Not on your A-Game just now?

[Ashley McGowen] "You're welcome," Ashley tells Declan, and it sounds sincere, for the most part. "If you need help, look me up." Resonance, after all, is like a calling card for mages - he'll have to learn to attune himself better to it, track them down by it sooner or later. It will be beneficial for him to teach himself to do so.

The Hermetic raises her eyebrows as the young man leans in toward Kage, whispers something to her that Ashley can't catch. It puzzles her, piques her curiosity further when Kage thanks him with that edge in her voice, because she can't guess at what was said. She stirs a little, that same inquiring gaze following the apprentice as he makes his way out of the park. "...Interesting guy."

Then, Kage, who is kneeling on the ground by Zane. The dog is basking in the adoration. Ashley looks down at him for a few seconds, shakes her head and comments, "You're pathetic," when he flicks his ears at her.

So, Kage says, and Ashley says, "So." She adjusts once more, trying to find a position in which she isn't sore. Gives up. "I figured you wanted to know more about the stuff I talked about earlier. Town crier at your service," she says, a little dryly.

[K. R. Jakes] "Yeah," she says. Then: "Most people are." Her mouth curves, slightly. Kiss-that-mouth: that sort've smile. It's that sort of attitude which has Kage still Looking at people just to Look, no motive beyond that. "His confusion reminds me of the beginning, a little."

A beat. Ashley adjusts her position again, and this time, Kage is beginning to get that it's discomfort that doesn't come from just sitting one place too long. "The word Hell was used. Without hyperbole. I'm interested," she says. And, "Are you okay?"

[Ashley McGowen] "It must be pretty different if you don't have anyone there to teach you right at the start," Ashley says, with another sidelong look toward Kage. "My dad got me first thing, so I never really had that." Ashley never had the fumbling guesses at what she could do and why she was different, whether there were other people like her, whether she was going crazy. She had a guide there, after that burst of will and stubborn teenagerdom, refusal to accept what medicine said to be true.

Kage asks about hell, asks whether she's okay, and the Hermetic gives a shake of her head that, under other circumstances, might have been brisk. Irony halts that effort to shrug her injuries aside, making the movement slow, hitching it there at the end. "There was a Nephandus near Cabrini-Green last night," she says, "and he was staring down a Chorister. Summoned some...well, I guess you could call them imps...to take him down. I was in the right place at the right time, depending on your point of view, and they flew out to attack me and two others instead."

The way she makes it sound, she was a bystander, pulled into it by accident. The reality is she was ready to charge in, ready to draw the imps out, destroy them to aid the man inside. The New World Order says that reality changes with the telling: Ashley's never heard that or she might take more care.

[K. R. Jakes] "Mm." This, also pensive. Must be pretty different, Ashley says, and Kage's response is a noncommittal: "I might be a very different kind of willworker if someone had been around at the beginning of the beginning to explain things to me. Then again," a callous shrug. Then again, Kage is stubborn.

Staring down a Chorister, Ashley says, and - " - Owen?" The question. The only Chorister that Kage knows, howsoever tangentially. There is a sense that she's waiting for more. Her gaze is direct (intense [thoughtful]), and not at all cynical.

[Ashley McGowen] "You might even have ended up a Hermetic," Ashley says. Her voice is chipper in that wry sort of way, a brightness that isn't quite false but is meant to tease; she has some idea of Kage's feelings on her Tradition, simply by extension of the things she has said about Hannibal. By the way she hesitates whenever she asks about Bran or Justine. By the opinions she has expressed.

Owen's name comes up, and Ashley looks over, meets Kage's eyes, and then there's another grin. More frequent, they're becoming, even if most of the time they do have their base in mockery or in amusement at another's expense. "No. Brother Noah Ward, of the Pentecost," and she affects the accent of a deep-south preacher with uncanny accuracy. It fades as she explains, "He was chasing a cabal. One stopped here, apparently the rest are in Canada by now. He healed up the worst of what the imp did, but I guess my heart wasn't open enough to Jesus, or I'd have been fully cleansed."

They were creatures out of nightmare. Making light of the man's Willworking perhaps helps keep her mind off the fact that there's a trail of dried blood leading from the sidewalk in Cabrini into the warehouse, and it belongs to her, that she had to thrust memories down deep when she saw the charred body on the floor.

[K. R. Jakes] "Mm. I don't know. I think 'Kage, Ninja Mage' sounds much better than 'Dr. Jakes, O. o. H.'" And it does, too. Just like a comic book. A bestselling comic book. Or a movie. Maybe Hollywood is rubbing off on her [glitz, glam (shallows, no hidden depths)]. There. Faint quirk of her mouth. Teasing accepted.

"Fully cleansed," Kage echoes, frowning. "Did they get smutty fingerprints all over your soul?" Black-hearted bastards and black-fingered bastards is what Kage has called nephandic things, in the best: black-road black-hearted. Bad things. Smutty fingerprints? All part of the parcel, see?

She scratches Zane's left ear, and while she listens to the answer, examines the top of her foot. Her shoes are 'cute' shoes today and they give her an extra inch of height. Fifties style wedges. " - by the way, if you run into my family again, and they ask you about what 'research' we were involved in, you don't have to lie. Well: you have to skirt the truth, but my degree is in Esoteric Studies. Just say 'occult crap,' and their eyes will glaze over."

[Ashley McGowen] "He told me to open my heart to receive and welcome the Lord's blessing, and then asked the Lord to cure me of the sickness of the devil's imp, so he might be the better one to ask," Ashley says, dry. "The wounds are normal wounds, as far as I can tell. Deep, but normal." She hasn't really been able to see them, point in fact: they're there where her back becomes her shoulder, where sharp claws rent through the muscle and flesh. "My soul is fine. Well. Depending on your perspective, that is."

There's still the Jhor, of course. She doesn't count that.

Ashley glances down at Kage's shoes when the Orphan does, actually absorbing the fact that she's in a dress for the first time since Kage came by. She must do this, for family outings. "I'll keep it in mind," she says. "What was the older one saying that she told you to remember?"

[K. R. Jakes] "Why, Miss McGowen. I sense a smidge of doubt. You don't believe the Lord had anything to do with it, ? Why not?" They've talked about Belief. This, to Kage, appears to be something Other: that the Lord might work through others -- that others might be doing the Lord's work. Maybe it's something Other (maybe everything can be correct [everybody is the truth (&noone)]).

What was the older one - " - oh. Next week is my brother in law's birthday. I'm supposed to make certain he doesn't find his presents or discover anything about Margot's Martha Stewart plans." The way Kage waggles her eyebrows: she'd make a most excellent supervillainess. There's a touch of Cartoon Russian Spy Accent there, as well.

[Ashley McGowen] "Of course not," Ashley says, as a frown furrows the smooth plane of her forehead. "He Willed it to happen. Crediting it to some higher power cheapens what he did, when he's fully capable of doing it on his own. I mean, in all likelihood something godlike -does- exist, but the idea that it would even care or bother to intervene is kind of ridiculous."

This was one of the first things Kage heard Ashley speak about, God. Whether he existed and why, what he would do and whether they were there to do his Will. The Orphan was unimpressed then, and Ashley's opinions on such matters do not seem to have changed, if her tone is any indication.

She's looking out toward the water now, trying to rest comfortably there. As long as she's not moving she appears to have found a position that is relatively painless. "Hm," she says, of Kage's brother-in-law. "They both live here in Chicago with you?" That contemplation, consideration of what it would be like to have siblings - it's not something many only children can ask.

[K. R. Jakes] "But perhaps he isn't capable of doing it on his own; perhaps he is only unlocked when he is a vessel. When he is a Word, and that Word belongs to a Lord. Perhaps that's how he works." Even when Kage and Ashley met for the first time, the red-haired Orphan had been the asker-of-questions - not the answerer. Her personal beliefs were clearer (less) then, of course: she'd been introduced as a Chorister; as Simon's apprentice.

"Well, not with me, but here in Chicago - yes. The whole immediate family is kicking about, occasionally making demands on my time." There's no bitterness. Kage likes her parents, and Kage likes her sisters, for the most part. Kage likes her niece and nephew, and she likes her brother-in-law, and her brother-in-law's brother. They're okay. She'd miss them if they left, albeit somewhat distantly. "I babysit the kids," she offers.

[Ashley McGowen] "...Maybe," Ashley says, flicking a dubious glance in Kage's direction. "But if it has to be unlocked, then why praise him? That's like praising...I don't know. A calculator for doing the processes you put in, or..." Ashley trails off, unable to find an appropriate simile, perhaps. A hint of that stubborn nature, that tendency to meet another idea head on and -push,- refusal to give in to the idea that it isn't something she can do solely on her own.

Autonomy is an important thing, to Ashley. The Hermetic dislikes the thought of being bound, fettered, held down: limitations necessitate this by definition, limit her beyond the limits she places on herself, beyond the choices she makes of her own Will.

About Kage's family, babysitting the kids, there's only a noise of acknowledgment, something brief and a touch wistful.

[K. R. Jakes] "Hm. Perhaps he is unlocked; not quite like a faucet - turned off every time there's no need for inspiration; it's always on. Shaped, when praises are sung - words to give direction, hm?" Kage flicks both eyebrows upwards. "Why is the idea of something godlike caring enough to intervene so ridiculous?"

There's a noise of acknowledgment, something brief and a touch wistful, and Kage tries to remember what Ashley has told her about her own family. Most of what she remembers centers around Ninja Dad, but that could be because he just appeared. Most of what she remembers centers around they're that Other thing. "You're an only child, right? Your Mom is asleep?"

[Ashley McGowen] "But I don't praise the faucet for giving me water," Ashley says, with another frown. "If I want water I reach over and turn the damn thing on." Kage's eyebrows flick upwards and for a few seconds blue eyes meet green, before there's another shuffle, another dance of discomfort that has her swaying back to the uninjured side. "Well," she says, "I would assume that any godlike being is basically human, just...Ascended above other things. And probably much too busy with whatever concerns it would have to worry about lesser Wills begging it for help. Even if it did...why fix some things then, and not others? Why give that power to anyone who asks the right way?"

There's a release of breath after that, long and slow, because Kage is asking about her family, her mother, things that they have only lightly touched upon in the past if ever. "Yeah, she's Asleep," Ashley says. "They're divorced. Tried to have more after me, but they miscarried. One was stillborn once." No bound feral sibling or icy cold one for Ashley: legends don't imprint themselves in full, apparently.

[K. R. Jakes] "Mm." Most of those points, that mm seems to say, Kage will get to: all in due time. What she asks is this: "What does 'basically human' mean?" And what she says, too, is this: "C'mon, 'ley. I'll walk you home." No badass monster truck of badassery, black as the devil's middle finger, today. Kage glances out over the lake -- cold, flat, dark; rippling [calligraphic] when the wind touches it. She met a dreamspeaker once who could read the future in the patterns the wind made, who saw true-visions that way; who heard true-warnings, whenever the wind blew. Who couldn't take Chicago. Too much wind. Too many warnings. Then she hauls herself up, brushing dirt off of her skirt, quirking an eyebrow at Ashley. "I'm sorry," Kage says. And then, "I imagine I would've tried to beat you up, if you were my older sister."

[Ashley McGowen] Kage is brushing dirt off of her skirt, saying that she's sorry, and Ashley just looks sidelong at her. It isn't troubled, that look: it's a touch wistful, wondering what Kage has and what things might have been like, but there's no hidden pain. If there ever was, she's come to terms with it. After a second, there's a shrug of the uninjured shoulder. "Nothing to be sorry for," she says. "I was way too young to remember."

There's a brief quirk of a corner of her mouth as she feels around the edges of the rock, trying to gauge the best way to get off, trying to figure out how far it would be to the ground and whether she could slide off without scraping her back. Carefully, she begins to work her way down. "Solomon tries to beat me up. Morgan doesn't." It's how she thinks of the two, really.

"As for basically human...I mean subject to human flaws. Like...gods of old, I suppose. I mean, I've read about arch masters. A lot of them were dicks. And they're probably the closest un-Ascended representation."

[K. R. Jakes] "Still," she says. "It's too bad. How is Morgan? Has anything happened with that -- half-heart spirit-mark?"

The red-haired Orphan [braids (blood)] offers her left hand to Ashley, if the Hermetic needs the added leverage to haul herself upward, once she has carefully, oh so, worked her way back to the ground. At very least, she takes Zane's leash from her, and holds that instead. Kage can be a thoughtful creature, attentive. See?

"Mm. Human flaws don't all lend themselves to -- closeting oneself away; to seeking isolation; to thinking only of oneself. Or, no -- let me rephrase that. To ignoring others while thinking only of oneself. After all, occasionally humans just want things, and those things that they want, maybe they involve other people. Why would it be different for a godlike creature, who has less -- if any -- boundaries?"

[Ashley McGowen] "It's still there," Ashley says, with a sharp little half-exhale, of Morgan's spirit mark. "I can't find what gave it to her, Gregor's gone, no one deals with the Ars Spirituum...but I've been stressing to her not to do what the spirit says, so it seems...stable, at least."

Kage takes the leash, offers a hand to help the Hermetic down. After a glance toward it and a split second where she continues to try to eye the ground, she accepts it, letting it provide some extra stability as she finds her way back to the ground. "Thanks," she says, once her feet have touched.

Once there, she tucks her hands into her pockets, accepts Zane's leash, which she holds with her uninjured arm. It's not as strong as her right, but fortunately, Zane is a dog that doesn't pull much. He trots along, docile and well-behaved. "Well, yeah," Ashley says, after a moment to ponder those words. "But if that's still the case, then the problem is still the same no matter what the nature of its flaws are. Why praise it? I mean, whatever flaws it has, for whatever reason, they've clearly had an effect."

[K. R. Jakes] "Gregor's gone? When, and why?" Noone could accuse Kage of not, when she hears or sees something she wants to know more about, paying attention to what she deems important.

[Ashley McGowen] "I..." A slow, sliding glance, something that sticks and holds once it meets Kage's face. It occurs to her how many people she's neglected to mention this to, all of a sudden. Emily was the only one, and she'd spoken to the girl hours after they made the discovery. "Yeah. He's gone," she says, and the words come out as a sigh.

"Wharil and I found his room a mess. The jacket I got him was still there, his gloves were still there, there was blood all over the place and the mirror was shattered. Wharil sort of pieced things together and said a raven spirit dragged him into the Umbra." She tells Kage this, but she's not looking at her anymore. She's looking ahead, at the ground, at Zane. "I wanted to go through and look for him. Wharil said it was a bad idea."

[K. R. Jakes] Gregor could have just gone off on a spirit quest: been incommunicado, part of the ritual; been somewhere silence is a necessity, been circled in, somewhere, noone could reach -- but a known quantity. Instead, these details: the broken mirror, the blood, what Wharil put together, what Ashley wanted to do, what Wharil said. "Did he," Kage says, after a second. A beat, really: a heartbeat. Her jaw doesn't tighten, but her gaze goes distant for a long moment -- away, across the park. She isn't looking at the Hermetic. Her hands go back into the pockets of her dress, unless she's still holding Zane's leash; then only one hand goes into her pocket.

[Ashley McGowen] "He said we wouldn't be able to find him, or probably deal with whatever took him through," she says, and the white toe of her sneakers briefly finds a pebble that's strewn across the path. It rattles away, bounces, clicks and drifts off into the grass, never to be kicked again. "I just don't have the slightest idea -how- to look for him, even."

It doesn't take someone particularly perceptive to see that Ashley is still upset by this, that it might have ripped her raw when the discovery was first made and the subject is still a little tender. She and Gregor weren't close, not emotionally, whatever friendship might have been forming was still in its infancy, but a cabal confers a certain bond. "I just..." A sigh. "I feel very..." She doesn't say what she feels; those just aren't words she speaks.

"We'll figure something out, though. Even if all we do is figure out what happened." This might be meant to reassure Kage, or herself. Or maybe she's just speaking the words aloud.

[K. R. Jakes] [O Kage. You-do-it-like-this, 'ley. Corr 2+Spirit 1+Mind 1 I Find You Rote. NOT THAT IT WILL WORK 'COS GREGOR IS ON SEEKING OF DOOM AND MAYBE NO RETURN AND MAYBE IN THE DEEP DEEP UMBRA, BUT STILL. Duh, Hermetic. Like this. -1 time -1 practice -1 focus but-can't-go-lower-than-three la-la-la.]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 3) [WP]

[Ashley McGowen] [Perception + Awareness, -1 from wounds!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 6)

[K. R. Jakes] Kage, still looking off across the park, nibbles on a cuticle, on the skin around her thumbnail, until there's a drop of blood, welling bright. This could be mistaken as a nervous gesture, or a pensive one; it is neither. After she has nibbled, she wipes her eye, blood-smears on the crease -- it's so subtle a thing, and then, then, well -- then she can See.

"Like this," Kage says, to I just don't have the slightest idea -how-.

And Ashley doesn't feel a single thing: dead senses, nothing happening with the slender, delicate-featured Orphan, average, whatever amnesiac homeless young gentlemen want to think, unless she smiles just so, no blossoming of magick, no Will, tracing a labyrinth in the spirit-world, feeling it in the back of her head, like a map, fixing it in memory, marking it there, stay, remember, reaching. Still, that's what Kage does, unhesitating, when Ashley says she doesn't have the slighest idea how to look for Gregor.

"Hmm," she says. "Did he say whether or not Gregor was taken willingly?" A pause. Because Kage is a touch distracted, now: that Rote burning in her breast, behind her collarbone, finding, looking. Kage's mouth quirks, but it isn't really a smile: "I confess, I think going through when you don't know anything about the place you'd be going -- that would be foolish. A squandering of, uhm, talent."

Follow it with: "What do you feel?"

[Ashley McGowen] Kage nibbles nervously at her thumb, bites down, and Ashley doesn't take much notice of it. She's a little distracted, whether that be from pain or from worry about her errant cabal-mate or memories or the other things they've talked about tonight. The Orphan speaks, and then Ashley looks over toward her.

And...waits. Looking a touch impatient for a few seconds at that burning hair, at Kage's face which is not tense with concentration. Is distracted, in fact, as though she forgot what she was going to do. "What am I..." she begins, then leaves off in favor of answering Kage's question. "He was taken unwillingly, Wharil said," she tells her.

What does she feel. Another puzzled look. "Nothing," she says.

[oooooo] ...Somewhere...

Blink

Altercations of ruin, falling debris, shattered screams as tiny drops of liquid shock. Desperation like miasma, shallow comforts in familiar colours, harks and eldritch sounds that stole the air from lungs, gasping. Heat sears distant skylines, painted in the jagged maw of some great beast, all crooked teeth and hunger. Blades of green slash and snap, gleeful audience to the wind. Clouds as titans of pastel hue, spitting wads of gargantuan things in flight, piercing neighbours with wedged heads and reaching nightmares for limbs.

Legs click ripples in puddles left behind by silent obstructions, tapping out snarls of iridescent blue that rush flights at hard angles, a moment of ancient relief. Splashes of reaching hands, disorientation and vomit tank the air and send small eyes watching curiously, fleeing to other moments and other realms for far safer unknowns to observe.

Choking on spittle that cakes beard and flecks features. Lungs like fire and nerves like meat, tenderized. Pot shards that dance on tendons and ligaments, fear spewing forth with a last meal in the physical. Wretched eyes blurred by worlds around and perceptions within, meeting with calamity as the reason.

Hands and knees. Half naked. Breath like billows. Lungs like fire.

Blood drips the scent into the waters around him, flesh tattoo'd with lacerations both plentiful and scalding. Pain rife and furious. Pain terrible and clarifying. Pain rich and piquant.

"Hello Gregor..."

"No..."

Hand rises gingerly, probing the seam he'd imagined was always there, where neck and shoulers meet. A thin line, crusted with blood. Recent emergeance.

"No...no no no..." Desperation closes eyes like cave-ins, like gates. Squeezing hard enough to crush dreams and nightmares and leave behind the real.

Puddles click with spindly legs, the waver of something serpentine and segmented.

"It's time..."


[K. R. Jakes] A brief, unsainted curve of her mouth. "Not on your A-game just now, are you?" The unsainted curve dissipates: smoke, steam; breath, dew. Becomes, more concerned: "You don't feel anything about -- the disappearance? About -- " and then, a pause. Because look at that: a vision; she is actually seeing Some Thing, she is actually Hearing and Not Hearing, some part of her has walked into the cloud of Gregor's fear, x marks the spot, and Kage's eyebrows draw together, a sudden slash.

"Do you," she begins to say, and then: tries to judge, to gauge, whether-or-not, what-to, is-that-a-test, unwillingly-Wharil-said, what-is-the-thing-to: "I see him. He's afraid - well, he's always afraid," wry, let's be honest: devil-may-care wryness, even. Imperfect concealer of actual distress. "But he's - fuck. Look." And if Ashley's too slow, Kage will reach over and show her. "Can you yank him out?"

[because that's totally what I'm trying to do, and totally beyond my abilities, and totally vulgar, so we'll say a nice healthy diff 8, with note: impossible.]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 5, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8) [WP]

[Ashley McGowen] Not on your A-game just now, are you? "Fuck you, Kage." It comes with as much good nature as such a statement can. Or at least with as much as Ashley is ever capable of. "No, I didn't mean about the disappearance, that's...I meant about..."

She trails off, because there's a pause from the Orphan, a hitch, maybe her breath catches as she sees that being out of nightmare. Yank him out, says Kage, taking hold of the Hermetic's hand, and then Ashley can see and her palm curls reflexively at the horrific thing the Dreamspeaker is in front of. She can't yank him out: nothing is impossible, but she doesn't even know where she would start to try to penetrate the Gauntlet. Maybe Kage can, in some heroic(?) burst of Will.

Ashley tries the next best thing. She tries to rend all-space, reach the Mind of the terrified man in some nightmare realm she can't quite begin to fathom. It's insubstantial, what she tries to send him, just thoughts, just wisps, but maybe he can catch on to them all the same: Words, and an impression of herself, her Will, her Hunger - which in this case, is solely focused on finding him.

We're coming to find you.

[Mind 3 + Corr 3, obscenely difficult, trying anyway!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 10) [WP]

[K. R. Jakes] [paradox - ow?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[K. R. Jakes] [soak?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[K. R. Jakes] [ha, take that, reality!]

[oooooo] Clicking limbs. Wavering tendrils of pink. Purple shards of ethereal substance. Attentions from that without eyes. Like eldritch gone. Ashley's mind. Kage's senses. Both receive the clatter of falling domino, each thunk a rupture of pressurized air. A tap on the skull. Water in the ears, hollow and lost.

His eyes. His attentions. Wild and terrif(ying)ied. A hand, blood rivers and tans, slashes out, curled to claws and desperate wrath.

GO AWAY! He screams, soundless at the tug. At the attention.

"...Hello..." It says in Ashley's mind. Parchment cracking over shale rock. Bursting intestines on jagged apostrophes. Welding static castration. The sounds of cataclysm wrapped in a greeting.

And then the Storm moves in. Obscures the gauntlet again. Shatters the connection and it's momentary and leaves behind Paradox to say hello...

[K. R. Jakes] Almost.

Almost isn't good enough. Almost isn't nearly good enough. Almost is like maybe, almost is a failure. Almost: Kage almost has Gregor. Kage almost, although it is more difficult than difficult, manages to pull him across the paper-screen between worlds, the shadow-puppet theater fold-out, the mirror, and maybe he even feels her touch -- warm-fingers, human -- before she fumbles, before, clumsy, she just isn't quite good enough, because this is an almost time, darling, because he's screaming GO AWAY.

And then reality gives her a light smack on the wrist, indulgent: a favored child. Not this time, girly, and Kage frowningly watches until she can't See anymore, and then she says, to sum it up: "Fuck."

And then: "He's alive."
- optimism?

[Ashley McGowen] There is an It in her mind, crawling and rupturing, a thousand sounds at once, fizzing and hissing and clashing, utter dissonance (music.) The response, before the Storm cuts her away, is a flare of defiance, of anger, to that eldritch being.

Then Gregor is gone, and Kage says the thought that echoes in her mind several times before she looks over at the Orphan. "...Yeah." What is the questionable optimism of one is the grim determination of the other.

"He didn't seem like he wanted us to pull him out."

[oooooo] (and that's it for the cameo folks. Thanks for the brief play. Talk to you anon!)

[K. R. Jakes] Kage rubs her eye with the palm of her hand. No more stain; no more sting. Then: an exhale. The sight of Gregor, of that thing with Gregor: they're nightmare-things, nightmare-visions; Kage is used to nightmares (at least there's that [at least there is this]). "Maybe he's in the middle of a bargain -- of a test; taking him out would just send him back to the beginning." Still, Kage sounds a touch -- just a touch -- dispirited. A beat, and then:

"Looks like we forgot the 'walk' part of 'I'll walk you home.' C'mon." Mermaid Kage, swimming in humid evening air, half-turns, watchful, down the path that'll wend toward Ashley's apartment.

[Ashley McGowen] Kage sounds a little dispirited; Ashley feels the opposite. She's been given something she can -do,- there's a crumb tossed her way, something she can latch onto and take sustenance from in order to press forward. It's not hopeless, they aren't hoping that a clue will come to them just to find a dead Dreamspeaker at the end of it.

Still, Kage. That doesn't go unnoticed. Ashley falls into step next to the Orphan, winding through the thick, heavy air, and leading Zane along next to her. "Thanks," she says, after a few seconds go by. "This actually gives me a lot to go on. Well, I mean. More than I had."

[K. R. Jakes] "Any time," she says, after a beat. And Kage, although it doesn't often show, is as arrogant a creature as any willworker is: it's in her feminine swagger, the easy sashay, the cadence of her steps, even now, even right now, when she is dispirited. So she means it, thoughtlessly: any time. "I just," her mouth curves, "don't feel right about it."

"I'm sorry," she says, dragging her gaze over to the diminutive Hermetic. "What were you saying, before? You meant about?"

[Ashley McGowen] Kage doesn't feel right about it, and there's a pensive pause from the Hermetic. It's tailed by a glance, a slight curve of one side of her mouth, as she reaches up and tucks a lock of dark hair behind her ear. It's getting long. Well, long for her, at least. "Things usually aren't as easy as you'd like them to be, I suppose. We'll find him."

What -was- she saying, before? "Oh," she says, and then her gaze shifts, moves away, follows up the path toward her apartment. "It doesn't matter." Then, half-relenting, "It hit me harder than I thought it would. Him disappearing."

[K. R. Jakes] "It isn't the level of difficulty," Kage says, seriously: "It's - well: whether or not it's right to interfere; whether or not it's right to interfere with the shaman's purpose, whatsoever it is; whether or not it's right to stand by while that driven man drive himself into - well, trouble. Trouble that could cleave his spirit. That." There: morality, Kage-style [outsider (because she chooses to be)]. Or difficulties with. "Blah," she says, smiling. Then: "Ah." Understanding, maybe. The bond Ashley formed -- or is, or was, forming -- with Gregor had to be very different than the one she had with Bran and Justine (has with). "I can see that," she says, with her own sidelong glance.

[Ashley McGowen] Kage explains that it's not right, that Paradox slapped her down because she was trying to do something she shouldn't have done, because she shouldn't be interfering with this...quest of Gregor's, if that's what it is. There's another tilt of her eyebrows, only momentarily, something amused and reflective. "Who determines right?" she asks Kage. "I thought you didn't Believe."

Kage can see the differences in her bond with Gregor. Ashley has nothing further to say to that. Kage sees because it is, because she had expected a practical social contract but not attachment, not affection (though even that is flavored by something quite different than it was with Bran and Justine.) Complicated things, those bonds.

[K. R. Jakes] "I don't," the Orphan says, nonplussed. Because she doesn't believe she does. "That's not what - " Here, a brief pause: collect thoughts. Order them. "I mean, going forward - I don't feel right because I'm not certain whether or not I should try again; whether or not it's right. As for who determines that?" Kage's mouth twists, self-mocking: "I always follow my heart."

(But it's a true thing she says.)

[Ashley McGowen] It is a true thing she says. Ashley notices that, because Kage is ardent, because the touch of her Will betrays the truth in her words. "I'm going to find him," Ashley tells Kage, "and then when I do, he can tell me whether he wants me to go. If he wants it badly enough, if it's right enough, I figure he'll make it happen anyway."

[K. R. Jakes] "Maybe," shes says. And then, "Were I you, I'd wait until I was less chewed though." Logical. Rational. Cool.

[Ashley McGowen] "Yeah...I'll need to," Ashley says, with a shake of her head. "I don't have the means to go after him myself anyway. I'll have to wait for Wharil, or...someone with the Ars Spirituum who'd be willing to help." Not Kaya. She refuses. But there have to be others.

Ashley drops a hand down to Zane's head, running her fingers over the dog's skull and the softness of his ears, watching for her apartment building.

[K. R. Jakes] Does she want to be able to touch a ghost
to command the little gods of cinnamon and dust
of streetlights and asphalt

Does she want to be able to part the curtain
to walk [the storm will rend
(& tear, & shred)]
the dark road.

Does she want to do more than see?
Does she want to be able to push?

"Hm," Kage says, reflective. "Any out-of-towner who owes you a favor?" Then: "We should have dinner sometime this week."

[Ashley McGowen] "Bran or Justine," she says. "That's...really about it, unfortunately. Most of my favor-gathering has been done here." She never had a need to, back when she was with the other two. Sunny, charismatic, clever Bran: all the bargaining, the public relations, was left up to him. She realizes now what a mistake that was. "Why?"

To dinner, she just gives Kage a nod. She's not going to turn down food. Or company, for that matter. "I'll see when I can push my dad out the door."

[K. R. Jakes] "I can withstand a piercing stare," Kage says, amused, of Ashley pushing her dad out the door. He'd given her that look; worried, overprotective, information-hungry. Ashley called Hannibal and talked about her; maybe Ashley's dad can be the equivalent (fair is fair [and he's pretty]). "I suppose your Dad isn't much use when it comes to the spirit world?" Why, Ashley asks, and Kage's response is an easy (callous) shrug: "I just can't think of anyone who's skilled and useful in that particular knack, in this city. Maybe there'll be a new neighbor, soon."

[Ashley McGowen] "No, he's not. I'm not sure he really gets it at all," Ashley says, with a shake of her head. She herself might not understand the specifics of the spirit world, but she has the basics of understanding what it is, how it works: she doubts she can say the same for her father. "If you don't mind him, though, you can come over when he's around."

Her apartment is coming into view, and the Hermetic reaches into her pocket for her keys - nevermind that Justin or Kyle are out smoking all the time and they let just about anybody in. "...I'm hoping for a new neighbor. It's much too valuable a skill to be lacking in."

[K. R. Jakes] "Why don't you study it yourself?"

[Ashley McGowen] "I'd like to," Ashley says, with a sigh as she frees the keys from her pocket. The ring is hooked around her finger and they jingle at the end, just the sticks of cold metal on the ring, no cards or keychain holders. "But I've been trying to focus on figuring out what I'll need to know to progress my studies with the Ars Mentis, and that's taking a lot of time. After that I..."

There's a beat, a pause. "Well, honestly. I'm interested in talking to a Verbena or two. But in lieu of anyone who knows what they're doing, maybe I should put that off and look into the Ars Spirituum instead." There's a wry smile. "If I could perfect a way to learn all of those things at once, I would."

[K. R. Jakes] "For that, you need time," she says, with one of her sudden, rare smiles -- something gorgeous, which transfigures her features, limns her gaze in dark radiance, flushes her cheeks, lovely. The emphasis makes it: for that, you need Time. And they're at Ashley's apartment building, and Kage has a ways to walk to get to the bus that'll take her home, unless she decides to call Janet and demand a pick-up after being stranded, so the red-haired Orphan says: "Good night, 'ley. Seeya, Zane." And, simple, will leave their night at that, one final pet for the dog.

[Ashley McGowen] There's another look, another meeting of the eyes as that gorgeous smile spreads over Kage's face, and a quick huff of laughter from Ashley. "I think I'm enough of a Paradox beacon as it is," she says, eyes drawn toward Justin, who is indeed standing out front smoking, who does indeed wave at her and lean over so that he can push the door open with his free hand.

"Thanks for walking me home, Kage. Good night."

The two diverge, and the night ends as it began, for at least one of them: mandatory family time.