Frames of reference

[Emily Littleton] It is a night in the middle of February, like many other nights. The moon has waned, drawn sickle-thin it her rasping ride across the Winter sky. She is almost completel obscured, having turned her argent face away once more. And it is still cold. Damnably cold. Always cold.

There is a girl, no perhaps a young woman, in a dark wool coat sitting on a bench in a quiet stretch of the Mile. It is not too far from the coffee shops, which slumber now in the midnight hours, or from the push and thrum of the clubs further up the way. It is too cold for her to have been there for long, and there is no snow accumulated on her shoulders or in her dark hair.

Emily sits with her elbows resting on her knees, staring out across the pavement and the street beyond it. She is still, and in that stillness she is all but forgotten by any passerby or stranger who might happen upon her. But to Awakened eyes, she is a steadfast beacon. A bright spot against the dark night, filling in for the absent moonlight. About her hangs the thin thrum of Reverence, touched through with echoes of Home.

[Solomon Quicksilver] He meandered. Not far from home. Home was some blocks away. But he'd been in the bars and taverns despite his youthful appearance and with the wonderful dice in his pocket he'd manage to trick some folks into buying him beers just to find out what the trick was. That was part of the appeal of the whole thing.

Jeans, boots, a t-shirt and a thicker flannel shirt hung on him. It was getting cold and he was considering how bad of an idea it was to be hanging around wandering this late. Of course, the alcohol he had in his belly made it seem warmer to him than it really was. Even so, he reached into his pocket and pulled a woolen hat down over his short brown hair.

Brown eyes a pit as he wanders along. His path a vague charting of points that might distantly resemble a vector towards somewhere. He didn't really have much to do on there on the street. So he was just walking. A slight thrum of something around him, like misdirection, misguidance, shifting, warping, never settling, sloshing around as drunkenly as he.

[Emily Littleton] He wouldn't be the first to drunkenly stumble across her path this week. Nor the first Awakened to do so, at that. Emily was having a rough go of things with Fate, who seemed to think her social dance card needed to be perpetually shuffled adn reinvigorated with the resident oddities. She looked up as he drew nearer, pulled out of whatever quiet reverie had overtaken her, and watched his wayward vector amble its way toward points unknown.

There was a softness to her expression, as if he'd pulled her out of a deep and thoughtful place, but whatever was going on behind her dark eyes was shrouded, occult. The closer he came to her, the harder it was to ignore the tickle against his senses, the insinuation that something (someone) was lingering just off stage right.

If he looked her way, he'd find Emily watching him. Perhaps it would seem odd, or a little unsettling. And if he paused, for a moment, or made eye contact, she'd say "Good evening," in that pleasant, polite way of hers, in that muddled accent touched with far away places.

[Solomon Quicksilver] He ambled along. This smooth faced kid that's never had to shave. Who's apparently a little buzzed, at least. Steam coming up from his lips when he breaths. Brassy colored rings on his fingers, or maybe they're gold. College ring sized. And a silver pendant around his neck on a thin black cord. He glanced her way. Saw her watching him and thought maybe he was being cute. Maybe she was interested. He straightened up a little.

And then gave her a hard appraising look, and realized maybe it was something else. Behind those eyes far too old for his face, was a keen intellect. His response snapped out, polite, professional. "Evening."

[Emily Littleton] Something of an odd balance they were. He her junior in some ways, she his in others. He couldn't know yet, that she had barely thrown the morpheus from her eyes. She hadn't learned, yet, to suspect the Others for what they were on the oddities and enigmas wrapped around them alone. He is young, and perhaps he is cute. Perhaps, on a different night, in a different time, she would be interested.

Tonight she is only friendly, and that friendliness may imply other things, wrapped up in the muddled nature of extremely early mornings and the blurry social margins between less-than-entirely-sober strangers. He looked at her, hard, and Emily didn't flinch. She slowly sat up, drawing her bare hands back into the pockets of her coat, balling her fingers into fists and flexing them until she began to feel the blood flow again.

She's college aged, and pleasant enough to look at. Nothing remarkable, really, unless he noticed the intelligence in her eyes as well. Like called to like.

"A little late for a walk about, isn't it?" she asked. Hello, Pot. My name is Kettle.

[Solomon Quicksilver] "It is." He comments. His accent is hard to pick out, but in his buzzed state it slips a bit to sound somewhat New England. He drifts over towards her on work booted feet. Deciding the spot next to her was as good as any to sit down at. He flops down in a loose languid way that only inebriated people can usually muster.

"So what're you doing out?" He props his elbows up on either side of him and owns his little piece of bench.

[Emily Littleton] Again, they juxtapose: him relaxed, loose languid; her purposeful, properly comported. A small smile graces her features, secretive in ways that are not explained to him. She smiles at a thing unsaid, something so deeply ingrained that it is likely not even thought in the way conscious thoughts are named, known and categorized. It is fleeting, and in that transience almost sad. Just as quickly, it is replaced by (it transforms into) something warmer and a bit more solid. A wry twist to the corner of her lips.

"I am being truant from my appointment with the Sandman, and trying to find purchase on some peace of mind. Barring that, some quiet has sufficed." An odd answer, but it was the time of night that begat odd answers or dangerous innuendo. "Yourself? Trying to walk off the shine to your eyes?" she asked.

[Solomon Quicksilver] His head tilts. He watches her for a moment. Eyes tensed into something like focus. She speaks in flowering ways, the sort of stuff you read in poems or see in art films. He puffs out a breath into the night and turns his head back to the street.

"Trying to stay warm, mostly." He tugs his flannel a little closer around his body. "Who knew spider silk wasn't as warm as cotton or wool?" He lifts his hand and pushes his finger into his own chest. "Certainly not this guy."

[Emily Littleton] "Is this your first Winter, then?" she asked, and there were no flowering words or ornate embellishments this time. Something he said pulled her away from those subtler, quieter thoughts and more into the present. Emily's expression shifted, her eyes becoming clearer and less nuanced, her features a little more sharply set.

"Silk can be quite warm," she added, her brow pinching a bit in mild confusion. Perhaps she'd missed that he'd said spider silk. "But a good coat seems to help best."

[Solomon Quicksilver] "Oh no." He waves his hand in front of him in a shoo'ing motion. Shaking his head. "No no. Just the first time I've been out in one in just some flannel. Or ex-flannel. Whatever. I could probably do with a proper coat, you're right. Nothing I can't quite fix, perhaps. But I'm sitting on a bench here, when I should be inside. Which makes me wonder, why you're still out here. Quiet moments can be had indoors you know." He folds his arms again, tucking his hands into his armpits to keep them warm. Leaning back against the bench and crossing his legs at the ankles.

[Emily Littleton] On another night, she might have felt pity for him. For the way he tucked his hands closer to his core to keep warm. Her fingers were only just coming out of the pins and needles numbness, themselves. She might have suggested they find a place, warmer and more hospitable, to talk. But tonight Emily is as interested in the cold as she is in the silence, the mostly absent moon, the lightly falling on-again-off-again snow.

"They are different quiet moments, inside. Here there is the sting of cold against your skin, the way your nose and ears numb first, the crunch of footsteps when someone passes by, the whisper of tires in the distance -- but it's late, too, and the world seems suspended between quiet and wakefulness. Or maybe that's just how I imagine it," she smiled a little, and if it were not so late or so cold it would have lifted into a light chuckle.

"I spend too much time indoors, any way. Those quiet moments weren't helping, so I tried this." It was a seemingly logical extrapolation. Emily shrugged a little and leaned back against the bench's back.

[Solomon Quicksilver] He waves a hand in broad looping gestures in front of him. "But this isn't quiet then either." Grinning. Tucking his hand back into his armpit. "It's white noise. It's the stuff we learn to tune out. We call it quiet, but it's never truly quiet." He glances over at her. "Ever heard true quiet? The true lack of any vibration over those membranes in your head? It's pretty disturbing honestly. Tends to drive you insane."

He gives her another appraising look and his lips lift in a crooked smirk. "Unless you already are."

[Emily Littleton] At this she laughs. It is a small sound, barely voiced beyond a chuckle, and it pinches her eyes shut in amusement for a moment. Emily is pretty when she laughs; she does not laugh often enough.

"No no, no one's crazy here," she assured him, shaking her head a little and letting the wry twist take over her mouth entirely for a moment. Then it fell away and she was simply smiling instead. "Though I have been to the place at the margin of Faith, where it is impossible to Hope, and I suppose that is a place like madness. Thankfully it was a long time ago, and I was wrong to have given up so easily."

This is spoken lightly, but it is not a light sentiment. If he reflects on it later, the words will seem strangely resonant. She is saying more than she means to. Emily is saying nothing at all.

"The white noise is useful, though. The need, drive, to divine patterns in it is distinctly human. And the patterns we see are useful indicators, ways of showing ourselves what we pay attention to. Isn't that what we're really seeking whenever one goes off in search of silence? Some sort of enlightenment or epiphany?" She raises an eyebrow. The question is simple, but it is a challenge as well. It is idle banter, and a serious inquiry all at once.

[Solomon Quicksilver] He waves his hand again. Throwing it up like tossing cards into the air. Let them shower down upon them. "Yes yes, patterns in silence." He chuckles and shakes his head. "But it's meaningless, more often than not. And simply another way to madness. You focus too hard on hearing something, where there's only a cricket chirping and a TV snow screened, and the flow of traffic. Are there patterns? Of course."

He leans forward, adjusts himself a bit on the bench. "But are they meaningful? Are they useful? You can discern the pattern to a cricket's chirp. To the movement of traffic. And maybe some part of it might be useful, maybe. Even in the white noise of a TV with no channel, you might find a pattern. There are some who stare into that chaos and manage to find pattern."

He pauses and looks over at her. "But how much of it is simply seeking for something like Faith? Like you said. Hope, that there's something greater at work. That there's some underlying unifying reason to the universe. But if all you do is stare into the chaos and grasp at the tiniest patterns, you'll go mad sure as hearing nothing."

[Emily Littleton] She does not laugh again, but the mirth is there. It touches her eyes now, and in their darkness they dance a little.

"And wherein would that great Truth of the Universe lie, but in the tiny, imperceptible wonders, the marginal details, the star stuff in all of us? Where better to seek an underlying unifying reason than in the seemingly inconsequential? For if there is ubiquitous truth, would you not find it there as well?"

She canted her head slightly, as if to say See? To highlight the method of the seeming madness.

[Solomon Quicksilver] He shakes his head quickly. "No but you see, the truth is writ large across the sky for us to see if we just stop staring at the specs and step back for a little perspective. We can stare at atoms until we're blue in the face, but is it going to lead us to a better understanding of why gravity is just a theory? Or why the planets act as they do?"

Then he waves his arm dismissively. "And besides, the Truth is inside Us. Not stardust or planets. Forests and Trees. They're nothing without someone to observe them. To name them. To discover their purpose and workings. We give them shape by doing so."

[Emily Littleton] "We give them shape," she says, her accent is predominantly British. He can tell this now. Riddled through as it is by other sounds and places. "I'll give you that. But that is not to say that they were bereft of shape before they were Named, or any less manifest before they were observed."

She stretched a little, moving about now that the cold had bit into her bones a bit more deeply than intended.

"Some Truths are within us," she also agreed. "Some are without us. It is possible that there are Truths beyond the scope or interest of mankind that will never be of consequence to you, or me, or any other human being. But the possibility remains that those truths could exist, could be valid, and yet remain unobserved."

Emily looked over at him, curiously. "What you make of the Truths you seek is what is truly within you, of you, empowering or hindering you. That mushy place where cognizance butts up again less subjective spheres. It's a fascinating thought form, intersection of physics and philosophy, metaphysics even. It's good light reading for those quiet indoor moments," she chides, lightly.

"Unless, of course, it is all about you. And then, in that ego-centric," she says it purely as an adjective, without any negative connotations, "paradigm, I could whole-heartedly agree with you."

[Solomon Quicksilver] He smiles faintly. Staring ahead into the street. This reminds him of some of sessions he had with other mentors. The constant questions and yearnings. The ways to integrate things, as they come. He closes his eyes for a moment. Lets out a sigh of breath into the air. "But now you get into faith. Of a sort." Still grinning faintly with his eyes closed. "Sure, we keep finding patterns in the chaos. We stare into an abyss of noise and we find truth. But is it Truth." Subtle inflection pointing out the difference in meaning. "Would any of this," Waving his arms around briefly, "Be here without us? Scientists find new species. New stars. New modes of thought. Is it because they were always there waiting to be discovered? Or is it because we were looking for them? Demanding there be more to our world than what we've already discovered."

[Emily Littleton] "And I would ask you if that mattered, at all. Are you asking why it is we seek, or why we find what we do when we seek? They are different questions, but one gets closer to the heart of the matter if you're speaking on faith."

She hasn't spoken with anyone like this in a long while, in more years than she would care to count. And Emily has not yet grasped that these questions were wrapped up in the newness of her Awakened life. That they might inform and enfold the work she was just beginning.

"In that case, I suppose the question becomes: Would it matter if any of this existed, if you were not here to wonder after it? Only if there is some greater consciousness, aware of both you and all of this here. Else, not terribly."

She shrugged. "It is nice to stretch a little. To speak of these things. Maybe this is why I was still outside when you wandered by," she said, smiling again, just this side of wryly again.

[Solomon Quicksilver] His lips tilt in a smirking sort of grin. "Well, the why is quite easily answered. It's what we are. What made us who we are. The desire to constantly ask the universe 'why?' Like little children tugging on our parent's hem. Why this? Why that? And no answer is good enough for us. It's in every child."

He pauses then. Opening his eyes and turning his head a bit to look at her. "But when you speak of a greater consciousness, aware of us both, I say no. There is no greater consciousness. There is only us. We seek for more and we built things up. But in the end there is only us. And if there is Faith, it is only there to be held in ourselves."

[Emily Littleton] She listened, and then nodded a bit. The nod did not imply agreement, necessarily, but it could be mistaken to do precisely that.

"That is a grave and awesome responsibility you place upon our shoulders," she cautioned. "One I trust you do not take lightly." He had given it much thought, and he was well spoken on the subject. This necessarily led Emily to believe he had thought through the consequences of such implications.

[Solomon Quicksilver] He shrugs lightly. As though shrugging off the cares and responsibilities of the world. Or it could be taken that way. "We are responsible for ourselves. And in a way, all of humanity. But it's too much to ask that we manage to care for all of humanity. We can only handle our burden of it. Anyone who cannot take up that burden, well..." He chuckled softly. Shook his head. "I am sorry they will not see, but we can't let them drag us down. If we can bring them about, teach them, then we can. We should. But not everyone will reach such heights of... understanding."

[Emily Littleton] "I believe you are not still speaking on faith," Emily observed, shrewdly but without judgment. He had moved on to speaking of politics, of shaping ideas into action, inaction, reaction (distraction). "For now you have a we, and a they. I might ask you, hypothetically, whether you believe that you and I fall on the same side of that division. Or are we speaking to one another from across some deep divide?"

Emily asked so plainly, but the question again was not quite that simple. Too often she had been assumed, unwittingly, into another's we. Why, just a few nights ago, another inebriated Awakened tried to collect her into a group and regale her with his complaints.

[Solomon Quicksilver] He looks at her shrewdly again. Rubbing his arms up and down against his sides to keep them warm.

"I suppose that depends. There are many divides. There's the division between those who are aware of this responsibility, and those who simply pull the sheets over their head and hit snooze. And there are those who see the responsibility, and choose to try to rule over us all. Decide what's right for us. Opposed to those who want to let everyone find their own path."

He fixes her with a long stare. His voice drops down, quieter. "So which are you?"

[Emily Littleton] There is a small pause, in which she seems to consider the question carefully.

"I am Emily, as of yet Untitled," she replies, for it is the plainest, clearest answer she can give him. She is not rank and file, no, and she doesn't have a litany of names or a reputation to proceed her. Just a sense of surety, and a nascent Reverence that might someday blossom into something fuller.

[Solomon Quicksilver] He grins, faintly. Like a ghost, or dust in sun beams. "Well, Emily as of yet Untitled. While we're asking all these why's, why don't we find our way into somewhere warmer? My ass is fer-eeezing."

[Emily Littleton] "Another time, perhaps?" she asked, though truth be told the cold was getting to her, too. "I am overdue for my bedtime, and I have office hours to keep in the morning." These mundane things sounded so droll, boring, in the wake of their higher ideals.

"Though I have no doubt I'll be seeing you again. That seems to be the way this city works of late." A wry smile, an acknowledgement of sorts for Fate (who might or might not be listening over her shoulder tonight).

"What might I call you, when we meet again?" she asked, pushing herself up from the bench at long last. Slowly. Because cold and aching muscles must be coaxed back into movement. She withdrew her hands from her pockets. Rubbed them together until her fingers began to warm again, and then shoved them back into their hiding places.