[Emily Littleton] The time has come, the Orphans said, to talk of many things...
Winter had broken, receded in fits and starts, leaving a rainy, windy Spring in its wake. The ground thawed, gave way, yielded, broke, (nurtured) let young shoots break through, to grow, stretch (yawn), reach : this was the Season of rebirth, of rediscovery (rekindling). The trees in the woods were thick with leaf buds and flowers, anticipating still warmer days, ready to spread again their canopy over the walkways and paths that threaded through the area.
The time for seeing clearly through the trees was almost past.
The time for gentle shade and fragrant breezes was just beginning.
Emily wound her way out the Court, to where the fallen Kings (trees) slumbered, to where they'd met before to talk of things both great and small. She carried a blanket this time, so that the wet-damp would not wick through to their clothes so quickly. She brought tea, in a thermos, and sandwiches to share. Simple fare, bright and clear flavors: Basil, tomato, mozarella with just a hint of balsamic and garlic. She brought Reverence, Unrelenting and ever building.
She looks for the rowan-haired Other as she approaches, the Other who comes down the opposite path, paths that kiss and then turn back away from one another like reluctant lovers. In the distance a bird calls out, stirs the quiet with its rolling voice. She looks up; she looks back down, and keeps walking.
[Kage R. Jakes] Emily reaches the fallen oak (king [lord]) before Kage does. Not long before, but before. Emily has time to note the transformation. They'd met here in autumn, the trees wearing summer's last-crown; the trees russet, bare, undressing to be shriven (naked [and unforgiving]). They'd pilgrimaged in winter, the air so cold it drank their breath and re-cast it, sketched delicate calligraphy in the air, and more than once.
Now it is Spring, and the earth has resurrected gold from the dead and dying earth: the delicate gold-that-is-green that a brush of breath'll bruise. Now, it is Spring, and trumpets have thrust out've the earth; there are carpets of purple, there are flowers, there are bees, bumbling and heavy in the honey-light of the late-afternoon, and yet still. Still.
Emily reaches the fallen oak (lord [king]) before Kage does. Not long before, but before. And perhaps she's already settled in when, down the familiar path, around the winding road, the red-haired, rowan-haired, blood-haired creature comes, pale-skinned and almost, for a moment, a lovely thing, says, grinning: "Hail, and well met -- and too long between true meetings."
[Kage R. Jakes] [and, just because! percept+awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] The sunlight is different; its hue shifts in the late afternoon as the year passes, as time goes by. It was a deep umber-amber when they'd met; it is honeyed now. The in-between times it was clearer, colder, bluer. In the summer it will be hotter, whiter, scathing.
"Hail and well met," the raven-haired (raven-hearted?) returns, with a growing smile that is mostly warmth (thawed) and less wry than oft before. The accent lingers, an unsteady constant amid a sea of change. "I hope the time has treated you well," she adds.
She is not the same as she was. She does not expect Kage to be, either. But there is a blanket laid out, and buzzing bees, and the relative stillness of an amber afternoon.
"I bring offerings of sandwiches and tea." There is a little flourish to the words, if it does not reach her hand that much can be forgiven. It is a beginning, much like their other beginnings.
[Kage R. Jakes] The (not for much longer) other Orphan is not the same. Kage looks at her, and sees [and hears (and feels)] the thrum of reverence wash across her skin, press against her eyelids, against her mouth and throat, against her pulse, but it is also unrelenting, relentless; it is also stronger than it was before, differently-nuanced, and the red-haired woman studies the dark-haired, looks at her, and then smiles. This is the sort've smile that draws lines around her eyes, around her mouth; that creeps into her dark eyes, illuminates them, touches them with a transformative radiance, so that, briefly, she is all gorgeousness.
"Well, well," she says. "Look at you. I'm glad I brought the good desserts on which to feast each other, because -- Emily, you're different. You've, well; you feel different, so something important must have happened. Are you glad? Does it feel right?"
And Kage, who has approached, and is now folding herself down to sit on the blanket, settles a box tied with string in which there is -- well, something delicate and delicious, something wealthy, something that tastes of decadence, something that will make the tongue yearn -- dessert down on the blanket, but off to the side. Today, in spring-clothing, she has a light blue sweater, knit, but skimming off both shoulders, and she also has a knapsack of some random print, which she lets drop behind her.
[Emily Littleton] She thinks, perhaps, that she ought to have been chagrinned, embarrassed at how easily they all could tell, how they just knew -- but there is happiness underneath that, overbrimming and eroding the shyness, negating the desire to look away. Instead there is a twinkle to her dark blue eyes, a lightness to the little lines that frame them.
"I am glad," she says, as if it were a great surprise to find herself so. "And it does feel right. Ashley called it Seeking, and she seems to think it's a good thing."
She takes up a place on the blanket, across from Kage. It has been a busy Winter, and Spring presses on at a fittingly unrelenting pace. Emily pulls to white-wrapped bundles out her bag, hands one to Kage. When the paper is pulled away, there is a finely crafted sandwich within. Fresh bread, fresh herbs, fresh tomato, fresh cheese -- it celebrates (elevates) the season without ceremony.
"And you? Have you had any great adventures? Memorable conversations? Forgettable flings? Journeys that take you away, so that you can return again?" She asks, she pushes without truly meaning to. It is not as uncomfortable as Owen's intensity, or as Hungry as Ashley's, but it is pushing (Seeking) still.
[Kage R. Jakes] "It is a good thing. And difficult. And private, but I'm curious, and we're friends, so I'm going to ask anyway. Did you meet your avatar? Did you Seek on purpose or did what wanted to be Sought find you?" Before Emily can answer, Kage has taken a bite of the sandwich, and she has closed her eyes [rapture (quiet)]. Kage, when biting into something that tastes delicious, that is simple, but full of homage, Kage doesn't make a sound low in the back of her throat, doesn't make any sort've sound at all: just closes her eyes for a moment, quiet, and stops breathing for a second. Then she breathes again, something approaching mischief in her gaze. "This is good. What deli did you purchase them at?"
"And, oh. There have been adventures, and memorable conversations, and if I had any forgettable flings, I am sorry to report I must have drunk deep of Amnesia's draught, because I do not recall them. Oh! I did get you something in L.A. Do you want it now, or shall I save it until after we've supped?"
And then, quiet. Not pushing, but still: quiet, a place for Emily to lay her own words down, answers to questions, more speech, more talk.
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