Sometimes the little things are...

[Wharil Choc] From the outside, this mystically warded meeting place for magi, looked a lot like a house. A bed and breakfast, in fact, which meant that it wasn't just a house, but the prime example of a home, complete with a hyperbolic projection of comfort.

Inside, it wasn't that much different. At least, if you didn't know anything about it. You could easily skirt past the front door where men with shotguns once stood. You could leave your shoes at the door and be both shocked and refreshed by the sudden sensation of hardwood where once blood and gore soaked into the carpet. You could make your way into the kitchen, and where once a certain Cultist wen t mad and hatched diabolical plans, there was now a certain dark haired, dark eyed, dark skinned man carefully watching a pair of eggs solidify in the heat of a frying pan, while the toaster click-click-clicked and glowed warm orange.

Wharil wasn't in his usual attire. The jeans and t-shirt that he wore were the closes things to 'I'm not going anywhere' clothes he had. Occasionally he stopped what he was doing, and turned to the entrance. Almost as if expecting someone.

[Emily Littleton] The rains came in the middle of the night, pounded down the air, the earth, and everything in between. They swept through, whorled and eddied unstable air thrown off kilter by the nearness of the lake, and then abated. The morning is cold and overcast, but the firmament of the skies holds, for now. The covenant between God and man remains unbroken.

The Orphan, for she is still unsworn into any Traditional home, approaches the broad veranda of the Chantry house. She wears her jacket, her jeans, a witty tee shirt (black, 'to be or not to be' scrawled across it in programming notation). There are no socks between her soles and her shoes. Her hair is unbound, but not entirely unruly. Her skin is cold to the touch, her nose a little pink. Emily has been wandering; she has not been home tonight. But the weariness doesn't drag her down, not yet.

There comes a knock -- once, twice -- at the Chantry door, and then it eases inward. She does not leave her shoes at the door, does not call out for anyone in particular. This place is not a safe haven, but it is a safe enough place to warm her hands, to rest after the wide-arced, city-span pacing she's invoked. It is early enough that the living room might be quiet.

The smell of frying eggs finds her. It gives her pause. Standing, now, hands in coat pockets, Emily looks around for signs of the Others.

[Wharil Choc] There was a knock at the door. He was sure he' heard it.

Click-click-click-click

He slid the eggs into a plate he had waiting. The stove top turned off, a quick rinse of his hands in the sink, and Wharil appeared at the end of the hallway, his bare feet leaving fading prints on the hardwood and his hands being wiped in a kitchen towel. He looks tired. The kind of tired that lingers on someone who only recently woke up. The kind marked on the face of college students on the day of finals. He hadn't slept very well. Or perhaps just not very long. Its easy to see on him, even through the bright, welcoming smile that he gives to Emily.

"Well. You look like the cat actually did drag you in. Come on in. Warm up. I was just making breakfast. You want some coffee?"

Click-click-click-click-SNAP!

"How 'bout some toast?"

[Emily Littleton] "Coffee would be lovely," she says, her voice a little softer than usual. Hushed. (Not in reverence [in remembrance]). "Cheers."

There is a moment, where she lingers overlong in that living room, looking about it as if she's awaiting the next great calamity to befall them. As if someone might roar down the stairs and threaten to throw lightning bolts, or rise up from the floorboards to grasp at bare ankles with undead-yet-animate claw, or perhaps even another dreaded meeting in which much was discussed and yet nothing ever resolved.

It passes, and the waiting falls away from her. She is too tired to uphold it. The girl, for she is still on the cusp of womanhood, with all her foreign places and accents wrapped up against her tongue, she makes a few small strides toward where he stands in the walkway. Toward the kitchen, which once smelled of cookies and yet harbored the great Leviathan to rip memories from her mind.

It passes. She smiles. It is a little shaded, but they are both tired.

"What's keeping you up at night?" she asks, all friendly like, as if they were more than passing acquaintances. Had shared more than a chess game and a few innuendo and double speak laden conversations.

A pass, then, on the toast. Today she takes her coffee black. One hand rakes through her curls, settles them a bit more acceptably. Now her deeply blue eyes settle on Wharil, looking to him, looking through him.

[Wharil Choc] He leads her into the kitchen, drawing coffee mugs out of a cupboard for both of them and groaning and sighing with fatigue as he does.

"Oh. Y'know. A recent compilation of the Vedas and someone's poor translation of a codex found in Guatemala. Research. It's...well, I'd say its complicated but that'd just sound patronizing."

He indicates the sugar and creamer. He doesn't take any himself. After spending so much of his awakened life in places where such luxuries were so hard to come by, he'd already lost the taste for it altogether. And while she watches, he occasionally glances back, all the while buttering his toast.

"Gregor, my cabal mate, was...taken. Turns out I know very little about what he was doing. I don't even know how to find him. So, I'm trying to beef up on my cosmology. Knowledge. Knowledge is everything. Power and ability, useless without knowing what to do with it."

[Emily Littleton]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6)
to Emily Littleton

[Emily Littleton] ((Keeping things to myself -- Manip + Subter))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 8, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] ((Oh, hell no..., +1 dif))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7) [WP]

[Emily Littleton] There's a flicker, a momentary reaction that is not entirely stilled, when he says that Gregor has been taken. It is stolen away in the time it takes him to butter his bread. It's drawn down, toward the hollow near her heart, where something beats, wings flutter, bright and burning, unyielding, unrelenting, reverent and new. It's captured, sundered, and the look that meets his eyes is veiled but concerned.

"Ashley told me, briefly," she says. There's compassion there, and no hint of whatever more had crossed her features. She stops short of condolences, for they will fall flat between them. There is a nod. She raises her coffee cup to her lips, drinks from it briefly.

"I hope you find him soon, and safe." This much can be offered without reservation, without careful coloring or reading between the lines. The May morning begins to drizzle just outside the windowpanes. The air is heavy with the scent of ozone. "He's lucky to have friends like you two."

[Wharil Choc] "Hm." Is the only audible comment that Wharil makes. Friends. They were friends. It wasn't just a matter of necessity. Not completely anyway.

Wharil cuts into his eggs with the edge of his fork. "And you? I hear you've been having more than your share of adventure these days. How're you holding up?"

[Emily Littleton] Another sip of coffee then, another moment deferred in a socially acceptable way. The little clink of her coffee cup settling against the counter. The way her longer fingers toyed with its rim, palming the rising steam to warm her hand.

"Well enough," she says, thoughtfully. As if it is enough to be physically hale (look, Ma, no breaks or bruises) in the wake of her recent adventures. She spreads her hands, a little, as if to accent the point, then shakes her head a bit. One hand drifts back to toying with the mouth of her mug, and the other finds its place demurely in her lap.

"It isn't easy," she says, in a way that implies she no longer expects it to be simple, straightforward, succinct. It's a shift in the girl across the way from Wharil, something that wasn't there before. "But I'm doing alright, all things considered."

[Wharil Choc] "No. It isn't. But you do seem to be holding up well. You...wanna tell me more about it?"

[Emily Littleton] She exhales. It's just shaky enough to be taken for a chuckle, reverberating without resonance. As if he'd asked something funny, made some unexpected nonsequitur.

Straightfaced, she inquired: "Are you asking about the Zombie that crushed Riley's ribs, or what happened at the park?" The latter, it seemed, needed a little clarification. What happened at the park was an insufficient designator, so she adds, "With Owen?"

Emily doesn't give any indication that she needs or wants to talk about these things, but the opening is there. If he chooses to ask, prod, seek for himself. It's the best she can offer.

Another sip of coffee. She resettles herself. Politely doesn't watch him while he eats.

[Wharil Choc] "Both, actually."

He says, munching into a piece of toast layered with fired eggs. He seems disturbingly nonchalant about the whole thing. Particularly the mention of Zombies.

"Ashley seems to think they might be connected. I was hoping to find out more."

[Emily Littleton] Disturbingly nonchalant is probably the best way to handle discussions about Zombies. Really, if Emily were to cultivate a demeanor for future zombie discussions, disturbingly nonchalant was right up there in the possibilities list with Owen's utterly unphased.

She'd get there. Sooner rather than later.

"They might be," she ventures, carefully, as if she isn't quite sure. Sure how to begin, or how to connect them, or if talking with Wharil will lead down the same road of having to relive the memories while another mage pulls them out of her head.

Coffee then. Another sip. Oh, my, the mug is almost empty. Tip it side to side and watch the dregs swirl.

"Ask away," she prompts, with a grim little smile. It doesn't quite touch her eyes.

[Wharil Choc] "Well..." He hesitates. The fork clinks against the plate and rests there, free of his hands. Those are set flat on the table, palms down, and fingers spreading gradually.

"Lets start with these zombies. What can you tell me about them? What did they look like? What did they do exactly? And...you remember when I gave you and Emily those notebooks? When I was trying to get you to cultivate your awareness? Did you use any of that? Can you tell me what they felt like, that way?"

[Emily Littleton] She's relieved, that he starts there. It shows in the careful exhalation. The way her hand can finally move away from the coffee cup. Stilled.

"You'll have to talk with Riley about the Zombies. I wasn't there; I was just her emergency contact." There, the wry twist to her mouth, it's ghosted, the familiar expression. Again, no mirth to it.

"And I'm Emily," she remind, gently, without any real push to it. There's a gentleness in her eyes, behind whatever it is she will not share with him. "I remember the notebooks, though, and I've been studying still. Not just that awareness, but using the scans I've learned."

She doesn't tell him she's gone Seeking. She doesn't mention the feather-flutter at her breast. But Emily has changed since they last met, weathered, worn in not entirely unpleasing ways.

"Owen and I checked her for... infection. She laughed about that later. Said she'd not even been bitten."

[Wharil Choc] Wharil's face is one of passive acceptance, up until the point where she mentions that she's Emily, and not the other one. At which point the brows over his tired eyes furrow with a bit of confusion.

"What'd I s--oh. Right. You're Emily. Of course you are." And with a shake of his head he signals for her to go on, and listens quietly to the rest.

"So she wasn't bitten. But she was crushed. They did get their hands on her. Hmm."


And for a few long moments of quiet, furrowed-brow pondering later.

"Tell me about the park."

[Emily Littleton] Ah, yes, nothing like making a solid impression. The Orphan's eyebrows raise, incrememntally, then drop as she shakes her head again.

"She had some cracked ribs. I took her to the ER, got her some meds, let her crash at my place." Emily was, at least, an effective emergency contact. "She went to Chuck's from there, but she seems to be a lot better now."

All so very mundane. Sometimes, it was all she could do to help a situation -- tackle the simple, routine things that other Awakened might overlook.

And then to the park. Here Emily took a breath, pulled it inward to steady herself. Hands in her lap, shoulders squared. It's a noticable pause, still a struggle.

"Owen and I were in Lincoln Park," she says. She doesn't say shooting hoops, because it's not important. "The lights began to flicker, and there was an undirected but strong wind -- things hung in the air for a moment: eerie. There was an oily feel to it, too, wrong but difficult to describe.

"We found a young boy, hiding in the bushes. He'd been beaten. His pattern was bruised, but not broken. Afraid. He told us he was afraid for his sister, that his mother might hurt her."

She looks away now. Swallows hard. Schools her features. A muscle in her neck jumps as Emily clenches her jaw. Her hands work into fists. Release. There is nothing she can do: helpless, impotent.

"He took us to a smaller park -- Owen remembers the name. Owen found the baby in the fountain." A beat. Eyes still downcast. "Drowned."

She rolls her shoulders a bit, struggles to look up and over at the Euthanatos. There is grief in her expression, frustration as well. It is muddled up with the weariness. She does not carry this well.

"About that time their mother returned, with a Man -- Ashley thinks he was a Nephandus, but I am not so sure. She attacked the boy, tried to stab him. To kill him. Owen did what he could to stop them, but the Man worked some sort of magic. He pushed me back, threatened my life."

Away, again, goes her gaze. A shrug. As if it doesn't matter (but it does). Another hard swallow with no coffee to sharpen it.

"When he left, the woman was just a husk. Her mind was broken and her body lax. We took the baby to St. James where Owen buried her. We took the boy to his apartment, helped him sleep. Someone from the Chorus collected him later in the night, to take him somewhere safe to recover."

And there her voice stills. And she waits on the questions that will surely come.

[Wharil Choc] Wharil's eyes find a spot on the table. They only move once or twice during the recap, and then, only a few inches before returning back to the same spot. He inhales slowly and quietly throughout it all.

"Why...why'd he leave?"

[Emily Littleton] Emily purses her lips, leans heavily on her memory until the reason surfaces. It brings with it the lick of flames, the flash of Prime, the memory of the small body struggling under the weight of his mother, laughter.

"He made Owen choose, between me and the boy." Matter-of-factly, cool and collected. The words came out steady, but the Orphan was anything but. She held it together though, perhaps valiantly even. "When he wouldn't, the Man got angry.

"I could destroy you... but I would rather break you, he said. And then he was gone. Not, and then he went -- he was just gone."

[Wharil Choc] He nods slowly, and the fingers splayed on the table curl back into the palms.

"Then he's not gone. And you both may still very well be targets. That's how his kind work. Their business is with the soul. And sometimes the mind. They know how to work slowly and subtly. He's not gone. He's just setting the next trap."

He rubs his fingers together. There was still some egg left. Still a bit of toast. He pushes it aside.

"I'll have to talk to Riley to know for sure, but those zombies weren't your garden variety walking dead."

There was such a thing?

"It sounds like they were directed. Not compelled by hunger or wild urges, but directed. They might have been guarding something. Thanks, for sharing. I know it might have been a bit uncomfortable for you."

[Emily Littleton] She nods, and for a long moment Emily doesn't say much of anything. It roils within her, but finds no egress. Quietly, then, carefully she says:

"I don't mind sharing. If it helps find him, helps stop him." She had let the Hermetic rummage around in her head for the same reason, and that had been far more uncomfortable. "If there's anything I can do to help, please tell me Wharil."

It's almost pleading, plaintive. It stops just short of being quite that needy. Emily is rising, now, unable to keep still. She washes her mug at the sink. Clears up what she can in the kitchen. (Idle hands are the ...)

[Wharil Choc] "You're doing plenty already. You're handling yourself well, Emily. I know you can't see it right now, but you should be proud of yourself. You've grown. I can tell."

Finally, Wharil stands, gathering his plate and scraping the leftovers into the garbage. When I was where you are I was...completely paranoid. To an unhealthy degree."

[Emily Littleton] She moves away from the sink, shares the space in the kitchen easily. It's a natural thing, finding her here, as if she belongs more in a kitchen -- in any kitchen -- than she might in the myriad of other places they have met. It's almost enough the sluice the uneasiness from her shoulders, to calm the unrest she carried in with her today.

"I can understand that," she says, plainly but with some sympathy (empathy). "It's hard finding out that the nightmares and ghost stories are based in something resembling fact. There was enough horror and terror to the world even before that," she muses, shrugs slightly, rests her hands on the counter behind her.

"But there is wonder, too, and I can't help but hope that one day it will overwhelm the things that go bump in the night." She offers the Euthanatos a small, guarded smile. She still had Hope, and it burned all the more brightly despite the trials and troubles she'd seen.

"Even if I'm foolish to have hope, let me keep it a bit longer?" she asks of him. As if it's the only thing keeping her steady, just now.

[Wharil Choc] "Not foolish." He says, smiling. He moves to the sink, washing his plate without very much hurry. "Not foolish at all. Its true. And it does outshine the dark. If you know how to look for it."

When he's done, the faucet is turned off and he wipes his hands in the kitchen towel again before spreading it out among drawers to dry.

"Me? I'm going for a walk. Little things. Some little things are absolutely marvelous."