Kalen Holliday
[Nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Kalen Holliday
[And how distracted are we by Resonance?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
[Perception + Awareness = Magedar!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
Kalen Has come up to the park to be alone.
Look.
Sometimes that happens. Infrequently, perhaps, but occasionally he's
had enough of planning and projects and breaking the news that magic is
real to the baby Magelings he has the luck to find. Considering the way
people tend to die around him...that may not be good luck. For him.
For them.
So he is out here, staring over the lake from a nice
safe distance. He has coffee with him, but it's living in the thermos
in his bag yet. With a book that he will probably be glad isn't visible
momentarily. For now, he tries to watch the lake and be calm.
Ian Lai
[Awareness]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2) ( fail )
Janisa Jones {Playtesting}
She
hops out of the car that's brought her here, leaning in through the
window to talk to the driver. She looks at her phone, then nods in
agreement to the driver. She pulls a small daypack from the back, shuts
the door, lowers her sunglasses over her eyes, and begins strapping the
bag on over her wicking shirt. She also bends over, lifts the cuff of
her jeans, and tightens the laces on the trail running shoes she's
wearing.
Grace
Kalen has come to the park to be
alone, and yet here is Grace, come to ruin that notion. She didn't
exactly track him down, even though that would be a simple thing.
Sometimes the universe just has notions of its own.
Grace likes
parks. They're good places to get away from it all, sit down in the
grass, and write. Whether that writing is a story or a bit of code
really doesn't matter. Well, it doesn't to her at least. So she
found herself a nice hill with some nice grass, and has planted herself
upon it, variously typing furiously on her laptop and scowling at the
screen.
With a sigh, she leans back (though still crosslegged to
make a desk for her computer) and stares at the sky with the clouds
rolling by. A hint of storm-promise in them today, though. Wait. No.
Kalen?
Curiousness
guides her always, and it is that which causes her to abandon her
writing and bundle up her laptop to go and find her pseudo-mentor. He
never said anything about going to the park today.
She takes a
rather strange route on her way, crossing the jogging path, and doing
switchbacks every now and then, because despite the fact that she can
definitely sense Kalen, she can't exactly see him. Yet.
Ian Lai
On
a late-May Sunday, the beach by Echo Lake was busy enough that a person
could sit still and become just another nameless, mundane tourist
dotting the sandy shore. It made it easy to blend in, particularly if
that was what one wanted to do. Except that Ian wasn't really the type
to blend, and Kalen more than likely noticed him long before Ian
bothered to look in the right direction.
Usually he was the first
to sense when he was approaching someone familiar, but today he was too
much in his own head, and the presence of the other mages went
unnoticed. Like Kalen, Ian had come here alone. Until recently, he'd
been walking the trails around the lake, but now he made his way down
onto the sand and pulled off his shoes, trailing bare feet through the
lapping water at the lake's edge. It was warm enough that he went
bare-chested, and he'd rolled the cuffs of his jeans up to mid-calf to
keep them dry while he walked.
A few of the people nearby noticed
him. One girl smiled when he glanced at her, and Ian returned the smile
but kept walking, hands tucked into his pockets while his feet left a
trail in the sand that the water soon washed away.
Serafíne
(Perception + Awareness)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1
Kalen Holliday
[Of course you're touching the stupid water, Ian. (Will)]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Kalen Holliday
Of
course he can't be alone. He can sense Grace, all shifting energy.
Colors melting into new colors and sharp and fluctuating angles. She is
coming closer. He can sense Ian, can see Ian, and both to his eyes and
to every sense that can register it, Ian is all sleek feline grace.
Kalen
picks up his bag and heads toward the edge of the water. He's had
considerable time to make peace with the lake, and though he does give
it occasional wary looks like it might reach up with watery hands to
drag him into its depths, he falls into place walking parallel to Ian,
just at the outer edges of the water.
"I'm beginning to suspect
you may actually live in a tree. A very stylish, posh tree. With many
closets." It's a greeting of sorts, one that neatly dodges questions
about how people are and little social fluffs of pleasantries.
Janisa Jones {Playtesting}
She
starts walking along the widest of the available paths, keeping a keen
eye out for anyone from the farm. The new dude her dropped her off
didn't know if anyone else was coming out today, but mentioned it was
possible.
Grace
On her jagged path, Grace is
looking, looking for the source of storm-resonance, when it is joined by
a flash of feline -- ahh, the (big) cats are off together again, and
she smiles. It's good. They should be.
It's then, that the wind
changes, shifts, moves ever so slightly differently against her (or is
that less the wind and more the world?)
Well, if that isn't new and old at the same time? Is that how...
Grace looks around herself some more, for the new someone. So many new someones lately...
Ian Lai
[Per+Alertness - does he notice the book?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Ian Lai
Ian
glanced to the side with a slant of his eyes to take in Kalen's
familiar figure. The silence that followed lasted just long enough to
verge on awkward, but then Ian said, in a completely deadpan tone, "Why
do you think I never bring anyone home with me?"
Hell, for all
Kalen (or anyone else) knew, Ian very well could have lived in a tree.
Or a castle. Or a cave. He hadn't exactly made overtures to invite the
other mages over for tea.
Ian stopped walking and waded a couple
of steps into the water, feeling sand and stones slide beneath his toes.
A handful of tiny silver minnows darted up to inspect his feet, and Ian
watched them the way a lazy cat might stare at a goldfish. A moment
later he glanced back, eyes shifting to take in the visible contents of
the Hermetic's messenger bag.
"Good book?" he asked quietly.
Kalen Holliday
There
are things he could say in response to the question about Ian bringing
people home with him. Playful ones. True ones. But he lets them all
lie quiet.
Instead, Kalen follows Ian's gaze, sees the tiny fish, and...doesn't spook exactly.
But there is a little huff of surprised breath. If you avoid water
hard enough long enough, you greatly delay such things as seeing live
fish swimming around. He goes still for a few seconds to watch them.
Grace
slides off at an angle, probabilities shifting and intersecting and he
glances at where he knows she is but lets her go. She knows how to be
cautious. She will call if she needs him.
"All five pages of it
I've read are promising. I came out here to read it, but then I was
distracted by the lake. There's a good place to watch it back there."
He waves back in the direction he'd come from.
Janisa Jones {Playtesting}
The
new someone has gone slightly off the trail to examine a small patch of
mint nearby. She brushes aside some grass, and finds a different plant.
"It has a square shaped stem. That means it's...? A member of the mint
family!" echoing dialogue of days gone by. "Dueling mint. Huh."
Grace
There
appears a stranger behind Janisa. A stranger dressed in jeans and a
grey turtleneck jacket, zipped up to the neck. Her hair is messy today,
all windblown, and she's slipping a cell phone into the pocket of her
jeans and smiling down at the plants.
"Lamiaceae duking it out again? What will we do with them?" she says, by way of greeting.
"Hi. You new around here?"
Ian Lai
Ian
followed Kalen's gesture with his eyes, but didn't offer much reaction.
After a few seconds, he took another step forward. Then another. The
water rose high enough to soak the edge of his jeans. It felt briskly
cold on his skin. Glacial.
"Let me know what you think when you're done."
Kalen Holliday
"Yeah."
Kalen watches Ian walk a few steps farther into the water. His jaw
tightens a little, but he manages not to say something ridiculous about
the water being dangerous.
If Ian was someone else, he'd ask
questions. But it's Ian and Ian is...mysterious is a tame word. A word
lacking in deliberateness and sharp edges. Reading Ian is like looking
through shards of obsidian. Half opaque. Likely to end with you
bleeding. And sometimes things you think you know just shatter.
But
he did indicate he'd talk eventually, even if he wasn't talking now.
Or, more precisely he indicated he'd listen. Expecting him to offer
much by way of return...problematic.
"Are they-" He frowns. "Do they bite? The little fish."
Janisa Jones {Playtesting}
She
glances back, up and slightly over her shoulder, and comes to an
important realization: this position is way uncomfortable to address the
nature ninja from. She stands up and faces the newcomer, instead.
"Looks that way. It's like plant Thunderdome over here." She decides it
would be -more- suspicious to keep her sunglasses on and so sets them on
her forehead. "New to the area? My family is from a drive through town
near Boulder, so Yes, but no. Colorado is kinda a country unto itself."
Grace
Ahh,
plant Thunderdome. That conjures up images of recent events. For a
split second Grace's smile falters, but hey -- this one probably doesn't
even know the first thing about that.
But what does she know? And how to ask that question?
"So...." Grace says, and her eyes slide off of Janisa's, to contemplate the clouds. "So..."
Oh, come on, think of something.
"Yeah, Colorado is a magical kinda place, isn't it?"
Hint. Hint. Okay, well, if the woman does know the first thing, that might spark off a little recognition right?
Serafíne
Serafíne
was sitting on a retaining wall beneath an arbor overlooking the lake,
barelegged, wearing her shitkickers rather than her heels. A black and
red plaid bustier beneath an unzipped black hoodie with the hood pulled
up, which was itself longer than the black leather skirt she's wearing
beneath it. Then she reached up and with a boost grabbed the metal bar
holding up the frame and lifted herself, swinging with a few pumps of
her legs like a child going higher and high until she let go, landing
with a solid thump on the packed ground.
Ambled down the path toward the lake and oh, ended up at Kalen's flank.
Sunglasses covering her eyes. Daisies threaded into the laces of her combat boots.
Sera
gives Kalen this measuring sort of look. It is all sideglance, and is
softened by the curve of her mouth, this rather far-away smile.
There's something tender in her gaze that he cannot see, hidden as her eyes are by those dark glasses. Gleaming.
"Everything bites."
The fish, she means.
And everything. Everything, too.
Ian Lai
Kalen's
willpower in that moment was... admirable, considering. And Ian put
forth a rather good show of acting as though he wasn't perfectly aware
of how much the water bothered Kalen. To the point perhaps where one
might think he had forgotten.
(He hadn't.)
Yet Kalen was
still there. And when he asked about the minnows, Ian huffed a light
breath of amusement. Not enough to thaw his cool demeanor, but it
helped. A little.
"If you stand still they'll try to nibble at
you. It doesn't hurt though." Even as he said it, a few of the fish
began to tickle the side of his ankle. Ian glanced over his shoulder at
the people dotting the beach, noting their placement and activity. Sera
was afforded a considering gaze, and though Ian didn't seem unhappy to
see her, he didn't offer any formal greeting. When he looked back at the
lake, there was a line of energy to his body. A tension that spoke to
his desire to keep going. To dive in until the water
swallowed him whole.
Ian stood there for a moment, poised and
liminal. A few silent, heavy breaths made their way past his lungs. Then
he turned around and walked back to the sand.
"Indeed, everything does."
Kalen Holliday
[Minnows seem interesting. (WP)]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
reaches out, without really thinking, to wrap an arm around Serafine,
letting his hand rest against the place where her ribs start to curve
inward. "Everything, huh?" He asks softly.
And then he releases
Serafine, drops to crouch on the ground and puts one hand into the cold
water and waits to see if the minnows will come closer to him. Close
enough to bite. His entire body is tense, like he's expecting something
horrible to happen. Like...piranhas? The apocalypse?
But he waits there anyway, still and quiet and curious.
Janisa Jones {Playtesting}
She looks amusedly, and quizzically, at Grace. "Yeah, it's pretty special out here."
"You a cop?" She asks, shrugging off pretense. "Because if so, I can't help you."
"You're trying to score, right?"
She's
not sure when, exactly, she did get the look that says 'this girl knows
how to get drugs', but she had noticed that there was a marker, almost
supernaturally visible to those who had frequent reason to look for it.
Serafíne
Kalen wraps that arm around her and Sera tips her golden head aslant, resting her temple briefly against his shoulder. Everything, huh?, he asks her softly and Sera, she inhales and this lovely fading sunset of a smile crests over the quick and supple curve of hear neat little mouth and,
"Every fucking thing," she affirms for Kalen, quietly, before he lets her go.
Then
he's stepping forward, toward the water and Sera, she takes a half-step
back, hidden gaze dropping to take some measure of the tension in
Kalen's frame before rising to watch - oh, steadily, see? - Ian's
approach from the water.
Her eyes are hidden.
Without quite thinking about it, she rubs the bronze ring on her right index finger thoughtfully with her left thumb.
Grace
Janisa
asks if she's a cop, and Grace starts cracking up. Seriously. This is
the funniest thing anyone has said to her in quite a long time.
"A
cop? Oh fuck, I hope not. If so, I have some serious explaining to do.
Listen, if I want to 'score' I know where I can find it," Grace says,
and she's trying to recover -- giggling through the conversation like
she can't help herself.
"I'm not a cop. But do you know what you are?"
Just
then, Grace pulls her cell phone out of her pocket and taps into it,
like she's texting. And lo, Kalen, your phone is bleeping.
Ian Lai
Ian
stopped at the edge of the water, half-turned on the axis of his spine
to watch the way Kalen knelt down and dipped his hand into the lake. And
there was a moment where Ian almost marveled at this, though his
interest was veiled beneath a layer of clouded thoughts.
Given the
text Grace had just sent Kalen, perhaps the timing of Ian's exit was
all the more convenient. In any case, Ian seemed to pull away in that
moment. To allow the space his body and resonance had occupied to be
replaced by Sera. And he said, quietly, "I'll see you later, Kalen."
Which
was as much of a reassurance as he could offer in that moment, as he
turned away and walked up the beach toward the parking lot.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
looks up, away from the water and the minnows as Ian draws away.
"Yeah. If nothing else, I'll let you know about the book."
He
looks, back, but the movement has spooked the poor little minnows and
his phone is trying to get his attention. So he takes his hand out of
the water, rises, and takes a few steps back from the edge of the water
before looking at his phone. He smiles a bit, then looks to Sera.
"Grace found a new friend. You want to go say hi?"
Serafíne
AWAREMPATHY what is that look at Kalen et cetera!
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) Re-rolls: 2
Ian Lai
[Like there's even any hope. Manip+Subterfuge]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Ian Lai
[To Sera: Ian
looks at Kalen as though he is surprised that Kalen would touch the
water. Because Ian knows that water terrifies Kalen. So there is
surprise, and also a grudging respect for Kalen's daring and willingness
to push himself. It isn't the first time he's seen Kalen do this (push
himself out of his comfort zone,) and it's beginning to make a favorable
impression.
There is also regret, and guilt, and a little bit of fear. (Fear of
Kalen, not for him. Of the tentative threads of connection that have
built up between them.) This is the broad picture. Ian doesn't know how
he feels about the relationship he has with Kalen. It's there in the
hesitance and the conflicting emotions. He knows more about how Kalen
feels than he lets on, and it troubles him.
He also thinks that he
will be (if he has not been already) a negative influence on Kalen's
life. This is the guilt. The regret though... is something else.
Something more attached to the here and now. Sera interrupted something
between them, some tenuous moment of connection that had nearly resulted
in Ian letting go of a thing he is trying to hide.
But now he thinks it is better that he did not. Because there is regret, but there is also relief.
What
is he hiding? That much cannot be discerned by intuition - there are
too many specifics - but it's the same thing that weighed on him the
other night at the chantry. More guilt. More of that instinct towards
self-destruction. He did something he wished he had not had to do, and
he hates himself for it. Hates more, perhaps, the fact that it bothers
him this way at all.
In the end there is this: He leaves because he doesn't want to talk to anyone right now.]
Ian Lai
When Ian left the lake, it was clear that he
didn't intend for anyone to follow him. And Sera, with her awareness as
fine-tuned as it was, would not have missed that. It wasn't an amiable
departure. It was a retreat.
Kalen let him go. Reluctantly, perhaps, but in this he didn't push. It was probably the right thing to do, in his case.
Sera,
though? Sera followed. Perhaps not right away. Perhaps she gave him
enough time to leave the sandy perimeter of the beach and make his way
across the grass, or perhaps her pursuit followed right on his heels.
Either way, Ian didn't turn around. Either because he didn't notice her
or because he chose not to react. When he reached the parking lot, he
paused long enough to brush the sand off his feet and slide them back
into his shoes.
Serafíne
Not right away.
Ian
has time to cross the parking lot, to wipe the sand from his feet, to
slip his feet back into his shoes. Has time to catch a glimpse of her
in his peripheral vision. The wild blond hair caught in the wind, her
hands rising, winding about the crown of her head as she tries to
contain it, wraps an elastic around the bulk of it with a practiced hand
and pulls it into a ponytail that she starts to braid as she walks.
This, too, is practiced.
Sera
is kicking her heels against the sand and then against the asphalt and
she is smiling at the way her dark boots shed the sand and that smile is
fading, eclipsed by something else as Ian comes into view in the
parking lot.
And she could perhaps simply be leaving, right?
Finding her way back to wherever the hell it is she lives when she isn't
cutting a line through stranger's lives, except for the way her hidden
gaze fixes on him and the way the sunglasses remain slanted toward him
and the way she shifts her course, weaving through the parked cars all
gleaming chrome in the sun to shadow him.
"Going home?"
Ian Lai
He
could lie to her. One might rightly suspect that lying (or at least
obfuscating the truth) was an easy thing for him. A practiced thing. If
Sera saw past his mask, it was not because it was poorly crafted, but
because sometimes Sera saw things that no one else could see. He kept
his motivations close to his chest, Ian did. That was hardly a surprise,
given his character.
But right now, in this moment, he did not lie.
"Not yet."
But he was going somewhere.
Ian
turned to regard Sera fully, as though trying to determine why she was
there. There was a faint edge of hostility to the hard set of his jaw.
It wasn't the same flirtatious energy she was used to finding in him. It
didn't register in his voice (which was soft and neutral,) but his body
language spoke to a kind of lurking volatility.
"Did you need something?"
Serafíne
Somewhere
between the beach and here, Sera has zipped her hoodie up half-way. It
is short but longer than her skirt so that the band around the bottom
frames her thighs. Sera is not tall enough to be precisely long-limbed,
but still somehow they way she is made, the way she is put together,
doesn't she look it? So, long bare legs, that hoodie half-way zipped,
the chain of some ridiculously expensive bag slung cross-body to bisect
her breasts in their red and plaid bustier. Her fucking combat boots
with her twee fucking daisies threaded into the laces.
Tattooed hands tucked loosely into the kangaroo-style pockets of her hoodie.
Sunglasses still covering her eyes.
No
hostility in her and no fear, either. Sera is fearless in her way and
does not seem to mind the lurking volatility, the hard set of Ian's
jaw. Oh, oh no. Her eyes are steady on him, and there is a supple
sort of tenderness to the curve of her mouth as she keeps ambling over
the parking lot.
Does she need something?
"Yeah. A ride. Do you mind?"
Ian Lai
[Per+Subterfuge: Do you really just need a ride? Specifically trying to get an angle on her motivation and intentions]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
Some
part of Sera welcomes that hostility. That edge. Lifts her face into
it, see. She is watching Ian and she is aware of Ian and she is
concerned about Ian. So: does she really just need a ride?
No. The request is multilayered.
But she does need a ride.
Ian Lai
A few seconds of silence. And then?
"Ask Kalen. I've got things to do."
The
dismissal implied by those words was fairly evident. Whatever she
wanted from him. Whatever she wanted to offer him. He wasn't interested.
When
he resumed his gait, there was a purposeful pace to it, striding across
the parking lot toward the black Audi sport's car that was parked at
the far end (and which Sera may or may not recognize as Ian's from the
times he'd driven out to the chantry.)
Maybe Sera would follow him, but if not, then he would get into his car and leave.
Serafíne
She
does follow him. God, look at her, unspooling like a errant little
satellite behind him, still with her hands in the front pockets of her
hoodie, her arms close to her body, elbows tight against her flanks.
The braid she was creating as she climbed up from the beach is already
starting to come undone. Half-way across the lot, Sera reaches up to
take the glasses off, folding them without thought and tucking them away
in the vee defined by her half-zipped hoodie. Squinting against the
dying rays of the setting sun.
Not quite as purposeful as Ian's
pace, nor as long, nor as sure, but the whole time, he may well feel her
dark eyes on his back, somewhere in the middle of his spine.
And
so: she does follow him, but her heart feels strange in her chest -
that curt dismissal, god she breathes that in the same way she does
everything else. Inhales it and feels it lodge beneath her bones, coil
itself around the base of her spine. Circles behind the Audi but
doesn't touch it, and does not address Ian unless he addresses her.
Doesn't try to slip into the car itself, but instead climbs into the
Camry parked beside it. Sits her ass on the trunk, her feet on the
bumper, to watch him pull away.
Mouth seamed. Eyes pensive. Looking more than a little bit lost.
It is, after all, that time of the year.
