Who does that?

[Rene Vitalli] *It was cold and clear. Rene sat perched on the back of a bench. A black silhouette lit only by the dull glow of a parklamp, and the orange of a cigarette cherry. She'd been out. Thinking. Yes, she thought. Her face cast in bronzed relief a moment as her smoke flares, hand waving through a plume of smoke. Teeth flash white as she grimaces at her own shadow. Smoothing her hair.*

[Emily Littleton] Cold, clear nights were hard to come by in the deep heart of winter. It was neither snowing, nor was the sky pelting the world with frozen rain. Emily was out in the park, walking the paths with her hands in the pockets of her heavy wool jacket. The moon was out, and looked down on the park with its round full face.

Their paths crossed, as paths were wont to do, at the bench were Rene perched and Emily ambled by. She'd given the bench wide berth without meaning to, but Emily slowed a little as she recognized the eerily familiar woman. She stopped. And since she'd stopped, it seemed only polite to say, "Good evening."

But she didn't get near enough to touch. Near enough to grab. Near enough for those spiders to slither along her digits. No no, not this time. No.

[Rene Vitalli] *Someone approached, and Rene tensed, as coiled and prepared as an adder, expression just as devoid of emotion. Ashes crumble from her cigarette, unnoticed. Emily is stared at. Flat. Waiting. Every moment an eternity in which Dark almond eyes scour more layers from the young orphan's person. Finally the euthanatoi speaks, and a single word that soft child's voice is as shockingly unexpected as a gunshot.*

Yes?

[Emily Littleton] "Just... good evening," Emily said, dipping her head a bit and looking at the path between them. Nothing more. The Orphan, however scoured she was by Rene's gaze, doesn't seem overly phased. She is tense, because Rene is tense (intense), and because Rene had troubled her some nights before.

Time passes, and its passage can be counted in the space of heartbeats, breaths, in the degrees by which the moon sinks away from its zenith.

[Rene Vitalli] *Time passes. Seconds tick by. Turn into minutes. Minutes drag on. Rene's smoke burns between her lips. Ashes falling. Eyes unwavering. Waiting. Silent and Statuesque. Eerie as she sits staring at Emily. What did she want? What was required here? Rene didn't know, and so her wait continued. Eyes slowly narrowing as her irritation grew.*

[Emily Littleton] At first the silence is just silence. But as time progresses, it becomes something more purposeful. It becomes Silence, something to be maintained, respected, observed. Emily's chin lifts, and she meets Rene's eyes for a moment. There is no challenge there, only keen observence from her own side. In this light, her eyes are merely dark. Rene has not seen her in better lighting, so she cannot know they are a deep shade of blue not brown.

As the minutes pass, Emily shifts into a more comfortable (defensible) stance. Not because she knows to do it, but because the growing Quiet demands a grounded stand, a heels-dug-in standing. Something solid.

And it continued. Emily looked away, over Rene's shoulder instead of into her eyes. She fidgetted with her keys in her pocket. Finally, when the space between them has stretched so thin, so taut, and Emily cannot stand it anymore, she says, "Well... good to see you again."

Even though it is not. She looks back to Rene, smiles a little, and turns as if she's about to leave.

[Rene Vitalli] *AH, yes. She was leaving. This Rene had a response for. An appropriate one even. Her head dips slowly, and that little girl voice sounds again. Strange coming out of a woman who had the charm of a moray eel. *

Good Evening.

*Emily turns to leave, casts a small smile over her shoulder. Rene hadn't made a joke. Hadn't said anything that was pleasing. Had she? She so often confused social interaction. An eyebrow raises. It seems she's quite willing to sit still and menacing as a spider in its web - until a noise echoes in the distance. The barking of a stray dog. Rene snaps to her feet, hand diving inside her coat in the same instant.*

DOG.

[Emily Littleton] When the sound echoed in the distance, Emily's head turned and she canted it a little to one side as she tried to place the canine with respect to their position. There was nothing about the Orphan that belied the same concern. It was a city; stray pets happened.

Emily looked back to Rene when the woman intoned that single syllable with such emphasis. Her eyebrows raised a little, she rocked back in her stance and took a step away from the creepy woman reaching into her coat for something (car keys? [mace?]) and standing up suddenly.

"It's probably someone's pet. Just got lost, or frightened," Emily said in a level and calm tone. Because it wasn't worth getting excitable over.

[Rene Vitalli] Most likely.

*Rene doesn't seem excited. Rene seems downright bored. Her hands are moving with practiced efficiency however, as a silencer is screwed onto the barrel of her glock. Gun held low so as not to attract attention. Frantic barking has turned into something more ominous. Snarling and yipping as a medium sized canine flashes under a nearby parklight, barreling towards the two awakened mages with ill intent. A cursory glance around and the stunning black woman is training her gun at the dog with a look of vague disinterest.*

[Emily Littleton] Emily's eyes were trained to the gun now. In the full moonlight and within the circle of illumination of a few park lights, it was unmistakable to her at close quarters. Perhaps another passerby would not necessarily notice, if they were far enough away, if they were distracted by the canine hurtling towards them.

"Are you going to...?" Emily asked, her words hurried and her voice sharp with alarm and disapproval. She took a few steps away, putting herself out of the path that intersected by Rene and the dog. "It's just a dog," she said, firmly.

Emily's hands were out of her jacket, held out in front of her in a no-please-don't sort of gesture. Her expression was entirely worried, alarmed and uneasy. She kept looking between the dog and Rene and the gun, and taking small steps backward from the situation. If needs be, she wasn't above running away.

[Rene Vitalli] [shoots it]

[Rene Vitalli] [dmg]

[Rene Vitalli] *Rene fires, and the dog goes down. For a moment. The faint Fppt of the silencer preceding a high yelp as the canine hits the dirt a few short feet away. Blood splatters across the snow, steaming in the chill air, ugly brown in the moonlight. Its with a snarl the mutt rises to its feet once more. This was not normal dog behavior. Then again. The calm step up onto the bench and retraining of her gun was hardly normal human behavior either. Rene coiled and braced for impact.*

[Emily Littleton] "What the [/i]hell[/i] are you doing?" Emily asked. She was yelling now. Yelling over the yelp of the dog, yelling at Rene for shooting it. She kept backing away from them, because Emily wasn't about to turn her back on the dog or the terrifying woman with a gun. She should have obeyed her gut and kept moving when she recognized Rene.

"Seriously. What is wrong with you? It's a dog."

A dog that was pulling itself up off its feet for more. She kept backing away, kept her hands out in front of her, kept her voice elevated just in case someone (anyone) with a little more sanity was headed this way and could help.

(Goddamned beautiful people. This city is insane.)

[Jarod Nightingale] There is one thing that one never particularly wants to hear when they are taking a night-time stroll through the park, and that is the sound of a gunshot, followed by a familiar voice screaming. Unfortunately, tonight, that is precisely what Jarod heard when he meandered past the Art Institute, across the street, and around the giant fountain.

A gun. And Emily. Screaming at someone.

And since there was at least one marauder and who the hell knew what else wandering around the city at present, he didn't take any chances that her distress might be caused by something more commonplace. He just picked up the pace and ran until the figures of the two women and the dog came into view. As he drew up to them, he slowed to a halt next to Emily, and put his hand out as if to calm her.

"What the hell is going on?" this of course, was directed at Rene. And then, to Emily..."Are you okay?"

[Rene Vitalli] *Rene notes the man approaching. Notes Emily screaming. Much more commotion and decisions would have to be made. Another shot is fired into the dog as it wobbles on three legs, lunging at the bench to snap at the euthanatoi's long legs. She looks for all the world like a icy madwoman simply executing a dog, as Emily shrieks at her. She raises an eyebrow in question. dark eyes glittering with vague alien malice. *

[i shoot the dog again]

[Rene Vitalli] [damage]

[Emily Littleton] Emily doesn't shriek, thank you. She's far too British (nearly half) for anything so disdainful as shrieking. She does yell though, and disapprove, loudly. As loudly as possible.

She heard footsteps behind her, but didn't look away from the Euthanatos and the dog long enough to see who it might be. When Jarod's voice reached her, she looked over just long enough to meet his eyes (I'm fine) and then looked away. Rene had a gun the dog was vicious. The Orphan stepped back again, putting herself half behind the Verbena, another step away from the fray.

Then Rene shot again, and Emily winced visibly. Her eyes pressed shut and her breath caught in her chest, as the gun went off again. This time she didn't yell. She did, very carefully, place her hand against Jarod's back. (I'm here [I'm safe]), let it linger for a moment, and then let it slip away.

The look she gave Rene was most foul, disdain. Resolved for truly horrible people, like those that might execute a lost pet in the park.

[Emily Littleton] ((edit: resolved = reserved))

[Jarod Nightingale] [Mind 1 on the dog - what's goin' down here?]

[Jarod Nightingale] [Cha+Empathy - hey, it's alright]

[Jarod Nightingale] "For fuck sake, if you're going to kill it, try to have better aim," Jarod's voice snapped icily in Rene's direction, but rather than let her continue to shoot the animal, he moved in... and stepped directly between them.

Not the safest thing to do, really, stepping in between a euthanatos with a gun and a snarling dog. But the dog... wasn't after him. And for all that one might not expect Jarod Nightingale to be... an animal person, exactly... he had a way of projecting an air that was surprisingly calm. Tranquil. Soothing.

He did this now, as he reached out to touch the dog, crooning something gently in the back of his throat. Maybe he'd get bit, or maybe the animal would recognize something in him that was familiar and friendly. Either way, the idea was to touch it just long enough to do what he needed to do.

[Life 3 - seizing up muscles - coincidental, diff 6 -1focus, -1going slow]

[Rene Vitalli] *The dog continues. Strangely violent, treating Rene like the very worst sort of predator, the shaggy canine seems convinced its do or die, gunshots no deterrant. What might usually be a docile animal, someone's "Lucky" or "Skipper" or "Rover" is now a wild eyed jaw snapping beast. The creature makes to sink its teeth into jarod's hand in defense, only to shudder and seize mid-snap. Rene's gun hasn't moved, as though she were actually considering shooting through the man if need be. The dog however, seems quite out of commission. The canine appraised with dull interest. *

[Emily Littleton] It was good that the other two were calm, because Emily? No. Not terribly calm. Her hands balled up into little fists, which she shoved in the pockets of her jacket. Her pallor was noticeably ashen now. Someone had just pulled a gun and shot at something in what was supposed to be a safer part of the city. Moreover, that someone was Rene. 'Nough said.

When the dog stood down, Emily was left to watch the following tableau: Someone who terrified her pointing a gun at someone she cared about all over a dog, which might bounce back and attack any one of them at a moment's notice.

"What the hell," she said, again, but quieter this time, "Were you thinking?" It's unclear who she means to direct the sentiment at. The dog, Rene, Jarod. All were equally likely targets. Emily fidgetted again, unable to move towards the scene and help and unable to get the hell out of there now that Jarod was involved. It made her antsy, which likely didn't help either elder mage's nerves.

[Jarod Nightingale] [Per+Awareness on Rene]

[Jarod Nightingale] He hadn't needed to make the contact for long. Just enough time to feel the creature's life pattern pulsing beneath his fingertips. After that brief touch, the dog lunged at Rene again, and blood splattered on Jarod's hand from the creature's matted fur.

But it didn't matter, because he'd just put the poor thing out of commission for the rest of the evening. That dog... was not going to move. Now it lay on the ground, panting heavily through its nose, and Jarod looked down at it with a mixture of pity and disgust. One got the sense that he hadn't been entirely of his own mind when he'd stopped the fight to begin with, and was even less so now... as he gazed down at the dog in silent contemplation.

His hand had blood on it. It made his fingers twitch slightly in discomfort.

"That was stupid. You didn't need to shoot it. Or is that the only way you solve problems? Now there's a dog here with bullet wounds, my apprentice is freaked out, and I've got blood on my brand new fucking coat. Thank you. Thank you so much." His voice dripped with sarcasm as he bent down again and put his hand out to brush gently against the dog's head. For a moment, his eyes looked.... sad.

"Emily, can you help me with this? If we leave it here, it'll bleed out or freeze, whatever comes first."

[Rene Vitalli] *Rene kneels. Jarod was fussing over the dog like it was a lost relative or something meant to be equally heart breaking. His hand brushes across the dogs head. Rene's does the same. But Rene's holds a gun. "THHPT. The silencer makes a soft whip of the gunshot. The strange black woman raises to her feet and looks from Jarod to Emily in turn before holstering her gun.*

There. Goodnight.

[Emily Littleton] Emily, can you help me with this? She's already shrugging out of her coat by the time he finishes his request. Emily, unlike Jarod, has only one coat. She has, so far, been very fastidious about keeping it clean of anything's blood. And this is not the first time she has seen a Euthanatos kill something in a seemingly quiet section of Chicago -- but she would not connect Rene to that Tradition, or Rene to Ashton, or a dog to the Chantry, because she does not yet understand the implications of their connectedness.

She is moving toward them when Rene kneels. Emily slows a little, and then Rene shoots the dog in what Emily would imagine would be its temple. She stops, holding her jacket over one arm and staring at the (dead) dog in a mixture of disbelief and frustration. It had been over, quiet, stopped -- and the dog still ended up dead.

She looked up to Jarod with a pained and confused expression (Why?) and then over to Rene. The look Rene gets is... unpleasant. There's no good way to sum up the flurry of responses on the Orphan's face before she slams them all back behind a cold, angry front.

Emily does not offer her good nights this time. But she desperately wants Rene to leave. (Go. Away.). It is obvious that she's biting her tongue, now, holding something back, now, trying so hard not to yell again. But that is a losing battle, and Emily can only hold back for so long. Hopefully Rene would be gone before she broke.

[Jarod Nightingale] Fussing... was not an entirely accurate description. He had, in fact, behaved rather coldly, but for that brief expression of loss in his eyes. And the emotion had not been meant for this dog, in particular. No, it had been more of a.... ethical loss. As much like when a scientist had to stand in place and watch as the cure for cancer went up in smoke during a lab fire. A stray dog was hardly the cure for cancer, of course, but it had worth. As did the trees in the park where they now stood. As did Emily. As did Rene.

The only difference was, whether or not one chose to differentiate these life patterns as having any more or less meaning than another. Most people did. (Most people did.)

So Rene shot the dog, before anyone could stop her, and blood splattered in a spray of crimson across all of those gathered next to it. Surprisingly, Jarod did not snarl, this time. He didn't even look surprised. Instead, he raised himself slowly to his feet and fixed Rene with a long, frozen stare.

Euthanatos were not the only ones who could seem a bit... creepy.

"Wait," he asked quietly of the dark-skinned woman.

[Rene Vitalli] *So much emotion invested over a DOG. So much emotion period. She has all the sympathy of an arachnid as cold black eyes sweep from the Verbena to the Orphan. Confusing. Had they not seen the thing attack her? She's staring, a look that for all intents and purposes looked chill and murderous, regardless of what she was thinking. Visual Vivisection. She was a beautiful woman. Sharply sculpted, impossibly statuesque. Yet nothing about her personality was even remotely attractive. Rene's eyes meet Jarod's. And she waits with the eerie patience of a spider.*

[Emily Littleton] Emily stood off to the side, beyond the lifeless body of the dog and away from the two Disciples and their warring mentalities. She stood with her hands clasped before her and her jacket falling into the lowest part of her joined arms. Her head was bent, which kept her face occluded by shadows and wisps of dark curls. It kept her from focusing too much on either of them.

Beside them, the dog's body slowly bled. It was cold enough that it wouldn't bleed to quickly, and once its heart had stopped there was no force to push its blood from its veins. Just gravity, adhesion, cohesion -- slow forces, strong and inevitable. Resolute.

[Jarod Nightingale] Emily was upset. It was a perfectly human reaction, and for a brief moment Jarod allowed his gaze to settle upon her own. But there was something off about him right now. Something else looked out of his eyes. Something else moved beneath his skin. That something turned its attention back to Rene.

"Do you mind if I ask your reasoning..." his voice was still soft. Pleasant to the ears, but cold and lacking emotion. Not all that unlike her own, now. And when he took a few slow steps toward Rene, his body moved with a kind of ethereal grace and beauty all its own. The cat... staring down the spider. "Behind killing this dog?"

[Rene Vitalli] I do.

*A simple enough answer as annoyance began to take root. Jarod approaches and Rene's eyes slant narrow. Hands slipping inside her pockets ominously. She looks venomous. Dispassionate. Every inch the neutral predator preparing to attack a threat. In the depth of her coat pocket she wraps a lifeline around a slender finger. Turning to leave.*

[Emily Littleton] Emily knew first hand how little Jarod liked being evaded on questions. And she hadn't encountered this particular tone of voice, either. That, she imagined, made this game of cat and mouse all the more vicious. She did not look up at either of them, instead Emily crouched beside the dog, set her jacket beside her on the snowy path (away from the blood, away from the spatter) and seemed thoroughly engrossed in the matter of figuring out how to get the animal's body off of the path, away from where some other passerby might just happen on it. Especially a child, or anyone else who might find it in the warming morning sun.

(I'm not here. [Staying out of this one.])

[Jarod Nightingale] I do, she said simply. And Jarod cocked his head slightly to one side, as if he found this curious.

"Well then, I'll simply have to go with what clues I myself could infer, in that case. You killed the dog because the dog attacked you, and this was the most efficient solution to your problem. You saw no reason to keep the dog alive, even after I neutralized the threat, so you killed him to be done with the matter, perhaps. However.."

And here Jarod smiled, just slightly.

"It is, in fact, your presence here that caused the dog to attack. You were the source of the problem, not it. So... by that logic, one ought to dispose of you. Yes? It is the same argument."

A very... euthanatoi argument, at that. But Jarod was not euthanatos, and if he had been, he probably would have walked right past and never batted an eye at the entire incident. Point in fact, Rene was not the only one among them who had killed, before. But the rationale of a Verbena was a very different thing.

They were standing very close, at this point, and Jarod reached out, as if to shake the woman's hand. "I don't believe we've met, by the way. Jarod Nightingale."

[Rene Vitalli] *Rene is quite done with human interaction this evening. It had gone awry, as it always did. She would have to speak to Wharil about trying that mind meld again. Perhaps he'd bolstered his courage. Jarod's hand reaches out towards the slender line of Rene's back. She doesn't respond, instead choosing to stalk further into the park. Leaving them and their strange reactions and flawed logic behind. Arcane folding around her like a warm blanket.*

[Jarod Nightingale] [Well fine, I will totally do this without my focus then, bitch. Watch me botch it, too! Induce an asthma attack in Rene. Life 3, coincidental, diff 6 -1taking time, -1resonance, -1quintessence, +2 no focus]

[Jarod Nightingale] [Well damn, I guess... that didn't botch]

[Emily Littleton] Emily didn't look up to see Rene leave. She was confident that Jarod had that well in hand, and that if he didn't have it well in hand then she wasn't going to be much help in sorting it out. Once Rene's footsteps had grown indistinct, Emily exhaled and reached up with one hand to press her palm against the back of her neck.

Only once she was certain (or thought she was certain) that the eerie woman had retreated, did Emily look up and over at her mentor. Only to find him otherwise occupied...

[Jarod Nightingale] [Alright, in the interest of letting punkin go sleep.... nix that last roll. -1WP instead to overcome avatar.]

[Rene Vitalli] [perfect. thank you! *fades rene out*]

[Jarod Nightingale] There were two minds in Jarod's body right now, and one of them glared at Rene's back with the deadly intent of a hunting predator. Luckily for everyone involved... that mind wasn't the one the prevailed, in the end. For a brief instant, the air around him seemed to crackle with resonance (and there was something about this particular energy that felt less like Jarod himself and more like some kind of primal retribution)... but then, his own consciousness came snarling to the forefront.

No.

Not with Emily here.

A shame. A pity. The point had not been adequately made. And the predator hissed irritably and stalked back into her cave, long tail flicking back and forth.

Jarod blinked and shook his head a bit, then looked back at where Emily stood trying to deal with the dog's body. Jarod himself was still splattered with its blood, and he reached up to wipe a drop off of his cheek, absently.

"Hey... I'm sorry about all that. Are you okay?"

[Emily Littleton] His resonance crackled in the small space in which this scene has unfolded, unfurling against Emily's senses with a strange taste and timbre. Her expression was clouded, concerned and uneven but not immediately readable. Regardless of the anticipatory feeling (that presages something [but what?]), nothing else happened. Rene walked away, and Jarod stayed. The dog remained dead, incapable of springing back to life or back in time to rethink its assault on the terrifying Euthanatos woman.

No, she was not okay. Physically, Emily was a little messy and a little shaken but otherwise well. All things considered, she was better than could be expected, but that did not make her okay.

"I'm fine," Emily said softly, evenly. Her tone was level, but only because she willed it to be so. Her brow furrowed in frustration as she looked down at the dog, but Emily didn't communicate whatever it was she was thinking at that moment. Guarded.

"You?" The question went both ways. Emily looked over at him, barely lifted an eyebrow in inquiry, and asked after his well-being. Because it mattered, at least to her.

She had nothing in her pockets to help them clean up. Nothing to offer this time to wipe the blood from his face. Emily was unaware of whether she, too, was dappled with canine blood. That hadn't filtered in, yet. She was still barely coming down from the flight or fight high of the encounter. She pressed her hands together to hide the fact that they were, again, shaking lightly.

[Jarod Nightingale] There was a long moment when Jarod simply looked at her, but there was no longer that frozen anger in his eyes. Whatever had taken him over for those last few moments... it was gone now. Maybe Emily had noticed the change. There were some small clues. His coldness, after Rene had shot the dog, and the slight change in his speech patterns. He'd gone from swearing and irritable to... cool and calculating in the matter of seconds.

Then again, Emily was probably used to Jarod's mood swings by now. So maybe she wouldn't make note of this one in particular.

Whatever he saw when he looked at her, he didn't question her response. Instead, he closed the distance between them and reached out to run the back of his knuckles over Emily's cheek. Maybe he'd wanted to do more, but he had fresh blood on him, and that hardly made for a comforting embrace.

"I'm alright. Just... pissed off, really. I'm sorry you had to see that. It was unnecessary."

[Emily Littleton] Emily had seen his exchange at the kitchen, the way he snapped at Enid, and now this. The moodswing itself didn't upset her. The implied threat against Rene, well, under different circumstances it might have upset her. Tonight, though, Emily was willing to write it off to a distressing situation.

She was taut with anxiety and alertness, and when he touched her that would communicate far more clearly than she wanted it to. Emily was trying to pull back, but she wasn't able to. She didn't lean into the touch, but her eyes closed for a moment and she... exhaled.

"I... please... no," Emily struggled to put the right words together. Stopped. Frowned a little. "Don't apologize. This... isn't the first time I've run into her. Remember when I first came back from Taipei?"

She asked him a question, but didn't wait for much of an answer. Emily had not been entirely well the first time they saw each other after she'd come home. "Right before I saw you, I ran into Rene in the pub. She grabbed me. It," Emily's mouth pursed angrily. "I didn't appreciate it much. Needless to say, my opinion is unchanged after tonight."

She bristled at the memory, at the dog's corpse lying at their feet, at the Euthanatos woman who was no longer her. Emily ran her fingertips through her hair, lightly, pressed her hand against the back of her neck again.

"Who shoots a dog?" she asked him, obviously upset still. "Who does that?" Emily was still looking down at the animal, unable to reconcile what it had happened with her internal sense of right and wrong. (What is wrong with this city?)

[Jarod Nightingale] "Someone who evidently thinks more of their own misguided logic than they have a right to." But that was still his avatar speaking, her voice echoing within his memory. "Someone who doesn't give a shit," he added, in his own words.

Sometimes, Jarod didn't seem to give a shit either. It was all perspective, really. He glanced over at the dog for a long moment, and his lip curled back in disgust. "Fucking waste. And I don't even like dogs."

Then he looked down at the blood on his clothes, and his jaw flexed visibly as teeth came down to grind against each other. "Fucking bitch owes me about three hundred bucks if I can't get this out." (And ah, there was the Jarod we all know and love.) He may have missed a moment of Emily's own anxiety, in that distraction, but when he glanced up at her again, his expression softened. "She's a Euthanatos. Like Wharil. They're... like that. Well, not all of them. But some. We should... get out of here. If I don't take a shower soon, I'll go nuts, and I'm sure you could use something warm and distracting as well."

He might have meant a number of things, by that. In this case, though, it was probably something along the lines of a hot shower and/or tea and/or snuggling under some blankets.

[Emily Littleton] Jarod's avatar and Jarod himself spoke in startling similar sentiments, so Emily did no pick up on the insinuation that he was of two minds at the moment. They were both tense, both angry, and Jarod's show of emotion was... strange enough to Emily that it caused her to rein in her own frustrations as tightly as possible. It was likely unwell for the world if they both were to give in to their bad moods in the same moment.

Fuck, she said, mostly unvoiced and just under her breath. He was close enough to hear it, though, and hear the full force of her vexation behind it.

"We can't just leave it here," Emily said. Well, she supposed they might be able to, but it seemed somehow wrong to her. "Someone will find it in the morning..." and that didn't seem a palatable idea to Emily.

"If you want to go I'll... I'll figure this out, and meet you later?" Emily wasn't really sure what to do with a dog's body that wouldn't involve the humane society, or some sort of municipal paperwork. She wasn't even sure what the American social body for the disposal of pet-sized animals was called. So her offer was misguided, at best.

Emily finally looked down at herself, taking stock of the blood spatter on her decidedly less expensive clothing. Then she looked up at Jarod again, somewhat displeased but otherwise deadpan. "Or perhaps not. I suppose it would not go well to speak to any authority looking like this..."

It was a right fine mess. A right fine mess.

[Jarod Nightingale] "It's dead, Emily. Nothing much we can do now. At some point a cop will drive by and notice all the blood in the snow, and someone will come by to take care of it."

He didn't seem to entirely understand her desire to make some kind of amends to the body of a dead animal, which may have seemed strange, considering how he'd reacted to its death in the first place. But it was dead, now. A dead body was just a dead body, and in time weather would erode it and scavengers would pick it clean, and then it would decompose and return to the earth, as everything did.

Taking care of the dead... that was a human thing.

After a moment, though, he sighed. "I'll call the police myself, if you want. Once we're home. But I'm not sticking around, so... if you're coming?" And there was a slight lilt to his voice. Something that said he preferred that outcome to not.

[Emily Littleton] It was a human thing and Emily, for her part, was still very human. Somewhere in there was a gentle soul that had not yet been as entirely eroded by the ills of the world as one might expect. It bothered her, leaving the dog here as a smear in the snow and a prelude to some member of Chicago's Finest's unhappy morning.

Nevertheless she stooped to pick up her coat, but did not shrug into it again. She carried it away from her, so it wouldn't get anything else on her.

"Yeah," she said, a little grimly, and with another sidelong glance at the dog (I'm sorry [you say that a lot these days]). "I'm coming."

And then she turned away from it, prepared to leave it behind them. Emily looked over at him again and a bit of something warmer, less agitated, less angry (agitated) peeked out though her eyes. She wasn't mad at him, after all.

Never again

[Emily Littleton] She did not belong in Cabrini-Green, but Emily knew her way around certain streets very well. She knew where to find the soup kitchen, the hours it was open, and where its patrons filtered off to once the doors had shut. She knew how to find the rec center, where Charlie had told her to seek him out.

And so it is middling in the afternoon when she finds her way to the center. And it is not long after when she begins asking around for Charlie, whose last name she does not know or has forgotten. Emily is polite, with a warm smile and a curiously foreign accent. She is friendly, and the smile touches her dark blue-grey eyes in warm and comfortable ways.

Moreso than even that, there is a quiet sense of something right about her. The twinned but faint feelings of Home and a nascent Reverence. They are faint enough to get lost in the wash of Otherness about the Orphan, but one day may become a familiar signature.

So it is the middle of the afternoon, and so she is looking for him in the nooks and crannies and corners of the place.

[Charlie McGee] Most of the kids glance up when she says Charlie's name and everyone on staff seems to know him, a few smiling at the mention as they gave her directions. Its finally one of the Youth Leaders that mentions Charlie was asked to work on some pipes in the basement...he points towards the stairwell, telling her to watch the first stairwell as the light didn't work there but the banister would turn and there would be light in the basement itself.

Charlie was indeed working in the basement. Currently twisted upside down, his legs were hooked to two pipes to brace himself...almost in a vertical split as he arched down to grab a wrench and then gritting his teeth as he bent his mid section back up. Some of his brethern would preach to him about how he should be working on form...focusing his body...kata and routine of exercises.

He would then give them a wrench and tell them to change the valve of a pipe that you could only get to in angles like the one he was doing if you lacked a ladder or room to really maneuver your wrist if you were twisting from that position.

[Emily Littleton] She made her way to the basement, watching her footing as she went, and feeling out the steps in the dark before descending. The banister turned, and Emily turned, and thusly she arrived in the basement to find him twisted about in the acrobatics of minding the pipes.

Emily made a little noise as she entered the room. She didn't want to startle him, especially with as precarious as his positions seemed to be.

"Need a hand?" she asked, in a clear enough and enough confidence to imply that she might just be more help than hassel. Emily studied the angle he was trying to reach, and quickly evaluated whether her slighter form would be any advantage.

[Charlie McGee] Charlie heard the noise and suddenly he made flapping motions, arms spin wheeling as if he was about to fall...before he tumbled into a flip, landing firmly on his feet with a grin...seeming to try and get a rise out of her.

"Yo, what's up? And nah..almost done with this...just gotten to tighten it and then check the water flow. The valve is shut off at the moment but I want to get it going before the kids come in for their basketball game and start water fiending like mad."

[Emily Littleton] "Alright then," she said, cool and level despite the momentary concern that had flickered across her features when he pinwheeled and fell. "If you ever do need a hand, though, give me a ring."

Emily looked like she'd probably come straight from campus. She wore a pair of jeans, and a light sweater under her winter jacket. She wasn't carrying her messenger bag, so that was likely in her car. She watched him for a moment, and her expression and thoughts were inscrutable. All the while she seemed pleasant, and friendly enough. Just guarded.

"How've you been?" she asked, conversationally. As if she hadn't sought him out in the less favorable section of the city. As if she didn't want anything more than a friendly chat.

[Charlie McGee] "Busy busy busy...way it goes. I'm the resident hand-" He cut off for a moment, putting a wrench between his teeth as he jumped up, hands grabbing the pipes..rotating for a moment before he got his legs locked through the gaps of the pipe and flexed his knees around it. "-...resident handyman here. So, I fix stuff until its so broken we need to pay cash money for it. Pipes...broken soda machine...basketball nets. That's my job. And occasionally out on the floor to have fun with the kids here."

He grinned some, fingers reaching to the wrench. A white bandanna was tied around his head, almost similar to a gang member might wear...his hat lying near the make-shift toolbox as he locked his arm around another pipe then slide his wrench hand to the section he needed to tighten.

"...yourself?"

[Emily Littleton] "School, work, studying, more work," she said, leaning into the doorjamb as she watched him work on the pipes. The predominant note to her accent was British, but it was softened by something more familiar of late. "I did spend the weekend in San Francisco, but that was for a job, too."

Emily shrugged a bit and tucked her hands into her pockets. She managed to look entirely unassuming, canted casually against the frame of the door.

"I think it's great what you do here, and for the kids. It makes me really miss the kitchen."

[Charlie McGee] "...I've been doing it for a few years now. Give back to communities what has been taken from them..."

Charlie flexed, grunting for a moment before he let the wrench clatter down...legs dislodging and then letting go to land in a crouch this time as he looked up at her with a smile.

"If I was a Christian, I would say it was my attempt at repentance."

[Emily Littleton] "For what are you penitent?" she asks, and the words roll off her tongue like familiar syllables. Compassion overlayed the curiosity in her expression, but the edge of her mouth lifted in a somewhat wry expression.

Emily watched him for a moment, then dipped her head and let her gaze fall away toward the floor. Demurely. Politely. She had, after all, asked him a rather personal question.

[Charlie McGee] "I use to deal."

Charlie said, his voice taking that thoughtful tone like it had the last time they talked. He walked over, lifting his Chicago Bulls cap off the ground...he checked for any grime on it before fitting it firmly over the bandanna at an angle, very thuggin-esque.

"But, I don't really see this as repentance. I mean..its more like re-balancing myself. But my sifu once said....the rabbit does not apologize for eating the grass and the scorpion for its stinger. You are what you are and ultimately the choices you make reflect the person inside. If you deal drugs for a living, that's ultimately on you...if you take drugs, that's on you. We are free to make our choices. It just needs to reflect if inwardly, you believe to be a righteous choice."

[Emily Littleton] She pushed off of the doorframe with her shoulder and nodded a little. Emily's expression became neutral. She wasn't aghast at what he'd said, or terribly judgmental. It simply was. And whatever it was, it was between Charlie and God. Emily technically shouldn't have asked (but she'd been curious).

"But you got out?" she asked. It was more of a statement, really. "And now you fix things for the rec center, and look out for the kids?" A pause. "You're probably more help to them as an example than a handyman," she commented. "Not very many people get out of that sort of lifestyle."

[Charlie McGee] "I realized it wasn't why I was in this lifestyle to begin with...I had never been dealing to make money. I had never been involved with the streets to be 'thuggin' or having some cheddar. Its because that's where I found other kids like me that liked to b-boy. I just got caught up in the surge when gangsta rap became the big thing. I've learned since then...realized how much influence peers can have on you."

He shut the toolbox, taking a seat on it as he looked to her.

"So...what brings you this way?"

[Emily Littleton] Most of the slang was lost on Emily. She'd not lived stateside to pick up the linguistic twists and turns of the streets. Her expression got a little twitchy when he mixed cheese types into his oration, but she schooled it back quickly. Nevertheless, much of that was greek to her. (Greek might have been more intelligible, actually.)

"I wanted to follow up on our conversation at the Cloud Gate," she said, shrugging a bit and looking just past him rather than directly at him. It would be harder to miss, this time, that she was saying something without saying it. "That is, if the offer still stands."

[Charlie McGee] Charlie paused and then looked at her.

"Ahhhh. Well...I can teach...if that's what you're coming for."

He glanced at her a bit, looking her over but it wasn't with the eye of a guy looking for a hook up....before he walked over.

"...take a stance for me, if you would."

[Emily Littleton] "It is, but..." Emily took a step back as he approached her. She did not naturally sink into a stance, but her balance was decent and she moved with purpose.

"Wait," she said, as her hands came out of her pockets and she held them out in front of her. Once he stopped moving towards her, Emily exhaled the little breath she was holding. "I... You should know something first. It might change your mind."

Emily's body had gone from casually comfortable to taut, tense, in the space of his few footfalls. She watched him carefully, keenly aware of the space between them. She knew, likely down to the inch, how close he'd come to her and it made her... anxious.

[Charlie McGee] Charlie paused and then slid his hands back into his pocket and just stared, giving an up nod for her to continue...obviously waiting on what she had to say. His expression was neutral, as if humoring her.

[Emily Littleton] "Okay," she said, once he'd stopped. Her hands fell back to her sides, and she nodded a bit. As if she approved of this. Whatever this was. Emily's expression was troubled, but calming. The tension in her shoulders was releasing. And she looked to him with less (fear) wariness.

"At the Cloud Gate," she began, unsure of how to really address this without deception or side-stepping it. She was unpracticed at it, and it showed. There was no polish to the sentences she strung together. "I mentioned that, well, there are some people who would have benefitted from knowing how to take care of themselves at some point in the past?"

Yes, he probably remembered. Emily brought her hands together and fidgetted a bit, then brought them back to her sides. Still. She couldn't quite stand still.

"I'm..." A little breath. "I'm one of those people. I... I have, issues, with personal space, and I want to stop feeling." She frowned. "Feeling helpless." God, she hated to say that word aloud, and it showed. "But I can't imagine it would be fair to ask you to teach me and not tell you," another little pause, "That I was abducted as a teen, and violently mistreated. And I never want to let it happen again."

There it was. Emily couldn't look at him. She shoved her hands into her pockets and stared at one of the many pipes he'd been fixing. She was nowhere near as comfortable with her past as he seemed with his. After a moment, Emily reached up and pressed the palm of one hand against the back of her neck.

[Charlie McGee] "..."

Charlie said nothing before he finally nodded and then slid his hands out.

"Okay...with your persmission...I want you to take a stance and let me do some handiwork...I need to check your shape out before I can decide on how to go about this..."

[Emily Littleton] Okay. Emily bared her darkest secret, and Charlie said Okay and let it lie. There was a little pause, in which she half-expected him to come back to her with questions or need to know details she didn't want to disclose. But then the moment passed without further ado, and Emily shrugged out of her coat so she could take up the stance that he requested.

It was immediately obvious that she had no training, but that Emily was fairly well aware of her physical form. She was passibly athletic, even if martial arts had not previously been her sport of choice.

[Charlie McGee] Charlie moved close...before he rested his calloused fingers on her arms. It was almost like he was about to take a dance pose to do the tango with her. But then the digits moved down, the tips touching along muscles...along the limb of her left and right arm...slowly bending and then guiding it. These fingers were used to handiwork...they were use to hand chalk to give spin and less friction. There was a slight...nervousness or hesitation in touching her. It was hard to tell if it was for her sake..or his own.

He paused for a moment and then looked at her legs...his hands only touched her bottom of the limbs rather then moving up to her thighs...at least not being that indiscreet. He squeezed her calve...around her ankle before he stood some.

"Good...good...we can definitely work with this. The style I know doesn't incorporate a lot of body strength. Its more about flexibility and motion. Rhythm rather then power."

[Emily Littleton] She could handle this. For all that Emily had professed a problem with personal space, she could handle having Charlie in hers this way, announced and intentful. Respectful. At first she struggled to let him guide her limbs, but that resistence faded quickly and Emily found herself following innately.

Emily showed very little variance between her left and right sides. Most people had a clear dominance for certain tasks and it showed in how the lineaments and muscles had arranged themselves over the years. It was possible that she had a hobby or interest that had encouraged her to cross-train these strengths and weaknesses.

She listened when he spoke, and nodded her undestanding, but Emily didn't say much at first. If it seemed like he needed her to reply, somehow, she said softly, "Okay." It was a solid sound, for all its quietness. She was not alarmed, or uneasy. Well, beyond the uneasiness she normally had with anyone standing so close to her.

[Charlie McGee] "Now...before we can begin with the body though....we have to start here."

Charlie tapped his forehead, right in the center.

"I'm going to give you a mental exercise...something simple. For the next few days...I want you to imagine a lake. Then, I want you to imagine how to make that water move...how it moves...but...you cannot imagine anything other the nature itself making it move...and it cannot be the wind..it cannot be outside the lake."

Charlie smiled, this mental exercise something he had created on his own.

[Emily Littleton] Her expression shifted, thoughtful, for a moment. And Emily was clearly trying to outthink the puzzle. If he restricted the wind from the solution set, Charlie likely wasn't looking for anything like convection due to heat differentials. Emily chewed on the inside corner of her lower lip.

"Imagine why it might move, or how it moves when it does move?" she asked, pulling herself away from thinking through the details of the question and trying to look at the more circumspect, broader concepts. "There are many reasons, thermals, convection, that could make the water move in a still lake."

[Charlie McGee] Charlie smiled some.

"Less about scientific logic on this one. Think on it...when you think you have an idea...or you get stuck...come back to me."

It would seem that she would not graduate immediately into Jackie Chan and Jet Li status.

[Emily Littleton] The journey was every bit as important as the end goal. Emily didn't need to graduate immediately, but she did not like being at a loss for answers. Less science, he'd said, which ruled out most of her areas of expertise. It left her with the same floundering and confused feeling that Waking Up had, in the first place.

"Oh.... kay....," she said slowly, skeptically drawing out those two syllables until they sounded like completely distinct words. "I will work on this."

[Charlie McGee] "Good. Guess that's it for today then."

Charlie grinned good-naturedly...knowing that it was a difficult process. But it was one he had gone through during his trials as an Akashic...if she managed to figure it out...then maybe...just maybe he could teach her. Or further...she would find herself amongst the Record.

[Emily Littleton] "Alright then," she said, taking the statement for the cue it seemed to be. Emily shrugged back into her coat and seemed ready to go. But she lingered for a moment longer, regarded with him a mixture of gratitude and respect. That, like so many other of her fleeting emotions, was quickly hidden again.

"Charlie?" she asked, pausing to make sure she had his attention before she continued.

[Charlie McGee] Charlie glanced over at her as he was bent near the toolbox.

"Yeah?"

He arched a pierced eyebrow, waiting to see what she was going to say.

[Emily Littleton] "Thank you."

The words were resonant. Meaningful. Emily's eyes caught his own just long enough to lend the words their proper weight. And then she smiled, and it was a bright and warm thing again, and started to turn away.

If he didn't stop her, Emily would be finding her way out of the basement, back up to wherever it was she'd parked her car. But if he said something more, or asked her a question, she would linger a little longer.

[Charlie McGee] Charlie just bowed his head and smiled before returning to putting the tools away. There were no parting words or sagely advice to follow her. Just the lesson and the knowing that she would have to figure it out before they got further.

A grain of salt

[Emily Littleton] (( I spy with my little eye... diff 4 ))
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7 (Success x 1 at target 4)

[Emily Littleton] January is giving way, breaking down beneath their very footsteps and fingertips. It is receding into the nearness of February, making way on Winter's doorstep for self-scared groundhogs and the hope of early spring. The University campus is alive again with the timeless toils of many a student, scholar, and faculty hoping to impart in these precious short years some modicum of wonder, common sense, and elevation to the young minds they encounter. Beneath the engineering building, in a thick-walled basement room, Emily works amid twinkling LEDs and exposed PCBs.

Jarod would have had to call the lab extension, a number she left with him awhile ago. Before they had fallen into a comfortable pattern of being near each other without needing to say much, needing to do much more than breathe. She'd written it beside her cell phone number, said something nonchalant about it being her second (or third) home, and in the intervening weeks she'd pointed out that her cell had limited reception in the catacombs and depths.

There is no one else in the lab when he calls, but it still rings twice before she can pick up the phone. She answers with the department name, and her last name, in a distracted tone. Something chirps in the background at regular intervals, a decidedly inorganic sound, and Jarod has less than Emily's full attention during the call. Perhaps it is frustrating, perhaps it is expected.

She tells him that she's in the middle of something, but she'd be happy to call him when she's through. And she's distracted enough to not side-step deftly when he suggests he might just want to see her lab. There's an mmm-kay and a quick suggestion on where best to park without acquiring a ticket, a round about (but oddly direct when executed) set of directions to her building, and then down into the concrete walled hallway that leads to the lab.

In the beginning of her work here, Emily had to steel herself against the feeling of being swallowed up by the ground each time she went to the engineering lab. Falling below the plane of the Earth was a special sort of aggravation not at all unlike suffocating. Now she somewhat relished the isolation of it. The sound of footsteps in the hallway was loud enough to chase away any lingering fears (echoes) and being cut off from most of the immediacy of text messages and mobile phones helped her focus.

The door to the lab had one of those RFID card scanners on it, but it had been defeated by a cleverly placed trash can that propped the entryway open. Emily sat within, perched on a lab stool and focused intently on a contraption on the heavy-topped bench. There was an open laptop, connected to a bare board with clumsy looking components on it (not the micro-sized beautifulness of production boards). A multimeter. A schematic pinned to the wall (and perfectly level, for that) with push pins.

But Emily was not looking at her tools. She was not looking at the measurements she was supposed to be making. She was looking at the traces and components, through them, with a slightly unfocused expression. Around her thrummed the same familiar heartbeat of Home, home, home, twinned and intertwined with a growing sense of Reverence.

[Jarod Nightingale] Sooner or later, Emily and Jarod were going to have to come to terms with that they were to each other. Placing definitions on relationships was something that the Verbena found rather distasteful, and as a rule... he avoided it. Still, there was relationships of the sexual variety, and then there was the responsibility of a Disciple to take proper care of an apprentice (even if she was not, officially, his apprentice, because they'd never truly discussed it.) Emily was an intelligent girl, with a good instinct for self-preservation, but sooner or later she'd need to learn more than the few little tidbits of information he'd been tossing her way.

Sooner or later, he was going to have to actually teach her something. Jarod had no idea, of course, that another of Chicago's mages was presently trying to step in and do this for him, and maybe that was for the best. Regardless of said ignorance, he was going to try and rectify the situation. So in his usual fashion of appearing in people's lives seemingly at random, Jarod picked up the phone and dialed Emily's number. It wasn't until he tried her at the lab that he actually received a response, and though Emily seemed a bit distracted, this did not deter him from suggesting he meet her there. At the least, it would satisfy his curiosity.

It was about half an hour later that Jarod's footsteps could finally be heard outside in the hallway, and when he got to the propped open door, he pushed it open and stepped neatly past the trash can.

"So this is where Emily Littleton spends all her time these days."

[Emily Littleton] This is a neat place, a place where order reigns and chaos only dabbled. There were places to put one's tools, and open-ended cubes with ergonomic chairs for doing one's desk work. There were clear expanses of bench tops, and leveled stools to sit on, and only localized sections of disorganization when things were afoot and there was work to be done. It is a calming place, for people like them.

Emily's cube is visible from where he stands. She is working at a bench, but over to one side, at the far end fo the row of cubbie-shaped workspaces, he can see the small section of Chicago that she called home. Here, unlike the half of a rented room in which she (usually) sleeps, there are pictures from various places. Here there is a hand-drawn nameplate in bright autumn colors (with a set of what might be Chinese characters to one side). There is an electronic kettle perched atop her filing cabinet, and a tea cup quite like the ones at his apartment. Three small glass canisters with loose leaf tea.

There are little whispers and clues about her, here, where it is safe(r) to share them.

Emily must have heard him come in, but she is a little slow to turn around on her stool and face him. She blinks a few times, and the grogginess she evidences is quite similar to waking up in the early morning, blinking away the morpheus from her eyes. It is a momentary disorientation that he knows well on her features, but others might shrug off and think she had been day dreaming. Emily scootches off her lab stool, and grins when she sees him.

"Welcome!" she says (Hail, and well met! [this is how we great friends in safe places]). The British tones and more American sentiments vie for dominance in her accent. "You found it!"

Slowly, as if a barely-heard whisper is drawing to an end, the sense of Reverence begins to fade. It unravels around her and dissipates.

[Jarod Nightingale] "Yes, well, I can generally get myself around well enough, given a decent set of directions." Jarod's mouth quirked into a lazy half-smile as Emily left her seat to greet him. He seemed rather relaxed, but then he often did. Jarod tended to walk around like a housecat who was always mildly curious about everything around him, but never so much that it required him to leave his state of calm repose.

Now he was looking around Emily's workspace, noting the look and feel of the room, and of her desk. Whatever he thought of it, he didn't say. Instead he merely pursed his lips together and made a soft hmm sound.

(The Verbena, exploring an alien planet.)

"So what are you up to in here?"

[Jarod Nightingale] [Per+awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 5, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] Of course he didn't say. This was Jarod, after all. Between the two of them, they could make a career out of not saying what needed to be said at any given time. It wasn't avoidance as much as a finely honed sense of what was and wasn't necessary to divulge. Or a self-protective quietness. Perhaps.

She was more changeable than he. He was the quietly slumbering world under a bedding of snow and Emily? In recent weeks, Emily had been more like the sweep of the tides. Perhaps not quick to change, but occasionally violent in her breakings. Now, though, she seems comfortable in this alien space. He explores, and she doesn't not intervene to hide anything from him, or distract him.

He made that nondescript sound and her nose wrinkled a bit, perhaps in annoyance. Emily did not make any move to hide it from him, either, which was out of place in their interactions but perhaps forgiveable. They had been getting closer (close enough to kiss) over time.

"I'm trying to find a fault in my design," she said, with a bit of a shrug. These things happen, it seemed to say. "I'm sure of my math, but something else is going on... I suppose that's why it's called research."

Emily stretched upwards until some knot at the base of her spine gave way, and then let her arms fall down by their sides. she regarded him quizzically for a bit, then asked openly, "... So, what's important enough to bring you out among us mere mortals?"

There was a wry twist to her mouth as well, but a knowing one. Campus was far from empty, and Jarod would have had to endure at least a few overlong looks... if not more, to find her here.

[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod was used to getting looks like that. He'd long since learned how to ignore them when he wasn't in the mood to take advantage, and likely that was precisely what he'd done as he walked down the sidewalks and hallways, past curious and interested students. This was the first time that Jarod had ever been in this particular building, but he'd been down to campus once or twice before.

Emily wrinkled her nose at him in irritation, and Jarod flicked his eyes up just in time to catch it. Rather than apologize, though, he simply smirked, as if he found her disgruntled reaction to be slightly amusing. (Or maybe that was something else, and not him, entirely. It was rather a good thing that Emily could not hear the things that went on in Jarod's head, sometimes. Particularly now.)

"A shame I can't help. Engineering was never one of my subjects. Or math, for that matter." (Well, beyond the small bit that everyone had to do.) "Sometimes I think we come from two completely different worlds. But then... there are always those things that surprise you about people. The little details that make them human." He was musing aloud, now, and let the thought trail off in his own head.

"I thought about what you said to me last time. About your avatar. It wants you to learn? So I think I should teach you. Before someone else does it for me and bungles the whole thing up."

[Emily Littleton] "Ah, well, yes then," Emily inserted a quiet sort of agreement into Jarod's opinion on her strengths and weaknesses. She didn't mention that it had surprised her to learn than he translated books, when he wasn't modeling. That was neither here nor there, and would likely bring up a different upsetting topic. Instead she added, "Well, if you ever need something taken apart and put back together... that's me. Or, I suppose, help with your computer." But she'd really rather not.

Emily shrugged a bit and let him muse. Right up until he brought up her Avatar. She caught the inside edge of her lower lip with her teeth and shifted, bring her arms across her torso to hug against her. It was definitely a defensive posture.

"Now that's... eerie. Do you all have some sort of bulliten board I don't know about?" she asked, and there was a little burr to the edge of her tone. To most, it made her sound a little more British. Jarod would be able to separate it from the accent entirely. And she was addressing him as part of the collective of something greater, a collective to which she did not belong.

Emily's mouth set into a thin line. "Because I just had this conversation with Wharil this afternoon and I do not want to chat with my Atman, thank you very much. At least not today."

There was a stubbornness to the set of her jaw, the glint in her eye, the way she kept the space between them separate and clearly defined all of a sudden. Emily had drawn some sort of intangible line in the sand, either earlier with Wharil or here now with Jarod. And she was not beyond defending it, however misguided that defense may be.

[Jarod Nightingale] There were many parts to Emily's argument, just now, that Jarod might have latched upon to either respond to or take offense at. Perhaps amusingly, that thing was not her prickly dismissal of his suggestion, but rather, her use of the term Atman.

In fact, he actually broke through that barrier of calm perfection enough to show a wrinkle of displeasure on his face. Something like a mix of irritation and... worry.

"Emily... if you want to go talking to other members of the awakened world, I would highly recommend taking the things they say with a grain of salt. Especially if you want to talk to a Euthanatos. Unless, of course, you have designs to spend the rest of your life as a glorified assassin. In which case, be my guest. Personally, I'd rather study life than death. It's a lot more interesting, and it has a lot more wisdom to impart."

He took a breath, then... and somehow managed to smooth over the anger that had begun to surface in his voice.

"Anyway, no, there wasn't a bulletin. And no, I wasn't planning on suggesting you have a conversation with anything but me."

[Emily Littleton] There was a lot to process in what he said, so many layers to it. But the first thing that hits home is that Jarod is not telling her to do something, not laying the responsibility for her piece of soulstuff at her feet and charging her with anything more than a conversation. It's enough to make the rigidity in her form and features faulter, fade. Emily's jaw unclenches and the haughtiness falls from her eyes.

"Thank God," she said softly. Emily took a few steps back and perched herself back on the lab stool once more. She reached up to press the fingertips of one hand in to her temple, closed her eyes, and exhaled heavily.

The space between them no longer thrummed with that enforced boundary. Her resolve and separateness had softened. In the seconds that passed, Emily tried to wind her mind around the rest of what he'd said. The assassin bit, that bothered her.

"I ... don't want to kill anyone," she said, looking up to him at long last with naked concern. "I..." her expression darkened, pained a bit, and she looked down at her hands again. Closed her eyes against a memory she had had to drink down just earlier in the month. "I don't think I could do it."

Not and keep the quiet sense of Reverence she had had when he walked into the room. Almost as an after thought, Emily turned enough to reach over with her left hand, type a few things into the keyboard of the laptop and close it. Then she turned back to him, somewhat quieter and more settled, and said quietly, "I'm... sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that."

[Jarod Nightingale] I ... don't want to kill anyone, Emily said, and her voice sounded pained. Her expression was much like what anyone's would be, when faced with such a brutal reality, and for a brief moment, Jarod had the urge to close the space between them and put his arms around her. That may have led to self-distraction though, so instead he remained where he was, leaning against a desk with his arms folded across his chest.

"You might have to. Some day. To keep yourself, or others, alive. Killing is a necessary part of survival. But it should not be done... to excess. And if you can avoid it, then all the better. Life shouldn't be wasted. Especially not yours." He paused to take a breath. "And I hope very much that you won't have to hurt or kill anyone for a long time. Because it's not a pleasant experience. It stays with you."

He sounded like he was speaking from experience.

"Anyway, you don't need to apologize. Just try not to make assumptions where I'm concerned. Actually... I was going to ask if there was anything in particular you wanted to focus on learning? If not, I can decide for you. But... it's for your benefit, after all, so you should have some say."

[Emily Littleton] There it was. An understanding. Jarod had probably taken a life in his time. And would likely do it again, for the right reasons at the right time. Emily was left to decide how she felt about that, and weigh it against the very real knowledge that if she had been able to, once, she would have done the same to survive. It wasn't something she liked to think about, and it wasn't something she would openly admit, but she had been pushed to a breaking point once before and she knew what it was like to know you weren't going to see the other side... and yet wake up into a new morning anyway.

It is a solemn space, the lab. In this moment, it is the seat of some important conversations, some nascent but developing boundaries. Jarod is on his side of the room, and in this moment he is not her lover or necessarily even her friend. Mentor. Apprentice. This is a strange balance for them to strike so formally and Emily is not sure how to carry herself.

"I have been learning what I can. Talking to people, asking questions, especially about what has happened lately. Kage, Ashley, Wharil, you... you've all helped. I've thought about talking to Charlie, some, because a bit of what he says sounds familiar from living in China." Emily shrugged a bit, and for all her disclosures she seemed a bit withdrawn. "Enid and I don't talk about this. Jon's given me his card, and I think he teaches one of my seminar courses this term."

It might surprise him how far she'd worked her way into the community in a few short months, how many directions she'd been willing to explore to get her feet grounded in what she was becoming. Emily didn't seem to think much of it, beyond that this was an ultimately frustrating research project and no one used the same vocabulary words.

As to what she wanted to learn... "Wharil and Kage both told me to focus on the feeling of things. I think he called it Awareness. I've been keeping a journal," she didn't point it out to him, but it was good to know that these things (secrets) were being documented somehow. "And Kage showed me..."

Here's the shift. Emily's expression filtered through a flummoxed look (How do you describe...), to a fondness (Something lost... [something remembered]), to a quiet sense of awe that was left unvoiced. She hung there, suspended in that quite moment for a moment before continuing.

"Kage showed me (Grace) something I thought I'd lost long ago. I would like to learn that, and what you do. These things first. Others to follow."

Emily's fingers came up to toy with the chain around her neck. They pulled the locket free of her sweater, and she wrapped her fingers around it. But she didn't not hold tight to it. Instead it was almost as if she held her breath, slightly, as if breathing might disturb whatever it was she was trying so hard in that moment to hear beyond the threads of the physical world. Then her hand slipped away again, and the expression faded. Emily said nothing to him of the Song of Everything, or the places she'd heard it as a very young child. Those were not secrets for this place, or this time, or even necessarily for him.

[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod listened to all this, and if Emily expected him to be upset... his reaction might take her by surprise. Instead, he merely raised his eyebrows slightly, and for awhile he said nothing.

"You've been busy, I see." Now he straightened to his full height and crossed the distance between them. His steps were slow and deliberate, and as he moved he glanced around at the room again briefly, as if in contemplation. When he met Emily's eyes again, he smiled. "That's good. It's good to get as many opinions as possible. Education shouldn't be about soaking up someone else's Dogma. It should be about... truth."

Truth? This from the man who had mastered the art of the beautiful lie. Odd, that word, coming from his lips.

"And truth is mutable. Difficult to pin down. It takes more subjectivity than one would imagine. The more you see... the more you hear. The more you experience, the closer you get to it." He paused again, and grinned. "But don't tell the cultists I said that. They've been trying to recruit me for years."

He took a breath, to bring himself back to a more serious tone. "Anyway, the important thing is learning to listen with a discerning ear. To pick out the truth from the fantasy. To take from things only what you need, and not what the other person wants you to have. And there, see, I finally gave you some good advice. Maybe I'll make an alright mentor after all."

[Emily Littleton] Emily listened. She listened the way she had listened to Wharil earlier that afternoon, with the full weight of her attention: mind, body and soul. It is an uncomfortable thing, to be scrutinized as carefully as those weighty dark eyes could watch another person, to see the flicker of acceptance, understanding, skepticism, and wariness all at once within their depths. To see the openness, however honest, however forced, she managed to keep.

There is a solemnity to it as well, a ritual, a purposefulness. Whatever he has said is not lost on her, and Jarod will have no doubt that she is drinking it in, digesting it, changing it and fitting in into the beginnings of her paradigm. She's done the same weighing, judging and discarding with whatever everyone else has told her as well. Perhaps not until she'd gotten too upset about one bit or another to see straight, or perhaps not before she'd put herself in over her head. But the weeding out and whittling down and recrafting of a world view is something familiar to Emily. It is something she has done her entire life, as she bounced between one place and another.

"If things don't work out, you can always blame it on your student," she said, with a light touch of their usual banter, wryness, touch the corner of her mouth and the edge of her tone. "I've been told I'm ... difficult," she admitted, "at times."

He is closer now, but this new pattern has been set and she's not sure if she should reach out to him or stay seated and mind her own spaces. Emily decides on the latter, keeping her seat and watching him openly. They do not say what mentoring might mean for the other ways they've known each other, and she is not ready to ask. Emily is rarely ready to ask such questions. So again, with the quiet, and again, with the feeling of being suspended between two polarities.

[Jarod Nightingale] "Good students are seldom easy. I certainly wasn't. The first person who tried to teach me about all this nearly gave up on me at one or two points, I think." Well, she had given up on him, in the end... but that was a different matter, and not Emily's concern. Neither was it something that Jarod was inclined to discuss. Ever.

They were close, but neither of them reached out to meet the other. Instead, Jarod glanced around the room again, briefly, and sighed.

"I don't think... I can do it here. The energy isn't right. But I want to show you, if you want to learn. Let's go to the woods again, tomorrow. And we'll work on helping you sense things. Just... you know, don't be impatient. It takes awhile to pick up a new sphere of knowledge. That's always the hardest part."

[Emily Littleton] Emily arched an eyebrow in mock surprise, and it is again one step closer to their usual behaviors. "Oh? You do not approve of my technophilic demesne?" she enquired, lightly, not at all surprised that he did not wish to exercise his will within her safety net of numbers and maths and schematics.

Emily stretched a little, again. It was not as felinesque or sensual as Jarod's early morning stretches, but her body ached to be in motion again and it was telling her that this was too long of a tense conversation. That she needed to stretch more when she went running in the early afternoons. That the stools were not as comfortable as their ergonomics suggested.

"I would like to learn. Whatever my Avatar is, it would like me to learn something more than vocabulary words. On this much we can agree, and it may be th eonly thing we agree on right now. I would like to be helpful some day, too, though I imagine that's quite a ways off from now." Emily put that thought back on the table, knowing full well that Jarod would only brush it aside again. The magi in Chicago had no real need for an Orphan apprentice, and unless they asked her to keep their cars or computers running, Emily was unlikely to be of much help to them as she was.

"If it is alright with you, I think I am going to ask Charlie to teach me some self-defense as well. He seems to need to be helpful, and maybe I would be less... anxious... if I had the skillset to defend myself, at least physically."

Ho, hum, nothing to see here. Emily's mask had slipped back into place somewhere between asking for permission and finishing her sentence. She wasn't really confessing anything, because they both knew there had been ... something ... in her past that was weighing down her mind and eating into her sleep given the recent past.

Emily sighed a bit and looked around the lab, too. It wouldn't take her long to clean up, and whatever drive she had had to work late into the evening had dissipated when Jarod started talking about magic in the middle of her quiet, safe, zone of sanity.

[Jarod Nightingale] [Per+empathy - watchoo hiding there?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 5)

[Emily Littleton] (( Just a long day, that's all - Manip + Subt ))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Jarod Nightingale] Whatever Emily was keeping to herself... tonight, Jarod wasn't able to see it. There were more invasive measure to be tried, but... trying something like that would have been a breach of trust. So he didn't. Instead he accepted the fact that she was being a little closed off, and left it at that. (After all, how often did he project precisely the same thing?)

Instead, he focused on responding to her questions. When she asked him if he approved of her technophilic demesne, he laughed. "It's not a matter of approval. This just... isn't how I work." And because a rather dominant voice in his head was presently voicing a slightly less considerate view on the matter, he did finally add, "And you're not the only one with a little voice in her head."

When she asked if she could take lessons from someone who Jarod didn't know and had never met, he merely shrugged. "Might not be a bad idea. You don't need to ask my permission to learn something. Just be smart, and careful. And if someone tries to force you to come around to their way of thinking, just listen to your gut and tell them to fuck off."

And now... finally, he pressed forward to close the distance between them, reaching out to take Emily's face in his hands gently as he kissed her. It was a soft kiss, and nothing too pressing or needful. Reassurance, maybe.

"I suppose I should leave you be. Unless you want to come back with me?"

[Emily Littleton] There was no one in the lab to see him kiss her, or to notice the way the tendrils of stress and fear and solemnity uncoiled and slipped away from her in his closeness. Jarod had an answer to his question long before Emily's eyes blinked open again and she looked up at him with a quiet softness.

"If I go back with you, may I stay the night?" she asked, not because he'd ever kicked her out before but because she had class in the morning. And by the time they'd spent any time toether at his place, and she drove home, got settled and sleeping... she'd have not much time to rest before her courses began again in the morning. And she wanted to go back with him. But there were other pulls on her time, now.

"Otherwise, I'll get home rather late. And iIf I'm late for class, my A yi will give me another lecture about my marks." Emily's mouth twisted, fondly. "One a week is enough for me," she added. Again, the foreign word seemed not so foreign at all on her tongue.

And if he hadn't come by? There was a strong possibility that she'd have slept in the lab, on the couch in the break area or in her cube. It had happened before, mostly when she needed some sense of quiet and control over her surroundings.

[Jarod Nightingale] "Of course you can. Wouldn't want you to get behind, now, would we?"

It was an easy answer, given freely from someone who so very rarely actually invited people to spend the night in his bed. Not that he kicked them out, either... no, Jarod was very skilled at handling those sorts of things with grace and courtesy. He was probably one of those people who could break up with someone, and end up with them thinking it was their idea. (Not that he'd ever had cause to do that, since breaking up required... actually dating someone to begin with.)

Jarod took a step back and let his hands settled into his pockets briefly, prepared to wait for Emily to do whatever it was she might need to do before leaving. "You'll just have to remind me not to keep you up too late." Because he had a habit of doing that.

So Jarod waited, and then, when Emily was ready, they left together. And it was an easy thing, to slip back into something more familiar than teacher and student. To just be together, and enjoy each other, for the remainder of the evening.

A force of creation

[Emily Littleton] January is coming to a close, ushering out the days of Happy New Years and resolutions. Sweeping clean the doorstep of Winter, making room for the hope of early Spring. Soon, but not too soon, there would be talk of Groundhogs and other superstitions. Soon, but not too soon, she would begin lusting for warmer weather, tee-shirts, shorts, and sunburnt shoulders. Soon, they Chicagoan collective would begin imagining leaf shoots and flower buds on still dormant trees.

As it is, she has returned to campus with an aura of expectation, hope, a clarity of purpose known only to those who have (had) a map of where they are, where they were, and where they are going. University was a singular experience in Emily's life; such clarity she has not known before this loose grouping of years. She wears the mantle of a student well. Her messenger bag hangs across her body, moves as if it has been assumed into part of her being. She navigates the campus and near-campus with a preternatural understanding of here and there. It is Home, as close as any place has been to Home for her.

So she happens upon the meeting place without flourish or hesitation. She is carrying two paper cups, each with thin wisps of steam rising from their take-away lids. One hand is also precariously carrying a small paper bags, its edges tied up in the fingers that hold fast to the paper cup. In the bag is creamers, sugars and a swizzle stick for mixing. The contents of this hand -- bag, cup -- are offered to Wharil whenever he may part the veil of her seeming inattention and step out of the anonymity that cloaks him like a shadow in the minds of many.

"Hi there," she says, with a lighter sort of smile. Emily is unburdened, and the British tinge to her voice has receded somewhat. She is quieter, and sounds more American than he has heard her to date.

[Wharil Choc] There was something nostalgic about being on or near a college campus, even when it wasn't your own. There was something attractive about the idea of student life, even for one who had left it behind. Wharil was himself distracted by this thought. By the warm comfort that surrounded a person as they soaked knowledge from the very brick and mortar. The practical side of him knew, of course, that it didn't work like that. No matter where you went.

"Hey Emily." He says with his usual jubilant smile, accepting the cup and bag gingerly, so as not to burn himself or drop either. "You're...in a good mood."

[Emily Littleton] "I had a good weekend," she replied, settling in beside him -- near enough to talk, but not near enough to do anything more than that -- and wrapping her fingers around the paper take-away cup and its corrugated paper sleeve (to prevent those burnt fingers [insulator]). "I saw my Ai-ee," the Chinese word rolled off her tongue like any other fond endearment, leaving no hint that she was void in functional understanding of that language.

"I had some paying work to do, too," she added, which was always a plus in student life. Jobs that paid were few and far between for most. "And I spent some time with a good friend of mine in a city I miss."

So, she was away. Though Emily showed no signs of jet lag, and that readiness was not aided by any magical effects, so it was Wharil's guess where she might have been.

"How was your weekend?" Artfully turning the question around, Emily fixed Wharil with a curious gaze. Her eyes were a deep blue, flecked through with bits of grey, stormy, and in their own way intense at times. Today they were intensely curious, warm and friendly. Perhaps his jubilant smile was just contagious, because it touched her mouth and eyes too.

She sipped at her coffee and waited on his reply.

[Wharil Choc] The smile became a thought in the back of his mind as he worked on opening a peeking hole in the coffee cup through which he could apply a bit of sugar. A bit of cream.

"Not as exciting as yours. Got my hands dirty. Cleaning mostly. Entirely the opposite of glamorous as a matter of fact. But I did get to see a couple of old friends that I haven't seen in a while. What's an...Ai-ee?"

[Emily Littleton] She nodded when he mentioned that his weekend had been more about chores than adventure and excitement. Sometimes that was how the cookie crumbled. Emily had gotten a respite from the magely weirdness of her winter, Wharil had returned to mundanity of cleaning up (or so she imagined) and then he was asking after... well... Family.

"Ah, it means Auntie. For very loose definitions of Aunt." She said ahn't not ant, and for the first time the Britishisms slipped back in. Otherwise her accent was not tinged with that familiar note too much. "It's also used for non-familial relations, like friends of your mother or so. My Ai-ee is a friend's mother, who became a lot like my Chinese mum when we lived over-seas. She nags me about my marks, sends me red envelopes for New Year, makes me eat my vegetables and tells me to find a nice Chinese boy to settled down with."

Emily smirked a bit at this last, and playfully rolled her eyes. Then she sipped from her coffee and shrugged again. "If you move around enough, bits and pieces of other cultures stick to you, I guess. This is one of those many things that isn't American or British, but seems perfectly normal to me. Until someone asks after it."

[Wharil Choc] "Oh, I understand. I understand perfectly. Just wait until you meet your first Greek guru."

He gives a huff of laughter at that, taking the first sip of his coffee and shaking his head.

"Roman ships decked with Greek gods. There are certain truths that are simply universal. Like uh...Well, like the love of a mother, I guess. What about the journal? Any new entries?"

[Emily Littleton] Emily digs in her messenger bag for a moment, pulling out the red notebook with the Cubbies logo and handing it over to Wharil with very little fanfare. There are fewer notes this time, just two entries of note since she's seen him last, but at least one should pique the Euthanatos's interest. As before, they are dated. These are a little more verbose than before.

Malleability
Androgeny? Magic encompasses the ability not only to heal rends in flesh or breaks in bone, but also to change the fundamental nature of a thing: in this case gender. Though it creates a fundamental cognizant dilemma, it seems to be a rather complete transformation. Temporary and utterly reversible.

Visitation
Wind. I am trying to recall the other instances in which a precipitous feeling of moving air has presaged an unfamiliar or uncharacteristic choice or interaction. None so alarming as last night, though, when I heard voices and felt the presence of a ... something. ("Avatar", -JN) This other, a/my? Avatar, is displeased. Implied I should be learning more than words. Spoke in familiar voices, taken out of context -- Gregory, Cedric, Ling, Wharil, Jarod, me. Cold. Insistent. Restless.

She sips at her coffee, watching him out of the corner of her eye as he reads.

[Wharil Choc] Wharil reads casually at first, taking a second glance at a particular page while his other hand navigated the coffee cup toward his lips. He muttered a curious 'Hm' at a certain point, but eventually simply turned the page to the next entry.

The next entry, it seems, required both hands for him to read. And he read it twice. With the coffee cup hastily placed on the bench between them, Wharil fumbled about his pockets, finally finding a pen, uncapping, and adding his own notes to the page.

Where she had written Avatar he included what seemed like complicated scribbles (&+2310;&+2340;&+2381;&+2350;&+2344;&+2381;) and in more legible letters the word '&+256;tman' beside it. Wharil handed the book back to her.

"A little advanced, don't you think? The Malleability entry. You know why its reversible? Its cuz...no. No you're better off finding that one out yourself."

He inhales deeply, thoughtfully. The coffee has been completely forgotten now and his eyes seem to inspect Emily for a long time. And then he says:

"Excellent. Training your awareness like this, and your understanding of...everything, will pay off in the long run. For now though, Its time to move on."

[Emily Littleton] Emily twitched a little when Wharil lined out something in her notebook, scribbled something in the margins, didn't date or initial any of it. She would fix that, later, when he was not looking at her so intently. He would find his name restored on the page, with a notation. And a "W" and the date beside the odd letters he'd added. Emily was a bit fastidious about her documenation, especially in what she viewed as a laboratory notebook.

She tucked the notebook away again with a small nod. Looking at the messenger bag gave her a break from Wharil's intense dark eyes. And then she was looking back up at him with a curious expression.

"Move on, how?"

[Wharil Choc] "You've been contacted. By your Atman. Its...a part of yourself, a part of the universe, that is striving for...well, in a word: Ascendance. You're Atman obviously wants something. It will guide you to where you need to be and to what it needs you to become. So your next step is to find out what that is. And the best way to do that is to ask it."

[Emily Littleton] Emily's eyebrows inched up as Wharil spoke. Bit by bit they crept toward the top of her forehead. Incredulous. Displeased.

"I don't much like its tone," she said, just on this side of seriousness. Emily left out the part where she'd been left scared and sleepless by its late night version of a tete-a-tete. "And it talks to me, not the other way around. Or pushes when it wants me to do something and I'm not naturally inclined. I don't think we can just sit down and have a chat, one on one, if that's what you mean."

[Wharil Choc] There's that smile on his face again, but this time it seems a bit less jubilant, and a bit more amused. Condescendingly so, in fact.

"It takes a bit of effort for the Atman to contact you, especially if you haven't developed a proper connection with it just yet. And yes, it will push and insist, and sometimes even threaten if it goes too long without getting its way. Like I said, its a part of the universe. When you die it'll go off and find another soul in another time. You're awakening isn't just an awakening to magic. Its an awakening to the Atman's needs.

"And you're wrong. You can communicate with it. You must. Just as there'll come a time when you'll feel like you must work against it. But that...that's something I can't teach you. I can, however, teach you how to cast off the external and listen to where it's guiding you. It was hard for me at first to imagine it too, but it is possible."

[Emily Littleton] The look doesn't phase Emily anymore. She's grown used to the condescending laughter of a particular Verbena disciple, which grates along her nerve endings like sandpaper on some occasions. So a smirk? Well, yes, that's far more tolerable.

But something else does unsettle her. This talk of souls, of having something interfacing with her inviolate sense of self. The seat of her connection to some sort of divinity. That this rush of wind, this harsh voice, might preempt that. Emily sets her coffee aside, now, folds her arms across her middle, now, and bows her head thoughtfully.

"So the Atman is... like a leech, or a remora, or some other thing attached to another body for sustenance or purpose or survival? Does it choose indiscriminantly? What if my wants or needs are not in line with its? Who takes precedence now... you speak of its needs. Is Awakening entering into a life of servitude to this other?"

Such heavy questions, yet the fall like rain from her lips. Emily, who has never evidenced to Wharil any great proclivity for Faith, is ... concerned. Contemplative.

[Wharil Choc] "That's a really dark way of looking at it. Let me put it to you this way, and I warn you this is pretty much the dogma of my tradition so when this J.N. guy you write about tells you something completely different try not to get too confused."

He takes a breath, eyes finally moving away from her as he tries to gather his thoughts.

"You don't read Sanscrit, do you? This would be so much easier if I could just have you read it for yourself.

"Anyway, Its the basis of every creationist story. In the beginning there was nothing. Then there was something. Well, that first something was singular, unified, and stagnant. There was no room for life or creation or beauty. Then, at some point, unity became chaos and the universe that we know started taking shape. Little pieces of everything broke off and went out and did their own thing.

"They created sentience and will. They created matter and life and the space between the planets and the time it took for them to spin, and the energy they held and even the cycles in which they were created, destroyed, and created again. They formed reality as we know it, basically. And even some forms of reality that we still don't know.

"Now, your Atman is one of those pieces. Only now it seeks to shape a bit of the universe through you. It's as nefarious and unpleasant as the universe is nefarious and unpleasant. Its as generous and benevolent as the universe is generous and benevolent. And, most importantly, its as powerful as all reality. But it needs you. It chose you, either because you, in this instance, are special or because you were special in a past life."

"Now the thing to remember is...you hold power as well. You, Emily Littleton, hapless human, hold the power to shape your Atman simply by will of it being with you. You're decisions and choices affect it as much as it affects you."

And here he pauses, tensing his lips and knitting his eyebrows together.

"You remember when you asked me about...Marauders?"

[Emily Littleton] She listened. Emily listened to him in the way that only scholars of Faith and students of the Universe could listen to a tale of Creation (Genesis). She listens while he wraps a familiar hymn around an unfamiliar tongue, ties it up in trappings that call to hear, and makes the whole thing easier to unfurl again in her mind. She does not watch him while he talks, instead focusing on a spot a little behind him, a little above his shoulder. Emily listens with the full weight of her attention: mind, body and soul.

Perhaps he can see a little why an Atman would choose her. There are many things hidden behind her plain exterior, many things that may influence the choice to Awaken or might, in time, move mountains.

"Now that I can understand," she says, and while it is meant to be light and somewhat reverent the words come out as breathy and a bit distracted. It is there, though, the nascent Reverence building in her pattern and strengthening with each Awakened day. There is a remote fondness to her features, an abstraction as she turns away from something higher to the question of those who have Fallen.

"... Yes. I do." And it is gone, the reverence, the Faith. She is just a girl standing beside him too near to campus, talking about the stuffs of faerie tales and magic.

[Wharil Choc] "A Marauder is what happens when one of us goes mad. Not just mad, but completely batshit crazy. They're literally trapped in their own insane reality, cut off from everything else. What's worse is, after a while, their Atman begins to warp to match that world. It goes crazy as well. And when the Marauder dies, if it ever does, the next incarnation is just as messed up because that madness goes along with it.

"The same is true for a Nephandus. That's when one of us serves...well, to avoid another overly long explanation lets just call them 'The forces of darkness' if you don't mind. Their Atman's can become blood thirsty, vicious, and completely depraved, and drive the mage to follow suit."

"So, You can see why its equally important for you to put your foot down when the time is right. Trust in your Atman. Follow where it guides. But keep your wits about you."

[Emily Littleton] "So... I'm responsible now, not only for my own well-being, but also for the relative sanity of the force of creation coupled to my soul. And should I venture into paths unknown, I might corrupt a painfully powerful entity for all time's sake?"

Emily looked to him for confirmation of this much. He could, perhaps, understand why it was a bit much to swallow in one sitting. At least all the loose threads and impromptu lessons of the past months were coming together into a cohesive plan. Unfortunately it sounded a lot like the cliche: With great power comes great responsibility.

[Wharil Choc] "Yup!" He says cheerily. "Don't worry, its not as bad as it might seem. I've been doing it for twelve years now, and I'm perfectly fine. You will be too, I promise.

"Okay, now here's the good news. The cleaning that I've been doing this weekend? Its so we can get back into that safe spot that i spoke to you and Enid about. It should be safe to go to, except for the smell, so we can meet there next time and work on you actually interacting with your Atman."

[Emily Littleton] Her expression pinched a little, and Emily's arms unwrapped from her middle finally. She looked at her hands, as if she was seeing something in or on them that was not there any more. Discomfitted, she tried to push the feeling back and away, tried to find something else to focus on as she picked up her coffee cup again and took a long sip.

Strangely, Emily makes no effort to hide the transgression of these dark emotions across her features. Perhaps she is less mindful of that deception around him now, or after a pleasant weekend.

"That would be the Chantry, right?" she asked, with an unusual burr to her tone. Emily had put a few things together, by talking to several people, by asking a lot of pointed questions. Just like this one.

[Wharil Choc] He'd said it all as a positive. They had a place now. Somewhere they could meet and teach and learn. Somewhere safe. Emily's reaction was the opposite of what he'd expressed, and his cheer falls away with it.

"Yes. The Chantry. Why, what's wrong with it?"

[Emily Littleton] "..." The quiet was her first response. Emily knew something, something that he hadn't expected her to know or recall. The levity was gone. The Reverence was gone. Something solemn, pained, and quietly scared remained in its stead.

"You got all of that cleaned up? Over the weekend?" She looked down at her hands again, made a small nauseated face at her coffee and set it aside.

[Wharil Choc] He sighs at that, leaning back onto the bench and re-discovering his coffee.

"Yeah well." He says in between sips. "Somebody had to. I'd forgotten. You kinda...saw all that, didn't you?"

[Emily Littleton] "I saw enough," she said with a little shrug. Emily rolled her shoulders, hunching forward a little. It made her seem smaller, somehow. Diminished. And she was slight to begin with.

She let the silence stretch out between them like taffy, pulling back into herself for a while. Unfocused. And then, when she couldn't bear to stand like that in the cold and the quiet, Emily spoke up abruptly. "So, I ... suppose I should be going."

It seemed like the appropriate thing to say, now that she'd run aground something she didn't really want to discuss again. And Wharil had grown quiet. There was too much quiet here for just two people.

[Wharil Choc] Another pronounced, almost frustrated sigh.

"Emily." He starts, but doesn't seem to know where to go from there. Wharil shakes his head, and nods toward her, but otherwise looks away.

"Thanks for the coffee. And I was serious about the contact thing. I'd say take your time and think about it, but...I think you might be on somebody else's schedules right now."

[Emily Littleton] "Kage and I always have something, tea or cocoa or cider, when we talk. I thought it might be nice," she said, about the coffee. Hinting again that she was feeling her way through the community with more than just him. Her voice was warmer now, and a little compassionate.

"... What do you mean by someone else's schedule? My Av--Atman's?" She corrected her vocabulary halfway through the more familiar word to be the one that Wharil had chosen instead.

[Wharil Choc] He nods, still not getting up to leave. She would probably leave him here, and in some romantic fairytale notion he would stay there forever until he was forgotten. In less romantic terms he'd probably just finish his coffee before walking to the nearest trashcan.

"It wants something from you, obviously. And it's not afraid to drive you. Unless you find out what it wants li ke I said, it'll only get worse."

[Emily Littleton] "It was pretty straightforward about that, to be utterly frank," she said, with an edge of irritation to her voice that he may or may not pick up. The Britishness was worming its way back to the forefront of her tone, becoming more noticeable now that they had strayed back to upsetting topics.

"It does not like that all I've learned in two months' time is vocabulary." She said it flatly, like she was reporting something to him. It was stripped of her own emotions as much as possible, and perhaps that was telling enough for him. "But it bothers me, the way it pushes. And the Chantry bothers me, because I carried bodies to someone's trunk there. And the thought of combining the two is a little too much for me right this moment."

Irritated gave way to blatant frustration. Emily's fingers tightened around the paper cup, threatened to deform it in her frustration.

"Excuse me for not wanting to hurry right into all of that, alone, again, just yet."

There came a pause, a heavy sigh, and Emily reached up to press the fingertips of one hand into the little indentation of her temple. Her hand shook, slightly. She willed back the fear masquerading as anger, trying to shove it down some place where it wouldn't seethe out at Wharil again.

"Unless, of course, there's a way to have a civilized chat with these Atman... Atmen? And then, in another setting, perhaps I'll try."

[Wharil Choc] It occurs to him, as well, to lash out. To tell her to suck it up and go off on a tirade about the amount of dead bodies he's had to stuff into someone's trunk, or furnace, or acid bath, or deteriorate with nothing more than his will.

He sips his coffee instead.

"Atman. You pick the setting, I'll show you how."

[Emily Littleton] "Fine," she says, and the word is imbued with all of its usual feminine connotations. It does not mean fine in that tone of voice, not when voiced with that look in her eyes, or that set to her jaw or any of the myriad of conflicting cues. It is an acknowledgement of some sort, and a promise in some way, but unless Wharil is particularly well versed in the subtleties of angry women he is unlikely to unravel what Emily's particular inflection of Fine might mean.

"I'll call you," she adds, leaving it at that. Perhaps there was more to that thought, but she will not give it voice. There's a moment, for parting remarks if he might make them, and then the Apprentice turns -- not quite on her heel, not quite proudly or haughtily -- to make her exit. Somewhere nearby a trash bin is the unwitting recipient of an angrily discarded take away cup. Further away yet a door or three on campus is unceremoniously slammed shut behind her.

Fine, she has said, but Emily is anything but.

[Wharil Choc] Wharil only sighs as she storms off. If he thought ill of it, or if he was expecting more from it, he didn't let on. Or he tried not to, anyway. His silence, and his letting her go without question, might have been illustration enough.

At least, he thought, the coffee was a nice touch. He finished it there, staring out beyond the throngs of people. And stayed there. Forever. Until he was forgotten.