Cold in July

[Kage Jakes] [?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[Kage Jakes] Today is a hot day, muggy, the air is almost water, and it sticks close to skin (needy [lover]), has Kage Jakes's hair curling at the edges, at the nape of her neck, has her skin gleaming, a polished over thing, rubbed raw. For once, the demure (reserved [contained]) Orphan is a little disordered. Her collar is open, her shirt unbuttoned far more than is strictly decent, the center of her bra (blue [lace]) visible, the curve of her breasts, and her shorts are rolled up, too.

It's not raining, but there are a lot of clouds, more water in the air, foam that wants to crash down, wash the people of Chicago away. The red-haired Orphan is in one of the older parts of the cemetery, a book she can't concentrate in her lap, staring off at nothing at all. Shadows. She hasn't slept. Remembering how she hasn't slept, remembering what it was like with her eyes closed, keeps injecting a swell of [nervous energy...ozone] adrenaline, has her shaky.

Her knees are tucked up to her chest, her feet pressed together, resting on a gravestone lower than the one she's sitting on. It's toppled over in turn, leaning against a mausoleum.

Graceland Cemetery, and a day for convocation.

[Percept+Awareness, getting it out of the way!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[S. Ashton Winters] She likes cemeteries.

It's cliche. Euthanatoi liking cemeteries, but Ashton likes cemeteries. She thinks they're beautiful. The woman makes her way through, and in her time off, because that's what she has going right now (a break [from what?]), and looks at things. Just looks. Ashton comes through the older part of the cemetery, wonders how long it'sbeen here.

She could find out, but that's too much work. instead, she rounds by a mausoleum and finds a redhead.

It's quiet. Ashton blinks loudly.

[Kage Jakes] [-1 percept alert! I notice stuff!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Kage Jakes] The thing about Graceland is that it's got history, is that it was once located elsewhere (down by the lake [down by the river] where the bodies float [and the bones wash cold]), that it's famous in Chicago, large, there are maps. The likelihood of running into someone you know isn't very strong, but S. Ashton Winters, who feels like an ice floe, like something resonant, motionfull, frozen solid, contained, made into crystal, preserved, cold enough to burn, Glacial, something Other, a Mage, well - S. Ashton knows about fate (and chance [and ordination]).

Kage can feel her before she comes around the corner, somewhere, unlocalized. She can hear her, too. Ashton has a particular way of walking, of striding, of wandering, a particular effect on the greenery, a blight, a frost moving, and she has a particular way of walking in Summer strong, and Kage hears all this. Doesn't immediately connect Ashton to Ashton, but isn't surprised when the dark-haired, weary Euthanatoi Disciple comes around a corner. When Ashton does, Kage has dragged her gaze out of reverie, head turned, looking at the point Ashton appears.

It's quiet. Kage blinks too. "Ashes," she says. "Hi."

[S. Ashton Winters] "Hi."

She has things to say, but she can't think of them. So, instead, she goes to bridge the gap between herself and Kage. Ashton's on break right now, so she can do whatever she needs for the next... oh... forty two minutes. Ashton sits down.

The grass withers, cries. Poor grass. She does not mourn the grass.

"Reading anything interesting?"

Nature bows to inevitability.

[Kage Jakes] For a brief moment Kage looks (perplexed [lost]) uncertain. Her gaze drifts down to the book in her hands like she's never seen it before. That will be all, for uncertainty; for losing oneself. She's a little distracted today, her pulse is a little rapid. Ashton sits down, and Ashton is like a woman carved of ice, a lovely thing, and Kage leans closer, because she is hot. Polished, remember? Polished by the heat, burnished. "Not really. It's for work. It's about women detectives in the 1930s and the rise of rental apartments in the United States."

"Ashes," she says, again: the name she has for Ashton. "You don't look like you were torn into pieces by head-to-head plan of foolishness and desperation. I got Father Ward's text. Are you good?"

Not: How are you? Or: Were you hurt? Just: Are you good?

[S. Ashton Winters] "Solomon text messages?"

She looks equally perplexed. The rest is lost, for now.

[Kage Jakes] "Is that strange?"

[S. Ashton Winters] "No, he just doesn't seem tech-savvy."

[Kage Jakes] "I don't know him very well," Kage says, seriously. In fact, they've yet to exchange words outside of a meeting. "But it's not like texting takes a lot of intelligence. My baby sister's girlfriend does it regularly."

A beat. And then: "Are you good?"

[S. Ashton Winters] "I am, actually," she replies.

Is she good? She.. she says she's good, adn she doesn't seem to be lying.

"I'm sore," she says, "stiff. Cold."

That's the strange part. She says that she's cold like, for the first time in a long time, she realizes this. That, for the first time in a long time, she feels it. Knows there's a different, knows she's different. Dfferent. Not her constant self, not an oppressive force of nature. No, Ashton overdid it. Ashton pushed too hard, and the universe needed to remind her of how small one can be.

It's not December; you are not Creation.

"Fixed the guys up, did what we could. My aim was a little off, but we all walked away alive and mostly intact."

[Kage Jakes] [Eh? -1]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 8, 10 (Failure at target 6)
to†S. Ashton Winters

[Kage Jakes] [Eh? -1 +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 7, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 4 at target 7)
to†S. Ashton Winters

[S. Ashton Winters] 1- Physically, yes? She's good. But she really is kind of sore
2- Okay, sort of okay.
3- WTF have I always been this cold? [oh godohgodohgod (Yes, you have. Remember? This is what awakening was like. Just embrace it, you'll get used to it again) Oh.] and on a certain level, that makes her kind of sad, because it's like "You're really distant from normal people"
4- She's okay. She's not good, but she's okay.
to†Kage Jakes

[Kage Jakes] They've known each other for a while now, Kage and Ashton. Kage knew Ashton (howso ever briefly [intensely]) before Ashton was a mother, before Ashton was (winter [barren] wasteland) a woman who'd created a thing, and what she knows of Ashton is seasonal. Ashton wears herself in her name, wears herself in her cool skin. Ashton isn't icewater, and has a warm heart- she has to have a warm heart to keep moving when everything about what she touches wants to freeze in place and keep still and solid. It's still unusual (of interest) when Ashton mentions it, watching the change in the Disciple from one season to the next, watching how she becomes almost another person (arrogance [unwavering]). Kage quirks an eyebrow when Ashton replies, and after a second, seems to accept the answer as honest enough. She isn't a caregiver, Kage. Doesn't try to hug it out with people just because.

"What's it feel like?" she asks.

[S. Ashton Winters] Ashton is intolerable in winter.

In those months, she is so far removed from people and the bounds of what is normal and possible that she can't relate. And, really, she doesn't even try. It's not that she can't relate, it's that she's arrogant. In her own way, it permeates all things; she thinks herself different in those months. She works harder in summer, perseveres, tries more. Struggles more. It makes her real.

She helped banish a demon at the beginning of this month. It works for something.

She is different, but predictable. She will behave in a certain way at a certain time. She admires Kage of rhtat, that she is predictable in the fact that she is not constant. Kage will not behave the same way all the time.

But what does it feel like?
"The day after a good workout," she says, "I don;'t want to move. I didn't notice, but my fingertips are numb. Joints are stiff, and bending hurts a little. Not impossible, I just don't want to move."

She takes a second, and her voice drops and there's something like awe tinging her words, "it's different. Kind of renewing... I'm freezing my ass off and it's July. It's almost scary, because I know it'll go away soon enough, and I won't notice anymore. Acclimation to constant sensory input."
There is something Greater here.

[Kage Jakes] [Pause!]