna
[Awareness: because I suppose I should roll this if we are openly talking magics in public]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Arianna
[Awareness: because I suppose I should roll this if we are openly talking magics in public]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Arianna
((ACK! Why double roll, why?))
Margot
[[ Variety is the spice of life? ]]
Grace
"I could take your wand and turn it into a stick-insect robot," she says, a fake-cruel little grin on her face.
"Or, a wifi hotspot," she says, with a horrible evil laugh.
But when he freaks out and starts the other way, Grace looks around, a little alarmed that perhaps Dr. Sepúlveda has seen one of the Technocrats he ran into at the lab. But, it's just Margot. She looks at the Apprentice, quite confused, before looking back at the doctor...
Who's disappeared.
"Huh. I uh, heard your name from Silas."
God, but Dr. Sepúlveda is weird.
Margot
Well, there went the Doc. We'll say that he blew right past Margot when he bailed out after a quick look at some device (not his phone, though) that was produced from his suit pocket. When he'd passed Margot there was some brief exchange of words-- Margot looking displeased (wrinkled nose, furrowed brow, quickly shaking her head and muttering back to him). After a certain point Andrés must have decided that he didn't have the time or it wasn't worth the hassle, because he made a gesture of 'whatever' with his hands and continued past.
Some parting words, though, had Margot looking over at Arianna and Grace. If at that moment either looked her way as well, she pushed a closed-lipped forced smile onto her face and lifted a hand to wave; the wave looked far more genuine than the smile. Some people are just poor in their social graces.
She started walking again, along the same path she'd been on, which was now a direct approach of the other two Mages. Her hands went in her pockets, and in another show of amazing social finesse she greeted the pair upon proximity with a simple:
"Hey."
Arianna
Sepulveda departs, leaving Ari to stand on her own and mark this: she has practice at being inebriated and socially adept. There are aspects of being slightly toasted that make this easier, that keep that smile and the warmth in her eyes despite the grim resonance coming up behind them.
Have you ever heard of monsters? Do you know them to be true? Margot feels like monsters and this woman, in her dress and her white coat, in the wake of Andres abandoning her, she seems utterly unmoved by it. As if the monsters trapped in Margot breast are not that dark, and not that unknowable. She is at ease with them; she may even know their Names.
At an appropriate time, perhaps coupled with the doc's departure, she casts a look over to the source of that sticky, dark and --
See this? A flash of teeth. Polite. Genteel. So, absolutely, politically correct: a little laugh. "Oh, yes. That would be a good one." This, then, with so many unspoken undercurrents.
"Though I would advise against it." It is only the thinnest shadow of a warning; a blade seen on edge; only at its thinnest point. It gives no sense of the sharpness of the thing; that is kept caged.
And this brings Margot, and her closed-lipped smile, and her caged expression, and her hesitance forward. "Good evening," says Ari; it is pleasant and warm. That sense of mischeif has been walked back a little bit. It is colder here, without the doctor beside her--isn't that saying something?
Arianna
((Edit:
I could take your wand...
*And her attention snaps back to Grace. See this? ... (and so forth...)
I don't know how I lost that in copy/pasting!))
Grace
Grace gets that. If anyone were to take her instruments, she'd be pissed too. Still, it gives her an idea...
She pulls her phone out if her pocket.
"Hey, Margot. What's his problem?"
The last time Grace said anything to Margot it was to tell her to fuck off. This seems to have been forgotten. Mostly.
She then proceeds to tap away at her phone's screen. Mercurial Elites, man.
Arianna
So you've heard that stereotype, right, about how technology really doesn't get along with wizards? How their cars don't quite run right. How they eschew modern conveniences in favor Older, Truer methods.
This is especially true with Arianna. She is well and truly cursed. Not that she minds it; technology is querrelsome at best. But she does the Elite the favor of stepping a little further from her when Grace pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts typing away. So it will be less her fault when it starts behaving... poorly.
Margot
Arianna's warmth in her greeting wasn't missed. In fact, it was apparent the impact it had on the little witch. She appeared relieved, like she was worried that there was going to be some kind of a what do you want? replacing the 'good evening' that actually came. The tension in her brow lessened, forehead smoothed and eyes relaxed.
Then came Grace's greeting and question combination. That relief doubled up enough that Margot actually let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding and her shoulders stopped being so square and rounded down to rest. It was good to know that grudges weren't being held over how tense their last encounter was. That she wasn't being held necessarily responsible (yet) for how her Mentor behaved was nice too, though the question did have her glancing back over her shoulder to where the Doc had disappeared.
"Not a problem exactly. Some project or another." She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as though to say 'what can you do?'. He was a Mad Scientist after all. She was figuring out that the emphasis on Mad and Science in that title was equal but different between words. She looked to Arianna and smiled a little-- this one far less tense than the close-lipped thing she'd provided when approaching. "The Doc said you know Pen and Nick, and that I should come say hi. I'm Margot."
Yeah, Grace just said that.
Arianna
It's fair, this expectation Margot has of her. In different circumstances, that greeting may be just what she gets from the Initiate Exemptus. But not at an establishment that peddles pleasures; not outside of more strictured social circumstances. Tonight Arianna is downright pleasant. She is practically polite. She has not led anyone astray or into mayhem.
"They are among my dearest friends," she says, confirming this for Margot readily. As readily as she had completely glossed over mention of Silas. Take that as you will. "Are you both known to them?"
This, then, ties the three of them together in one question. It cements the thing. And three points make a circle, so they are cast together in it; they are made immanent and full of omens. Then for Margot: "A pleasure. Please, call me Arianna."
Grace
"Oh, you...." she starts. The cussing is cut out. "You do too know how to do that..."
She's talking all right. To her phone. Frowning at it. Finally smacks it, like it had a head and she was slapping it.
Suddenly there is a burst of something sharp in the air. She's done playing nice with Mr. Phone.
[Entropy 3: Debugging. Obviously, her phone is possessed. The only cure is some nice, regular, orderliness. And violent smacking. Diff 5 - 1, taking her time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 2 )
Margot
Grace was busy with her phone. Something sharp snapped at the air and Margot eyed her and the device she was holding suspiciously. A keen edge, if you will, stinging and biting. She knew that some used their technology for their Magick and Grace was among them.
As opposed to ask questions, Margot felt out the air to make sure she wouldn't get caught in a backlash somehow, then returned her attention to Arianna.
"Nice to meet you, Arianna."
Were they both known to them? Margot glanced to Grace, then shrugged. She couldn't speak for the Elitist's familiarity with the Chakravanti-Hermetic couple She could speak to her own, though.
"Yeah, the Doc had a dinner party and had Ned and I over to meet them. We're in touch now, here and there." She paused, then added for context: "Dr. Sepulveda is my mentor." Left out Ned, though. Sorry buddy.
Arianna
There is a crackle of energy in the air around her, the hallmarks of working magics and, unlike Margot, it draws up something ever-ready and precise in Arianna. Her shoulders square, and her chin lifts. Even tipsy, even a little off-her-guard, her attention is cast wide before narrowing back to the Elite at her side.
"Is everything alright?" she asks Grace. It is clear spoken; it is sharp-eyed. But there is no obvious sense of danger, and so Arianna's hand strays to a pocket, fingers wrapped around the hilt of her wand, but she does not draw it out in public. Mark, though, that she is ready. She is able.
This tension remains, uneasiness, between them as she casts her attention back to Margot. She is surprised at something the girl has said, reaches for the appropriate words to touch upon it. "I... am surprised to hear he is your Master. I would have marked you for an Older ilk; a greener sort."
Grace
"I've... Met both of them, a couple times," Grace says, absentmindedly, well after the question was asked.
But then Arianna said something else, didn't she?
"Oh. My phone. It's acting up. Like, the touch screen isn't... Touching or something. I think..."
She smacks it again.
"I think I fixed it..."
Arianna
"Oh," she says. Just this. And the singing tension drops out of her shoulders; sluices; moves away is if it were never there. And there is mirth to the corners of her eyes again -- one could imagine it amuses her when, yet again, the older ways are proven to be more stable things, to hold more gravitas. In truth, it is just the stay of some unknown altercation that pleases her.
After all, this is a city on the brink of War. This is a place where an unaffiliated Apprentice was taken, reclaimed again, and they are still awaiting the retribution.
"I'm glad it's better now." That seems like an appropriate thing to say, doesn't it? That's practically pleasant. It saves her from making some sort of patently false assertion about how friends of Nick and Pen were her friends too, or some other platitude. Arianna doesn't deal in platitudes.
Grace
Her phone is amusing Grace now. Taps get followed by mischevous grins.
Somebody's up to something.
"Oh, yes. It's great," she says. "In fact, I have just made 'Arionna's Wand' into a wifi hotspot."
A grin. This time above her phone screen. At Arionna.
"I'm joking! Joking!"
Margot
"Master?"
Margot sounded incredibly offended by the word-- not insulted by Arianna directly as much as appauled at the notion of referring to him, or anyone really, as master. She stared at the pretty Italian woman with disbelief. But then--
"Oh. Hermetic." Already wide eyes widened further with realization, and the girl relaxed.
Then she realized there was another question hanging in the air. Forgot for a moment, because she was distracted watching Grace and her phone. Stared for a moment, then remembered that Arianna had spoken further of Traditions.
"No, no no. I'm not into Science like that. I'm studying ecology, but gizmos and chemistry sets?" She shook her head and waved her hand. "I don't have a Tradition yet." She glanced around. Nobody was passing near, nobody had exited the bar to bombard them yet. She wasn't worried about being overheard really. What, would the Technocrats have a stake out in every part of the city? Wouldn't being around Grace basically automatically ward her by proximity? She couldn't doubt that Grace kept a Ward up about herself, especially these days.
"I think I may look into the Verbenas.... Penelope actually said she'd ask a friend to meet me." The Doc was right-- community was key, wasn't it?
Margot
[[ Sorry for the occasional delay, by the way! I've got a baby about sooo, heh, you know. :) ]]
Arianna
For Grace: If looks could kill is a stupid saying among willworkers. Looks could, in fact, kill. Looks could flay a mind down to its vestigal redundancies and fail to built it back again. Looks could steal air from lungs; they could turn veins to ice. Looks, man, they're powerful things. So there is delicacy in the Look that Arianna gives Grace; it is measured; it is precisely as warning as she wants it to be without going further into coldness.
"You are quite clever."
This may not be a compliment.
"Oh. You are the apprentice for whom Thane is visiting," Arianna says, stringing quite a few things overheard into something more solidified. This brokers a true smile, a thing that touches her eyes. "I am indebted to you, then. Because we do miss him, and you have given him good reason to venture out this far."
Grace
"I really did though," a huff of a laugh. If Arianna wants to throw fireballs at her, Grace can take it. In fact, all the serious business the woman keeps putting on her face have only served to egg Grace on more.
"I named my phone 'Arionna's Wand' and turned it into a wifi hotspot."
Because, you know, doing what you're explicitly warned not to do, getting around things by using cheap tricks? It's all a good hacker ever does. Even if the result thus achieved is kind of silly...
"And, I am very clever. It is good of you to notice that. Who's Thane?"
Margot
[Perception + Empathy: Are these two goading each other or what?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Arianna
[Manip + Subter (cunning): Nah, we cool. I'm just a Hermetic.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1
Arianna
((ACK! Not re-rolls. Double 10s. I am such a M20 newb.))
Grace
[Grace just seems like she's having fun for the sake of having fun. There are some things she takes seriously, like the lives and freedom of people (as Margot has seen). Other people's possessions just don't seem to be on that list.]
Arianna
The serious business face is what is keeping Arianna from being an outright ass and asking, in a jovial and friendly tone, for Grace to let her see: how cool! Because she is so very good at being cunning, and also at being mean. And then getting her wizardly cooties all over the Elite's tech. This abrupt and perturbed outward seeming is the lesser of the available escalation tactics. Nobody's instruments are well and truly called into danger.
Yet.
Grace's smugness is met with a briefer smile. And here, then, Arianna's own phone, something anachronistic, and bulky, something that flips and doesn't touch, comes out of her pocket. Things are typed, keys pressed. It goes back into her pocket.
It does not remain in view as long as Grace's tech. It would be unfair to call Arianna's phone "tech" this many years after its debut. The question of Thane's providence, then, is returned to.
"A friend of mine, and Nicholas's and Pen's, who shall be visiting for a brief while." She says this plainly. So that Grace, distracted as she is with Arianna's Wand (the phone [not the true one]), might still take it up this time. "And will likely speak with Margot her about her mystical inclinations."
Margot
While Arianna gave stern looks and Grace grinned and continued to play (Circuit Coyote), Margot was quiet. She looked between the two of them, like she was anxious of tension that may begin to flicker-flicker-flint. She'd seen a pair of Mages in a fight with one another before, and the aftermath made her puke in her mentor's toilet. She didn't want to be here if it was going to happen again.
But nothing came of it, and Arianna had addresse her with thanks for bringing Thane back out. Claimed that Margot herself was a very good reason for him to visit. The Apprentice looked thoughtful while there was filling in on Thane's identity going on.
"...Recruitment's that important, is it?" She piped up quietly, and glanced between Arianna and Grace both. Perhaps a question she sought bouth their views on.
Arianna
"Recruitment?"
This draws a furrow to Arianna's brow for a moment, and for a moment she cares not at all what the Elite has named her phone, or whether Naming is sufficient sympathetic magic to link the named thing to the true thing and thus influence the flow of Ars Essentiae between them -- because that would be impolite. And rude, even by Hermetic standards. And would make Nick unhappy with her. A different sort of unhappy with her than he has sometimes been. It would be counterproductive, however satisfying.
And no, Margot, there will be no great awakened throw down in mystical Denver Downtown. At least, if there was, Arianna with her stern looks would not be the one to start it.
"I... I would speak to you about this in a more controlled environment, but, and please understand, Margot, that I am being brief not in dismissiveness but of necessity -- Choosing the minds with which you will align yourself is more precious and important than 'recruitment' may belie. It is choosing the framework upon which you hang your Works, your world view, and ultimately your greatest accomplishments and challenges. You are choosing the shoulders of the giants upon which you will stand as you move forward in your enlightenment. Do not let any Tradition claim you that you would not proudly claim for yourself, but also do not belittle or diminish the danger in remaining apart."
This for the apprentice; this for the one who will claim Thane's attention and possibly join his Tradition. Every single syllable of this is spoken without slurring; it is imperative; it is crystal clear and shining. For Arianna is also luminous, and the Order has been a shining City on the Hill to many in its millenia of leadership.
Grace
"Oh, that's cool!" Grace says, to Arianna's reply. Honestly, Margot needs more than just Andrés Sepúlveda in her life.
But, to Arianna's words, she shakes her head. "I don't really think 'recruitment' is nearly as important as just having people you can talk to about your... mystical inclinations. Hell, when I Awakened, I had a bunch of people -- none of them technically minded -- who I leaned on a lot to figure out how to deal. There's a lot of commonalities in what we do, when you get down to it.
"You might find if you want to have that in your life, joining up under a banner is the way to go. You might also not. I know a lot of Disparates in the city who adamantly want to go their own way, and there's nothing wrong with that. A bit more dangerous, yeah. Perhaps. But we're Mages," she says, gets down to a more serious tone herself. "There is no fear we can't conquer."
Arianna
"It is more than a bit more dangerous," Arianna says, on the heels of Grace's opinion. This, too, is clear cut and definitive. "But Grace is right: the choice is yours." It is ominous when she says it that way; it gives the thing the proper weight.
"Keep in mind, though: not all places are so... generous... to Disparates."
Grace
"Then, those places are corrupt. And I wouldn't go anywhere near them anyway, Disparate or no."
Ahh, happy shiny conflict.
"There's a word for people who care about other people's labels. That word is: 'bigot'."
Arianna
"So you have a label then, for these other labellers of people?" Arianna asks. Her mouth twists wrily, eyebrow arched and challenging. It is a dark and dangerous thing. She has honed her skills in this game against a Tytalan. It shows.
Margot
The advice that she received was soaked up like a sponge. Margot listened raptly to Arianna, for she was well-spoken and serious and impactful, and her words felt like they carried heavy weight. She listened to Grace, of whom she's heard in almost every conversation that revolved around the magickal community in this city. Grace said this, Grace set this up, Grace dismantled this and found this and fixed this. Margot bore this in mind, and also noted a similarity there-- she knew a lot of people, but none of them seemed to match up with what she felt herself to be.
Then, some back and forth about the pros and cons of Traditions and Orphans and bigots and bigoted bigot callers and--
"I'm a witch."
Margot cut in, over their back and forth. Glanced between the two, almost sharply (scoldingly, a budding emergence of what Mage she would become when her connection to her Avatar was stronger, no doubt-- when her confidence and Power were given time to grow), and continued on.
"Ned and I, we've talked about this. We'll find Traditions, it's unsafe to do otherwise. I've seen what happens. I--," But her phone started ringing in her pocket. She glanced down at the screen, then sighed and explained: "It's the Doc, will you excuse me?"
She stepped away. A brief conversation later (tense back and forth for perhaps a minute or less), Margot sighed and pocketed her phone. Returned to the others and explained: "I guess the Doc's gonna get his assistant tonight after all. Thanks for, y'know, your time and stuff you two." An awkward pause, for an awkward girl, then-- "'Bye."
And away went Margot Travers, briskly up the sidewalk from whence she came.
The only way that Arianna Giametti and Andrés Sepulveda seem likely to colocalize is in establishments that are purveyors of fine (or cheap, cheap works too) alcohol. They are about as unlikely drinking buddies as ever the Awakened world has seen: he with the sense of cold foreboding wrapped around his pattern, and she with the sense of starlight wreathed around her. And today she has been drinking enough that her hands and words seem inexorably tied, and she is explaining to him something, as the door to said drinking establishment swings wide, something in one of those expressive languages, languages of the heart, romantic, some call them, she is saying something that requires large and sweeping gestures, and Italian is close enough to Spanish anyway.
What they are talking about doesn't matter much. The obvious sense of camaraderie and mischief to her, the easy way she seems to make very bad ideas seem logical and well within the bounds of reason? The absolutely impeccable quality of her dress, aspects of her appearance; this easy and uninhibited sense of privilege and wealth? Those are important. Those are critical.
It turns out, she is telling him about a recipe. It could be magical; or it could be a secret family pasta sauce. Her hands still a little, come up to wrap a pashmina around her neck against the cold of the Denver winter. Because it is Spring; and therefore there is a blizzard.
Andrés
[DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY: jamie has 90 minutes on her laptop battery and will have company in 15-45 minutes so her posts will not be top-notch]
Many airports and European bistros have instances where travelers from Spain and Italy have run into each other and had entire conversations without either having previously learned the other's tongue.
Mexican-Spanish is not his mother tongue. It was his mother's tongue and his father's tongue but his father was barely around and his mother -- well. Arianna has none of this information. She does know that he speaks Spanish with an immigrant's fluency and can understand about half of what she says when she lapses into Italian. A match made in Hell.
If she has not smacked it off yet, he has his arm around her waist. Not tight, not possessive, but like he, five-foot-six in his shoes, needs her for balance. He's wearing most of a suit. The tie is gone. He hasn't shaved his face since Saturday. His glasses are on his face. His wedding band is gone.
"Anyone!" he is saying. "Anyone who denies the change of the climate, they have never been to the United States!"
Arianna
She mostly understands him when he speaks; probably a fair bit better than he understands her, and so it brings the conversation back to English more than her tipsy multi-lingual tendencies would otherwise prefer.
"Tell me again, about this Climate Change -- and why, if you have done the proper cantrips; if you have the associated research; why would it be denied? Change is inevitable, right, this is how your English saying goes?"
There is a flush to her cheeks, a rosy-warmth and healthy looking thing. It is partly alcohol, and partly amusement. She hasn't shoved him off of her, rather slipped an arm around his shoulder, steadying him further. Or steadying herself off of him. Ari is taller by an inch; she is immeasurably more put together.
It is a small miracle that they are not debating the finer points of Hermeticism as they wander-weave down the street, in search of the next pub on tonight's ill-advised crawl.
Grace
She's bought her plant materials today. Those are stuck in the back of her car, waiting for the chance to be used. But then, she found herself in the general area of a number of bars. It's a good plan, right? Drunken hydroponic gardening? She can always get Kalen to drive her home. Or, possibly, just undrunk herself.
So, she walks into the place, and... finds that Andrés is here, by the way the cold slither goes down her neck. Fantastic.
No, it's good to see him, not... You know... I mean, hopefully he's not...
She walks up, squinting a bit, and then relieved once she actually gets a good look. She's got on her usual red (sharp-looking) coat, with jeans underneath. Accidentally fashionable, at best, Grace only teally cares that she's clothed.
"Oh, hey. Dr. Sepúlveda. Nice to see you not naked. Who's this? Also, it's denied somewhat because people don't understand the difference between seasonal changes and climate changes. Fucking senators throwing snowballs to 'prove' it's not happening..."
Andrés
"Gracia! Ignorance! Ignorance throws the snowballs!"
He neither releases Arianna nor addresses the part of her sentence that has to do with his prior nakedness. He does however speak with the hand that isn't latched onto the Hermetic's hip.
"Le presento a Arianna," he says. "Arianna, le presento a Gracia." Lightbulb! He isn't just trying to be a dick! He has a thick accent and is drunk half the time! "If you want to give each other your..." A flailing yet cyclical hand motion. "... your whatevers. Persuasions. What is the w--TRADITIONS. Yes. Do it. I'm not."
Arianna
Here Arianna is, enjoying the company of commoners, arm looped around the shoulders of a most unlikely friend, dripping with the sense of starlight, tripping over the toes of her multitude of languages. She is almost comfortable in how they discuss these pedestrian things like the fate of the global ecology when...
... Grace wanders up. Ari's eyes flicker over to her quickly; to the sound of a new and unfamiliar voice. There is a slick of quicksilver to them, something mercurial and unfathomable but clever, but quick, and all together too inviting. Sharp red, bright white, and what can only be assumed to be shades of what was black -- they are at least a complementary tangle of outerwear, if not resonances. The corner of her mouth curls, slightly, at some inward joke.
"Naked..." A look to Andres, and then, in something close to Spanish, she says, "You didn't seem to be the sort." Mirth here; approval or perhaps cleverly covered disdain. It is difficult to tell just now. Hard to see around the teasing in her eyes.
"It is a pleasure, Grace, to make your acquaintance," and though the words are formal, they are tinged with her mood and her slight inebriation. There is a playful pass at curtsey here, one that isn't going to drop the good doctor on his ass. She has manners, after all, however occluded they may be at most times.
Grace
Arionna's curtsey. Grace tries to mirror it, with a frown of concentration on her face. She was named Grace, but the name never suited her.
"Arianna. Nice to meet you. Also, yeah. He didn't really look like he had too much of a problem with it either..."
Grace though. A blush comes to her face just talking about it. She shakes her head.
"I guess not too many people can say The Union desperately wanted to make their clothes disappear. It's, you know, bragging rights."
Of a sort.
"I'm with the Elites. You? I've heard the name Arianna around.
Margot
Let us not worry about what Margot was doing prior to this moment. Let people presume what they will about the time of a 19-year-old girl and what she may dedicate it to (they're probably wrong anyways). What does matter is that this here was a hot spot tonight, a veritable leyline where Fates and paths crossed over into a patch of concrete and brick in front of a bar in the heart of Downtown Denver.
She was wearing a pair of black boots laced up the ankle, into which a pair of snug gray jeans were tucked. A heavy brown jacket warded off the chill from the last breath of winter-- accustomed though she may be to chilliness due in whole to her mentor's resonance, she was still human bodied and susceptible. She had her hands in her pockets and her hair down, left for the wind to tug and pull however it pleased when it whispered.
Ahoy! Up ahead! A zap in the air, a chill, a sparkle, a whoosh. Margot slowed and stopped several yards away, frowning, hesitating, hovering.
Grace, who walked away upset when she saw her last. The Doc, with his arm around the waist of a pretty stranger in a dress. He looked properly toasted, so did she. Her nose wrinkled and she hovered, unsure of if she wanted to come and play.
But that resonance, though.... They would notice, it was like having a battlefield full of carrion and sticky red crawling up behind you.
Arianna
Grace blushes. It draws a little more of Arianna's attention her way. This could be a good thing; it could be a very very bad thing. But these are not her usual circles, and so her usual games are held at bay, but only just so. When Grace says 'the Elites' one of Ari's eyebrows arches just so, lofted a measured amount.
"The Elites? I thought you were a faery race of nightmares made up just to scare good little Apprentices within the Order into behaving just so, lest their wands be taken away and fashioned in ... to...those memory things." Well, this is where it falls apart. She has likely never held a thumb drive in her life -- not one that livedto tell the tale.
This, though, with the curl of mischeif sharply intact.
"Though do tell, as I am always curious: from whom have you learned my name?" Oh yes, now, her Hermetic is showing. The grammar; the grammar always gives them away.
Andrés
"It is a popular name," says Sepúlveda.
What else is he supposed to say. He's on the sidewalk with his arm around the waist of an attractive woman who has her arm around his shoulder. Yeah it's well-known he was going to break into the Amaranthine Laboratories and retrieve Alexander Brandt. Yeah it's not so well-known that he contracted clothing-eating nanites and spent three days holed up in an invisible van outside the motel Serafíne the Cultist had cordoned off in case of cases like this.
And then here comes his apprentice.
It has nothing to do with the fact that something goes off in his pocket. It isn't his cellphone. It's blocky and weird and may or may not resemble something Grace saw in the back of the "ambulance" in which she first witnessed Sepúlveda's nudity.
"Shit," he says when he pulls the device out of his pocket. "I gotta go."
Arianna
[Awareness: because I suppose I should roll this if we are openly talking magics in public]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Arianna
[Awareness: because I suppose I should roll this if we are openly talking magics in public]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Arianna
((ACK! Why double roll, why?))
Margot
[[ Variety is the spice of life? ]]
Grace
"I could take your wand and turn it into a stick-insect robot," she says, a fake-cruel little grin on her face.
"Or, a wifi hotspot," she says, with a horrible evil laugh.
But when he freaks out and starts the other way, Grace looks around, a little alarmed that perhaps Dr. Sepúlveda has seen one of the Technocrats he ran into at the lab. But, it's just Margot. She looks at the Apprentice, quite confused, before looking back at the doctor...
Who's disappeared.
"Huh. I uh, heard your name from Silas."
God, but Dr. Sepúlveda is weird.
Margot
Well, there went the Doc. We'll say that he blew right past Margot when he bailed out after a quick look at some device (not his phone, though) that was produced from his suit pocket. When he'd passed Margot there was some brief exchange of words-- Margot looking displeased (wrinkled nose, furrowed brow, quickly shaking her head and muttering back to him). After a certain point Andrés must have decided that he didn't have the time or it wasn't worth the hassle, because he made a gesture of 'whatever' with his hands and continued past.
Some parting words, though, had Margot looking over at Arianna and Grace. If at that moment either looked her way as well, she pushed a closed-lipped forced smile onto her face and lifted a hand to wave; the wave looked far more genuine than the smile. Some people are just poor in their social graces.
She started walking again, along the same path she'd been on, which was now a direct approach of the other two Mages. Her hands went in her pockets, and in another show of amazing social finesse she greeted the pair upon proximity with a simple:
"Hey."
Arianna
Sepulveda departs, leaving Ari to stand on her own and mark this: she has practice at being inebriated and socially adept. There are aspects of being slightly toasted that make this easier, that keep that smile and the warmth in her eyes despite the grim resonance coming up behind them.
Have you ever heard of monsters? Do you know them to be true? Margot feels like monsters and this woman, in her dress and her white coat, in the wake of Andres abandoning her, she seems utterly unmoved by it. As if the monsters trapped in Margot breast are not that dark, and not that unknowable. She is at ease with them; she may even know their Names.
At an appropriate time, perhaps coupled with the doc's departure, she casts a look over to the source of that sticky, dark and --
See this? A flash of teeth. Polite. Genteel. So, absolutely, politically correct: a little laugh. "Oh, yes. That would be a good one." This, then, with so many unspoken undercurrents.
"Though I would advise against it." It is only the thinnest shadow of a warning; a blade seen on edge; only at its thinnest point. It gives no sense of the sharpness of the thing; that is kept caged.
And this brings Margot, and her closed-lipped smile, and her caged expression, and her hesitance forward. "Good evening," says Ari; it is pleasant and warm. That sense of mischeif has been walked back a little bit. It is colder here, without the doctor beside her--isn't that saying something?
Arianna
((Edit:
I could take your wand...
*And her attention snaps back to Grace. See this? ... (and so forth...)
I don't know how I lost that in copy/pasting!))
Grace
Grace gets that. If anyone were to take her instruments, she'd be pissed too. Still, it gives her an idea...
She pulls her phone out if her pocket.
"Hey, Margot. What's his problem?"
The last time Grace said anything to Margot it was to tell her to fuck off. This seems to have been forgotten. Mostly.
She then proceeds to tap away at her phone's screen. Mercurial Elites, man.
Arianna
So you've heard that stereotype, right, about how technology really doesn't get along with wizards? How their cars don't quite run right. How they eschew modern conveniences in favor Older, Truer methods.
This is especially true with Arianna. She is well and truly cursed. Not that she minds it; technology is querrelsome at best. But she does the Elite the favor of stepping a little further from her when Grace pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts typing away. So it will be less her fault when it starts behaving... poorly.
Margot
Arianna's warmth in her greeting wasn't missed. In fact, it was apparent the impact it had on the little witch. She appeared relieved, like she was worried that there was going to be some kind of a what do you want? replacing the 'good evening' that actually came. The tension in her brow lessened, forehead smoothed and eyes relaxed.
Then came Grace's greeting and question combination. That relief doubled up enough that Margot actually let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding and her shoulders stopped being so square and rounded down to rest. It was good to know that grudges weren't being held over how tense their last encounter was. That she wasn't being held necessarily responsible (yet) for how her Mentor behaved was nice too, though the question did have her glancing back over her shoulder to where the Doc had disappeared.
"Not a problem exactly. Some project or another." She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as though to say 'what can you do?'. He was a Mad Scientist after all. She was figuring out that the emphasis on Mad and Science in that title was equal but different between words. She looked to Arianna and smiled a little-- this one far less tense than the close-lipped thing she'd provided when approaching. "The Doc said you know Pen and Nick, and that I should come say hi. I'm Margot."
Yeah, Grace just said that.
Arianna
It's fair, this expectation Margot has of her. In different circumstances, that greeting may be just what she gets from the Initiate Exemptus. But not at an establishment that peddles pleasures; not outside of more strictured social circumstances. Tonight Arianna is downright pleasant. She is practically polite. She has not led anyone astray or into mayhem.
"They are among my dearest friends," she says, confirming this for Margot readily. As readily as she had completely glossed over mention of Silas. Take that as you will. "Are you both known to them?"
This, then, ties the three of them together in one question. It cements the thing. And three points make a circle, so they are cast together in it; they are made immanent and full of omens. Then for Margot: "A pleasure. Please, call me Arianna."
Grace
"Oh, you...." she starts. The cussing is cut out. "You do too know how to do that..."
She's talking all right. To her phone. Frowning at it. Finally smacks it, like it had a head and she was slapping it.
Suddenly there is a burst of something sharp in the air. She's done playing nice with Mr. Phone.
[Entropy 3: Debugging. Obviously, her phone is possessed. The only cure is some nice, regular, orderliness. And violent smacking. Diff 5 - 1, taking her time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 8) ( success x 2 )
Margot
Grace was busy with her phone. Something sharp snapped at the air and Margot eyed her and the device she was holding suspiciously. A keen edge, if you will, stinging and biting. She knew that some used their technology for their Magick and Grace was among them.
As opposed to ask questions, Margot felt out the air to make sure she wouldn't get caught in a backlash somehow, then returned her attention to Arianna.
"Nice to meet you, Arianna."
Were they both known to them? Margot glanced to Grace, then shrugged. She couldn't speak for the Elitist's familiarity with the Chakravanti-Hermetic couple She could speak to her own, though.
"Yeah, the Doc had a dinner party and had Ned and I over to meet them. We're in touch now, here and there." She paused, then added for context: "Dr. Sepulveda is my mentor." Left out Ned, though. Sorry buddy.
Arianna
There is a crackle of energy in the air around her, the hallmarks of working magics and, unlike Margot, it draws up something ever-ready and precise in Arianna. Her shoulders square, and her chin lifts. Even tipsy, even a little off-her-guard, her attention is cast wide before narrowing back to the Elite at her side.
"Is everything alright?" she asks Grace. It is clear spoken; it is sharp-eyed. But there is no obvious sense of danger, and so Arianna's hand strays to a pocket, fingers wrapped around the hilt of her wand, but she does not draw it out in public. Mark, though, that she is ready. She is able.
This tension remains, uneasiness, between them as she casts her attention back to Margot. She is surprised at something the girl has said, reaches for the appropriate words to touch upon it. "I... am surprised to hear he is your Master. I would have marked you for an Older ilk; a greener sort."
Grace
"I've... Met both of them, a couple times," Grace says, absentmindedly, well after the question was asked.
But then Arianna said something else, didn't she?
"Oh. My phone. It's acting up. Like, the touch screen isn't... Touching or something. I think..."
She smacks it again.
"I think I fixed it..."
Arianna
"Oh," she says. Just this. And the singing tension drops out of her shoulders; sluices; moves away is if it were never there. And there is mirth to the corners of her eyes again -- one could imagine it amuses her when, yet again, the older ways are proven to be more stable things, to hold more gravitas. In truth, it is just the stay of some unknown altercation that pleases her.
After all, this is a city on the brink of War. This is a place where an unaffiliated Apprentice was taken, reclaimed again, and they are still awaiting the retribution.
"I'm glad it's better now." That seems like an appropriate thing to say, doesn't it? That's practically pleasant. It saves her from making some sort of patently false assertion about how friends of Nick and Pen were her friends too, or some other platitude. Arianna doesn't deal in platitudes.
Grace
Her phone is amusing Grace now. Taps get followed by mischevous grins.
Somebody's up to something.
"Oh, yes. It's great," she says. "In fact, I have just made 'Arionna's Wand' into a wifi hotspot."
A grin. This time above her phone screen. At Arionna.
"I'm joking! Joking!"
Margot
"Master?"
Margot sounded incredibly offended by the word-- not insulted by Arianna directly as much as appauled at the notion of referring to him, or anyone really, as master. She stared at the pretty Italian woman with disbelief. But then--
"Oh. Hermetic." Already wide eyes widened further with realization, and the girl relaxed.
Then she realized there was another question hanging in the air. Forgot for a moment, because she was distracted watching Grace and her phone. Stared for a moment, then remembered that Arianna had spoken further of Traditions.
"No, no no. I'm not into Science like that. I'm studying ecology, but gizmos and chemistry sets?" She shook her head and waved her hand. "I don't have a Tradition yet." She glanced around. Nobody was passing near, nobody had exited the bar to bombard them yet. She wasn't worried about being overheard really. What, would the Technocrats have a stake out in every part of the city? Wouldn't being around Grace basically automatically ward her by proximity? She couldn't doubt that Grace kept a Ward up about herself, especially these days.
"I think I may look into the Verbenas.... Penelope actually said she'd ask a friend to meet me." The Doc was right-- community was key, wasn't it?
Margot
[[ Sorry for the occasional delay, by the way! I've got a baby about sooo, heh, you know. :) ]]
Arianna
For Grace: If looks could kill is a stupid saying among willworkers. Looks could, in fact, kill. Looks could flay a mind down to its vestigal redundancies and fail to built it back again. Looks could steal air from lungs; they could turn veins to ice. Looks, man, they're powerful things. So there is delicacy in the Look that Arianna gives Grace; it is measured; it is precisely as warning as she wants it to be without going further into coldness.
"You are quite clever."
This may not be a compliment.
"Oh. You are the apprentice for whom Thane is visiting," Arianna says, stringing quite a few things overheard into something more solidified. This brokers a true smile, a thing that touches her eyes. "I am indebted to you, then. Because we do miss him, and you have given him good reason to venture out this far."
Grace
"I really did though," a huff of a laugh. If Arianna wants to throw fireballs at her, Grace can take it. In fact, all the serious business the woman keeps putting on her face have only served to egg Grace on more.
"I named my phone 'Arionna's Wand' and turned it into a wifi hotspot."
Because, you know, doing what you're explicitly warned not to do, getting around things by using cheap tricks? It's all a good hacker ever does. Even if the result thus achieved is kind of silly...
"And, I am very clever. It is good of you to notice that. Who's Thane?"
Margot
[Perception + Empathy: Are these two goading each other or what?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Arianna
[Manip + Subter (cunning): Nah, we cool. I'm just a Hermetic.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1
Arianna
((ACK! Not re-rolls. Double 10s. I am such a M20 newb.))
Grace
[Grace just seems like she's having fun for the sake of having fun. There are some things she takes seriously, like the lives and freedom of people (as Margot has seen). Other people's possessions just don't seem to be on that list.]
Arianna
The serious business face is what is keeping Arianna from being an outright ass and asking, in a jovial and friendly tone, for Grace to let her see: how cool! Because she is so very good at being cunning, and also at being mean. And then getting her wizardly cooties all over the Elite's tech. This abrupt and perturbed outward seeming is the lesser of the available escalation tactics. Nobody's instruments are well and truly called into danger.
Yet.
Grace's smugness is met with a briefer smile. And here, then, Arianna's own phone, something anachronistic, and bulky, something that flips and doesn't touch, comes out of her pocket. Things are typed, keys pressed. It goes back into her pocket.
It does not remain in view as long as Grace's tech. It would be unfair to call Arianna's phone "tech" this many years after its debut. The question of Thane's providence, then, is returned to.
"A friend of mine, and Nicholas's and Pen's, who shall be visiting for a brief while." She says this plainly. So that Grace, distracted as she is with Arianna's Wand (the phone [not the true one]), might still take it up this time. "And will likely speak with Margot her about her mystical inclinations."
Margot
While Arianna gave stern looks and Grace grinned and continued to play (Circuit Coyote), Margot was quiet. She looked between the two of them, like she was anxious of tension that may begin to flicker-flicker-flint. She'd seen a pair of Mages in a fight with one another before, and the aftermath made her puke in her mentor's toilet. She didn't want to be here if it was going to happen again.
But nothing came of it, and Arianna had addresse her with thanks for bringing Thane back out. Claimed that Margot herself was a very good reason for him to visit. The Apprentice looked thoughtful while there was filling in on Thane's identity going on.
"...Recruitment's that important, is it?" She piped up quietly, and glanced between Arianna and Grace both. Perhaps a question she sought bouth their views on.
Arianna
"Recruitment?"
This draws a furrow to Arianna's brow for a moment, and for a moment she cares not at all what the Elite has named her phone, or whether Naming is sufficient sympathetic magic to link the named thing to the true thing and thus influence the flow of Ars Essentiae between them -- because that would be impolite. And rude, even by Hermetic standards. And would make Nick unhappy with her. A different sort of unhappy with her than he has sometimes been. It would be counterproductive, however satisfying.
And no, Margot, there will be no great awakened throw down in mystical Denver Downtown. At least, if there was, Arianna with her stern looks would not be the one to start it.
"I... I would speak to you about this in a more controlled environment, but, and please understand, Margot, that I am being brief not in dismissiveness but of necessity -- Choosing the minds with which you will align yourself is more precious and important than 'recruitment' may belie. It is choosing the framework upon which you hang your Works, your world view, and ultimately your greatest accomplishments and challenges. You are choosing the shoulders of the giants upon which you will stand as you move forward in your enlightenment. Do not let any Tradition claim you that you would not proudly claim for yourself, but also do not belittle or diminish the danger in remaining apart."
This for the apprentice; this for the one who will claim Thane's attention and possibly join his Tradition. Every single syllable of this is spoken without slurring; it is imperative; it is crystal clear and shining. For Arianna is also luminous, and the Order has been a shining City on the Hill to many in its millenia of leadership.
Grace
"Oh, that's cool!" Grace says, to Arianna's reply. Honestly, Margot needs more than just Andrés Sepúlveda in her life.
But, to Arianna's words, she shakes her head. "I don't really think 'recruitment' is nearly as important as just having people you can talk to about your... mystical inclinations. Hell, when I Awakened, I had a bunch of people -- none of them technically minded -- who I leaned on a lot to figure out how to deal. There's a lot of commonalities in what we do, when you get down to it.
"You might find if you want to have that in your life, joining up under a banner is the way to go. You might also not. I know a lot of Disparates in the city who adamantly want to go their own way, and there's nothing wrong with that. A bit more dangerous, yeah. Perhaps. But we're Mages," she says, gets down to a more serious tone herself. "There is no fear we can't conquer."
Arianna
"It is more than a bit more dangerous," Arianna says, on the heels of Grace's opinion. This, too, is clear cut and definitive. "But Grace is right: the choice is yours." It is ominous when she says it that way; it gives the thing the proper weight.
"Keep in mind, though: not all places are so... generous... to Disparates."
Grace
"Then, those places are corrupt. And I wouldn't go anywhere near them anyway, Disparate or no."
Ahh, happy shiny conflict.
"There's a word for people who care about other people's labels. That word is: 'bigot'."
Arianna
"So you have a label then, for these other labellers of people?" Arianna asks. Her mouth twists wrily, eyebrow arched and challenging. It is a dark and dangerous thing. She has honed her skills in this game against a Tytalan. It shows.
Margot
The advice that she received was soaked up like a sponge. Margot listened raptly to Arianna, for she was well-spoken and serious and impactful, and her words felt like they carried heavy weight. She listened to Grace, of whom she's heard in almost every conversation that revolved around the magickal community in this city. Grace said this, Grace set this up, Grace dismantled this and found this and fixed this. Margot bore this in mind, and also noted a similarity there-- she knew a lot of people, but none of them seemed to match up with what she felt herself to be.
Then, some back and forth about the pros and cons of Traditions and Orphans and bigots and bigoted bigot callers and--
"I'm a witch."
Margot cut in, over their back and forth. Glanced between the two, almost sharply (scoldingly, a budding emergence of what Mage she would become when her connection to her Avatar was stronger, no doubt-- when her confidence and Power were given time to grow), and continued on.
"Ned and I, we've talked about this. We'll find Traditions, it's unsafe to do otherwise. I've seen what happens. I--," But her phone started ringing in her pocket. She glanced down at the screen, then sighed and explained: "It's the Doc, will you excuse me?"
She stepped away. A brief conversation later (tense back and forth for perhaps a minute or less), Margot sighed and pocketed her phone. Returned to the others and explained: "I guess the Doc's gonna get his assistant tonight after all. Thanks for, y'know, your time and stuff you two." An awkward pause, for an awkward girl, then-- "'Bye."
And away went Margot Travers, briskly up the sidewalk from whence she came.
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