Keeping Court

[Emily Littleton] For the third time in a remarkably short passage of time, Emily wound her way out to the clearing in the woods, where the fallen trees (kings) held court and the still surface of the slow-moving water reflected the barren trees and endless expanse of the sky. The snow had melted away, leaving the sad and no longer dessicated leaf litter exposed and rotting in the afternoon sun. There was no heat to the day; the windchill pushed the temperature back toward freezing. The push-pull ambivalence of early winter painted everything in dreary shades.

Reaching the clearing, she planted herself at a familiar seat, rested her feet on the near-frozen ground and stared blankly out across the water. From far away came the rustle of wings as a flight of birds launched themselves skyward. Quietly, the wind whispered and curled in her ear. There were no leaves left aloft to shudder and shamble along, no sussurations of rolling secrets. The woods were still, dormant.

She ran her fingertips over the bark (skin) of the long lying trunk (fallen king). Contemplatively. As if the patterns of rifts and smooth planes could offer up some small oracle while she waited for the Other. Court could not come to session until the Other arrived, took her seat upon the tree (beside the king) and called the woods to order. Until then, Emily waited and the straight stalked barren trees kept silent sentinel.

Until...

[K. R. Jakes] There are footfalls on the path. They aren't quiet, because whoever they belong to has no particular knowledge of how to walk quietly across frozen earth; they do belong to only one, a solitary pilgrim. The path is not the path which Emily walked to reach the clearing in the woods, the great fallen (king) tree, the view of dark water half-frozen now by night's cleaving until dawn touches it into (almost) warmth again: the water isn't yet ready to freeze. But soon. There is frost in the ground, and it is lovely, and it is cold, and it will wither the root. Winter is come to Tekakwitha, and cold has settled into Chicago. There has been snow already, and there will be snow again, and when it snows, all will sleep, sleep, sleep.

At least, it would be nice. Tekakwitha will at least be even more solitary than it has been so far. It's unlikely that anybody would be found on these trails this time of year. They aren't for skiiers and there's not a bit of snowboarding to be had. Quieter, then. Quieter, and quieted, and hushed. Hushabye.

When the lone pilgrim-on-the-trail appears, it is indeed and unsurprisingly the Other. She navigates the very edge of the path, careful of a sprawl of frozen roots, ducking sidelong underneath a low-hanging branch, one hand held up to touch it as she does, as if that touch could provide stability to herself. Something to the tree. A token.

Her mood is still and hushed, but when she sees Emily sitting at the tree, she smiles unabashedly. "Hail and greetings," she says, over-gravely, so that Emily might infer the gravitude isn't any sort of grave at all! "From one pilgrim to another!"

[Emily Littleton] Chicago seemed full of Winter people, who took the snow up as their mantle and allowed flakes to nestle on their eyelashes, the wind to rouge their cheeks and nose, the static to arc across their skin. Emily was not a Winter person, though she held a deep appreciation for its beauty and its aescetism. Emily was of Autumn's people, tied to the place in the year where the slope of time was nearly vertical and every day changed more quickly than the last. Here, the year rested at its nadir, and the slope of time was horizontal, sleeping. So close to the solstice, the year seemed to stop, wait on baited breath for some unseen cue, and then achingly creep forward again.

The Other arrives on a carpet of crunching footfalls across the frozen ground. Her hair is crimson, so brilliant that it almost hurts the teeth. She is careful but purposeful in her movements, and she smiles to Emily. Emily is, after all, her Other, a dark-haired other with stormy eyes who tucked notes in painstakingly neat handwriting into the hollowed-out heart (hearth) of the king (tree). Emily is her unabashedly smiling Other, welcoming her to the Court with a wave of ungloved fingers.

"Hail, and well met!" The greeting is returned in kind, with a sort of literary playfulness that is at once structured and freely spirited. "I have kept a seat for you, it is clear but not yet warmed. Welcome, and come well," and be well, and sit.

[K. R. Jakes] The smile stays. There are lines around her mouth, when she smiles; her dark eyes are (reverence and delight) bright when she smiles. Like that, anyway. It feels good to smile at someone without being cool, without being aloof. It feels good to smile at someone and mean it. It feels good to remember that she can smile.

And there. That is the shadow, see. The shadow of trouble and worry. It isn't necessary to dispell it with a shake of her head, because she just pushes it back and pins it down. Everything has its place, and she will not worry, will not be troubled, right now where it is cold, where there is an absence of punishing heat, where there is noone in the shadows except for a young woman who wears Home over her heart, who's clever enough, cool enough, to communicate by notes with a woman she met only once.

So Kage walks (sashays, swaggers: feminine) across the clearing, still smiling, to claim her seat beside Emily on the fallen king. Wind curls through her hair, plays at her ears, plays at the bottom of her jacket and rakes thoughtfully across her cheekbones. Kage blinks into the wind.

"I brought cocoa," Kage says, "and cups." Because: lo. Indeed she did. The redhaired Orphan is dressed far more appropriately for the weather and the scenery today, and she also has her large, tapestried bag slung over her shoulder. From this, she withdraws a thermos (red, but dark red: a pomegranate seed, the juice around a pomegranate seed) and she has two little plastic cups as well. They're blue, dark and navied. "Which I hope you like," she adds. "Because there's not much left of the tea I drank on the way over here."

[Emily Littleton] "Cocoa sounds delightful," Emily replied, and the comfortableness of this meeting of Others brought back the marbled accent, the touch of foreign-ness that surrounded her words from every angle. It was there in the slight way she stumbled over cocoa, wanting so much to say chocolate in another tongue.

Emily has come with nothing to offer, no bag slung over her shoulder or carried on her back. She has the clothes on her person and the contents of her pockets, which might be enough to start a military conflict or assuage a small child--pockets were limitlessly intriguing, in that they could contain almost anything of a particular size and a particular mass.

"At least it isn't snowing today..." she offered, disclosing her less than loving relationship with falling (frozen) preciptation. Perhaps also hinting that she had been here, in the time between their meetings, long enough to encounter the falling cold.

[K. R. Jakes] "Chicago is one frozen mess in winter," Kage says, agreeably (agreeingly). She'll hand Emily one cup, then undo the fingers of her gloves, snap them off so they fold against the back of her hand, waiting to be of use again. Her gloves are reds, blacks, grays, but her coat is black as water in the dark, and her jeans are blue as winter's clearest sky, white unravelling underneath her boots. They're boots meant for walking, and they're also black, although not quite as black as dark water; they're duller, they have not the potential for depth of luminousity. Plain things, like Kage. The thermos cap untwists with a pop, and the cocoa is still tolerably hot when Kage pours it into Emily's cup. The steam reaches upward, like smoke from a candle snuffed out. "It is part of why I bought the truck." There. Now Emily knows that Kage drives a truck, and she drives it just in case of snowdrifts (or flood, or anything else that might turn a small car into a boat and sink it). "Have you been here," specific, that here, "in the snow before?"

[Emily Littleton] Kage's attire is well attuned to the cold. Emily's is... not. She wears layers that suit their purposes, keeping warm that is, and just work in concert to facilitate the warmth needed for winter. She has not gloves, and her hands are kept inside pockets when they are not used for greetings or holidng on to such things as mugs of warm cocoa. She has no appropriately dense, appropriately long coat. She has not lived here long enough (has not intended to stay long enough) to develop the appropriate wardrobe.

Kage is plain, but fittingly so. Emily is pleasant, but inappropriately so. They are both just right (baby bear's porridge) for a particular place, and Kage's place is nearer to her than Emily's.

"A few days ago," she replies with a nod, but then her mouth purses and her brow furrows. "Or last weekend... I am having some trouble with days lately," she confessed, and it would seem at once odd that Emily, who seemed often so grounded, who had a particular way of saying and doing things that seemed occasionally almost practiced, would have trouble with days. Except, perhaps, the ones ending with Y.

[K. R. Jakes] Now, such things as the way Emily's wardrobe is put together, the way she layers just for the sake of heat, but without any practice, without any feeling for the winter's cold? These are things that a native to the northeast or the upper midwest (the Great Lake states) notices. Kage pours her own cup, then settles the thermos between her thighs (warmth, there) and cradles the cup in both hands. As if the heat from the liquid could kindle a fire in her skin that would keep her safe from the elements, all elements, from winter's rawness, from the the stark isolation of the winter-whittled lanscape between snows, where all is ice and water and wind.

She doesn't sip yet, no. She has her head turned, so that she can regard Emily while she's speaking. Her mouth quirks, just a little. "But no more trouble with rockstars and soup kitchens, I trust?"

[Emily Littleton] Emily drinks first, and she savors the sweetness, letting it roll around in her mouth and thaw her tongue a little before swallowing. She appreciates it, the way one might appreciate a favorite brew or a delicate wine. Or just something one has sorely missed for too long. Hot chocolate is a special panacea, one that works its magic well here in the time between years.

"Just the rockstar," she said, chuckling a little and rolling her eyes coyly. "I haven't been to the kitchen this week," she added, sipping again off the navy blue cup. Something in Emily's expression was noncomittal. The trouble with rockstars was that they were quite upredictable, and not meant to stick around for long.

"How is your house guest?" she countered. Raising an eyebrow slightly before adding: "And the liar (lawyer?)?"

[K. R. Jakes] "Oh ho," Kage says, but mildly. Both of her eyebrows rise, and she still keeps the cup cradled just beneath her mouth and breathes in the vapor (escape, escape, heat always escapes and leaves naught but cold, cold and dead kings until spring comes again and sometimes, sometimes even then). "He appears at places that are not soup kitchens. How exciting?" She makes it a question, but it needn't be answered.

"Do you volunteer often?" This is a normal conversation, understand. Kage knows that Emily is More, that she truly is Other. But Kage also has no desire, no need as yet, to try and coax the darkhaired girl into defining herself, into picking a word and making it a badge, a sign by which all others might know. She is curious, but it's a curiousity that doesn't need to be indulged yet. This is a normal conversation between two intelligent young women, and it's nice. It follows logical patterns. "Actually ..." And here, Kage's gaze takes in Emily's clothing again. "I was wondering if you were a student here. Am I right?"

But they don't say everything plainly. They say things without saying them. For Kage, it's because she wants somebody to talk to about these things. And for Emily? Well. How is your house guest, Emily asks, and the liar.

"He is a mistake," she says. "But I hope,"

and that sentence falls away, falls off a shelf. Falls. "Oh, I hope that all will be well, and he'll soon be up and out of my hair. Come to think of it," and she grins, sidelong and mischievous, dark eyes a-gleam, "I think I have to say the same of the liar (lawyer)." A pause, and then, "No, that isn't fair. The lawyer has layers. He's," she pauses, again, this time frowning. "He has an impulse that's good, sometimes. Shouldn't discount it. Blah!"

Kage kicks at the frozen ground.

[Emily Littleton] They both watch the conversation faulter, stumble, and tumbled head-first over the cliff. Down, down, down it goes (where it will stop, nobody knows) and Emily nods a little.

"Boys!" she says, with a knowing exasperation. But it is playful. And at their ages, she should have said men, but neither boy (man) is there to contradict her, correct her, complain.

"They have just enough redeeming qualities to keep us endlessly confused," she says, both of the lawyer-with-layers and the rockstar-of-occasional-philantrophic-acts. Emily had been looking out across the still (still liquid) lake, but she looked over to Kage again now. It shifted her shoulders, a little, changed the cant of her head, her body. "Is it possible to take the good, when presented, and let the rest wash away?"

It was never that simple, of course, but it sounded so nice on paper. She wound her way back to Kage's questions, in time. "I'm a student at Northwestern," she stated, adding to the short list of descriptors that Kage had for her. She was not from here, clearly, only stopping through for an education of one sort of another. "And ... I am hoping the rockstar is not a mistake."

A little pause, a half-rolled chuckle. "He may well be... may well be a very big mistake." Perhaps they should trade, her rockstar for the Other's liar/lawyer. Perhaps only trade them in stories. Oh... Emily didn't know, but she did know that she was falling, right off the edge of that cliff, right after Kage's sentence, into the bottom of this conversation where the deeper things lie. Down where the side-stepping syntax would be harder to maintain, and the dance became more precarious.

[K. R. Jakes] Is it possible to take the good, when presented, and let the rest wash away. Kage hoped so. She hoped so fervently, deeply; at least, she hoped so (but didn't really believe) in the case of her houseguest. This was a secret, however. It was so closely kept it was almost a secret to herself, as well. Her actual response to the question is a sound, a murmur, as she finally takes a swallow of the cooling hot cocoa, tries to take some scald from it, tries to use that scald to keep her throat clear. When she exhales, a little heavily, her breath is an oracle in truth, and she notices it. Takes a second, and then blows gently in the air, just to see what shapes might pattern through it.

There are hints (subtle) in the way her breath unravells, and her eyes go half-lidded as she watches it (wither, whither, wither go thou?) eventually disappear, taking with it that momentary glimpse into More. She inhales, deep, brings the cold air right into her gut, and breathes out again (kiss the air, see what it says to you). The time feels right, and so does the place: it is right to read the world and see where the luminous gathers, twines, where it half-sings.

"Why do you say that?" She chooses to touch on Emily's last comment. "He a scary guy?" That is a somewhat casual usage of 'scary guy', because Kage doesn't expect that he might be a mistake because he beat his last girlfriend so hard that she had to go to the hospital. One never knows.

[Emily Littleton] It was Emily's turn to breathe out in weighted eddies and whorls, but she stares down into her blue plastic cup to scry, reading the tremors of her hand (to faint to notice) in the ripples of the cocoa.

"Of a sorts..." she replied, without replying. Emily closed her eyes for a moment, as if she needed that dark solace to sort through her memories and make a more specific response. But her eyes opened quickly, and she had found no sense of concensus. "I suspect I'm in a little over my head," she said lightly, and the corner of her mouth quirked upward in a (empty) wry smile.

[K. R. Jakes] "Keep your hand at the level of your eyes," Kage says, and it's with a shadow of wry; she is quoting from something she doesn't particularly like. After a second, she continues in a more serious tone of voice: "Just keep your head. It's possible to get along and keep going under all kinds of pressures, as long as you still have your head in place." She reaches up to tender a lock of vibrant, vibrant red hair back behind her ear. The landscape wants to be chiarroscurro, but she just won't let it. "Do you want to talk about it?"

[Emily Littleton] "Aye..." the sound trailed off, floated away, upward. It trended back toward the lighter beginnings of their conversations. It curled with a faint brogue, one Kage hadn't heard (much of ) yet in her muddied accent. "That's what I'm worried about."

Emily took a sip of cocoa, seriously, in a mannerism far older than her twenty-something years should have taught her. She stared at the edge of the water, wishing it lapped in a far more familiar ebb and flow. The stillness, the interminable stillness of Winter in Chicago was infuriating on some level. It was not Home.

Ungloved fingers reached up, tangled in the light chain she wore around her neck. She pulled the small locket free, immediately sequestering it behind long, folded fingers. The tremulous but palpable calm emmanated through the cracks in her grasp, through the fault lines in her facade.

"I'm..." she wasn't sure how to phrase it, lacking the shared vocabulary to hold an intelligent conversation, not knowing whether Kage was an Us (was Emily even an Us?) or a Them (which is different than Other) "... waking up to some new possibilities. Opened Eyes and all that. But it has made some things very complicated, keeping my head being one of them."

A pause.

"And rockstars another."

[K. R. Jakes] Kage regards Emily without saying anything for a moment. The locket's chain glints, sea-scrim around Emily's fingers; the resonance of Home is kept safe inside a cage of warmth (and no doubt warms in turn), and the Orphan frowns at herself. She glances down at the toes of her boots, at a scratch on the leftboot's toe, and her hair tumbles loose from behind her ears again. She flexes her feet, toes pointing upward, then leans back against the tree, against the air, as if the air were enough to seat her (throne). Somewhere in that moment, she'd placed the thermos on the ground by her feet. Somewhere in that moment, she also takes another long draught of the hot cocoa (warm cocoa, now, only) and set the plastic cup beside the thermos.

Now, she says, "I know what you mean." She waits a beat. Then she adds: "Really. I believe that I have been where you are before: new, my eyes open, possibilities and impossibilities everywhere. And just needing to keep my head on." That last was said more meditatively than anything else, more turned inward than the rest.

[K. R. Jakes] [pause!]