Running in circles

[Enid Geraint] Where do you run in the winter?

This is what started this excursion, a simple call, a cry for help in stress relief, and goodness knows Enid had needed it too. She'd been pleased, really, to have a partner to share her run even if she doesn't particularly care to talk about why she's so keen on said company. It's just a thing, a mood, everyone gets them especially in winter, and there is no doubt that winter has hit Chicago. It's not as bitter cold today as it has been in days previous, but still – it's chilly.

I usually run outside, had been the obvious answer. I'll meet you at Grant Park. Things are . . . kind of weird here right now.

So, at around noon, the two girls meet at the start of one of the mile-marked trails in the park. Enid is clearly a runner; she knows what to wear for this sort of thing, how many layers, what fabrics, and so forth. Stretching comes first, of course (no one wants an injury), and then the run starts – slow at first to get muscles used to such exertion in the cold.

“How was Taipei?”

It's better than talking about her own holiday.

[Emily Littleton] Emily hadn't run outside in the snow in a long time. Not as more than an incidental or playful jaunt. She hadn't run like she had something to burn off, cast away, escape (prove) in a long time, but she wasn't a slouch either. She'd kept fit enough at Northwestern's facilities, but it was always better to have someone to run with. Someone who had a little bit of the past to put (further) behind them as well.

Emily does not know the proper number of layers, so she asks Enid in advance for advice. The older girl is not shy about it, or particularly dismayed by asking for help. She's no native Chicagoan, used to weathering winters below freezing. When they meet, she's wearing more or less what Enid suggested. She's also got her iPod, in case this is just running... and not running as a foil for catching up.

They stretch, and Emily asks Enid to start off easy on her with a light-hearted smile. All the same, there is something off-kilter about the dark-haired Orphan. A thin (keening) thrum that's wrapped around her in place of the usual Home, home, home.

"Warm," Emily replied, almost wistfully. "But smoggy. Don't run outside there... I think you'd do in your lungs." Emily let the feeling of the ground beneath her feet hammer into her bones, up her legs, rising up her spine before she added more. "It's strange going back to that now. I... I don't really belong anymore."

[Enid Geraint] Enid also has her iPod (or rather, her iPhone), though that won't get turned on until the pace gets picked up; for now, they're warming up and talking is still possible. The burn of muscle hasn't started yet, nor is breath coming in dagger-sharp pants.

“Yeah? I guess it'd be that way after a long time away.”

She says this as if she understands it, though they've already discussed this; Enid's lived in or near Chicago her whole life, and hasn't traveled much either. There's quiet for a bit, and then, “We'll make a nice slow loop all the way around – it takes a bit to get used to this kind of running. And, if you're still up for it after that, we can pick up the pace. It's a mile, this path, so it'll probably take between twelve and fifteen minutes.” Which is a roughly average mile time – not great, but not slow, either.

“When I do this one, I usually go for at least five.”

She's a distance runner, then – not a sprinter. What she lacks in speed, she makes up for in staying power. And after that, there's quiet for a while; going by the markers, it's about a quarter mile before she speaks up again.

“Everything went alright while you were gone? You got your thinking time and everything?”

[Emily Littleton] She laughs a little, and it forces her breathing out of its rhythmn, leaving her quieter for several more footfalls until she can answer Enid more completely. "It went alright, I guess." Emily would have shrugged, but what does that do you when you're running. She was focused on keeping her feet grounded on the winter pavement more than being properly emotive.

"My mother wishes I'd brought someone home with me; my father thinks I need to learn Mandarin. Greg--probably the only person I wanted to see--stayed at the Manchester House this year because of some last minute thing. But there were nice parties... "

She tossed Enid a look, a curled smile that was just short of snarky. "And I got plenty of time to think on the plane." For a moment there was just the sound of the feet hitting the pavement, their strides a little out of time with one another. "I don't think I figured anything out, but I did think quite a bit. How about you?"

She stopped short of asking whether she had someone to kiss for New Year's. Emily wasn't sure what had happened in Enid's life lately, and didn't want to poke at any sore spots. The girl had been through enough.

[Enid Geraint] “Things were complicated,” Enid answers with a frown, and the shrug that doesn't hit her shoulders any more than it had Emily's is clear in her voice; she's been running a long time, and figured out how to do this. It only applies when she's running, oddly enough. “Mom was home, with some of her friends. They're . . . different. Hard to explain.”

There's a pause, and she checks the time on her fancy runners' watch; she'd underestimated, a bit, how long this first lap would take them.

It doesn't really matter.

“Saw Avatar with Uncle Dan and Uncle Zeke and the opera with Mom, Aunt Pete and Uncle Steve. Hung out with Ashley and Austin a bit. Bumped into Jarod and a crazy guy. Got lectured by Mom and her friends for having unsuitable friends. You know, same old.” It's wry and vaguely amused, all of this; with Uncles Dan and Zeke having been the last to leave, at least she'd had a bit of decompression time, a bit of time to work things out.

And of course there's no mention of kissing anyone – she'd actually spent New Year's Eve alone in her room with her laptop and a book.

“It was good seeing everyone, really. But they creep Ashley and Austin out, and Ash says I shouldn't have anyone over for a while.”

[Emily Littleton] "Your folks must have really... odd standards," Emily observed, mostly in a commiserating tone. "Ashley's a grad student, right? And Austin sounds like a good kid. What's unsuitable there?"

Parents. They seriously needed to take a chill pill. All of them. Except that Emily's parents had been on the money with some of their concerns. "My folks want me to go back to traveling with them. They think Chicago's a bad fit for me."

"Maybe it will work itself out... " Emily shot the redhead a little look (Oh?) when she mentioned Jarod. Or the crazy guy.

[Enid Geraint] ".....I can teach you Mandarin, by the way. And also Cantonese, if you're interested. I forgot to say - I'm teaching Austin, too. And Dad thinks they're great - he thinks all of you are, the ones who've been to my house. But he's just happy I have friends again. Mom and the rest . . ."

Things were complicated, she'd said, and she meant it.

"Well, they're kind of controlling. Mostly mom is. And they want me to see things their way, not . . . I don't know how to explain it, really. But Ashley and Austin don't much like them, either. I'd be willing to bet Jarod and Wharil would feel roughly the same way."

There's the sound of breathing for a bit, made steady through effort as they come up on the mile. "Another? We can kick the speed up a bit, if you're up for it."

[Emily Littleton] "Bring it," Emily said, grinning at Enid with mock challenge on her features. The truth was that it felt good to stretch her muscles like this, to feel them push and burn over something more purposeful than...

"Are you and Jarod on speaking terms then?" she asked, keeping her tone light and merely quizzical. "You've mentioned him twice now, and nothing's caught fire." It was a light jib, delivered imperfectly as Emily's breathing was slower than Enid's to adjust to the new pace.

[Emily Littleton] ((OH noes! Jamie has found us. DOOOM is forthcoming. *runs away screaming*))
to Enid Geraint, sunglasses

[sunglasses] [BWA HA HA HA HA]
to Emily Littleton, Enid Geraint

[Enid Geraint] "Not . . . I don't know. I think he's a jerk, and it's bullshit to carry on the way he does." Enid swears rarely but it's not unheard of - and of course she doesn't like Jarod much. He's embarrassed her multiple times now, and . . . well. If Enid played the fool, she'd be okay with it.

"But I told him, I like you, and I think we could be good friends. Since he's a part of that deal, even if only in periphery, it's only fair to you if we aren't assholes to each other all the time. I don't know if he agrees or not - I had to go." There'd been more to the meeting than that, it's clear in the flush that isn't completely cold and exertion induced, but Enid doesn't spell it out. It's covered well enough in the 'bullshit' part of her speech, she figures. "Anyway, one of us has to stop sniping. So I figured it may as well be me."

[Emily Littleton] "Hmmmmm...."

Emily let that sound hang between them for a long while, while their feet hit the pavement in an ever-steady cadence. While the frozen world drifted by in their peripheral vision. She was contemplative, and carefully considering Enid's statements.

"You and I can be friends, even if you two don't get along. I wouldn't ask you to put up with anyone else's asshattery for me," Emily said, evenly. Firmly. Enid was younger, and perhaps a little idealistic about this. "I wouldn't put too much weight on it, getting along with him because of me."

Emily didn't say why. She just looked at the path ahead of them, and how it curved, and ... let that go. Enid could take from it what she wanted. Emily wasn't quite sure what she'd wanted to convey. Perhaps between the two of them, they'd make some sense of it.

[Enid Geraint] "'s not just because of you. The more views you look at, and try to understand, the more you see, you know? The closer you come to truth. You can't try a case without talking to as many witnesses as possible, you know."

Maybe it's mature for her age, maybe Enid's metaphorical glasses are awfully rosy, maybe both; it's anyone's guess, really. But it fits well with her, and she says it with a sort of certainty that few people at all, let alone as young as she, can say such things with.

"I just . . . don't think I want to be alone-ish with him again if I can help it. And it's no fun for me, at least, if me being pissy at him or vice versa is making you miserable. So I asked for a cease fire."

She's pushed just a little ahead of the older girl, now; it's not that she has better form, or is faster exactly, as she has more experience in distance running. She knows how to pace herself, what stride to hit, and has to rein herself back a bit.

[Emily Littleton] Enid has pushed ahead and Emily, taking this as a challenge (what isn't a challenge to you these days?) lengthened her stride and pushed that much harder to catch up. It was too early in this endeavour for her to fall behind and her body would remember--if she pushed hard enough--what it was like to strive for something more than a bookish life of laze.

"That's fair enough."

Emily let the words hang between them, acknowledgement enough for Enid's opinions and feelings, until they came to the end of their second mile. Her cheeks were flushed, now, and her lungs had become incrementally less angry about the cold, biting air that savaged them with each breath.

"I ran into a crazy man the other night, too. And a really weird woman. It must be the full, or something." Moon that is. Emily knew that cosmology had nothing to do with it, but it was a ready excuse. And it fitted in nicely with a change of topic.

[Enid Geraint] "I think that's true, a little bit - the lunacy thing. By the true meaning, I mean. Not by some cosmological metaphysical thing, but by sheer . . . I don't know what it would be. Anyway, magnetically speaking, there's a pull. The metals in our blood respond, and the water has tides like the ocean. I don't know why," she says with a rueful grin that takes the place of a shrug. "Or why I know all that. I collect useless trivia, I guess."

She's quiet for a minute, chewing on the bit about the crazy guy. ".....was his name Dylan?" It's edging well past time where Enid can claim to believe in coincidence any longer - she's fairly certain there's some kind of weighted odds, or something. To keep running into the same people, and have those same people running into each other? Well, it kind of defies normal, every day explanation.

[Emily Littleton] "We didn't exactly exchange pleasantries," Emily said, reaching up to rub at a knot near her collarbone as they ran. Emily said nothing about Enid's brand of psuedo-science. She tamped down, hard, on the physics lectures that threatened to bubble up past her self-censoring mechanism. Enid was destined from pre-Law greatness. Emily was... Emily... oh, Emily was deeply infatuated with the pursuit of describing the physical world, in all its unpredictable ways, in equations on white boards.

Physics. (Obey Gravity. It's the Law! [Have that t-shirt...])

"I didn't really want to stick around long enough to get to know him." Emily's expression was colder for a moment. Harder.

[Enid Geraint] "If it's the same guy, you had more sense than I did, then. But everything ended up . . . mostly alright. I mean, no one was hurt or anything, at least not badly."

Pseudo-science or not, Enid's cheerful enough about it - and if she's noticed the lecture-that-wasn't, she doesn't say anything. It's quite [probable] possible she'd have listened and learned from it, and applied it to something somewhere else. She'd done well in the one physics class she'd had, but . . . High school. And yes, she's destined for pre-Law greatness. She learns the rules and laws so she can find the loopholes.

"I talked to Kage about it, a little."

[Emily Littleton] "I like Kage," Emily said, as if this was a determination she'd made just then. On the spot. Running in wide loops, chasing her own tail. She liked Kage. She liked Enid. She even liked Jarod. (The world is clearly ending [You have friends]). "She's good people."

An uncomfortable quiet lingered between them for a long moment, before Emily wandered back to the topic. "If it was the same person, which I'm not so certain of, he looked worse for wear when I saw him. I'm glad you're okay, though."

Strangers were scary. And Enid wasn't that much older than Emily had been when Emily had learned first hand about strange men and just how dangerous they could be. "Keep safe, okay? That's a lot more important to me than whether you and Jarod snipe at one another."

[Enid Geraint] "I do too. We helped each other Christmas shop." It feels like ages, that two weeks; can it really only have been a fortnight? It seems so strange, and so long. Not that much has flat out happened (the Enid-that-was boggles at this assessment, wondering where on earth her basis for comparison took such a wild leap), but there's been a lot of learning, and a lot of talking with various people.

And her mother'd been in town, which always makes time move like molasses.

Keep safe, okay? This brings a hint of smile to her lips as they keep running, and Enid nods. "I'll try. It's not always the best way to pick things up though, the hanging back and staying safe."

[Emily Littleton] "Ah, yes," Emily replied, and her voice was mildly ribbing the other girl again. "You are the Enid going to China in not-too-long to have a proper adventure, aren't you? Well, try to keep safe over there too. It's a bit different than home."

Her own life had not been quiet since she returned, and there was a healthy dose of minding-one's-own-welfare as a life lesson that 2010 had handed down already. There was plenty she wasn't telling the younger girl, even as she told her to mind her own arse. "You're still going, aren't you?" she asked, what with all this disapproving Momsy talk, perhaps Enid had changed her mind.

[Enid Geraint] "Of course. I still have my ticket - I don't know about the internship, though. It's . . ." An 'offer you can't refuse' sort of thing, one that Enid knows, now, that it might be better to refuse after all. She's not sure, though, given a great many factors. ". . . complicated," she finishes lamely, as if she knows she's already used that word too much.

There's a lot she's not telling the older girl as well, it seems.

"Even if I don't stay for that, though, it'll be good to spend a while living the language I've been learning forever, you know? Cement it in my head as well as I can and all that.

[Emily Littleton] "Even if you decide to just travel for a bit, I think it'll be grand," Emily said, without trying to sway the other girl too firmly in any particular direction. "If you want to go places outside of China, too, on your way home, I'm happy to make suggestions."

Emily was winding down, unable to keep with Enid for quite as long as she'd hoped. "I have my favorites," she said, meaning places... or places within places. Remembered cafes, and sunsets, and castles to tour. She could give Enid a map of extraordinary spaces all across Europe and most parts of Asia.

"Thank you for letting me run with you," she said, a little out of breath now. "It's been too long since I did this."

[Enid Geraint] "Stretches," she says first, slowing gradually and making Emily do so too; a proper cool down is important, especially in this kind of weather. Then, when they're stretching together, "No problem. It's good to have company on a run sometimes." The last is answered first, giving her the time to consider the first.

"Yeah, thanks, that would be awesome. I don't know if I'm going by myself or not, yet, at least not for sure, but either way, it'd be great to see some new places. Who knows what interesting new thing might come from that?

[Emily Littleton] She enjoys stretching, especially now that the tension has seeped out of her muscles. It would be replaced, soon, by aches and knots to work out over time, but that was a good thing. It was a good hurt. And the warmth and tingle to her limbs now was not the hellish Heat the madman had put off. It was healthy, explicable in normal terms. Running wasn't magic, but it was good for the soul.

"We should sit down with a map and my laptop some day," she said, and Emily wasn't joking. "I've got pictures from some places, and some city maps and stuff from others. If you're taking your laptop, you'd have it all with you when or if you decided to hop out to another country on your way back."

It sounded all orderly. All neat and tidy and tied up with christmas ribbons. Emily's information acquisition phase couldn't have been that neat and tidy, so simply wrapped up, but she offered it to Enid like it was nothing. Just memories of a few trips here and there.

[Enid Geraint] "Of course I'm bringing my laptop. It'd be mighty hard to keep up with emails and blogs and stuff if I didn't," she says with a hint of a grin. "And that'd be cool. I appreciate it. Might see who's where, when, or I might just go on my own."

There's a pause, and then, "Ashley says there are bad guys. Does Jarod?" She asks because of course she's been paying attention the couple of times Emily's mentioned learning things from him - not in so many words, maybe, but in that tone. In that way that implies there's something serious to it, regardless of whatever else is going on. It's more obvious with Enid, maybe, because of her youth? But she talks about Ashley the same way. It's an odd question, maybe, but Enid really wants to know.

[Emily Littleton] Emily doesn't talk about Jarod that much in front of Enid. Not really. She's let Enid talk about Austin, and Ashley, and she's confirmed Kage's undeniable awesomeness, but aside from a couple careful queries... they didn't talk about the Verbena much. Enid had picked up on something at a coffee shop more than a month ago, but nothing really solid enough for her to assume that Emily was (ahem) under his tutelage. Or anyone's, yet.

"It's come up," Emily says, in a way that both answers and deflects. She shrugs, and stretches in a way that Enid cannot meet her eyes -- coincidental, truly -- but can still hear her voice. "With several people. I think it's something of a theme for them."

Emily says Others and she says Them, and it is unclear where she had learned to put this separation between herself and other people Enid called friends.

[Enid Geraint] "Okay," she says with a shrug - so she'd been wrong. She won't be next time, or won't make the same assumption, or . . . well, no, she probably will. Maybe with Jarod, maybe with someone else, depending on what's going on, and who she hears about. Regardless, that's hardly the important part. "Do they say who, and why?"

This is. Enid is not difficult to read; she can be, when she wants to be, but most of the time what you see is what you get. And now, on this, the young red-head has a lot riding.

[Emily Littleton] The older girl straightened up and fixed the younger with a serious look. Just for a moment, there is more concern than levity in her deeply blue eyes.

"Enid," she says firmly, but also gently. (Oh... Enid.) The tone does not yield, but it does forgive. Apologize. "There have always been bad guys, and none of that changes because of what you and I are becoming. What we are--whatever we are. It's an ugly part of human nature, but I promise you it's there."

Emily speaks from experience. And experience is a cold, unforgiving thing. It will not let her look away from the teen, and it wills her to hold Enid's eyes a moment longer than is absolutely comfortable.

"I think... you should talk to Wharil about this. He was very straightforward with me."

[Enid Geraint] "I . . . okay." There's disappointment, and a bit of a frown. "It's just . . ."

Complicated. Complex. A warren of issues and concerns and eight million (at least) other near-synonyms. ". . . I don't know. Never mind. I'll talk to him, yeah. I haven't seen him in a while anyway. He's alright, yeah?"

Lighter subjects - gossip is good. Why not, right?

[Emily Littleton] "I'm supposed to meet up with him soon," Emily mentioned, but she only remembered this because she'd put it in her calendar immediately after her phone call with him. "Maybe you could come with me, or I could mention it to him when I see him."

She was trying to be helpful, and trying not to upset the younger girl too much. "I am going to be so sore tomorrow," she remarked idly, chuckling a bit and not sounding too upset by the prospect.