No Reverence In That

[Emily Littleton] Twice in as many days, Emily paced the winding path out to the point where the frozen water kissed the slumbering land, and long-fallen Kings laid under a blanket of snow. Twice in as many days, she wore the heavy wool coat she was just now learning to carry with ease. Twice in as many days, the expression she wore could not be elevated to the quiet Reverence she was building within her, lingering instead in a cooler, more somber place. Twice in as many days, the woods were still, vaguely reminiscent of a mausoleum. Twice in as many days, the too tall, too dark trunks of bare Kings (without their regalia [without their hosts]) stood sentinel.

Emily reached their favorite seat first this time, and took up residence on her half of the throne. She fiddled with her keys in her pocket. Sat slight hunched over, with both hands in her pockets. Her hair was tied back severely, wrapped into a tight knot at the back of her head and secured with pins (more bother than was often worth it).

The cold water offered no absolution, only a hazy layer of unforgiving ice (a network of lines that enlace [a network of lines that intersect]). She waited, but not calmly, no patiently.

A tiny heartbeat called out: Home, home, home. But it was not home for her, not this winter afternoon. Not here in the Court of their Keepings. For she had come to keep grave council with the Other, and there was no obscuring that from the ice, the snow, or the Kings.

[K. R. Jakes] This time, Emily is once again first, and she has time to contemplate the pale winter (the pale death) that lies all around. Underneath and above. Hers are the only footsteps on the path, and hers are the only signs of life at the lookout where the (king has fallen) tree lies lightning-struck and bowed. They'd left behind a clementine, and it froze in the night; Emily can see it, brightness subsumed by frost, half-underneath some snow. The air is so crystalline that it might cut, on the way down -- cut the throat, make it fill with blood, and no more words, no more, words.

But she doesn't have to wait (not patiently, not calmly) for long before K. R. Jakes comes into sight. As almost ever, she is dressed to stay warm against the cold. It's become easier for her to do this, since the nameless 'crow is no longer in her house, no longer scorching her skin (scarring her mind) with his presence so that an extra layer of clothes feels nigh on unbearable. Her scarf is smog gray, and so is her hat, and so are her gloves, and her jacket is the color of a mourning dove's breast, doublebuttoned, and her corduroys are a deep color that isn't quite red. There's too much indigo for that, too much softness.

"Hail," she says, and her fine (plain [delicate]) features are concerned. And curious. "What news brings us so soon again to Court?" And her voice is grave, and perhaps willing to be easily coaxed into amused or mischief, but only if Emily opens that door. Otherwise, it's locked.

This time, she has brought an offering. A paper bag, and inside it, two chocolate croissants, hot. A thermos, apple cider inside, spiced and steaming still.

[Emily Littleton] "Hail, and well met," she replies, as is becoming their custom. Emily lifts her eyes to look to the rowan-haired Other, letting a small smile of welcome grace her features for a moment before her expression falls back to more somber places. Her voice, today, is low and almost liltless. The accent has damped a bit, and her consonants are softer. She is still foreign, still Other, but diminished.

"Grave news," she appends, and the words take on a twinned meaning. Grave, for it is serious. Perhaps also grave, in a more terminal, mortal sense. "Else I would have waited." Else she would not have summoned Kage back out into the snow, to their place of secrets and admissions.

Emily's fingers dig into the snow, loose the frozen clementine from its shrouded hiding place, and heft it deftly. She eyes it thoughtfully for a moment, then steps sidelong into their proper helloes.

"Are you well, then?" she asks, as if she had expected the Other to reply with some minor ailment, some aching of the body, heart or soul. As if Emily herself has been come unwell in the hours they have been away from this place.

[K. R. Jakes] Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[K. R. Jakes] "Yes," she says, and she means it. Kage is well, today. She slept as she always sleeps, and it was not necessarily sweet, but when she woke up, she was refreshed; she was ready to write a new day, ready to walk (to swagger, to sashay; a feminine sort've swagger, has Kage) from moment to moment. Whatever that moment was to bring. And what the moments seem to have brought her is an Emily who is muted, an Emily whose tone of voice, whose very body language, is grave and grim and foreboding. The way Kage regards her is thoughtful, is intent. Attentive. "And I'm going to assume that you are not well. What happened?"

[Emily Littleton] "I am..." Emily says, as if that is enough. She is, which is more than she might have been if the previous night had gone a little differently. And was it not the Lord Himself who summed up His existence, His very name in the words Yahweh (I am [I am]). If it was good enough for God, it was good enough for the dark-haired, heavy-hearted Orphan.

"I am well enough," she continues. Well enough has become an epithet of sorts, for coping, for struggling, for existing against the sheer oddity of the brave new world around. Emily's fingers tighten around the frozen orb, and then she lobs it idly out across the ice. Throws it away from her in an almost ritualistic fashion. The sweetly scented brightness of it could splinter, fracturing away the thin sheet of cold that had settled over Emily herself.

"And I have earned some practice at, what was it you called it, sensing the eldritch?" A little pause, and then she tucked her too cold fingers back into a pocket to warm up. Her mouth pursed slightly, and she tumbled the next words over and over in her mind, as if she were polishing dull stones to shiny (worthy) trinkets.

"Last night I was Called, among others, to a house I'd never seen before. Before I realized what it was, I thought I might be dying. I have never hurt like that," not quite like that, but Emily had felt as if she were dying before (she may have truly toed that line [but failed to step across it] before) she recognized it as a vision, not a stroke or something more visceral. Her fingers escape her pocket once more; Emily presses frozen fingertips into her temple: pain remembered (echoed).

[K. R. Jakes] O brave new world.

Emily is probably beginning to realize that it will not quiet. That there will not be a time (likely) where she is able to focus on only what she had focused on before. Now that her eyes are open [reverence] how will she be able to ever (again) shut them? Maybe that is why she answered, when she felt a Call; maybe it was that simple, and had little to do with the pain the Call brought. Kage is beginning to know Emily passingly well, but she still doesn't know her quite well enough to guess why Emily, when she was Called, drove down the streets of Chicago until she was at a house that she'd never seen before. Maybe it was just to make the pain cease.

"I'm listening," she says, the righthand corner of her mouth touched by the very dead ghost of a smile. "And witholding questions. You didn't die," she says, and it isn't a question (not exactly).

[Emily Littleton] "Whatever called, it? -- they were dying," she said, and the word ached. It broke the pensiveness on Emily's face and the regret and guilt showed through. Emily hadn't been able to help, hadn't been able to stop what happened (and she barely understood what had happened). She had carried broken bodies, entrails, to someone's jeep. To be disposed of like refuse. There was no reverence in that, no honor or sanctity.

"I arrived with the others, and the house reeked of magic." It was the only way she had to explain it, and Emily stumbled a bit over the words. "It felt wrong. Unsettling. Not like the man at your flat," because Emily did not remember if she knew his name. "Evil--if that is even possible. Twisted and malicious."

She shook the cobwebs from her memory, trying to free the odd syllables from wherever fear had shelved them the night before. "Ashley called it... Nephandus?" The word was inexpertly weilded, but would ring clearly enough on its own.

"I have never seen so much blood, Kage," Emily said, looking down at her hands. "When it was over, I carried them, with the others, in pieces, to someone's car. It isn't right. This can't be right. This can't be why we Awaken."