How are things?

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley called Susannah earlier this evening to ask if she'd like to come out and meet to talk. They don't know each other, and thus an invitation to her apartment was not extended - besides, she has a distressed apprentice there, and God knows the girl could use some rest.

So here Ashley is on the street, waiting out in the cold, watching a man who is out on the street painting. It's an ink rendition of the Chicago skyline, and the Tytalan is waiting with folded arms, leaned against a wooden post. Watching the brush mix the ink and sweep across the parchment, her expression oddly...pensive, perhaps, as her gaze traces the brush. Something nostalgic there.

She's dressed much as she was the other night: a black peacoat, blue jeans and red Chuck Taylors, wind ruffling her dark hair in all directions. She doesn't wear gloves, and both her hands and cheeks and nose are a bit red from the cold. She's been outside in it a while, apparently.

[Emily Littleton] It is another cold night in an endless string of cold nights that are all beginning to feel the same to Emily. Those that are not the same stand out due to some exaggerated sense of wonder or horror, and perhaps it is a blessing that this night is steeped in sameness. Unremarkable in so many ways.

The young Orphan wanders, but not aimlessly. She carries a shopping bag filled with odds and ends (mostly groceries) that could not be picked up closer to the University. She seems at home here, in a different way that she is comfortable or at home in the brighter shops along the Mile.

Emily is at a corner, preparing to cross, looking both ways before -- when she spies Ashley. There is a moment, a pause : consideration. Then she changes course and wanders over toward the Hermetic.

"Evening..." Emily offers, but it is a tenuous hello. Seeking. If Ashely doesn't want company, she's happy to move along.

[Ashley McGowen] It's always difficult to gauge whether or not Ashley wants company. While she isn't indifferent to the presence of others, they're more often than not met with a hungry stare; curiosity is usually the best a person can hope for, when interacting with her. It's curiosity with which she fixes Emily now, glancing toward the bag the younger woman is carrying.

"Evening, Emily," she says, straightening up against the post. She wasn't using it for support out of relaxation: she seems to genuinely be exhausted. Tense, the air of someone who is keeping herself going from sheer Will.

"How are you?" And then, a short beat, staccato, before she adds, "Thanks for dropping Enid and Austin off the other night."

[Emily Littleton] Emily recognizes the exhaustion in the other woman, mirrors it in some subtler ways (but only [subtle] because her own mentor had found her the night before).

"I'm.... alright," she says, taking a moment to select an appropriate adjective. "I've been better, but I imagine you could say the same." Her tone is less clipped, more open. Warm, but not overly-friendly.

She noticed Ashley's attention to her carrier bag and lifted it a little more into view. "A friend is loning me their kitchen so I can cook. I find it calming, during midterms," and with everything else going on... "And they get a meal out of it." A little smile.

"How are you all doing?" she asks, when Ashley brings up Enid and Austin. And Emily asks about more than Enid and Austin. "I haven't wanted to pry, but if there's anything I can do to help...even running errands or making meals, or just being around so you can focus on some studying of your own -- please, let me know."

The undergrad does not offer to slay dragons, or solve problems. Just to handle some of the mundanity that gets lost when. Well. The seriousness in Emily's expression belies a stronger understanding than mere sympathy. She has some (visceral) understanding of what happens, once someone has come home unwell and altered.

[Emily Littleton] ((edit: ...a friend is *loaning me their kitchen...))

[Susannah Sutherland] ooc: Sorry, ladies. The baby is teething and downright miserable right now. I need to go into full mommy mode for a while. *sad* Hopefully I can try again tomorrow night if either of you are free!
to Ashley McGowen, Emily Littleton

[Emily Littleton] ((I will not be around tomorrow night, but hopefully we can try again soon! Good luck with the babe, lovey.))
to Ashley McGowen, Susannah Sutherland

[Ashley McGowen] Ash nods, with one last curious look at the bag. Cooking is one of those things that she doesn't do -badly,- but often tells herself that she should learn to do well. It just tends to fall to the wayside, in among other things.

Emily asks about Enid and Austin, though, and this prompts a shrug from the Hermetic. "Austin left the night after you dropped him off, and Enid...well, she's making progress." And here, a glint of almost parental pride, something she wouldn't really display in front of the girl herself: that Enid is pulling herself together, that she's making small steps, that she's strong. "Enid's moving in with a Tradition-mate of mine soon."

She does not respond to Emily's offer of help. Well, more accurately, she does respond, it just isn't verbal: it's a long, level look. A lifted chin. An expression that isn't quite offended, but one that certainly implies that Ashley does not believe that she needs help. Or is, at the very least, too proud to accept.

[Emily Littleton] She nods a little, at the long level stare. It says: I thought as much. It is accepting, without being judgmental. The topic of help is left, then, and not returned to.

"I'm glad to hear she's doing well," Emily says, and it sounds a little stilted in the wake of the Tytalan Glare(tm). She is awkward in this conversation, because there is nothing to say that is both honest and comforting. Nothing beyond, "She's lucky to have you. To have someone to turn to right now."

That was a sentiment Ashley likely wasn't hearing from Enid. Emily looked away from the Hermetic, before Ashley could ask for her to expound on that insight. She fidgets a little, shifts the bag from one hand to another.

[Ashley McGowen] "I'm trying," Ashley says, and she too looks away for a few seconds. She has been, but she knows that she can't make it better for Enid, and in fact probably made the girl feel a bit worse after she had to break into her head. "She's just...young, and it's the first time she's ever really suffered."

Nevermind that Emily can't be that much older: Ashley is well aware of how much of a difference a few years can make, especially in those few years that create that gulf from childhood to adulthood. "There's not even really that much I can do for her. It's just...one of those things you push through on your own, with some time. It'll be good for her in the end."

[Emily Littleton] Emily had actually been a few years younger than Enid when she had learned that particular lesson, suffering. She had not handled it as well as Enid seemed to be handling it, though, and so it resurfaced from time to time, haunted her. It had been haunting her lately, since she had Awakened, but that was not something Emily had talked much about. Still, the solemnity of that experience bled into the softness and surety of her tone.

"It's harder, in the moment, to see the people around you as helpful and caring. But I'm sure she'll appreciate it later, when she looks back." Emily shifted her weight, slightly, and looked back up to Ashley. She was older than Enid, but not stronger than the Tytalan's apprentice.

"She didn't tell me what had happened, and I don't," Emily meant this, "Want to pry. But please let her know that I hope she's well. And if she wants, and it's alright with you, I'm happy to visit her."

The little bit at the end is offered in deference to Ashley's protectorate of the teenager. It is quite possible, given the level stare and polite (?) refusal of help offered, that Ashley had intended routes for Enid's recovery... and that Emily might be trodding all over them, unaware, yet again.

[Ashley McGowen] "I think she'd like that," Ashley says, and this is said sincerely. "It's...it's good for her to have some support from people around her." A lesson recently learned by Ashley herself, who has been struggling so hard to keep herself together on her own.

She looks back at Emily for a few seconds, and finally offers a quiet sigh. "Enid's mother is a Technocrat," Ashley tells her, voice lowered into something private, something for the two of them. "And she and her...cabal, I guess, I don't know what word -they- use...attempted a conversion on Enid when she was in China. They do it by breaking your Will and bending it so that you can be reconditioned until you're one of them and believe what they believe. Until your Mind and Will aren't yours anymore."

It's clear by how she speaks how much distaste she has for the process: the words roll off her tongue like she's trying to speak around them, tempted to spit them out. Her expression is bitter, angry. The way someone speaks of the profane.

[Emily Littleton] An uneasy quiet stretches out between them. There is nothing to say to this that won't sound trite or placating. Nothing to do besides observe, pointedly, the unease that ripples off Ashley's word, the chill that settles along the back of Emily's neck and how it makes her shivver at some imagined gradient of cold to colder yet.

"Austin, too?" Emily asked, and here her tone faultered a little. Because Austin had been decidedly the worse of the two, physically, when she picked them up from the airport. And he had gone off on his own, Ashley had said. Emily closed her eyes, shook her head softly. She was slightly ashen, sick from thinking about these things, but otherwise outwardly calm.

Ashley had just told the Orphan that her friend had likely been tortured, and Emily managed nothing more than deep concern and obvious unease. No exclamations. No... surprise. A pragmatic need to push on, though, to more straightforward matters. (It was Ashley's guess what this response meant. [It might not mean anything at all.])

"I..." A pause. "She called me collect from a pay phone. I don't know how to get in touch with either of them. Could I bother you for their new numbers?" she asked, setting the grocery bag down on the sidewalk and digging in her pocket for something (cell phone ['berry]).

[Ashley McGowen] "Austin too," Ashley says. "But I...looked into the Minds of both of them to make sure the conditioning hadn't taken hold, and they're both okay in that regard. Austin's an Initiate, and an Akashic Brother besides. I think he just needs some time to himself." As though she'd read Emily's thoughts. For someone who is so often insensitive, sometimes socially awkward, Ashley seems to have an eerie habit of picking up on a train of thought and answering questions unasked.

Perhaps she's more perceptive than most people (including herself) give her credit for.

"I don't know Austin's number. Or if he has one. And Enid lost her phone. But if you want to see her, you can come by my apartment...I don't mind if you're there when I'm not. Just stay out of my study." This, said more so that Emily is aware of which place to avoid than because she genuinely believes Em would go poking around. (If she thought so, the Orphan would not have received the invitation in the first place.)

"I just...want her to be all right. It might be good for her to have someone to talk to."

[Emily Littleton] They were different skillsets, showing compassion and possessing insights. Ashley was sharply intelligent, and it didn't seem to surprise Emily that the Hermetic picked up on things. If anything, she was grateful for the need to not spell out every last inquiry.

"I'll drop by," Emily said, and it rang like a promise. "I can't promise we'll talk, that's up to Enid, but if she wants to I'll listen." Emily shrugs a little bit, and tucks her hands into the warm pockets of her wool coat. "I'll ask around to see if anyone's seen Austin recently, too. I'm sure he can take care of himself, and I'm not sure I'd be any help to him, but being alone after something like that... should be a choice."

Not a decision by default. Emily chewed on her lower lip a little and her overall expression was pensive. Just this side of troubled.

"Do you want me to look for a new phone for Enid? It might help to have a bit of normalcy back. And I can find her something fairly secure, and tie it to my account, so she wouldn't have to worry about her parents tracing the expenses or anything like that." Because Enid was still on the edge of adulthood, and Emily didn't know what financial repercussions might come from her mother's connections.

"Again, though, if I'm overstepping... " She pulled her hands out of her pockets and held them up in an innocent gesture to ward off the Tytalan Glare (if it was coming).

[Ashley McGowen] "I...yeah. I'd appreciate it if you could do that," Ashley says, after a moment. "I can't really take up the expense right now until I can find a new job." Emily might not even be aware that she'd lost hers - though, observing the Hermetic, it isn't hard to guess at why. The pervasive sense of taint that she's had since the new year, her sleeplessness, that she's lost so much weight: it would be easy for many Sleepers to draw the conclusion that she's either very sick or fallen into drug use.

"As for Austin...if we go too long without seeing him, I can scry him out. And...I need to find a way to get Enid's stuff from her father's house. Her mother knows me, so I can't just show up and ask her father, but it's dangerous for anyone else to go too."

Ashley shuffles from foot to foot, finally leaning back into the wooden post. Another sidelong glance toward the painter, whose painting is slowly forming into a detailed silhouette of the skyline: something shadowy and blurred. For a single, poignant moment she can thoroughly empathize with Enid's need to hug her father, and then she looks back at Emily again and raises a brow.

"It'll get done, though. And let me know if you'd like me to repay the favor with the phone." Something in her tone indicates that she'd feel better if Emily -did- want some sort of reciprocation.

[Emily Littleton] "I'll keep it in mind," she said, about the favor. No doubt, Emily would be calling that in before she knew it. The New Year had been mildly insane, from the Orphan's point of view, and they weren't even into March yet.

"I spent an afternoon at her dad's place, baking cookies, but I didn't meet her mom. If you want me to go," Emily offered, a little blindly. She didn't quite know the risks, but she was sure she was less on anyone's radar than Ashley might be. Or the others. "I don't mind. I'm just another friend in their eyes, after all."

Emily gave a little shrug. When she'd been at the Geraint's, she had barely Awakened. There had been no talk of magic, no lingering sense of Reverence about her yet, just another girl a little older than Enid and a bunch of holiday cookies to bake.

"As for favors... you didn't let me die at the Chantry in all of that mess. I think I owe you a few more errand-runnings before we're even from that." She smiled, but couldn't keep it warm or light. These had been grave times, indeed.

[Ashley McGowen] "Better that you don't risk going there," Ashley tells her. "If they have anything there to alert her mother, there's a good chance you could wind up being monitored by them too." And Emily, she's sure, doesn't have half the number of wards surrounding her place that Ashley has around hers.

Emily says that she owes Ashley for not letting her die at the chantry, and both of the Hermetic's eyebrows raise, at that. She seems to be considering her answer - because really, keeping Emily out of danger had not been a priority of hers that night. She hadn't even really been looking out for her at all.

"That's not something you should thank me for," is what she at last settles on saying. "We'll work something out." She reaches up and brushes a bit of dark hair out of her eyes, sweeping it to the side; it's in need of cutting and the hair in front is getting nearly to the point where it can be tucked behind an ear. "How is your training going?"

[Emily Littleton] Emily doesn't have any wards. Yet. So Ashley is quite correct. And the subject shifts again, away from Enid and Austin entirely now.

"Well," the Orphan says, and it is a decidedly better response than Ashley might have expected. Emily brightens a little, almost seems proud. There is a quiet smile that touches her eyes, now, and pulls her away from the worry and sadness.

"Jarod has been teaching me to read life patterns," she adds, because the details seemed important to Ashley. She seemed like a detail-oriented person. "And -- just last night, actually -- I think I may have figured it out. It's still a little shaky, but that's progress, right?"

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley smiles a little, at that. "It's a good feeling when things finally start to come together," she says, observing the way Emily brightens when she brings up the subject of magic. "Do you agree with Jarod's outlook on how it works?"

A pause while her gaze rakes over the Orphan for a few seconds, up and down and then back to Emily's eyes. Thoughtful in an intense sort of way, as though she's digging through memory and thought. "You probably haven't had a chance to talk with anyone in the Celestial Chorus, have you."

[Emily Littleton] "I'm not really sure," she answers, and it is an unveiled and honest thing. "I don't know that I wholly agree with him, or even really understand his perspective, but I can work within it. That's a start."

Emily pauses here and thinks. "It's easier for me than, say, talking with Charlie -- and I'm trying that, too, but it's harder to make headway. I always feel like he's talking sideways of the point he wants to make."

She thinks again, but only briefly. "I have not met anyone from the Celestial Chorus," she confirms. "Though I've recently met a Virtual Adept; I surmise they are not at all the same thing." A little smile here, because it is hard for Emily to imagine a heavenly adjective and hackers in the same paradigmatic bundle.

[Ashley McGowen] "They're not," Ashley says. "I'm...not sure I can give you a good summary of the Adepts, really, because I have a difficult time wrapping my head around them. But the Chorus believes that magic comes from a divine source, from faith and belief. Not necessarily God, but...something higher."

She looks thoughtfully at Emily for a few moments. "I wish I knew someone here I could send you to. I just...get a certain feel from you that makes me think you'd be interested in talking to them. Your resonance, maybe."

Another long pause as Ashley thinks through her words, through the impressions she's gotten of Emily over the times they've met. Things she's heard from Enid. "Which, I suppose, begs the question. With what you've learned so far, have you come to any conclusions about how your magic works?"

[K. R. Jakes] [a'ight you fools, where are you?]

[K. R. Jakes] [flaw roll!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] There is a reason that Emily's resonance trends toward Reverence, even now when there is no one from the Chorus to talk to or to guide her. Perhaps it is evident (in small ways) in the way she bows her head to consider the question, in the fleeting look of longing that she hurries from her features.

"I think that I could very easily adopt that point of view," Emily said, but there was an uneasiness there. As if she were hedging her reply around something, something significant and (lost) nearly forgotten. "I'm not sure that's the whole of it, how magic works, but... can I understand it."

She reached up with one hand to lightly touch the place on her chest where the oval locket was hidden beneath her coat, beneath her sweater. Emily is not looking at Ashley, now, but she is thoughtful (and calm).

"I have thoughts, but they are more hypotheses than conclusions at present," she continued, trying to answer Ashley's question honestly and accurately. "I like, but cannot prove, the idea that we Awaken unto some greater purpose or end. Otherwise, I cannot see a point to it, truly. I am not sure I am poised to tell you why or how these things work, because all I can do is reach out to see or feel layers of the world that I could not sense before. It is like reversing a deficit, but I'm still trying to understand all the new information. From what I understand, we learn to see these things so that we might change these things -- is this what you're asking?"

Here a pause, and her hand slips back into her pocket. The night is cold and her fingers chill quickly. Her groceries are beginning to freeze in the carrier bag at her feet.

"I do not know that God, perse, has anything to do with it. I don't know that I'd be entirely comfortable with it, right now, if He did."

[K. R. Jakes] [do i notice two people i know? just percept+alertness -1]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 6, 6, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley listens to this explanation, nodding when Emily says that she believes they Awaken to some higher purpose, as though a suspicion has been confirmed. Listening to what she can do now, how she's trying to understand how the world is different.

"When I call fire down or warp a pattern or break into someone's Mind, it's because I Will it so. It's because I -want- it to happen and my Will is stronger than the reality around me. The same is true for you...but chances are you're going to interpret it differently. What I'm telling you to do is figure out what works for you so that instead of just sensing things around you, you push to affect them. Take the rules that have been set down for you about how things -should- work and break them. Defy gravity, mend wounds."

She reaches an arm behind her and taps the wooden pole she's leaning against with her knuckles. "None of this exists. Your Will does. Other Wills do. Try to start calling on that sense of purpose you feel when you're at your most inspired, and see if it can lead you to do something you couldn't do before."

[Emily Littleton] Defy gravity. Mend wounds. Emily had tried a least one of these already, and not with stellar results. But she had learned much in the intervening weeks, and perhaps Ashley had a point. Perhaps it was time to give it another go.

She nods appreciatively, and it is clear to see that the Orphan is motivated (in no small way) and intrigued by this challenge. She is already thinking through things to try, or to try anew.

"That's the next step, then?" she asked. "To push through from sensing a thing to changing it?" Rather than to continue expanding her sensory awareness to new spheres, or continue down the path of seeking out the right Tradition to join. "I can work on that," she says, nodding a bit more clearly.

Emily smiles, now, and it is a far happier thing. She has a new challenge in hand, and a starting idea of how to tackle it.

[K. R. Jakes] K. R. Jakes is half-a-block from Ashley and Emily, perhaps less, when she spies them: diminutive Ashley, short of hair; dark-tressed Emily, who wears Home around her throat, tucked safe under her shirt. Her hands are jammed into the pockets of her coat for warmth, which is unbuttoned, letting winter sneak fingers inside, lay His knuckles against her shirt, reach through, bruise her skin; occasionally, she flaps her coat, pulls it tighter. Her steps slow for a second; she pauses, and perhaps she is considering that she has never actually seen them together, although each has mentioned the other to her -- even before she knew that that's what they were doing. Perhaps she is considering something else; at any rate, her gaze wanders to the side, rests on the mouth of an alleyway, and then narrows. Kage's shoulders lift-and-fall, and then forward motion happens again, although her swagger is somewhat diminished, it is still present [lyric: I'll tell you one] while she approaches. When she's close enough, close enough to catch Emily's last sentence, she says, "Evening."

[Ashley McGowen] "That's the next step," Ashley says, with a nod. She's watching Emily, seeing that light of inspiration in her eyes. It stirs something in her, somewhere, some of the joy and passion for Willworking that she's been lacking of late. Some of the wonder she used to feel when she'd push boundaries, during those dark evenings in Europe running with her old cabal mates.

"You're going to fail sometimes. Let it teach you something and keep persisting until you get it - and then improve upon it once you've got it."

And then, this said, she turns her head to look at the Orphan who has come up to the two of them. "Evening, Kage," she says, and her tone is pleasantly surprised even if her expression is not.

[Emily Littleton] They have been standing there, talking, for some time. And Emily, who is enjoying the conversation, has places she needs to be and things she needs to attend to. A subtle reminder of this buzzes in her jacket pocket, jarring her side slightly (in the soft place below her ribs) and widening her eyes a bit. She didn't pull the phone out of her pocket, but did look down a little (distracted).

"Sadly, I must away," she finds herself saying, at the conclusion of her chat with Ashley. Which is also the moment when Kage arrives, with a diminished swagger (minor key?), as Emily is gathering her carrier bag off the floor of the sidewalk.

"Kage..." she says, and there's an inward struggle for a moment: to stay, to go. Emily comes down on the side of going, but only because she has too much to say to her Other, and a growing need for sleep. (Burning the candle at both ends.)

"I hope to catch up with you both again soon." There is regret in the words, as if she'd really like to stay. Apology, for Kage, who she has not spoken to in... too long. After helloes and goodbyes and such things, Emily makes her way back to the corner to cross, back towards her car and home (wherever that is for now).