Ian
It was nearing evening in Eldorado Canyon. The
sky was just beginning to darken as Ian reached the top of a tall,
pine-dotted hillside. Warmer temperatures had melted some of the recent
snowfall, but there was still a thin layer of hard-packed white on the
ground. Gusts of strong wind buffeted his side as he turned to look out
over the wild, rolling landscape. It rifled through the
weather-resistant material of his jacket and pushed a section of hair
over his forehead. Soon the sun would begin to set, and the park would
close. He wasn't far from the end of the trail, but he was in no
particular rush to get there, so he pushed his hair out of his eyes and
looked out over the picturesque landscape. Over the snow and the trees
and the winding trail that led up into the mountains. He'd been hiking
all afternoon. There were still scrapes on his hands from where he'd
climbed up one of the sheer rock surfaces.
It was nearly
Thanksgiving. Ian didn't celebrate Thanksgiving, so he did things like
this instead. The chill in the wind turned his lips and cheekbones pink
with cold, but he didn't mind it.
Josephine
[Is our Spidey-sense working?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Josephine
Out
here, Josephine almost forgets how she has changed. There are trees
and rocks and little snowmelt rivers and none of these things make her
uneasy. Some people have fears of getting lost, keep the maps you pick
up at a ranger station and a compass and carry extra water and first-aid
kits and emergency blankets.
But she doesn't get lost, does
she? No. She may not always have a destination (which is different
from not knowing where she is going), but she is never lost. And so she
carries no map and no compass. Truthfully, she does have water and a
first-aid kit and four of five apples that she picked up on the way. A
sketchbook. Charcoal. Colorful pens.
But she has touched
nothing she brought, save the water and the apple. Those things, all of
them, are there in case needed. For hunger or thirst or emergency.
Most
people's eyes tend to glide past her, and Josephine doesn't look at
them. Makes no effort to meet their eyes, allows her own gaze to fall
to the earth. There is no reason to invite their attention. She takes a
breath when she senses Ian, straightens and her chin tilts back
upward. She looks for him, turning her head because half her face is
hidden behind the fall of her hair.
Delilah
[Now, is Delilah Aware on this Nice Day For a Hike also?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 7) ( success x 1 )
Delilah
Some
people enjoy winter, enjoy the singular silence frost frigid-holds the
blade of grass in- enjoy the glitter of radiance come morning, a sere
sort of ambivalence- some people enjoy it, winter, hardening the ground
and robbing breath of its invisibility, drying skin and arming the wind
with knives that draw fire from the cheek or nose or- how the skin will
flush, give exertion and the thinning air [the nearer one gets to the
stars, you see, the nearer the air will raze you, shave you, pare you
down- ] half a chance, Some people enjoy winter, and Delilah with her
twist of pale hair- shining in a herring-spine braid around-
rosy-fingered Delilah, with her nails polished just so perfect little
ovals pared short and an air of waking in the air around her- of
filaments, threading, radiant as day-break dawn-inevitable- Delilah has
thoughts on winter, and if her mouth is an enjoying shape, a coy little
curving smile, then what of it? Even in winter, after the long night-
She
turned herself around, went on a trail she hadn't meant to and wound up
at the ruins of a hotel burnt down before Prohibition was even a
whisper in dry-dry-dry Denver, and she polished off her sunflower seeds
there- stopped and picked up a stick [it's fun to pick up sticks,
somehow; some not-so-nascent urge to gather], then another, and she set
herself right again- some other trail.
(Maybe she used a trick. Maybe she took the most fortunate way,
which is why, of course, which is why there will be a meeting-
maybe. An opportunity.)
Near
the end of this trail she's coming reverse-down (up? skidding down a
goat-track) is Ian, but is also Josephine, and Delilah won't sense them
until she's- right atop them. Or until her palms begin to itch she
sneezes three times and when she swallows there's a sallow taste an
afterburn of elegance and peace-something-nostalgia-tinged of halcyon
and it's all very tea-party but tea-party with a dark clever riddling
undercurrent giving off sparks- which is to say this is how, when
Delilah is right UPON a pair of people, she might interpret the
resonance of their Willish signatures, a faint synaesthetic taste-sound
in the back of her throat, so there).
But Delilah is not
sneaky, so her tromping will be heard in advance- maybe she's singing,
too, some annoying radio song, cheerfully.
Ian
[Awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Ian
Josephine
was an unfamiliar presence. Someone who, under mundane circumstances,
might be easy to miss. Easy to ignore. But these were not mundane
circumstances, and she was no more a mundane creature than he was. She
felt him before he felt her. Likely, she also saw him first, as Ian was
perched atop an open hill and that made him vulnerable in ways he was
not unaware of. She came up the trail behind him, and Ian caught the
motion in his peripheral vision. Caught the sound of feet crunching over
snow. And so too did he feel that sense of her: halcyon and coruscating
and efflorescent. Tranquil and blossoming. Her resonance felt at home
here, as much as Ian's own presence invoked a sense of wilderness.
He
turned to regard her. To watch as she ascended the slope of the hill.
And he did not immediately call out to greet her, waiting instead to see
if she would press on or turn a different direction.
That was
when he caught sight of Delilah, with her golden hair and her
dawn-steeped aura. At a distance, he did not initially recognize her
face. It'd been some time since the last time he'd seen her. Even then,
they'd been only passingly familiar. She hadn't resonated back then.
They'd both been younger. Newer.
Time changed things.
So
he glanced down the trail, but he didn't think much of her presence
until he felt the first fragile glow of her resonance (like dawn
ascending in the sky - though it was evening [Lucy's time.])
Josephine
Josephine
does not veer off. She walks up toward the crest of the hill and
toward Ian without any hesitation, with no change in her pace or her
bearing save the straightening, the lifting of her chin. She does toy a
bit with her hair as she walks, twists a bit at this curl or that one.
Ian has the high ground. It makes him vulnerable. It gives him an advantage.
Perhaps
not how it works for them, is it? Not for them. They are all
breathing. All alive. With beating hearts and dreams like flashes of
quicksilver. They are all vulnerable. They are all strong. Hills and
rivers and circumstance...are illusions that hide that it always comes
down to that. They are strong and vulnerable and impossible and so
intrinsically part of the world it would be lost without them.
Not
because they are strong or blessed or wise. But because they know that
there is no loss of wonder or possibility between this world and
dreaming. There are limits, yes. But those are just invitations to
transcend them. To push through and past and beyond.
"Hello,"
she says when she reaches Ian. And she smiles, a smile not easily
described as radiant because Delilah is there to embody radiance? More
easily because Delilah is there to frame it? It could be both. It
could be neither. It is a smile. Perhaps that is all it needs to be.
Delilah
Skid
and pebbles fling-rattle like bones in a bronze cup together
rune-carved [like the most fortuitous time of day, like- a cresting
wave, gentle-lapping, forward-shifting, flowing, the opposite of
ebbing], and it is true that people see what they see without often
looking deeper than the surface. Ian may well not remember Delilah's
name even when they're face to face because Dawn wants to tangle up his
tongue, some daylight name which lives in her bones [a young woman
embroidered by the myth, worn by it like a glove the shape of it still
clear beneath the Delilah-skin flaring out Neruda would poem it would
lap it up], lots of people call her Dawn- where are we where are we?
One
for sorrow two for mirth two black bird magi something uncanny their
resonance just the faintest tick of a lick perhaps she is mistaken two
Mages two Willish types together, a cause for wariness of course-
wariness which passes like a hue across her eyes (she's still too far),
the same shadow a hand might let fall on the burnishedpolishedgleaming
sword of some long-ago priest(ess)- an artefact; in fact, the wariness
is subliminated is hinted at is already chased on its way by-
Hello,
Josephine says, measuring out her syllables with such a smile; and Ian,
Ian has his chance to reply, because Delilah is too far still but now
with a skid- less far, indeed! she cups her hands, wariness of
approaching two Magi doing who knows what turning to brash-directness-
"Halloo! Hello! Miss or ma'am, sir or mister, don't turn me into a broom, I'll go around if you're- Ian?? Oh, dear, I am sorry, it's just you look like somebody I knew."
One never thinks one's old aquaintances or friends are going to become superheroes, too.
Ian
Hello,
Josephine said. Ian's eyes caught the marking of her scars and trailed
over the lines of her face, following the burns down to where they
disappeared beneath the collar of her shirt. His eyes were dark and
placid.
"Hey."
Simple. Easy. She was, in some
respects, more evolved than he was, but he did not surrender his space
to her. Did not step aside as she came up the path. Instead he tipped
his head lightly in greeting and waited, like a cat, to see what else
she might do. Another gust of wind came along, hitting them both in the
side.
And then... Ian?
Ian's eyes shot back
to Delilah. To Dawn. And there was this slow-forming clarity of her
image in his mind. Like the snap of a rack-focus. Foreground to
background. The diameter of his pupils narrowed.
He shouldn't have been so surprised. After all, if Lucy was in Denver...
His
surprise did show, for a moment. Perhaps more to Josephine's eyes than
Delilah's (she was closer, after all.) But he schooled his expression
and laughed once, quietly, the sound of it mostly stolen away by the
wind.
"No, you were right the first time."
Could Ian ever really be mistaken for anyone else? He was such an indelible creature.
"...Interesting to see you again, Delilah."
(Interesting indeed. That word choice had not been casual.)
Josephine
It
couldn't be helped, really. Not coming up on him from below. But now
she draws to the top of the hill and now she lets her hair settle back
into place over those those scars with a toss of her head. They are not
so terrible, those scars. They are perhaps most terrible to Josephine,
once all flawless pale skin and dark hair and flashing eyes.
Beautiful, wild, exultant Josephine.
She is quieter now.
Those scars show she's vulnerable enough to flame. They show that
she's strong enough to survive fire. She wants neither of those things
visible, Josephine. Her wild hair says that she is like a dryad. One
of those untamed horses. She'll take that instead.
But know
this, for all she hides those scars reflexively, not for one second does
she look ashamed. She does not retreat, Josephine. Instead she takes
another step closer to Ian, closest to her, and offers one hand, covered
in layers of rings. Different metals. Different colored stones.
Kaleidoscopic.
"Josephine." And, again, she smiles.
And
then, after Ian has had a second to take or leave that hand, the same
introduction is offered to Delilah. Only then does she take a step
back, regard them with her head tilted just so because one eye is
covered by all of that hair.
"I see you've already met." And that could be read as an offer to give them space to get reacquainted.
Delilah
"Oh
I wouldn't say that; I've met Years-Ago Ian; does that count?" The last
a frank question, not as if she's trying to catch him out, but as if
she is used to being painfully clear; occasionally, musing. He's a
fucking superhero now. He's the Ian she knew, but not an Ian that she
knows- "Paradoxical," she adds, unthinking, with an unabashed sort of
smile. Delilah does bashful, but she does not bashful easily, or at
least not because of anything she thinks. Her cupid's bow just-coy mouth
curves deeper (enjoyment; the slow spread of light,
see- delicate and not at all easily banished because this is just the
beginning), and look, she doesn't quite notice that Josephine uses her
hair to hide part of her face, won't later be able to describe
Josephine's hairstyle one-way-or-another, little vagaries making a
not-quite ghost of some of her distinctions.
"It's lovely to
meet you Josephine, especially as I apprehend you do not -- neither of
you -- plan on turning me into a broom. I am sorry to interrupt- well,
half-sorry. Ian- are you with a- well are you working on anything?" by
which she means, dancing is life, and sometimes one thirsts for
artist-talk.
Three Orphans met on a trail to an imaginary Golden city-
[There is no city, that's a lie.]
"And
... Is this the way back down to the lot?" The question's for both-
either. She thumbs back down the trail- the way she didn't come. Lost.
Paths crossed. She's not ashamed of being lost, see, she says it
outright, "I wound up by that old hotel."
Ian
"Ian."
He introduced himself to Josephine, despite the fact that Delilah had
already given his name. When he took Josephine's hand, he felt the press
of cold metal against his skin. His own hands were unadorned. He never
wore rings, and today his wrists were bare of any decoration. Even a
creature as image-conscious as Ian did not especially consider his
appearance when going out for a hike alone in the winter. Not that he
needed the help, really. Even in hiking boots and wind-tossed hair he
was beautiful. Wild and aloof like some elegant winter cat.
I see you've already met.
"We have."
Ian's
response was shorter and less specific than Delilah's. He retracted his
hand and glanced away from Josephine's wild curls to take in the
picture of Delilah, with her sun-bright hair and cupid's bow mouth. She
seemed more familiar now, as she spoke. As he remembered who she'd been
before she'd Woken Up (both different and the same.) Ian had already
been Awake back then, but she hadn't known that, and he didn't tell her
now.
"I don't know, I might yet," Ian mused dryly. "We'll see how the day goes."
That
was a lie, of course. Ian was not even remotely capable of turning
someone into a broom. Delilah asked if he was working on anything, and
his mouth turned up in a soft smile. "I might be." Maybe she'd remember
this about him. Coy smiles and cryptic responses. Maybe he'd flirted
with her. Probably. He flirted with everyone.
"The lot's this
way, if you're looking for it. Park closes in about an hour, if it
matters." (Because it might not. People like them were used to ignoring
regulations.)
Ian turned and resumed walking down the path,
but he cast his gaze over his shoulder to the two women behind him, his
posture casually inviting. If they were heading in the same direction,
they may as well walk together.
Josephine
"No.
Though that reminds me I still need one." There is a slight frown.
Not for either of them, Josephine is just trying to remember if she
needs anything else. Eggs, maybe? Or was that the thing she thought
she needed last time and has too many of.
No. She doesn't have too many. She'll buy eggs and she will dye them. Paint them. However many dozen that is, the ones she has and the ones she brings home.
"It's worth seeing," Josephine says quietly. "Perhaps you knew where you were going all along." There is another bright smile, and the she turns to follow Ian.
