Every part of you

Kalen Holliday

[How awake are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Ian

It was early Sunday morning when Ian sent Kalen a text asking if he wanted to meet in the park after lunch. It was the first contact they'd had in weeks, apart from that brief rooftop encounter. In the text, directions were given to meet at one of the park's flower gardens, which was where Ian now rested, lying on his back in the grass with his eyes closed and his arms folded beneath his head. The afternoon sun shone down onto him through the clouds, baking into his skin, and he could hear the nearby buzzing of some insect in the flowers.

There were people here. It was to be expected on a Sunday afternoon. Maybe if he'd had more time he might have suggested they take a trip out of the city, but given the circumstances Washington Park wasn't a bad place to be. The flowers were still in bloom, and the trees and grass were lush with green. The people brought their own kind of life, laughing and playing and walking together along the trails. They were just as much a part of the tapestry here as the plants were.

Kalen Holliday

[And, how distracted by Resonance are we?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Ian

[ditto]

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

Kalen Holliday

Kalen comes to the park early, but not to the flower garden.  He stops at the edge of the lake first.  He does not go into the water, but as is becoming a custom he settles for a little while where he can see a certain patch of ground.  It is empty now, but there was Something there once.  Someone, really.  There are few enough encounters with anything extraordinary that Kalen has that he remembers fondly.

But there is the Message.  So he stays and he watches a place that looks unremarkable now until he has to go to meet Ian.  He does not go when he senses Ian arrive, but instead when it is time.  This is not really a social call.  He arrives at the flower garden perhaps a minute late, because he was murmuring a farewell to a spirit that almost certainly could not hear him.  He knows this, but in case the spirit came back, the way he does and the way Serafine does, he murmurs a farewell anyway.

He does smile, faintly and briefly, as he settles onto the grass next to Ian.  He does not sprawl out, but the way he sits is relaxed.  "Hey," he says.  Quiet.  In the empty kind of voice he uses on people he does not know.  It is gentle enough, but it is distant.

Ian

[Empathy - how are you feeling?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Kalen Holliday

Kalen is, perhaps more than Ian has really seen, calm.  There are still shadows under his eyes.  He still does that thing where anyone who gets close gets a reflexive evaluation to determine whether they are a threat.  But he doesn't seem at all anxious about Ian.  He's had a chance to think about it.  He tried to explain once, failed at that, and then decided it wasn't worth his time to try again.  He talked about all the feelings with Serafine.

Does it still look like he has no idea how many things are more things than anyone should be doing...yes.  But there isn't anything agitated to go with him looking worn out.  Nothing manic.

There is though, past all that, a hint of real warmth for Ian.  It isn't love.  But he does not, at all, dislike Ian.  He's just reclaimed his distance.

Ian

Ian sensed Kalen's arrival long before Kalen sat down beside him, but he didn't open his eyes until he heard Kalen's voice. The sun was bright on Ian's face, and he had to shield his eyes when he looked over to meet Kalen's gaze. He was quiet for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the light as he contemplated Kalen's posture and vocal tone.

When Ian sat up, he dropped his hand from his eyes and folded his legs into a more comfortable position. He had on jeans and a white v-neck t-shirt. No accessories today. The jeans looked expensive (all of his jeans looked expensive) and the t-shirt was fitted and new, but otherwise the outfit was laid-back. His walking shoes were black with white stripes on the sides. He looked relaxed and comfortable.

"Hey," he offered back. The tone was warmer and less airy than Kalen's had been. "How've you been?"

Kalen Holliday

Kalen frowns and considers the question, eyes tracking back toward the lake.  "Busy, though that is hardly new.  I haven't been shot at for awhile though.  No near death experiences."  There is a flickering of amusement in his eyes.  "Only a relatively minor brush with chaos, and I lack the exact skill set to try to chase those particular threads down, so I'm doing it the long way.  Still teaching people, of course.

"Oh.  I think we're going to try to do a laser tag thing sometime.  Which should be interesting.  I'll let you know, if you want."  There is a slightly hesitant but more real smile.  It doesn't really stick around long, though.

"How have you been?"

Ian

"Laser tag's not really my thing."

It sounded like something Elijah would come up with, but Ian didn't ask if he had. That wasn't why they were here. Kalen asked how he'd been, and Ian contemplated his response a moment, trailing his fingers through the grass.

"Good, I think. I got a new job, and I've been training a lot." (It showed. He looked much more himself these days: agile, athletic, healthy.) There was a long pause before he continued, watching Kalen like he wanted to say something but wasn't sure if he should.

There was a much more complicated answer to that question, but either Ian didn't wish to give it or he didn't think Kalen was actually looking for that level of response.

"I wasn't sure how you'd feel, after the last time we met. You seemed pretty sad then."

Maybe because of him, maybe not. The observation didn't include with it any further assumptions.

Kalen Holliday

"It wasn't-"  Kalen sighs and does join Ian in laying over the grass.  Hie eyes don't track over to Ian, but drift up to the clouds.  "I was sad. But I don't think about what you might think. It doesn't matter now. Time might be fluid, but the things that are done...they are still done."

There is a pause and then an amused little huff of breath.  "I decided to go actually feel the world for awhile.  Rather than just see it as an abstract thing that I was primarily tied to with dreams and obligations.  It was...it was something.  I think I'm almost done with that for awhile.  But I think it was good for me."

Ian

"I wouldn't say it doesn't matter," Ian offered quietly. There was no sense of admonishment or expectation in his words, possibly because Ian would have given a similar answer had Kalen asked him the same question. He nodded in response to the rest, watching Kalen as though to intuit whatever differences there were in his countenance. But he didn't inquire further.

"Still feel like exploring something new, after all that?"

Ian shifted position so that he looked down at Kalen, leaning forward with both hands pressed against the ground.

Kalen Holliday

Ian says that he wouldn't say it doesn't matter and whatever Kalen almost says, he doesn't.  Instead he takes a deep breath.  It isn't shaky, and he doesn't seem actually anxious.  Some of the tension eases out of the set of his shoulders.  Some of it stays.  Save for that whole post-orgasm sprawl, Ian has never seen Kalen not at least a little tense.  This, at least, is about as relaxed as he otherwise seems to get.

Kalen smiles a little, and does look back when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye.  There is a little blink, just as his eyes meet Ian's, but he doesn't look away again.    "It isn't entirely new, but...exploring new parts of it...yes."

Ian

Ian nodded and sat back. He was quiet for a while, perhaps trying to decide how to begin. Teaching someone to see the world in a new way (or as Kalen put it, to explore new parts of it) wasn't a thing he'd ever tried before. It was easy to forget most of the time just how young Ian was, comparatively. Not in years, though many would say he was young in that sense too. Kalen was also young, but he'd been Awake longer than Ian had. He was more intimately familiar with teaching practices. Hell, he already had an apprentice.

Ian tended to make up for his youth with determination and pragmatism. For someone without a Tradition, he had a rather strong sense of what he believed. That didn't necessarily equate to an ability to articulate those beliefs. So instead, he asked a question.

"What is your body telling you right now?"

Kalen Holliday

Kalen had another mentor who focused on sensation.  On physicality.  And for all Kalen maintains that there is no point in him doing a tea ceremony because he is not graceful...he knows how.  And he still has tea rituals, modified and simplified and almost never shared.  They are not the rituals he learned from a girl in silk over lace.  Whose nails had been painted to match the shade of the plum blossoms on her tea cups.

But he understands this kind of focus.  It is precisely why he came to Ian.  Ian will not, as some of those of his own Tradition would have, ask him to visualize the sigils for chakras or memorize complicated meridian charts or diagrams of anatomy.  At least, he doesn't expect that.  He could be surprised.  But he was expecting something like this.

His eyes close.  And that one thing, more than anything else, means that whatever he said what happened before does matter.  Maybe not that he explains what he was thinking, and maybe not that they ever dwell on what did happen happen or what could have happened.  That, he let go.

But he still trusts Ian.  And to Ian, who watched him fucking meltdown and then destroy whatever bond he did have with Sid when she hurt him, trust couldn't have seemed like a certain outcome.  He isn't trying to express trust with explaining the universe, hell, he isn't trying to express it at all.  He's much more interested in focusing on the warmth of the ground and the warmth of the sun and the sudden awareness that there is a rock pressing up just inside of his shoulder blade and then-

Kalen laughs softly and rolls onto his side.  "That there are rocks."  His expression softens again, though he is still smiling a little.  "The ground if warm and the sun is warm, and there are no rocks now.  There is a bug walking on me."  He doesn't seem concerned about the bug, just aware of its little bug feet.  "There are so many flowers here I can taste them.  And, for a second, I could feel my heart beating.  But I moved, because I wasn't really in a place to want to be aware of rocks pressing on knotted muscles."

He sighs.  "Fuck.  Was I supposed to be still?"  But even that is calm.  And not even a little apologetic.  It isn't as though being still was requested.  It just occurs to him that maybe it was the intent.

Ian

"You can be however you want to be, so long as you stay focused."

Ian didn't indicate what he would have done in Kalen's position. It had long been established that he and Kalen were different people, and rituals were personal things.

"That's a good start. Try to go deeper. Not just surface impressions. Do you feel tired? Alert? Hungry? What is your heart doing? Your stomach? Your muscles? Your lungs?"

Kalen Holliday

Kalen nods and sinks back to resting against the ground, though he stays on his side.  He'd given Ian enough space that even rolled toward him, there is still space between them.  Maybe not oceans of it, but Kalen isn't crowding into Ian's space.  He lets his eyes close again and this time the pause is longer.  And aside from an occasional flutter of his eyelids and little twitches in his fingers when someone's footsteps seem closer than he'd like, he stays still.

"My lungs are breathing, like they tend to.  I don't feel that so much directly.  I can feel them press my ribs up and force my spine to lengthen just a little."  He doesn't open his eyes this time.  "My heart is steady.  Not fast.  Not really slow, either.  It picks up a little when I hear footsteps."  He says that without any real sense of judgment, just observationally.

"My muscles are...for the most part relaxed, or a least more relaxed than they tend to be.  There are knots-I suppose that list is long and largely irrelevant in detail.  I can still feel where the rock was right on the inside of my shoulder blade, not like pain, just like an echo of pressure."  There is just the slightest frown.  "I can feel the scar from where I got stabbed when I breathe, which isn't painful but is not exactly pleasant."

He sighs.  "And tired...is not quite the word I would use.  Exhausted, maybe.  There needs to be a word for when people need more than to just get a solid night's sleep.  I am so far past that point.  It wouldn't hurt, but-"

Kalen's eyes open, because he suddenly catches up more consciously to the words he is saying.  And he does trust Ian.  He trusts Ian to watch for anything dangerous and he trusts Ian not to stab him unless it is necessary for this exercise.  He knows better than to think all sensation is pleasure.  He knows better to think even those Awakened who prefer to use pleasure won't use pain.

But this is a kind of vulnerability he isn't entirely sure of.  He stops talking, but his eyes settle on Ian's.  Curious.  Not particularly guarded.  Ian isn't being shut out so much as Kalen has stopped just offering him words.

Ian

For all Ian's flaws, he could be patient when the circumstances called for it. Kalen had already seen this side of him. Ian could be, in these moments, absolutely still. The way that animals grew still: as though they could melt into the landscape and disappear, watching in silence whatever it was that held their attention. Were it not for his resonance, and the way his body displaced the air (a physical presence could be felt this way even from a distance,) Kalen might forget that he was there.

But he was there, and his focus was trained watchfully on Kalen. Noting the way that Kalen breathed. The motion behind his eyelids. Listening as Kalen related everything he felt as he spoke with his own body. It had its own language, Life did. This is what Ian was trying to convey. Perhaps a Hermetic could understand that, even though this language existed far beyond words and symbols. It was one of the oldest languages, from a place and a time where all things were primordial and honest.

So many people were so painfully unaware of their own bodies. It was a modern disease, this disconnection. So easy to slip into when there was nothing particularly immediate that called for their attention. Ian could have used pain to help Kalen focus, but perhaps that kind of focus wasn't what he was aiming for here. People noticed pain. It was sharp. It was loud. It shouted. But to notice the smaller things. The whispers? If you could do that, you could hear everything.

When Kalen opened his eyes, Ian leaned forward and placed his hand over Kalen's heart. For a few beats he simply listened, feeling the reverberations of its pulse.

"It always starts here," he said quietly. "If you want to understand Life, you have to know your own pattern. Understand that your heart and your mind are both you. The space between is an illusion. They can be separated, but doing so splits you in two. Your hand is also you. Your mouth. Your feet. Every part of you is you."

He lifted his hand from Kalen's chest and placed it on Kalen's own hand, drawing it over to press against Kalen's heart so that he could feel it more closely. Ian then settled his own hand atop Kalen's.

"Focus on your heartbeat. Keep feeling your own pattern."

[Life 1 - practiced]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (6, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Kalen Holliday

Kalen does not relax at the contact, but only because he's paying attention.  If he gets much more relaxed, he's not going to be focused.  He does not tense at all.  He left them space, yes.  In the beginning, he was at a distance.  But he is not now, and he certainly has no problem with Ian touching him.  If anything, he would like more touching.  Not because he's in love, but because Ian is something different and present and real.

But, look.  There is this.  And this is also Ian being present and real.

It is a very different kind of grounding.

Until Ian lets him into his perceptions of his own pattern.  And he shudders and goes, for a few blissful seconds, perfectly relaxed.  Because magic.  Because before he took any oaths or even his Name, he was in love with a Cultist of Ecstasy who saw magic as communion.  Who used him as a focus.  Who taught him, before anyone else what magic was.

Her paradigm is why shared breaths are so intimate to him.  Why his focus for Mind magic is breathing.  And she is why he is absolutely in love with any magic that he is part of that is more than just his.  Even if it isn't, strictly speaking, a shared Working.  Ian cannot know those things, that is another Sphere entirely.  But he can feel the way Kalen relaxes.  The way even when he focuses again he doesn't tense, just retuns his attention more fully to his heartbeat.  Traces Ian's awareness of his blood move.  Of his breathing.  Of the warmth of Ian's hand over his.  He has felt this before, but never as anyone else feels it.  Never from outside his skin.

And for once, Kalen Michael Holliday says nothing.

Ian

[one more, to open that awareness up]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Ian

Kalen focused on his heartbeat, and with Ian's shared awareness, he could feel everything. So very alive and present in his own body. The flow of his heartbeat (of his blood) became something new. Not just a sound or a sensation but Life itself: liquid and alive like the tides of the ocean. The rhythm of it was so incredibly nuanced; so keenly in tune with everything else that Kalen was feeling. After a time, it became difficult to tell whether his thoughts were driving his pulse or the other way around, and maybe that was the point. Like Ian said: the space between is an illusion.

They stayed like that for a while. Time passed. It didn't matter how long. There were people around them, but it didn't matter. In that moment they were distant distractions.

And then, gradually, they weren't. And Kalen could feel them come to life around him, this slow-drawing chorus of heartbeats. First one, then another, then another. A mother and her two young children playing tag nearby. A couple kissing beneath a tree. And others. He felt them not as images but as sensation, mapped out and detailed the way that Ian had helped him detail his own pattern, and each of them felt different and unique, but they were all alive - all part of the same living tapestry. The awareness expanded further, taking in the trees and the flowers and the grass, birds and squirrels and dogs and mice and a vast symphony of insects. Life was all around them, and it was also inside of them.

(It always starts here.)

Minutes passed before Ian finally pulled his hand away and let the effect dissipate. He unfolded his legs and pulled his knees up to his chest, letting his arms drape over them loosely. He didn't say anything else, waiting instead to see what Kalen would say.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen murmurs something, very softly, when Ian extends the spell out to the living things around them.  It isn't meant for Ian, and it isn't in a language he recognizes.  It isn't even a human language.  For a few seconds his eyes flutter closed.  He can feel someone tag him.  A kiss.  The impact of ground under his feet.  Taste raspberry.  Feel himself being eaten by a spider.

And he falls into all of the sensations.  Even being devoured.  Perhaps especially being devoured.

He is quiet for a moment once Ian releases the Effect.  His eyes track Ian's movements, less because he wants to focus on Ian ands more because he needs to focus on something.  And if he's going to talk to anyone, it should probably not be his own heart for a minute.

"I would say you have no idea how amazing that was, but I think that would be very untrue."  Kalen smiles a little and while he is way more present than he often is, he is less focused abut it.  Granted, all that intensity has to be exhausting.  "I never.  I mean, I've done that.  But I learned from books.  I've never...no one ever showed that to me before."

"Thank you."

Ian

Ian's smile there was almost hesitant. It felt out of place, somehow. Something that belonged to a different person. And for a moment he didn't say anything. But then he cleared his throat gently and said, "I know there are already things you can do. I just thought if I was going to work with you, I should start at the beginning. I don't really know how any of this works for Hermetics."

His eyes made a casual sweep of their surroundings, taking in the people he already knew were there. After a pause, he got to his feet, offering a hand to Kalen to help him up. "Let's find somewhere more private."

Washington Park was a big place. Even on a weekend afternoon, there was liable to be some secluded area where they could talk without fear of being overheard. It took about ten minutes of walking, but finally Ian spotted a patch of trees that (for the moment) looked deserted. They were a ways off the trail, and when Ian fixed his eyes on the their destination he broke into a loping jog, leading Kalen across a wide stretch of verdant grass.

At the trees, Ian slowed and came to a halt beneath the overhanging branches of a large oak.

"So what else do you want me to show you?"

Kalen

Kalen's smile stays warm, but now with more amusement when Ian mentions not knowing how this works for Hermetics.  "Neither do I, actually.  I wanted...I wanted to feel this.  Not just command it or Name it.  I-"

He stops talking, watches Ian's eyes sweep the park, lets Ian pull him to his feet.  And even then, with his hand on Ian's, close to him, Kalen doesn't say anything.  Just gently takes his hand back and then takes a step back.  There is nothing about it that suggests he's upset, just that he's paying attention to space in ways he hasn't tended to before.  It's certainly nothing like when Sid tried snuggling against him and his response was wariness.

Kalen follows Ian.  It isn't as easy, Kalen's still in nothing like Ian's shape.  But he can keep up with a jog long enough to reach the trees, even if his breathing is already a little heavier.

"I don't know."  He doesn't sound confused or uncertain, though.  He's still calm.  "Hermetics...this would be the part with diagrams and Names.  Maps of people and qi and chakras.  The Cultists I have have known, sensation.  Union.  The Euthanatos...."  Kalen takes a breath, settles with his back to the tree.  "Balance.  Rebirth and death in an endless chain of fate.  Ebb.  Flow."

"I asked you.  I trust you.  From the beginning, like you said.  You're not any of them.  What else do I need you to show me?"

Ian

[Life 2, vulgar, diff 6 -1 for focus, -1 for going slow]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Ian

[Paradox?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 9) ( success x 1 )

Ian

[Stamina]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 9) ( success x 1 )

Ian

Ian trailed the tips of his fingers over the bark of the tree. "I don't have names or diagrams. For me it's never really been about..." he paused, trying to find the right words for what he wanted to say. "Mysticism, I guess. Some of it's interesting. I think some of it's even useful. But it can be a distraction. Strip it all away, and what's underneath is still there. This tree is still a tree, no matter what name I call it by."

Ian reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flip knife. When he opened it, the blade glinted in the sun.

"People exert their Wills on the world every day. Not just those like us." Ian tapped the trunk of the tree at a place where someone had carved their initials into it. The marks were old, and had long-since scarred over. "They hurt, heal, change. Leave scars. What you and I can do isn't really that different."

Ian opened his palm and cut a line across it slowly with the blade of the knife. Blood welled up at the fissure, and he smeared it gently over the bark of the oak tree, pressing his palm against the scarred trunk.

"I am alive. This tree is alive. I can feel its pattern, and I can also change it."

He slipped into silence, and for a long moment, nothing happened. Then the bark shifted beneath Ian's hand... and the marks faded. Healed.

"I can heal my own pattern too. It's the first thing I learned to change."

Kalen

"Creation has a language," Kalen says softly.  He reaches out to run his fingers gently over the place where the scars on the tree were.  "But, for all that it is beautiful and powerful, using it means that you recognize the whole of creation is unified in being spoken with one breath certainly.  There is a unity of a kind in that.  But there is a sense of separation there.  The people I learned it from learned to speak it to command it.  They see their knowledge of it as power.

"And it is, in their hands.  At times in mine.

"There are things in the world more precious than power.  Or knowledge.

"This isn't for me.  It is, in some ways, but...right now, right here, I need this to be about more than me.  I need...I need to feel the world again.  I need to get outside my skin.  I need to remember the world I gave up for oaths and duty and...I need to remember."

"Show me how you did that, show me how to reach out and touch something else.  I need that.  To be able to touch something like that.  Like a tree.  Just me and a tree and magic."

Ian

"It is power," Ian agreed, quietly. He flipped the knife closed and pocketed it once more, reaching out with his uninjured hand to grasp Kalen's wrist. He slid his fingers over Kalen's knuckles, balling Kalen's hand into a fist.

"So is this." Ian relaxed his grip, letting his hand fall away. "What you do with it is your choice. Like I said, the space between is an illusion. So if you want to touch the tree... then touch the fucking tree."

See, Ian meant it literally. As though making contact with a thing was as simple as reaching out and placing your hand upon it. Because for him, it was. (Even if his hand remained at his side.)

"It's standing right in front of you."

Kalen

[Can we magic?  Life 1: Scan | D=3 (3{standard}+1{Sphere}-1{time})]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 4) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Kalen

"I know," Kalen says.  But he is already looking away from Ian, at the tree.  "Everything is power.  Taking it.  Trading it.  Surrendering it."  He rests first his hand and then his temple against the bark of the tree and closes his eyes.

The night he Awakened it was wind and leaves that warned him.  Spoke to him.  Fate reveals itself to him and he follows it.  Time offers up her secrets.  And these magics were the first ones he learned.  Enochian and power and command he learned later.  In the beginning it was just Kalen and a universe that could suddenly speak to him.

Kalen bites his tongue until he tastes blood, all salt and copper.  He waits until he can taste his pulse.  And then he takes a deep breath, letting his awareness spread from his heartbeat to the world around them.  He breathes in the scent of the tree and the sense of the tree.

There is a smile then, sudden and radiant.  Kalen murmurs to the tree in Enochian, not a command, not a Name; only a greeting.

Ian

It was possible that Ian and Kalen thought of power differently. A lot of people found the word (the concept) to be base and distasteful. Others found it alluring. For Ian, it was neutral. Ethics came into play in how power was used (that was an important conversation in its own right.) But when he spoke of it here... what he meant was the capability one person had to enact their Will. To imagine a thing and then make that thing happen. That was power, in its simplest sense. Power to hurt, power to heal, power to tap into the fucking cosmos.

Power to choose.

Maybe Ian wasn't the best person to teach these things to Kalen. Transcendence didn't live on the tip of his tongue. It buried itself somewhere else, deep within the caverns of his heart.

But sometimes, people don't have to see the same thing in the same way in order to show each other something that mattered. The tree - it mattered. It had Life. It existed. It was fucking beautiful. And Ian hadn't only healed its skin so that he could show Kalen a possibility (although that was part of it.) He'd done it because some fucking kid had seen the tree and decided to use his power to do something uselessly destructive. To mark it, like the tree was a thing you could claim ownership of.

Kalen, what he felt when he touched that tree... maybe it was the same as what Ian felt, and maybe it was different. But there was reverence in both of them, because how could you not be reverent of Life?

Ian watched, and he didn't say anything. But he smiled softly and waited. His palm stung where he'd cut it, and blood still dripped slowly from the wound, tracing down the side of his hand to fall in sporadic drops against the earth. Like an offering.

Kalen

Kalen breathes out softly.  Opens his eyes and resettles against the tree so that he is looking at Ian.  His eyes are full of wonder and joy and exhaustion.  For all you can see how tired he is in his eyes and in the way he lets the tree support practically all of his weight though, this is more relaxed than just collapsed.

"I'm glad we're doing this.  Especially that we're doing this here.  I like this place.  It's where we met the Message."  Kalen smiles a little.  "Which, I can tell you about some other time, if that's ever a thing.  You didn't come here so I could tell you stories.  I just love this place.

"I should focus or something.  I know.  I get distracted by practically the entire universe.  Sorry.  I'm with you."

Ian

[Life 2 again, diff 6 -1 (focus) -1 (practiced) -1 (time)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Ian

Ian's smile lingered. He shook his head lightly. "Don't apologize."

Silence settled between them, at first comfortable (contemplative,) then perhaps just slightly awkward. They were still navigating each other, still finding new beats in the way they fit together.

"You said you wanted to get out of your own skin. I just wanted to say... your skin is a part of you. And we're all already a part of the universe. That's why I started that way, earlier. I just... wanted to show you that your skin isn't a cage."

Ian closed his eyes and ran his fingers gently over the wound on his palm. Silence settled in again as he focused on his pattern, knitting the flesh back together again. When it was done, he opened his eyes and said, "Healing is about listening. Patterns know what they're supposed to be. Skin knows its own shape. It's just a matter of guiding it where it already wants to go. If you can figure out how to listen, you'll figure out the rest.

"I think that's about all I can show you in one day."

Ian

[Oh right, paradox]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Ian

[Stamina?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kalen

Kalen is surprisingly comfortable with silence.  Particularly right now, when he's spent the last bit of time not focusing on all the places something could be coming at the from.  Their avenues of escape.

He waits until Ian speaks and then he listens.  Ian gets a little nod.  A slight frown.  But whatever he almost says, he doesn't.  Instead, he watches as Ian knits the skin of his palm back together.  As he tells him almost exactly what he wanted to hear.  His shoulders drop a little more and his breathing softens a little.

"Yeah," he says softly.  "Thank you."  There is a slight pause, not because Kalen doesn't know what to say but because that was what he wanted to say.  But then he remembers that this, oddly intimate and warm as it is, is less about friendship and more about exchange.

"You should come by sometime, so I can teach the security system you're its friend."  His tone doesn't go all guarded.  He's still relaxed.  Still warm.  "I know you have things of your own.  You can text me sometime when you're free.  Unless I've managed to fall back into the habit of having guns pointed at me or run-ins with ghosts or whatever other kinds of trouble I manage to find, I'm usually not needed anywhere at a particular time.  You can just let me know.  Notice...shouldn't be something I need much of."

Ian

[Empathy - what are you not saying?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 5, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )

Kalen

[What Kalen meant about wanting to get out of his skin was perhaps not quite what Ian, heard, but Kalen is not interested in disagreeing.  Not because he doesn't think it matters and more because he's apparently just in a more listening place today.  He really isn't in a mood to Name things or define them.  Which is...not entirely odd for Kalen.  It's just much more of a Kalen before the zombacalypse thing, except this kind of relaxed trusting thing was not so much a thing that Kalen did much of then.  The ability to just fucking listen for five seconds...that's not really something Kalen did as much ever.]

Ian

He'd said that, in the letter. That exchange was a thing he understood. But that had been weeks ago. It wasn't any less true now, but there were other truths to be had in the present moment which were perhaps more important. Ian's stillness in the wake of Kalen's offer might have been indicative of any number of things, but the moment passed, and Ian nodded.

"I will."

After a long beat, he glanced over his shoulder. A couple of people were coming up along the path.

"Come on, I'll walk you back to your car."

2:00 PM