Houseguests

[Reverence]
It is warm, and it is wet, and the canopy above is slip-shod, slippery soled, slick with rain-wet and brilliant green tiles. They hang like windchimes, fat lazy drops, they fall in concerts of thuds and prick-brights. The woods are full of rainsong today; it is a concert fit for the light that breaks through the grey ceiling overhead and falls like a spot light down to touch the lazy water. It breaks like light through a stained glass window in a church: brilliant (holy).

There is mud on the soles of her shoes again. There is dark-damp on the cuffs of her jeans. The Singer-to-be hardly cares. This is not a hard rain. It falls like kisses, like fingertaps on shoulders, like a whisper (are you listening [hello there]), like a friend to keep pace with the cadence she keeps. This rain is familiar, like the bend in the path up ahead, like the point where these two kiss, turn back. A clearing. This is familiar, this is all familiar, it is timeless (sanctuary [lonely] ritual).

She has come bearing gifts, as always, in the bag that is slung to one side of her narrow frame. Emily steps over the king-seat, straddles it, pulls her bag up in front of her. She pushes her hair out of her face with one hand. There is a glint of silver at her throat; it is not kept close to her skin now, she wears it openly, it sings: Home.

She has hurried here, sought it, struggled for it. Her breath is quickened, her cheeks are pinked. It is not quiet, no, but the song of birds is nothing compared to the prattle of men. She leans back against the branch that rises, like a coat rack, like a friend to lean upon. She looks out across the water.

Can you believe it? that look asks. The water does not answer back. I know, right? the roll of her eyes answers.

It takes moments before the calm of the Court seeps into her. Before the eye roll turns to a head shake turns to a more proper sitting posture and a long, slow exhalation.

The rain falls down, wet-slick and familiar. The water is too lazy to answer back. The birds prattle on, and on, and on. The sky is dapple grey; there is greenery overhead. Finally, Emily finds herself smiling. She reaches into the hollow of the trunk, casts about for the treasure box, looks for new secrets and hidden meanings.

[Candle]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[?]

[Candle]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[?]

[Candle]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[?]

[Candle]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[One more roll. AWARENESS advance guard!]

[Reverence]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Awareness: Because stuff's out there...]

[Candle] The corner (edged) of the treasure box is wet to Emily's touch. The water is a veneer, it lies like a layer of glass across the lid; it ripples like glass, too, like a glassy stream, away from the hollow, from Emily's hand, from the day, when she takes it out. The box is heavy, today. When Emily opens it, she finds a beeswax votive candle, and someone has pressed a charm against its side, something bee-shaped and medieval, something very modern. There is also a doll made out've sticks and a little note that is in neither of their writings, that isn't typed, another traveller who's happened upon their spot. The note has a name -- a date: the 4th of July. A smiley face, and a Thank you. Just some hiker who found it. Who was pleased, as they're pleased, by something so (mundane) magical in such an unexpected place. It's nice that someone wrote thank you on the 4th of July, while fireworks burst over the river, reflecting on the dark.

And lo, there is a Kage, a flake of brightness in the dark. Emily can sense her just before she arrives -- something shining, burning, amorous; something immanent, kindling -- witheringa way, the draining of -- beloved, ardence: Spring, a kiss. A flake of brightness, and it isn't dark today. And lo, today, Kage has an umbrella, and the umbrella is a watery green, as green as water-weeds and drowning girl's dresses, as green as impressionism and glass, open behind her head, and she is wearing hiking boots, yea verily, but also a dress, falls to below her knees, buttoned up in front, short bell sleeves.

And a bag, of course. Full. To the bursting. Of things.

"Hail," Kage calls, as she comes around that old familiar tree, pauses to rock back on her heels and examine something in the dirt. Then her gaze ficks up, the greeting finishes - "And well met - "

[Reverence] This is a fitting thing, a magical happenstances. A thank you for the Independence Day that almost wasn't, found by the Guardians of that shimmering gate. Emily smooths a fingertip over the beeswax. She smiles, in a way that she hasn't in some time. This offering (Gratitude [Grace]) goes a long way to soothing the edges the morning has rankled, rucked up, raised hackles: Ire, misplaced. It calms that, stays the upwelling. She is freed of it.

A thank you. Something so simple, so strong.

Emily tucks the box back into the hollow, keeps the lid shut tight agaisnt the rain wet. She will let Kage make her own discovery, take her own meanings. This place is magical (mundane); who knows what the rowan-haired Other might find when she opens the case.

"Hail and well met," Emily calls in reply. Her voice is warmer, lighter. It rises up like the corners of her mouth; her eyes dance. She is a brilliant once more, remade, renewed, rekindled: Reverent, again. "I come bearing gifts of fritata," she says, already reaching into her bag. This is ritual, see? This exchange of helloes, this gifting and taking, the smiles and lazy water. This is ritual as sure as any magic might be.

It binds them together like a ribbon-belt, shimmering, solid: surety. This is a friendship, a kinship; this is a place where her rough edges might smooth, wear down, take on a polish. This is nothing like the morning, the exchange in her apartment, and Emily is joyful that she knows the difference.

"It is good to see you," she says. The words speak volumes. They are innocent. Pure.

[Candle] "Fritata? Of what manner, with what cheese or vegetable?" Now, Kage is before Emily, in front of the fallen oak -- lightning blasted, once; see, now? How it grows, how things grow within it and around (lonesome [sanctuary]). The Orphan Disciple lifts her chin, imperious, and places a finger on it, just so, faux haughtiness, or inquisitiveness, or something. Then: ha! Treeclimbing.

The dress'll cling to her legs, but her shoes are sturdy, and Kage will, one-handed, clamber onto their throne tree, their meeting-wood, where the paths kiss, where they came upon each other quite by chance all those seasons ago, and she'll sway, unbalancing for a second, before traipsing up and up and around the coat-rack branch, until she can seat herself on a knoll, higher above the ground than leaf-litter'll make it look, higher above the ground than most things, but kept close too -- a moon, not a star. And then she twirls her umbrella, see, once, twice, and lets her bag thump to the surface of the Fallen King's oak. She sets it in a branching tine and it fills with water. Her hair is curling, condensation; tendrils are skimming over her cheeks, into her eyes, her mouth.

"Behold," she says, Magician-like: "I bring chocolate won tons." A pause, and then, "It's good to see you, Emily. How do you fare? Are we, here, at the court, to be readied against Monsters? Should our eyes be radiant and open, our hands closed and our knuckles sharp, wary grins on her lips and maybe a song to Lady Luck?"

[Reverence] "Mystery Fritata of the Leftovers, dear Lady Kage," she says, presenting the Disciple Orphan (Queen [un-felled, not yet fallen]) with a plastic wrapped bundle. It is still faintly warm. "With peppers, potatoes, jack cheese, and some crumbled Cotija, black olives, mushrooms and scallions."

The leftover bin, it seems, has been canted toward the Mediterranean. At least at Emily's house. It is less whimsical than Kage's traipsing, her lofty perch, her lilting words.

"And we come to gather in kinship, in friendship, in the wake of false friends and in echo of other times. Alas, I have taken a houseguest, because Compassion so compelled me, and she has overstayed her due. And her trading of favors, it vexes me."

A pause. Emily plucks a chocolate won-ton out of the magician's offerings.

"As does her wanton pantslessness."

It is, perhaps, just a little like other times. When they spoke of the rockstar at the soup kitchen. When their tongues were touched with nicknames and their exchanges more cryptic, enigmatic. Emily nibbles at the treat that Kage has offered, she lets the water and the verdant woods-smell mingle with the press of Kage's resonance. This is a good thing, a true thing, a thing worth fighting for. It pushes the morning further from her mind. She smiles.

[Candle] Kage clasps her hands together, twines her fingers, irreverent, when Emily begins her litany, we come to gather, and she nods after each comma, a punctuation, her eyes greener today than they are wont to be; summer brings the true out of the smoke, out of the haze, the besmirched hazel. They're almost lucent. When Emily says she's taken a houseguest, well, Kage unclasps her hands, bracing herself up with one as she carefully, cautiously, lets her legs dangle o'er, and then reaches for the Mystery Fritata, listening. "This land of the Leftovers, Em; where you come from it seems like a magical land, full fair and breezy. I confess the land of Leftovers I've waded through has been a place of nightmarish horror, where no sane woman wants to walk. Is there cutlery?"

And then, to the matter at hand, to the gathering, this: "Wanton pantslessness. Did you take a Satyr into your home? Best show them the door, and remind them how to use it. At least, for the leaving." A beat, and, "What favors?"

[Reverence] "There is not cutlery, but there are napkins," Emily says, withdrawing the latter from her bag, all folded in on themselves and kept clean. Kept neat. "It should hold together if you unwrap it carefully," she adds, for she is a clever sort, the sort that might eat Fritata on the run. Oh yes, Emily's land of leftovers is quiet magical compared to most.

"I've been cooking more, since last weekend. It's calming. I forgot how much I enjoyed it," she adds, handing Kage a napkin. Explaining the magica of the leftovers away.

"I'm making paella tonight, if you would like to help free me of my Satyr," she says, but it's playful this. She is not truly asking (or perhaps she is). Emily unwraps a corner of her fritata, peels the plastic away enough to take a bite. The rest stays neat. It does not crumble. Lo, a demonstration.

"Though I fear she is not Shining Host and summer-touched. It's only Lara," Emily says, and there's a dark that smudge-touches her eyes. It passes, this mild torment.

"She asked to do something for me, in exchange for staying. I told her there was something I might like; she asked after it; I said for her to leave Owen alone."

A pause, another careful unwrapping. A little scowl. Another bite. Chew. Swallow.

"This turned into her insisting on a massage -- I quite dislike her lack of personal boundaries, Kage." Almost as much as she disliked the wanton pantslessness. Or, perhaps, even more.

[Candle] Kage plays Echo, then, to Emily's nodding Narcissi, and she peels and bites just as Emily does, and lo! Verily, it was a revolution -- a Fritata on the Go revolution! Viva the revolution for now and for always! But that is just one nuance, just one thing that happens here, at the Court, between the hazel-eyed Orphan and the dark-haired Chorister-soon. There are some who will say that it's as easy as claiming a name; those are not as closekinned to the Mystery of it.

There is always an initiation; there must be honoring, there must be guidance, a moment of Naming. At least, this is what some believe. So Emily is a Chorister-soon, a Chorister-in-waiting, and it shows more and more, she wears it well. It's only Lara, Emily says, and then: her next sentence is most riddling, quite perplexing, and coolly radiant, sardonic Kage, Kage of the quick wit and sharp quips, begins to raise her eyebrows.

And then, after a no-that-can't-be pause -- something delicate, precise -- "She forced you to give her a massage in return for leaving Owen alone? Really? After you'd brought her home as a guest?"

Bemused. Baffled.

[Reverence] She had been about to take another bite -- her teeth framed it, she could taste it on her tongue as she breathed in -- when Kage asked her question, reworded Emily's synopsis and strung together the lapses an lacking information. Emily unwraps her teeth from around the fritata.

"Ah.... no." She says. The words are hesitant. They come as separate thoughts. "In return for leaving Owen alone, she wanted a good reason. I had only a good enough one; I fear he will not be spared."

Woe. There is some sadness to this, and frustration!

"Then she insisted on giving me a backrub. Because I am too tense, or something, and I do not think that was a good idea." No contractions; Emily is peeved. Now the fritata mouthful is reclaimed. Chewed carefully. Swallowed down.

"She cried when I pulled away from her. She doesn't know when or where to stop, Kage. It bothers me." She doesn't have to say that she doesn't feel safe around the other Disciple. She shouldn't have to say much after the card playing night. Though Kage had gone home early, and it was likely she hadn't heard that Emily and Lara had gotten off to an auspicious beginning.

"I had to ask her not to try to get into my head when she touched me. Like it is just a thing that she does -- are they all like this? Cultists?"

[Candle] This is a lot of information to take in about Lara the Cultist. The red-haired and beautiful (sharp [as a fox]) woman whose very resonance was subversive. Who Kage had given espresso, the first time they met. Lara, who'd worn a hood up around her face until she no longer could, who suggested tequila and cardplay, who just wanted to have fun. A lot of information in a week already full of information about this particular Cultist, about her doings. The slender minutes Kage has spent in the Cultist's company, the Cultist has seemed as wellbehaved as ever they do; clearly, that is not so. Emily's sense of unsafety troubles the Orphan's gaze, and her eyebrows are definitely high; not in disbelief, but in seriously, no way, what's wrong with that dame, and a bit of measuring, an attempt at a gauge.

"What is her reason for not leaving him alone?" Kage asks, carefully. And then, "Did she try to get into your head anyway?" Poor Emily: a reoccurring theme -- other Mages, touching her headspace.

And Emily wants to know if they're all like this, Cultists. And Kage, well. Kage isn't a Hermetic. She isn't an Akashic or a Verbena, she isn't a Euthanatos or a Virtual Adept, and she has none of their prejudices. Her prejudices are her own, and firmly entrenched. Her expression becomes wry, rueful, and she says,

"The Cult of Ecstasy. I've been told by others that they're about boundaries -- about breaking them down; about finding liminality. That's part of why they understand Time so well -- uhm, that's what I've been told, as I said. In my experience, they usually seem less conscious of personal space than others, but that doesn't have to mean they're rude. T.H. is definitely not a typical Cultist. Lara -- I'm not sure." A beat.

This is Kage. She still tries not to sway the newer mages one way or another with her opinions on Traditions. [Not her style.]

[Reverence] [Nothing to see here, move along.]

[Reverence] Emily sidesteps Kage's question about Owen, but it is not artful. She simply lets it fall by the wayside. There are other, more pressing questions to answer. It is not crafty, this, but perhaps it will not read as wanton deception.

"Not today," she tells Kage, instead. "She has, in the past. She can be very convincing, and I'm not sure where innate talent ends and magic begins. Or Tequila, for that matter."

A frown, a most decidedly unhappy frown. Emily is thinking of that night, with the cards. She is grinding her teeth, there, oh! Best stop that.

"I prefer Nathan's company to Lara's if that's any comment on character," she says. And Nathan shot Owen, something Kage would know by now.

[Candle] [?]

[Candle] "Why? What did she do to you, in the past?" Emily mentions tequila and there is a pang, a little thorn, of avowal; a snag, something that localizes this and Lara used magick on me moment to a certain day and a certain place, and she frowns, growing grave-eyed. She'll listen for Emily's answer, too, and nibble on the fritata carefully, as delicately indeed as any slender wood-nymph, as any dryad, come out've the scorched wood to stretch herself against the rain, and her left foot sways a little in the air, back and forth, forth and back, and hiking boots are heavy, pull their people down to the ground, fasten them on this earth. No heavenly paths for you.

And Emily, well; she has sidestepped a question, and it was not done gracefully. Moreover, that sidestep, that particular way of addressing another portion of the conversation first and foremost, casually, well: this is a trick that Kage R. Jakes knows very, very well. A shadow, and a light, and they are the same thing: make the same shapes in the world. She leaves it for now, but only because she has those questions, the ones she just asked, and because she is regarding Emily, and her eyelashes are sooty, dark, when they intermingle, when she blinks just like that.

[Reverence] There is a pause, and in that pause the rain falls down. It kisses their cheeks. Kage blinks, Emily blinks, the tiny drops that cling to their eyelashes kiss and coalesce, run down their cheeks like tears. It's all kisses and raindrops, this pause. The rain falls down, the Apprentice looks up. Up. Up. And then down again.

"That night, when we were all playing cards? You left -- wise choice, by the by -- and Owen came up from the well." And this? This is the reporting voice, it's the cadence. Were they not perched on a fallen King, nibbling wonders from the land of leftovers, Emily would be standing, shoulders square, hands clasped before her: courtly, then, and prim and proper. "He joined the table; Lara wanted him to drink to join us --"

A break here. A secret withheld. It is intimated, by the gravity of her pause, by the unwillingness she has to push onward with that thought. And then it is set aside. There is a problem, then, with Lara and Owen and alcohol -- or some subset thereof -- or just Lara or Owen -- or simply a problem. But Kage is bright, she is quick, it will sort itself in her head shortly.

"Owen went outside. I left to see if he was alright, but Lara..." Again, the teeth. The grinding. Self-chastizement. Emily exhales and it is scalding; there should be tendrils of steam: fire-breathing, angry. It is simply a sigh, though, and no tendrils, no flames. "She didn't want us to go. She said something; I don't remember what. And then she was looking into my eyes. Telling me it would all be okay."

Scorn. Emily picks an olive out of her lunch. Flicks it aside. Unwanted. Too salty. Too something. Unpalatable.

"She tried the same on Owen, I think. It didn't go over well. I tried to go out the back... but then he came back inside. I was," a frown, as if the face she made could grow more displeased. "I had too much to drink, when we were playing. Owen helped me get home. Lara was being very smug. I think she thought she was being helpful."

[Reverence] Kage is Emily's rowan-haired Other. She is the coldfire hair; she has the emerald-quick and occasionally hazel eyes. Her path kisses Emily's in the depth of the wood. They have kept Court; they have held the Breach. It is harder to keep from Kage things that she keeps back from others. Ardent, shining, amorous, immanent.

There is a softness to Emily's voice when she says his name: Owen. It is an affection, familiarity. It shapes the secrets she does not share; it is a closeness. Emily does not name it as anything but friendship; she does not call it out by another name, will not know it if it is set before her as openly as that. But there is warmth to it, this thing she is protecting (from Lara, from herself, from Naming). There is peace to it as well.

It is unsteady and uncertain, yet. It is hopeful.
to†Candle

[Candle] "This was inside the White Fence House?" Kage says, after a beat. After a beat, because again: it's a lot; because she is considering, and considerate. Her gaze tarnishes up, you see. And the dark, it doesn't reveal much; of course, neither do bright things, and Kage, Kage can be bright.

Kage, whose skin is warm, is flushed, who is wearing a dress to go hiking, who was briefly haloed by delicate green, by manmade metal spires, sheltered from the rain by dint of that halo. Kage slouches, and she pulls her knees up to her chest, looping one arm casually around them. Whatever it is she reads from Emily, whatever it is the other girl has, she feels no need to harry it, no need to comment, no need to hurry it, no need to point and gawk and say, look at that growing, curling thing, look at it.

Ardent, Kage.
And withering, too.

"Jesus. I'm sorry, but I had no idea she was so." No adjective. Just: was so. Brief, perplexed pause, and - " - Do you actually need help getting her out of your apartment?"

[Reverence] This was inside the White Fence House?
"Does the porch count as inside?" Emily asks. So, on the premises. Under the roof line. Inside was a matter of context.

"I may," she says, chewing on her lower lip for a moment. "I told her she could stay tonight; I'm even making dinner -- I don't know why, though. I don't like her as a person, but I feel compassion for her as a human being. There's something wrong. She's diminished. I've been diminished."

A pause.

"But I won't sleep there while she's there. I've stayed other places. And she's passive aggressive." There's a pause. Emily doesn't know how to explain this, there's no simile or metaphor. She has not met anyone as manipulative as Lara, as wantonly emotionally manipulative. It makes her angry; her vocabulary fails. Emily does not want to say, like the other Graduate Student in her lab, she is such-and-such like, whoa. That is a failure of the English language, but it feels apt.

Lara is manipulative, like, whoa.

No, she can't bring herself to actually say it. Instead she eats the end of her fritata, throws away another olive. Shrugs.

[Candle] "Do you need a place to stay?" Kage asks, "Because," a brief pause, a briefer smile; the impression of it is moonlight, kissing a lake, dappled dark, "I have a place to keep houseguests. You'd be welcome." While Emily ponders a response, or just responds, Kage pays mind to the fritata again, and it really is delicious. She eats well with her Magely aquaintances. Almost, almost, almost with a foodie's snobbery, all of this.

A beat. A measure. There's noone coming up the path that winds down to the parking lot. There's noone coming up the other path that winds down to the parking lot. There's noone hunting in the woods, not near enough for them to know. There's noone: this is solitude; this is solitary. There are no footprints, but the ones they leave.

Ah, sacrosanct things.

"And, well," Kage says, "Compassion is tricky. It's like the Sun and Icarus, you know? Good, that it's there; fine, that it lights the way -- in fact, totally necessary. And then bad for some people, in certain situations." A brief beat. And, "I admit, that wasn't one of my better metaphors."

[Reverence] "I would appreciate a place to stay, at least for tonight," Emily says. There's gratitude underlying the words. "I shall bring you paella in payment, and some croissants if there are any left when I get back to the flat."

They eat well, these Orphans (one for now and one for always). The share fine things, good conversations, treasures, wonders, treats. They uplift and bolster. Sacrosanct things indeed.

"I think I'd best mind my wings for awhile," she says, with a nod to Kage's metaphor (perhaps a nod to a young boy's Naming, as well). "At least until the sun-scorch has mended."

[Candle] [Roll credits!]