All of this noise.

[Ardent] [? btw.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 7, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Ardent] [Decisions, decisions: Dex + Athletics? Nobotchesnobotches.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 8, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Ardent] This is an unplanned visitation.

The devilblack is truck in the parking lot; the villainblack truck all smuckered over with mud, as if ravished by some messy Golemthing, and Kage is at the Court, seated on the fallen oak. Kage is high enough above the ground to be hanging [like an ornament, like Venus in the early evening - just over the horizon; or is that Mercury? Tell me, tell me, tell me the time of the year-King, tell me, tell me, tell me how to measure the Heavens] in a different perspective. Her shoes aren't really designed for hiking. They're designed for walking, a lot of walking, over concrete and asphalt. They're comfortable flats. They've got skid. They're planted [new growth (lightning struck here: from besmirched, black, new-fire, life, resurrecetion)] against a fork in the wood and she is dappled by leaf and shade.

See. Her back is not straight; she is not sitting up. She is laying down, precariously balanced, knees up, her left arm framing her head, the fall of her Rowan-berry hair, luck against the fairies, an evil sign, a curse. A spark from a cigarette lit on a dark, gray day, something brilliant, something ardent. And Kage is watching the wind move through the leaves of other-Trees, overhanging, and is soaking up the quiet of this place, all Sanctuary, so Lonely.

She does not think to see Emily, although there is an offering in her bag, it is relatively tiny. The bag is hanging from the coat-rack, antler-rack, rack of wood, solid, steady.

We can be still.
We can try to be still.
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 4 (Success x 3 at target 3)

[Reverence] [Head in the game, or head in the clouds, Em... what sort of day is it?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[Ardent] [Ha HA, but you love *me* right?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)

[Reverence] Someone had to get there first. The devil-black truck, muck-black truck in the parking lot meant Kage. It wasn't a thing that registered overtly in the younger Orphan's frame of mind. After all, they might park near each other in the lot and never happen upon one another out there, where the King laid Summer-slain and long-armed like Lugh. The paths were long and though they kissed, they did not kiss until their very end.

They did not kiss until their very end.

It is a hot day, thick with the heat, muggy in a way that weighs down, wears down, wearies, and yet Emily doesn't seem to mind. The movement stills the restlessness she carries, gentles the push. The trees are fat with green leaves, the air thrums with bugsong, birdsong, the breath of living. She needs no extra senses to feel the nearby water coloring the air, making it taste of dampness and rivermud.

When Emily rounds the bend that takes her past the Court, proper, she is surprised to find Kage there. As if the rowan-haired other had snuck up upon her, and not the other way around. She shuffles her feet in last year's fallen leaves, brings herself into the clearing with just a little noise. Enough to inform, not to disrupt. Her thumbs tuck into her back pockets, and Emily rocks back a little on her heels.

It's Lonely here. It feels like Sanctuary. (And they were happy for awhile...) It feeds into the things she needs, just now. The things she needs not to miss, just yet.

[Ardent] Emily isn't Aware that Kage is doing anything extraordinary, other than playing in a tree, when most women her age, most women in their twenties, have already given up on tree-climbing (she'd be further into the branches if climbing hadn't been such a failure [don't risk a broken ankle (bones are brittle)]), but Kage is Aware of Emily before the dark-haired Orphan reaches the clearing where two paths meet (holy palmers). Aware, because she is watching, and listening, to the sound and the sight of the luminous Everything, that which underpins reality, and she is letting her mind wander, vagrant, vagabond, up and toward it, is circling in a groove left for her by Chance, by Fate and Fortune, and it brings her to Emily's familiar (nearby [kin]) resonance.

So Kage is Aware, is informed, does not need to hear Emily to know when she stops underneath the tree, but does. Lets that draw her back into herself, fully. Vertigo plunges its knife between her ribs, and she waits a second, and then sits up, swinging one leg down:

"Hail," she says, with a faint smirk; easy, and overlaid by their ritual solemnity. The smirk is mischief, is diminished flamboyance; is the silver in a silverscreen lady's weapon. "And well met. I didn't expect you today, but there is deadman's fruit in my bag."

She means apples. Apples is what Emily'll find, if she opens Kage's bag. Apples are what'll come out of there eventually, one way or another.

Golden apples.

[Reverence] Golden apples, deadman's fruit, a prize for the loveliest -- these ease a slow smile from the younger girl, who is not eyes all ablaze with wonder today. There's a quiet to her, diminished, worn. It is an ebb in the soultide (all the moonbright fled my sunbaked bones), a rushing out of things adored, an egress: left behind. She had not expected to find Kage here, or Kage in a tree, or Kage's foot trailing down, Kage coming down, coming down like rainfall, down.

Down.

"Hail," she replies, and the tug in her accent is canted that much more toward Home. Sharper, clearer. "And well met, Kage." Her voice is gentled but not raw. "I've pomegranate juice," she offers, and it is deep and bright and sharp on the tongue. Two mythical fruits, these, one dreaming of winters, of undergrounds (steal me away from my mother) and one crisp like the coming fall.

"How have you been?" she asks, as if it hasn't been much time at all. It's always been busy, however short the intervals between their meetings. It's always been too long, in some way. Emily sweeps a curl out of her eyes, tucks it behind her ear. She moves toward the fallen King, leans against him but does not sit just yet.

"Ashley's back from Boston," she adds, with an odd undercurrent to her voice. It doesn't explain itself, the oddness. Merely presents and fades.

[Ardent] But it's a strange thing to say, Ashley's back from Boston, with that undercurrent. Kage, who has her own issues with things in Boston, who has her own history with Ashley's tutor in Boston, Boston, city by the sea, city of Universities, sprawling city of redbrick and currants, of what Age the United States can try to claim... well, Kage waits for that thought to finish, for there to be a lilt, tempering Emily's statement into a question. When it doesn't come, she tucks her right leg underneath herself, hauling on her ankle.

"Busy," Kage says, and this is not a watchword for trouble; this is not code. Not a layer of onionskin, this. She means it: She's been busy. She has work. She is self-employed, for a number of bosses, and occasionally they expect results; else they don't pay her. She's been busy making sure that she can still pay her bills. She's been busy trying to learn. She says sas much, too, with this - " - Work. And arcane studies. I'm trying to figure out a Knack I don't have quite yet. We'll see. I," and she sounds, briefly, yearning-thing, touched with wist, "Well. We'll see."

A beat. And Kage is trying to figure out the appropriate question. Settles on: "And the city isn't burning." A beat. "What's wrong?"

[Ardent] [ooc: *wave* I see you also in the OOC room. Do you need help?]
to†Syndrome

[Reverence] The city isn't burning / What's wrong.

Emily cants her head a little to one side, fixes the curious Disciple with a curious look. Then there's a smile, and ah, the lilt. One side of her mouth tugs up a bit more then the other, wry.

"Just hasn't reached flashpoint," she says, as to why the city has yet to spark. And spark it will, a few days hence, but neither here can know that just yet. Todays is for loneliness, and for seeking something. For diminished mischief and questions left unanswered for a spell.

"It's been a day of leavings," she says, then rests her weight against the bulk of the King. Emily tips her head from side to side until her neck gives up a crack, yields, relents and then she exhales a bit. Heavy, but not burdened. That's the thing with leavings, they rarely left one overburdened.

"I'm glad to see you," she says, no burr or undertone. Just fact, unadulterated and clear. "I'll be busy soon with studying too."

[Ardent] Kage isn't (necessarily) going to know just how quickly the city sparks into flames this time around. Kage knows Molly; Kage even likes Molly. They're aquainted. But Kage is an Orphan, and she is not part of the Chantry, and not intimately aquainted with anybody intimately embroiled in the latest doom: it might not even touch her at all. Maybe one shadow in this city won't: wouldn't that be nice? Don't let her hear the whispers, though: that's sure-fire way to ignite a crusade [I'm a rogue (I'm out for myself), you liar.]

Today is a moment in time.

Maybe one day one or the other of these two women will be old: old, and ancient; crabbed, gnarled. Maybe they'll be able to look through time. Maybe they'll revisit moments that happen (are happening [here (now) forever]) at the place they've started to call the Court without ever actually deciding on a name for it. Maybe they'll look at this moment in time.

Maybe not.

"Who left?" Kage asks, and she is leaning forward now, her elbows on her knees, her weight a precarious burden for the Fallen King to hold. He doesn't hold her, point in fact. She might lose her balance at any moment and fall, but she isn't high enough to really hurt herself, and might gain her feet at any rate. Feel the ground resonate through her body, know that she's alive. "Or what have you left?"

[Reverence] Emily has tried to stay away from the burn-lines this time, to walk where the wind doesn't blow the smoke across her path. She's tried not to muddy her lungs with the harbingers of something, smoke: then fire. She's tried, but it's coming to swallow her whole again. But today, for this moment in time, in this place they'd look back to whenever it is that they grow cragged and crabbed and weathered, today she is a soft song, a whisper, a lilted refrain. She is neither luminous nor ominous. She is. But it is not enough.

"There was a boy," she said, and it's story-light and free. It's a not-me thing, not-Emily, just a story about a boy, oh, and a girl. There's always a girl. "And I was a girl, and we were happy for awhile. But now he's gone away," she says, wistful but not quite longing yet. She looks up and to one side, shakes her head a little.

"They never stay," she tells Kage, with such certainty that it is easy. It is too easy. (They never come back.) It's not a sadness, just yet; it's too new to have deepened into a sadness.

"And my ... brother... was here. For a bit. I took him to O'Hare this morning," she says, but the word brother is not quite what it seems. She muses over it, like a lost word, a thing-not-quite-right. It is close enough.

She has not left, Emily. She is here, right here, digging in her bag now for that pucker-berry-bright flask of juice to share. To pass like a flask. In memory, in observance. Like communion, of Fellowship. An offering; a gift; as was the custom of this place, likely longer before either Other found it nestled against a bend of the river in the damp-dark of Autumn last.

[Ardent] Kage reaches (laconic [grace]) down to accept the juice of pomegranates. Armenia is famous for its pomegranate wine. Pomegranate wine is what Persephone serves in Hell. Pomegranate wine, going to vinegar, turning to bitter, and doesn't it just make your mouth naturally form a kiss? Uncaps it, and takes a sip. The juice is bright, and shrillingly sweet. Then she hands it back. "Your brother? I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to meet him. And am especially glad the city isn't burning, for company's sake at least." A touch of wry, because this is Kage. "Was the visit good?"

The disciple (of what? [Enlightenment]) chooses to direct her query -- and there is a query, an Awareness -- along the lines of the subject that isn't seeped in a story, at least for now, at least first. And there was a boy, [David Bowie sings in her head: There was a boy, a very...] and there was a girl: well. Kage listens, and she can hear the echoing things between Emily's words. Owen, Emily means. Owen is leaving, and they were happy for awhile: the box says so, still, unless somebody has since made off with that scraplet of paper. Owen is leaving, and Emily is not. They never stay.

She leaves it. For now. For this second.

[Reverence] Kage hands it back, and Emily drinks. The sweetness stains her mouth, her tongue. It's a color usually reserved for Autumn, a flavor to brilliant for Summer. Emily is wishing forward the Fall; so is Kage, with her gold-crisp apples.

"I am sorry, too. I think you two would have had fun. He even got Ashley talking," Emily says, there's an edge of uneasiness but she's mostly smiles. "Gregory is the nice one, whom everyone likes. Steady. I miss him, and then he was here and I realized that I like him best when he's not telling my stories or drinking my beer."

This is affectionate, the rankling of the perfect persona she cast out for her brother. To tarnish it, muddy it, with a bit of goodnatured jest. He is not perfect; she loves him the more for it. She loves him, though Emily would never name it so.

She twists the cap back onto the bottle. Kage leaves the other story to rest. Emily does not dredge it up. She doesn't reach into the heartbox to pull away the little scrap of knowledge; the secret that says We were here. The secret being that we, more than anything else.

"I've a feeling he'll come back again. Maybe you'll meet him then?"

[Ardent] A lot of the mages Kage knows are, or were, only children. Kage is not an only child. Kage is not adrift, and Solitary, disconnected from her family because of what she is. They're a part of who she is, and although she has never been the most devoted of the Jakes sisters, is occasionally given a hard time (difficult [to lie]) over why she isn't over as often as she could be, why she didn't do this, why she doesn't do this, what does she do with her time, why can't she do this and this, why can't family be her only life, when is she going to start one of her own, why does she insist on wearing a coat of black wool, why so iconoclastic little Birdy, well: it's all incidental. Kage loves her family, and she sees them fairly regularly; as regularly as she can take. So Kage listens to Emily's affectionate re-masking of Gregory, and the smile that touches her mouth is a flake of fire, a lacery of ash and heat, of recognition.

"Maybe," she says. And also, "But I'm going to go out on a limb - heh - " The sardonic awareness of what she just said, and where she is while she said it, is not even remotely lost on Kage; for a second, it saturates the air, dark radiant thing: " - and say that getting Ashley to talk isn't that difficult an accomplishment. Did they get on?"

A beat. And also, "Does Owen plan to stay away? Or," another beat, "Were you tempted to go, too?" Another beat. And: "I know I'm prying, a little. As always, I'll stop, if you ask."

[Reverence] Kage's self-aware wit lightens the little alcove in the woods. Emily pushes further up to sit on the King-bench, such that her feet can dangle. She wiggles them so, and it wiggles Kage in her perch just so. They are connected, by the King; they are connected, you see, by many a thing.

"Well enough," she says, about Ashley and her Brother-not. Well enough because Emily was able to temper the Hunger, shelter him from the Unyielding storm. Had things gone longer, or turned to different topics, she might have frowned here. Instead she smiled somewhat, as if she were pleased (approving) of how Gregory had handled the Adept. "I don't think she's used to people who don't care or wonder at her ranks and titles. To him she's a graduate student, full stop. And he assumes any delicate double-speak is just things lost in translation from one side of the pond to another."

Aha. Someone who thought awake meant not sleeping, and traditions were for family holidays and Church. It pleased Emily that his world view was well enough ensconced to rebuff Ashley's references.

A beat then, too, and also, "He says he will return. Left me a key. I don't think he's moved his things." She shrugs, rolls the bottle in her hands, looks down at it, at the purple-berry-bright vortex that forms to swallow down everything she isn't saying.

"I wasn't invited to go." This answers the question of leaving.

"I don't mind if you pry," she tells Kage. "I may not know how to answer, though. I should be used to the leavings; I've made a lifetime of them thus far. But it isn't easy. It doesn't get easier, either."

[Ardent] [I keep my balance! Hah! -1, 'cos it was just a gentle wiggle.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5)

[Ardent] "No." Kage agrees. It isn't easy to leave. It isn't easy to reach an Ending, to form a Severence. It's as hard as salt. Hard as a secret kept in stone. Hard on the knees, on the eyes, on the hands and the heart. Wears, its own element: some people get worn down to a nub, after a Leaving. And some people, they do it with such style, with such grace, that even gone they've hardly left at all. It isn't easy.

"But it would go unnoticed, if it were easy; I don't imagine I'd like that sort've numbness, unless it came with a swanky name, and maybe a night scorching the shoes off my soles." This is said lightly, her tone cool, gracious, just this shy of slang; Kage does this, unconscious poetry, sometimes. It makes her no less sincere. Emily wiggles her feet, which wiggles the tree, and Kage is flowering out've the tree, completely Zen, there on her precarious [dangerous] perch: unmoved.

[Reverence] Some endings are sharp, they crack like bone and get straight on to mending. Some linger, slowly crawl toward a resolution, fade out. Emily prefers the clean break, the kind that knocks the wind out of her lungs, pricks tears to her eyes: the type that passes, mends. There is a promise in the key that he left her: that the rent would be paid, that the space would be kept, that his home would be welcoming. It's a promise that there would be a lock into which that key fit. It's a promise even if he said nothing about it at all.

But one day the lights would not turn on, or the movers would come, or the key would not fit. The mail would pile up. The door would be barred. And that promise, the talisman, this thing would be the voice that tells her no, he is not coming home. No, she was mistaken to think. No. Just no.

She preferred the clean break, with nothing to hold on to. The press of moving on and the sweep of countryside outside her window; the clouds, piled high and anvil-flat at their crests, aloft beyond a plane's wingtip.

But he left her a key, and it burns in her pocket. There's a part of Emily that wants to throw it into the water, let it slip-sink down to the river-mud-bed. To lose it, she'd say, if ever he did -- to loose the promise, shirk the waiting, break things clean.

Instead she says, "I would not like the numbness, but I do not like the ache. At least it will not last long," she says, with surety. "Autumn's coming, and this year has been busy."

"Some things are not meant to be." This she knows. She knows it like heartsblood, like rainfall, like moonrise. She knows it like Faith, and it is acceptance more than ache. There is a smile still, and that is the best part of this leaving. There is a smile, still, and she can wear it as they speak.

She exhales and tips her head back, closes her eyes. "God. I need to get out of this city. Just go some where, for a weekend or a week. All this staying put is driving me mad." It's an urge, like an addiction; it's a lust, a desire. A need, and maybe Kage is the only one who knows that staying still, staying here, is making her soles burn.

[Ardent] "Then do it," Kage says, by way of answer. "Visit another city, take a week. This time is yours, to do with what you please."

There are responsibilities, of course, but Kage doesn't seem too concerned with them. There is no shadow of their presence, of, visit, but come back in her voice, no lurking-in-the-peripheral rules, warnings and signs, for Emily to hear. It isn't flippant; her tone is far too measured, far too even for it to be an off-the-cuff, callous suggestion, without due consideration for the disruption taking off for a weekend or a week might give Emily's life.

Some things are not meant to be, Emily says, and that phrase, it has infused a restlessness through Kage's limbs. She shifts her weight from one hip to the next, and drops her other leg, too, so both feet are dangling downward, and then she settles her weight on her right arm, bends her elbow, cants her head, tenders a lock of dark as a kiss as a brand as a burning hair back behind her ear, shepherding the stray back to where it belongs.

[Reverence] Emily's life is disrupted with all this staying put. Taking a week is far less tumultuous than the other things that cross her mind. Throwing out all her extraneous possessions and starting anew. Moving house just to move. Transferring to a different University. Hitch-hiking to Canada and back. Using her all of miles and most of her savings circumnavigate the globe on one airline or another.

Taking a weekend away is practically responsible, pragmatic, in the face of all of these other options. "I just might," she says, no promise. No surety. Just a possibility, and even opening up that avenue on its own seems to help.

"So," she starts, drawing attention away from the Singer-boy absent, drawing it away from the empty burn of wanderlust on her toes. "What is this Knack that you're learning?" All curious this. Curious and quick-bright, sharp. Intrigued.

[Ardent] What is this Knack, as if it were singular; Kage is never singular, in her interests, in her investigations, in her reverie and her involvements: she is always a multiplicity. But earlier, she mentioned a Knack; what Knack has she been Working on, trying to unspool, to figure out, to feel -- because why shouldn't she? Because everything is an option, if only can find her way into feeling it. Borrow from this Tradition, perhaps; find a better way, build a newer, brighter ritual.

"Fiat lux," Kage says, by way of an answer, a touch of wry; "I want that." A beat. "Earlier this year, a very mysterious shopboy threw me into it: tried to show me. Do you ever frequent antiquarian shows or used bookstores?""

And Emily may well think that the topic of the Singer-boy is sliding away, like a key, like a thing left under a mat, an option, a thing Not In Use, and Most Likely Unneeded. A back-up, a fall-back: a safety clause. But Emily would be wrong, because Kage says: "I've a question for you, Em. Two. And then we can talk all you'd like about Knacks and Arts. But -- you still intend to Sing with the Chorus, right?" Inscrutable, Kage: it's not easy to read anything into that question, except concern; it's an opaque question, dark glass, reflective: reflects back at the person looking into it.

[Reverence] Silence is her first answer. The truest. Emily works her lower lip between her teeth as she glances out over the still water for a moment. There had been no answers for her there, when she'd had Owen here. Now that he is gone, she hopes that balance will have shifted. Revelation, on the far banks? Hello, can anyone here me? Hello? ... No?

She turns the bottle of juice in her hands again, glances down. Anything but glancing over at Kage. This is a difficult question, a thing she'd considered twice (in different ways) since she last spoke with Ashley. Losing Owen had changed things; it had changed nothing at all.

"I think so," she says, but there's no surety to borrow on here. No intensity for her relentlessness to run up against. No ballast. "I think so," she repeats, then, tentatively: "Yes." A beat. "Why?"

Curious now she shifts her gaze to the other Orphan. Her brow furrows, her eyes are heavy-full. Pensive. Thoughtful.

"I've thought about not, but there's an emptiness there, in not Singing, for me. And I've thought better the emptiness than all of this noise. I think so, but I don't know."

[Ardent] There is a lot here that is telling. That Emily asks why, but that isn't the end of her sentence. That Emily asks why, but still finds there is more to say; there are more reasons to give, more thoughts to unspool. Kage watches Emily, steadily but sidelong. Kage has expressive eyes, for all they're dark, for all they're difficult to read. That's just the trick: deciphering the difficulty; making a choice -- deciding what lilt from Babel her gaze is trying to speak in.

Why?

"Because I look at you, Emily, and I listen to you, and I see someone within her catechumenate; because I think you've found a place that will serve to lift your voice up." A beat. "Because I think," and here, caesura; briefest of pauses, "that you needn't stay, that you can still step away, if you really, really wanted to, and one day in the far, far future, after you've developd your strengths along other lines, you can look back and say, Yes, I was influenced by the Chorus. But I don't think that would be very truthful."

"Seems different this time," brief, clot of her voice -- soft as river-weeds, unwinding; as ash, sifting. "You've engaged with tradition, not ... " Inexpressive, she makes a shape in the air with her hands, graceful.

[Reverence] Emily listens to the words that Kage spins. She listens with the quiet attention of children, with the patience of older, with the longing of someone still hoping to find the porchlight on when they get home, whenever they get home, for it has been a long, slow journey on a dark, cold night. She listens, and there's a flicker of recognition (resignation) in her features as she agrees.

"I could leave the Tradition," she says, "But part of me would always be this. Would Sing, by whatever named I chose to call it. Not because of him," she says. "Not even because of Him, but because it's what I think that I am."

There's a surety here, foundational truth. It's soft-spoken, quiet. Slow water that erodes, soft silt that builds up. A little flicker-flame in the darkness. Gentle. Grace.

"If I stay, it will not be because of Owen. If I do not, it will not be because he left. But I'm hung, just now, suspended. Neither in, nor out. No Praecept; no great want of another new one." She's learned some of the words of the Congregation, now. Kage wields them easily, as does Emily.

[Ardent] Not even because of Him, Emily says, and Kage starts a little, as if reminded of her own skin. And for a moment, she is lost in context; cannot see its contours, precisely; cannot quite feel them out. There is wind in the trees. There is wind in the leaves, and they're in a house of them, a chapel of leaf and shadow, a place where once storm and earth were in courtship negotiations, and who knows how that tale ended?

Ended with this: this place, this throne; this seat, this lonely place, lost, where there are never more than two at a time, solitary, un-lost, seeking. There are crows in the trees, and Kage can hear, distinctly, what sounds like a chuck -- svelt; a shadow on moonluminous water. Emily shan't hear it.

Kage does. Kage waits a moment after Emily's done speaking, and the silence will well up in the unsilent woods. Then Kage, who does wield the lexicon with ease, without a falter, a flicker, says this:

"Exactly, Em; regardless of how you stay, I think you should stay; don't let Uncertainty slip its knives into you, and keep you from where you fit." No Praecept,Emily said, and not in want of another new one. "You never stop learning from other people," she offers. "I don't think your days catechumenate are many more. History, maybe; what -- Tradition? some of the tried-and-trues? You're readied."

"This is just what I see, however." Kage breathes in, and then exhales, slowly, as if Grace were caught in her lungs, and she wanted it out, out, out. This, a touch wry - "Besides, everybody Sings, no matter the language -- right? Underlying truths." Kage tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, again. It didn't quite need tucking. "Hand me an apple?"

[Ardent] ooc: what sounds like a chuckle, clearly. (grin)

[Reverence] and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves
moments before the wind

The rustle of leaves overhead draws her gaze aloft, to the light that breaks through them, casts shadows, casts fingers of illumination both moonsoft and argent. This Sanctuary of fallen leaves, of dark deep dirt, and lightning scored trees, and still water, and stark truths, and hidden secrets -- it enfolds them. This moment. Moments like this. All beaded together, strung out just so, so that a time from now (perhaps a great time [perhaps a short while]) they can look back and name this half-named place Good. Name it Sanctuary. Name it Sacred, perhaps, or Profane, or Secret, or Hidden, Occult maybe, Obscured, name it anything but Lonely.

This is anything but Lonely, despite the Leavings they touch upon and the key bright-burning in her pocket just now. They were happy for awhile and this Kage-and-Emily they, the Rowan-and-Raven they, they are happy enough for now. Have been for awhile. It is good. It is enough.

Emily hands her an apple, round, ripe and golden. "Underlying truths and resonant chords," she agrees, handing it over with little pomp or circumstance. She rescues another for herself, offers the juice back Kage's way.

"You had another question?" she asks, before biting into the deadman's fruit she holds in one hand. Because Kage had had two, and Emily wasn't moving on to Arts and Knacks just yet; not when they would only double back again to touch upon this once more.

[Ardent] The apple isn't really gold. The apple isn't gold-leaf, that would stay in an illuminated manuscript and defy richness for years, for centuries, and gleam like a fragment of purity throughout all those risings and fallings of lives: it's just a green so pale and it becomes gold; the color of dischord. The color of a prize. The color of myth, of wanting; Kage breathes on her apple, and her breath brings apple-scent rich-and-gold back to her. Holds it to her mouth, before biting into it. Doesn't bite into it, just yet.

Says, "Mm. Tell me something about Ashley. You mentioned that she's back from Boston," Kage says, and pauses. This isn't the question yet. This is context.

[Reverence] The apple is crisp and juicy, sweet without being cloying. It tastes like Fall. Emily loves the Fall. She'd woken up in Autumn. It was coming up on a year now; such anniversaries seemed mind-boggling to her. She mused a little sound in her throat as she chewed, a little stall, a nothing of an answer, but Emily couldn't leave it at that.

"Ashley is quiet short," she answers, straight-faced, around the tiny bits of apple skin trying to stick to her teeth. It is an answer, and it was something about Ashley. "Were you looking for something in particular?" the girl asks, cants that question upward, lofts and eyebrow to match it. She glances sidelong at Kage.

There is something to find here, something to suss out. Something she does not want to give up so easily, just now. (A thing protected [a hurt disguised]).

[Ardent] Some people have this idea of Kage as a nice person. This could be because, judging by her actions, she is considerate and compassionate. Kage is not, actually, a nice person, unless those are your only criteria. Emily says that Ashley is quite short, and Kage smirks; the smirk is dark, and if the Devil were walking by just now, he'd grin in answer.

Be that as it may, Kage answers Emily seriously: "Yes. I was. I wanted to hear you say her name without that cloud smudging it up. Wanted to hear whether or not you could."

[Reverence] "And can I?" she asks, and she seems a bit worried by it, now. Now that Kage has called it forward, all devil-dark smirk, all river-mud splotched, imperfect. She hadn't been trying to hide, much, but hadn't been trying to give it all away either.

"We had words," she explains, without explaining over much. "I was put in my place. That's all." But it isn't. It's never that plain. Emily shrugs, nonchalantly, and bites into that apple to wick away the sting of the argument replaying in her ears. All so very civil. Polite. Urbane. Thank yous and what not. Cold. Chilly. Snow in August.

[Ardent] "Your place? What place is that?" Kage, composed, is still an ardent thing; somebody who burns (drains), who shines (immanent), who is the impulse to kiss (love [wither] rekindle). Which is to say: Kage is passionate; she doesn't lose her temper, doesn't fly off the handle, doesn't conform to many stereotypes people have about redheads, but it's there. And there may be an edge, sliver -- like paper; books are capable of many paper-cuts, for all they seem so nice -- to her tone, something wary, disbelieving-but-not.

And, exhale. "You can," easy, easier. "Still say it without smudges."

[Reverence] "That's good," Emily says, and there's relief in her features. She rounds her back a bit, sits less perfectly straight. Relaxes, maybe. Deflates.

"Mmmm, Ashley told me in no uncertain terms to find a new Praecept, because what Owen and I felt for each other would compromise his willingness and ability to hold Dominion or Will over me, to shape me appropriately." There's no gentling this. Emily reports it, but the words taste poorly to her. The apple-sweet does not cover them up.

"If I didn't find a new mentor, she said she'd talk to Solomon about it herself. Were she Chorus, she said, she would force it then and there."

Emily's eyes do not so much as cast a sidelong glance to Kage. There's real hurt here, and frustration, and she's not bringing that in to share. Just the heavy sigh that pushes this all out of her lungs, displaces the ire that threatens to build (but can't yet [she's hollowed out] hallowed).

"Doesn't matter now, though, so maybe she'll let it alone."

[Ardent] This isn't remotely what Kage expected Emily to say.

But Kage is mutability, is adaptability; she adapts, she transmutes. The redhaired woman's dark eyebrows rise, callously elegant, and she is plain; is average, Kage, is only ordinary, everyday beauty, although she carries herself well. Imperious, Kage; it's there, in her chin - the proud lilt of it; the sharp cut of her jaw. This isn't what Kage expected, and she raises her eyebrows, and she rests her lips against the skin o fher apple, and her eyebrows are still raised when she replies, says,

"Next time, you should tell her that not every Tradition conforms to the spank-me-with-a-ruler-and-give-me-100-lines model of tutelage that the Order espouses." A pause, and then, easier - less sardonic; less sharp. "She must have been concerned about you." Another pause, because see: Kage is justice, temperance. "But still, wrong."

Doesn't matter now, Emily says, and Kage shrugs, slouching like a debutante back in the day, in the wartime, an Untouchable, irreverent.