Keeping Court II

[Emily Littleton] The locket chain glints, glimmers, and the warm, consoling resonance peeks out between Emily's fingers in a distracting way. It called to Home, even if Home was an illusory, archetypal and oft elusive feeling. Kage could almost taste it... almost, because that glimmer of resolved (resolute) resonance was washed out by the brightness of Emily's own pattern. Her metaphysical self seethed with untapped, untinged energy. Untouched by the colors, tastes, textures of persistent willwork, she had no resonance of her own... yet. Or perhaps her star burnt too newly, too brightly still to have taken on a particular hue.

Emily peered at Kage for a moment, weighing an impossibly long litany of advice-offered and advice-requested in her mind. Thoughts of Self and Other, Us and Them, Good and Evil and a dozen other Manichean dualities flashed across her diamond-sharp mind, discarded as over-simplistic, paranoid, over-zealous, or even simply unpalatable. Kage was her Other, an Other who knew to hide secrets close to the heart (of the King), who could find the secret places between Autumn and Winter, who knew how to address and enter the Court. Kage had a sense of sameness to her, one that Emily could not yet name, and so Emily trusted her.

As she had trusted the rockstar. Perhaps trusting was not always the admirable course of action, but it seemed so much more manageable than the reverse.

"And... what did you do?" she asked, letting the pretense of minced words fall away and geuinine curiosty step in to fill that void. Emily reached up and tucked a dark curl behind her ear. She loosed her fingers on the locket, letting its pervasive calm and comfort bleed out into the Court, seep into the fallen King, compliment the stillness of early Winter.

[K. R. Jakes] What did you do.

Kage contemplates Emily's question, and for a while, there is a hush in the clearing. The sound of water, the sound of wood bowing before the wind, the sound of branches whispering (love) against each other, the sound of wood rising against the wind, of branches tangling and somewhere far away a bird crying out. These noises serve to underline the Court's solitude, and it is resonant, even as it is calm and still. What did you do, Emily says, and she considers just what it is she has done.

And the wind has raked tendrils of red, red hair (a fox, a fox, a fox with a torch who is bright in the dark, a stream of blood in a dark water, a coal) across Kage's fine features, and when she opens her mouth to speak, her hair tangles her tongue. Rather than sweep it away, she turns her head toward Emily, canting it so the wind re-draws the sweep of it, and her mouth quirks (yearn) slightly.

But her eyes are serious, see. "I had a difficult time, but I still have my own head. Do you want to speak about this," a pause, and then, "plainly?"

[Emily Littleton] "Please."

There is no foreign-ness to this word, no curiously shaped intonation, no distance between what is said and what is implied. And there is resonance into that union, the calling-out in unison of her mind, her voice, and her innermost Will. It touches her eyes with a sadness (confusion) and plea (weariness) that is too deep for the mere weeks (months [days]) she has been Awakened, sleep-walking in a new world without compass, sextant or stars to guide her.

Lost.

She does not wear indecision or ineptitude well. It mars her otherwise comfortably confident sense of self. It plays up impulses that lead to (stupid) acts with heavy consequences. Rockstars. Soup Kitchens. Last minute travel to East Asia (what?). Keeping Court with Winter Kings.

Emily nestles her cup between her knees and rubs her hands together to thaw her fingers. She blows into them, exhaling the warmth (heat) from within. Rubs them together again. Tucks them into her pockets.

[K. R. Jakes] "That will be difficult," she says, and that corner of her mouth turns up a little more, deepening with the ghost of mirth or self-mockery, "but I'll try." Her eyebrows draw together, precisely, troubling her expression for a moment. The trouble stays, a shadow of it; perhaps one day Emily will see Kage, and realize that, until that moment, she'd never seen the redhaired woman without a shadow of trouble behind her eyes, inside her eyes, a flaw in the mirror, a knot in the thread.

"When I awakened," she says, and she does watch Emily's expression to see whether she's heard the word before (as she suspects that Emily has, that perhaps this rockstar character, this complication, well just perhaps...), "I was alone with my own head and my own ... troubles ... for a few months before the real besieging began. Before I learned that there were traditions and there were conventions."

"It was strange," she says, and it feels strange to say it, to feel the sentence shape itself on her tongue, "to know that I wasn't alone, but I still was very much alone." There's a brief pause, and she straightens, exhaling strongly, as if she'd been holding her breath. She flicks a glance toward the water, then back. "No," she says, and Kage is a passionate woman, really. "It was nice, even when it wasn't, to know that I wasn't the only one who was living ... out of step with what I'd thought was probably true." Another pause, and then, "Does that make any kind of sense at all, or," rueful twist of her mouth, this time, "do you want to back away from the madwoman?"

[Emily Littleton] Awakened. She recognizes this word, and as such it no longer pulls her brows together in confusion. Traditions. The lazy-eyed graduate student (she doesn't know Ashley as "Hermetic" just yet) had intoned this word meaningfully at her. But conventions is new, and as such she takes it to mean habits, or perhaps rules of engagement. They are valid interpretations, far less sinister than the truth. Oh, Emily! There is still such innocence there, waiting to be sundered and lost. (Or perhaps only painted in new turns of phrase, new thematic content.)

"I do not think you mad," Emily said, and it was intoned in quite a Through-the-Looking-Glass manner. As if she, like Alice, had tumbled through the silvered glass and found herself besieged (quite the word for it) by wonders and horrors unimaginable. "Or if you are mad, than I am no saner."

A thought. A shared illusion. A tricksy seeming of Kings and Courts and Fanciful Magical things. Emily thought not, and it was written plainly in those stormy grey-blue eyes.

"I have met others, too, but it does not change oddity of it. Not yet," she confirmed. Emily pulled her hands out of her pocket, wrapped them around the now cool cup, and stared across the water, too. "It feels like I am walking through water, without knowing how to swim."

Show me how pretty the world is
'Cause I envy the way that you move
...
'Cause I want something, a little bit louder

"If that makes any sense at all," she turned the phrase back to Kage. Rueful, yes. Self-mocking, just a bit. Taking it all in stride? Trying. She was trying so hard to.

[K. R. Jakes] "It does," Kage confirms, and she is not at all unsympathetic. "But try not to expect that it -- or they, for that matter," and this time the curve of her mouth is another shadow of some place that is near mirth, or beside it, or just over the border, "will become any less odd as time goes by. That's just ..." Kage trails away, lifts her shoulders in a rise-and-fall shrug, turns her thoughtful eyes away from the young woman who shines, who is luminous, who glows with newminted untouched resonance, and looks instead at the line of a branch across the horizon, at the inkdark of the horizon itself. "That's just the way it seems to go."

"Would you like to ask me any questions? Or," a beat, "are there any questions you think that you probably should ask, even if you don't wanna?" The colloqualism isn't usual for Kage, not really, but it suits right here, so there it is. Don't wanna. Go away, no thank you, cease this game right now. Here, Kage resettles herself against the tree, rubbing some warmth back into her thighs, rubbing against the wintery blue jeans, until friction kindles, until she can feel her skin again, know that she is real.

"I mean, I could also just start quizzing away at you, to see what you know, who you know, what you think you're going to do, buuuuut," Kage's eyebrows draw together again, and she squints at the horizon, "well. What do you want to do?"

[Emily Littleton] Don't assume that this is going to get any simpler, is what Kage seemed to be saying. The oddity would remain and with it, Emily hoped, the exhilirating awe and wonder. Woe if all of this brave new world someday suddenly seemed mundane to her. What a waste that would be, to attuned so closely to the magical that the hum-drum drollness of unAwakened life slipped back in between the cracks in the supernatural tapestry.

"Oh," Emily said, with a rushed exhalation that sounded a little over-burdened. "There are a thousand thousands of things I would like to know, but not even a handful that I know how to ask..." she chuckled a little. It was not the good chuckle. It was the Office Hours, Finals Week, I'm fucked aren't I? chuckle.

"Plenty of things that start with How? or Why? .. yes, quite a bit of that. But mostly, for now, while I figure those questions out, I'd like to know who is safe. Who is not. How to tell them apart. How not to get snatched away by the boogie men before I find out where they hide, and what the game here even is." Somehow had put the fear of another Other in her, or dredged up old hurts to keep her somehow in line. Emily was, stoically (almost), trying to make heads and tails of that before it took her over. Before she started jumping at her own shadow, or assuming ill-intent in everyone she met.

It took far too much energy to live like that. It was inefficient. Impractical. She would not succumb to it... unless she had to.

[K. R. Jakes] Emily and Kage have had, thus far, remarkably similar experiences, and experiences which are markedly different -- at least as far as their Awakenings go. Emily has been on her own for weeks [months (days)], and she is only just coming in contact with those who have the experience to read her out of the faceless crowd into something more. Kage had also been on her own [excepting Him: his changing eyes, his changing face, his unceasing attention] in the beginning, and so caught up by events that she'd hardly even wondered if there were Others out there.

Maybe this is why Kage is having this conversation with Emily. Maybe it is this, this unspoken kinship with the darkhaired stormeyed young woman who knew about trees and who accepted hot cocoa on a cold winter's day, who had trouble with rockstars, who wore beauty around her throat -- maybe it is this, at least in part, which has Kage staying still while Emily presents her frustrations, which has Kage stepping in.

"Those are really good questions to start," Kage replies, raising her eyebrows. And then she says, and there is a fervence beneath her voice, a thrum of passion, of resolution: "And I wish I had an answer for you. But it's just like real life: there's no way to tell, no true trick that will always separate chaff from wheat... stone from ... heart. I think that's part of why the Traditions sprang up in the first place, really. A way to ...know your people."

[K. R. Jakes] ooc: ahem. (adds on)

"Do you know that word yet, in this context?"

[Emily Littleton] Emily thought on this for a moment, drinking in the information like a quick-minded child. Her mind was still flexible, quick, razor-sharp and agile. Kage's words went in and were filed away with alacrity, cross-reference, indexed, all in the time it took Emily to raise the near empty navied blue cup to her mouth once more. To sip from it again.

"Will I know my ... people... when I find them?" Emily asks, wondering if there is some mystical insight that will alert her to the right sort of sameness, the unanimity of thought, the resonance of souls. Or whether it was hit and miss, much life the rest of life, and far too often left to chance.

She nodded yes, she knew the word, in context, if not much more.

"How can I tell if, say, the rockstar," from the soup kitchen, "Is more like me, or the student, or even the (your) liar (lawyer), than, say, you are?"

So many commas, inserted willy-nilly, punctuating her question with odd, syncopated pauses. So unnatural, a sentence formed without clear words in mind, with a thought and a direction but no known form until she spat it out. Childish. Emily was not this unprepared for life. Not normally.

"What kinship holds these Traditions together, beyond self-recognition, convention, or the need for some sort of coterie?"

[K. R. Jakes] Kage takes a deep, deep breath and lifts her left hand to run her fingers (absently) through her hair. She holds it back, at the nape of her neck, then pulls it up to the top of her head; holds it there, too, and it falls, falls away from her. Do not mistake this: there's nothing about the deep breath that says uncertainty, and there's nothing about it that says trepidation. If anything, Kage seems to have (quietly) gathered some grace together, some inner poise that is as much a part of her body as her [balladry] bones. The breath gave her a moment to consider how to answer, however, and this is how she chooses to:

"Before I answer, I should be fair and tell you that I don't belong to any Tradition. There are Nine, and they hold together for the same reason any group of peoples with far, far different motivations will hold together: because there's so much beyond them, and they're wise enough to know at least that. And that's my bias."

[Emily Littleton] "Fair enough," Emily said, with just enough seriousness and matter-of-factness to show she'd taken the statement at face value, noted the bias, and accepted the interpretation. She could be quite cool-headed (cold) and rational at times. Even about oddities, and the groups that formed around them.

"And ... thank you. For speaking plainly, and for letting me find my tongue. It hasn't been easy to talk about with anyone, all of this." A smaller, softer smile. She tipped the cup so she could look into it, hoping to find more than just near-frozen dregs. Alas, the cup is not a self-filling wonder of cocoa-y goodness, and there is no more in it now than when she drained it moments before.

"If I ... gave the rockstar a name," she positied, carefully, "Could you find out if he is one of our people, or an Other?"

Emily's lips pulled together oddly (she chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment). Anxious. It seemed improper to ask Kage this, but she needed to know that she hadn't fallen in with the wrong crowd immediately upon waking up.

"I suppose I mean, if there are Traditions... and we are so bold as to speak plainly of them, mightn't one of the Others pretend to be one of us?" And wouldn't I be just fool enough to fall in with one? Couldn't she be on the cusp of being snatched up by a beautiful disaster, because she knew no better at all? Emily didn't think of Jarod that way, but knowing would be better. Knowing was always better, however painful learning might be.

[K. R. Jakes] ...one of our people, Emily says. And the redhead frowns, a shadow. She bends down (leaves, for a moment, the wooden throne; the fallen one) and picks up the thermos, uncapping it, checking for signs of heat, for signs of any leftover drink. There is some, and she will offer Emily a splash; it is nowhere near as warm as it was before, but it still retains some heat, some cinder without smoke.

She listens. A note of caution (omen) enters her gaze, when Emily first phrases her request. Then the caution transforms (Daphne before Apollo) into something else when the young orphan (you don't know yet where you might find a place to stand) stumbles over the hard question. "I ... could do that, perhaps," she says, cautious, cautious. "I could ask around, if by 'our people,' you do mean Traditionally Awake, not one of the other Others. But if he isn't, that doesn't mean he's ... There are still a number of possibilities. Has he made ... claims? Were you suspicious before," and here, she rubs her forehead, half-pinches the bridge of her nose, "I came along, all full of caution?"

"Because the short answer to your last question is: Yes."

[Emily Littleton] Ah, yes. Dancing. Now they were dancing in the early Winter not snow. Difficult questions, and difficult thoughts and Emily had made it all complicated all over again.

"I'm not suspicious," she said, plainly. She wasn't, really. Not too much. "I just thought that maybe I ought to start cross-referencing some of the people who talk about these things. That's all." She paused, searching for an appropriate metaphor. "Feeling out the phone tree, perhaps."

She sighs, a bit, knowing that this is a fool's errand. Trying to make sense of this tangled new web without the proper perspective... was... solving equations with too many unknowns. She could learn relationships, how x interacted with y to describe z, but nothing concrete and tangible. Emily had less patience with social calculus.

"Jarod," she said, finally attaching a name to the rockstar from the soup kitchen. She imagined that would be enough, if Kage knew him, to jog some immediate reaction. If not, it would be enough, if they frequented the right circles, to find him out. He was quite memorable, after all.