Are you Found?

[Emily] It is warm and wet in Tekakwitha Woods this Monday afternoon and the rain falls down in fat droplets. It splatters on rocks, slides over leaves; it coalesces into fatter, thicker, wetter raindrops; it shatters into thousand of tiny beads: unrelenting. The air is heavy with the smell of damp earth, with the verdant perfumed of crushed greenery, and all overhead roil dark clouds, the ominous promise of more rain, more wet, more damp-earth smell and more mud.

Emily really only minds the mud. It clings to her shoes and she'll have to wash them down before she can bring them into the building at home. She's not really a wetworks girl; the mud and the muck of life serves a purpose, just rarely an aim she's working toward. The rain doesn't bother her. Doesn't bother her as it drips off her coat, or stains her jeans navy-blue-damp. The humidity tightens her curls, makes them unruly: she still doesn't care.

It's been a long time since she walked the paths out to the clearing where she and the rowan-haired Other held Court. So long that the paths themselves had changed; they'd wandered from Late Autumn, through Winter, wound through Spring and arrived at Midsummer, resplendant in all its regalia. The darkest night seemed more than a year away, just now. It was forever ago; impossibly hard to recall with any clarity. Here, where the Fallen Kings slept, time was subjective. If she closed her eyes. drew a deep breath, perhaps she could draw the remembered chill of winter down into her lungs; blink her eyelashes apart to see snowflakes clinging to them; hear the squeak-crunch of snow between her sneakers.

Alas. Not even an autumn-gold leaf. No sign of stillness. Bird calls, squirrels in the ground litter, Life abounding from every niche, every nook, every cranny.

There's no peace here. Just rain and the overwhelming press of all things living and green.

She reaches the clearing, parks herself on the log-King-bench. Emily rests her elbows on her knees and stares out across the slow-moving water, where the pattern of raindrops on its surface renders all reflections hazy. Where the plane of the sky is imperfectly echoed. Turbulent but quiet. Restless.

[Kage] This is not a day for hikers. The rain keeps them out. The rain vanquishes intent and transforms the world into: pools, un-clear; occluded, roads of sky, of storm-sky. The path to the clearing where two paths meet is muddy, almost unpassable, and Kage sinks to her ankles in mud, in leaf-rot, into the drowning green, weeds and grasses, pulled under, quenched, as she walks her road to the Court.

Of course, it is not a road; it is just a path. And it isn't hers, there is no reason for her to always come up this side of the hill, to always come around that corner, there, to duck under that branch, to be leaf-stroked, hailed by a sudden fall of light-refracting water. But she does. And of course, there is no King, not really: no Fallen-King, once-great, once-grand. Emily claims her seat against the (lightning felled [disaster stroked]) wood not long before Kage comes around the corner, wet to her bone, wet beneath her skin, wet to her very marrow, a drowned-creature, a mer-thing, hair like a flake of fire, like an old treasure, rusted, darkened, not-yet blotted, blighted - but soon, oh. Soon.

Things always blight. [Water darkens them.]

Kage is soaked. She has no bag with her. She has a cannister on a strap, though. She has mud up to her knees. [Not just your ankles. When you drown, you drown.] She uses the branch to haul herself forward. The road is a mess: splatters out. Difficult to follow. Often, this - difficult to stay true. And there is a figure, dark-haired, damp-darked, by the tree; Emily, amid all the green, by the great scar of the Fallen-King, seated within it, against it, staring at the water.

Water doesn't cleanse.
Not just.

" - Hail," Kage says, and it isn't what she means to say: but ritual's got her. "Emily." Emily's name: like it's a thing that was looked for, sought; wanted. Emily's name: like saying it means she isn't smoke, isn't just a trick of leaf-light and storm-gleam; like she isn't a water-riddle, a rain-dream. Like she is real. She is still at the edge of the clearing, in the mud, unbalanced. She rights herself, moves forward. The cannister swings.

A lullaby. A tattoo.

[Emily] The water falls down and the water rises up; there is no break in the ceiling of clouds, through which one might glimpse sight of the blue firmament of the heavens. There is no line of sight to Heaven; no [as above, so below] reverence to spare in all of this drowning. Damp tresses of hair stick to her throat, to her cheek, cuts long dark stripes across them; tiger stripes; bindings. Somewhere behind the clouds Helios dawdles, ambles his slow arch across the heavens: this is the day that is slow to dying. This is the sunset that will not come.

The puddles and pools reflect the enormity of the sky, which answers back in only grey. Grey and wordless; grey like the flecks her in her eyes; grey: timeless, time distorted, distortion... There is no Time here, not in the classical sense. The rain falls down and the puddles fill up, they overflow, they weep out to branch new puddles. The rain falls down and the water ripples, it shudders, it trembles and quakes. The water falls down and the water rises up and the air between it all compresses, squashed down tight under the coverslip of the sky.

There are mushrooms growing in the leafrot, bedwounds of the Fallen King seeping white-brown out into the open air. Tumorous knobby growths. Pale cream and cancerous inside. Dangerous (Poison! [Eat Me!] No, Don't!).

All of it is new again and all of it is ever-same. These are the thoughts that swim behind the dark fields of her blue eyes; these and thoughts of nothing at all. The wet seeps in, through her clothing, down to her skin. It is not cold, does not refresh her, neither does she melt.

Emily endures.
(Where's the reverence in that?)

Kage has no bag; Emily does. Kage brings a cannister; Emily a paper bag. This is their way of Keeping Court; offerings for the rowan-haired/raven-haired Other. This is their way of turning back time.

Hail, Kage says, and Emily lifts her eyes from the water. She tilts her head to look over (cold fire hair [Manchester's a chestnut]) and offer a smile. Soft, reflective, troubled and tired.

"Hail and well met," she calls, though her voice is not resonant, not warm and mellifluous today. She is not smoke, nor is she a mer-thing, nor is she a water-riddle or a rain-dream. Emily is just, is only, is Emily. (I am that I am, He said when asked after His name.)

"I have brought offerings," for this is the way of the Court. "I trust you are well?" This is the way the keep Time; keep it honest, keep it close; keep it, for without keeping it is so often lost.

[Kage] "Well met, indeed. I am well." An answer. "I'm different," she says, then. An offering. "I'll tell you about it. If you'd like to know."

And she is different. Emily will feel it if she takes a moment to consider: the new note in the red-haired Orphan [always (Solitary)], the changed potency. It takes Kage only a moment to slog across the clearing, to find a root, to walk the root, until she is near to Emily, is close, close enough to touch the dark-haired girl, all-ravelled up in restlessness, to see the passage time has left, the tracks the past days have run beneath Emily's skin, just like this: a person is a floodplain, and where floods once ran, there are marks, there is memory, and sometimes memory is just a shadow, and sometimes memory is a ravaged line, and sometimes it takes a certain kind of glance to see either, but but but.

There: it always is.

If you'd like to know, Kage says, and she means it. But she means this, too -- and it's there in her tone -- that it is not the thing that might be most important. It is not the thing, maybe, that rises to the surface, if a thing is a word, and a word is a thing, and a thing or a word: either can be deeds. Kage's eyes are hazel, and just now, they look green -- green as [Oracular] waters, green as deep shadows, and large in her pale face, expressive, liquid themselves, a thing of night-time, best-belonging to that uncertain [Mutable] hour.

"What did you bring?" The cannister: she sticks a thumb under the strap, pulls the loop over her head. Her hair is turning into Medusa snakes. She should've put it up, at least, but she didn't. "I have tea. And honey sticks, three. In my pocket." A beat. And: "How are you, Em?"

[Emily] ((Do I see what you see? -- Awareness))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Emily] I am different, the Other says with her emerald-bright eyes, all aflash and ablaze beneath the drowned crimson hair; like lamplight: brilliant. Oracular. Shadow-deep, shallow-sea soft, shamrocks and luck-bright and oh!...

It is slow-coming, like Autumn, like Helios lazy and dawdling; revelation, languid, breaks over her, covers her, and for a moment there is Wonder again; there is Grace; there is Reverence (rekindled) and it gives way to a small smile, genuine, that eases up the corners of her mouth.

Like it might creak for the moving; has it been so long since you smiled?

"Yes," says the Apprentice, echoing back immanence. "Yes, you are."

This is solemn (bear Witness!) but not gravid, not heavy, not weighed down, no lodestone, just recognition, just Oh!... and then an agreement. That settles it. She drops her chin, looks down at her hands, which are clasped together, which gather the raindrops, which hold without meaning to, which brings about another epiphany. Fingers part and the rain slips through. The water falls down (and the water rises up); a new puddle is born.

She leans back, now, and reaches into her bag. A bag that is rain-dark and puddle-wet. Somehow, the bag she withdraws is only soft-damp and crinkled. It has been sheltered, til now, and the fat drops that fall slid down through its creases, run like rivulets between roots, drain away, fall, drip (the water falls down [the water rises up]).

"Apricots and almond scones," she says, for they are all jumbled up in one package. It smells sweet-lush like summer fruit and nut-rich of baked goods. All that Kage is, is becoming, is being rushes over her. It lifts her up, buoys her: kindling. The smile is warmer, now, and not so far off.

"Are you Found?" she asks, for the Other'd gone Seeking. "Did you find what you looked after?"

There's an answer, thus, in the unanswered question; the avoidance and focus on anything but How are you, Em? and What've you been up to? In the shadow of floodplanes that had formed under her eyes, that darkened her sinuses, dark blue like bruises; in her pale and unsleeping visage; in the slowness of her smile. There's an answer, truer than any she'd offer, and so Emily hands over her offerings, turns back to questions.

[Kage] Kage presses herself against the tree (the felled king [the scorched wood]) although it affords no real protection from the rain. Her jeans are a second-skin, are seal-skin; they cling to Kage's skin, to the curve of her hip, to the incline of her waist, to her ribs, and maybe she'll be sick later. What brought her here, what brought Emily here? Beyond the storm, the late - and squandered - sun spends itself gold; glints like a harvest; lines the unrelenting dark with gilt [amber (pure)]. They don't get any of that down here: mortal things, Chicagoans, stuck with what the weather gives them, stuck with the sewers, with the imminent floods, with the disaster.

And Kage watches as Emily pulls the crumpled [crackle] paper-bag out of its hidey-hole, the same hidey-hole, perhaps, they left notes in back when they first met, by complete chance, at this very spot. Notes like: I was here, you weren't; hello! And notes like: I'm thinking about coming here _____, and bringing food. And notes like: I will come too, but look for me at this hour, as the crow flies. Silly things, but magic. A plain, mundane sort've magic: yet still.

"I suppose I am found." The cannister of tea, opened, doesn't steam into the rain; it's hot. The air is warm: close, like a lover, the moment before he turns smothering -- before He turns smothering [can you still breathe (do you want to)]. Her smile is brief, but candescent, a gorgeous thing: "I found what I needed to find and I came out again. It hurt. I was surprised; I'm still surprised. But I'm also here."

A pause, because Kage is careful of Emily, and she doesn't know how to say what was easy to say to Ashley, fresh from the experience, still in awe of it (always), just glad to be alive (again), without at least: "There was a heart. Had to be given; had to be cut."

Another pause, and instead of taking the bag of apricot and almond scones, instead of looking into the bag, instead of breathing in the warm, moist perfume [denity of scent: thick, sensual], Kage looks at the bag of treats, of offerings. And then she looks at Emily, direct, serious, grave, and then she turns-sideways, hip still connected to the fallen-oak, the king's-wood (ah, hah).

And then she reaches out and hugs Emily.

[Kage] ooc: *waves wand, fixes typos*

[Emily] (( ... ))
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5 (Failure at target 6)

[Emily] Oh, no. Not this. Anything but this. Arms that enfold, that comfort, that carry; a slight girl, wet and soul-weary; Janus: two-headed, two-faced, one that looks this way (bright: brilliant), and one that looks that way (dark: somber). Kage hugs her, and Emily, Emily-soft and Emily-gentle and Emily-young, youngnaiveandsohopeful...

... sunders.

There is a tremor, a soul quake, down to her marrow, down to their bones. Once Kage was like moonlight that sloshed in her marrow, soul deep and aching: this is deep, like that. Foundational, unstable. Kage doesn't push, doesn't prod, doesn't hold up an offensive that Emily can stave off. In the face of compassion who can be Unrelenting? Who can struggle?

Who?

The younger girl's fingers tighten on the paper bag, crinkle-crackle it tighter. Her breath rushes out like the tide, heavy and moon-pulled, whooshes out of her lungs, swells like the sea. It breaks just as certainly. Is broken. Emily's broken. She struggles (she drowns).

Beyond the clouds there is amber-pure-warm-light. Untouchable. Unseen.

Beyond this trembling there is silence; struggle. She is tight, curled inward, walled off and pulled away. There is shame, self-horror; there has not yet been enough time for hate to sprout, for self-doubt to erode. She is drowning, not dead yet, but the fight has gone out of her.

And the rain comes down; it always comes down; it falls all around them. Slaps their crowns with fat fingers; slides into places most intimate; weighs down their eyelashes with sky-tears.

[Kage] Kage is drenched. Her hair clings to her neck when (and while) she hugs Emily. Her hair clings to her shoulder, even to her cheek, to her nose, and clings to one of her eyelashes. Streams, ruddy, darker than briony, dark as a branch with only a glint of copper, a glint of heart's blood, because - well. Flame [cold fire] shivers even under such an onslaught. Emily is taller than Kage by a good half-a-foot. Maybe a little less. The Orphan [Disciple (another level of the Mystery, unpeeled, unveiled)] swallows. Her throat works. Her hiking boots flex, the soles of them, and the rain washes globules of mud downward, until her feet are golem-things, golemlings. They flex because she goes onto her tiptoes.

She just hugs Emily, not so firmly, nor so invariably, that she can't be disengaged, but solidly, like a hug could make someone un-shiver, a hug could make the rain undo itself, a flood backtrack, un-strew the fallen trees, the branches, diminished of leaves. A hug's a small thing, and it isn't even a word, but it's the only word she can think to say, to do, right now. For what's happened. Kage is somebody's daughter, and somebody's sister, and somebody's lover, and somebody's unapproachable crush. Kage is somebody's friend, and somebody's enemy, and somebody's pain in the fucking ass, somebody's very bad day, somebody's good day, somebody's memory, somebody's.

"You don't have to say," she says, finally.

[Emily] "You know?" she asks, and her voice breaks. It is heartbreak. It is shame and fear and innocence lost. It is the tremble before the great flood, before her lashes cannot blink back her tears and they tumble, fat and warm and saline down her cheeks.

There is shame and it burns brightly, eclipses the wonder. It swallows the surety and drowns out Grace. Her breath rattles, like her chest were naught but a hollowed out drum; it rasps against her ribs, plays them like the xylophone. Hollow. (Hallowed.) There is shame and it burns brightly, so brightly that it consumes her, burns her down to her quick, burns so hot that the rain is forgotten, that it sluices off her in rivulets and goes unheeded. It gets in her eyes: ignored.

There is shame, and there is also fear. Fear that creeps in, casts shadows through the brilliance. Fear of doing; fear of becoming; fear of being nothing more than the sum of her actions.

Emily is somebody's daughter, she is somebody's friend, she is somebody's bastion, she is somebody's (end) downfall. She is nobody's lover, and nobody's sister, and nobody's unapproachable crush. She has no childhood hometown, no high school for reunions, just one best-friend-forever (birthright [Brother] friend).

She is a handful of accents, a map full of map-pins, an album of pictures, a collection of sins.

There is (usually [always]) a thin silver chain around her neck, and along it's strung a silver bauble that cages in a heartbeat that calls out Home, home, home. In times of trouble or heart-ache, she'll wrap her fingers around it, she'll think back to the one place she's really belonged.

Kage has never seen her without it.

Until now.

[Kage] "I know some of it," Kage says, and her voice does not break. She doesn't speak heavily, as Knowing were a weight on her shoulders, a heavy thing in her head, pressing her downward. She doesn't sound as if she has a story, a Back When I, or an I, Also pressing against her teeth, some parable to make it all right with Emily again, to make Emily all right with herself (as all right with herself as ever she was). Her voice is steady, but low. The rain is percussion; the rain is the sound of gods, speaking, and neither of these Orphans know how to understand what they're saying.

"I know - " Kage says, and pauses; and pulls a little away, because she is still hugging Emily, and rain sluices off the point of her nose, catches on her (generous [kiss]) mouth, and she licks it away as if she doesn't even notice it. She hasn't withdrawn completely; she is still holding Emily's arm, still touching, because touch is important [because sometimes Touch is the only thing, the only thing to Say, the only way to Hear, to be Heard].

"But not what to say. What," a pause, a beat, a skip, a step. "What happened to - " and with her free-hand, her fingers stray to the hollow of her throat, just below it, where Emily's locket is want to hang [to call Home, Home, Home].

[Kage] ooc: erk! 'her fingers stray to the hollow of her own throat, just below it, where Emily's locket is wont to hang' etc etc.
[Emily] What happened to -

Kage's fingers grasp at the place where Emily's locket might hang, if it had ever hung around Kage's throat, and the younger girl shook her head, sadly: No. No, nothing happened to it; no, I just can't wear it today; no, I don't that it's mine after Saturday. No. Just no.

"It's back at my flat," is what she did say, with a resigned sort of sigh. A small voiced sound that presaged more tears, tremulous, there goes her bottom lip: quivering, unstoic, unstaid. "I just... I can't..."

There is no steady heartbeat of home, home, home, but that tattoo of the rain remains. It is steady, steadying, sopping without growing cold. Its damp eclipses the tears at her cheers, washes them away, wipes them clean again. The air tastes of rebirth, of humidity and green growth.

"Oh, Kage," she says, like the name is a lifeline, like the hand on her arm still is the only thing steadying her. This place, this safe place, this Court of Kings, this clearing amongst the fallen trees, this slow-running water, this relentless sky, this unending day: this is her sanctuary, unbroken and unyielding. Kage is her confessor, her priestess, her friend. She is the rowan-haired Other whose path kisses Emily, then turns back, muddied and all but unpassable (impasse). She brings tea and honey sticks (three) and this Kage is a sigh of weariness, of a spark in the darkness, of a lost child seeing home in the distance; it is small, but still hopeful, somehow still hopeful, somehow so worn.

"It's all a mess," she says, but not quite ruefully. Emily hasn't the energy to be that upset just now. With the wet streaming down, and her tears streaming down, and her hair sodden and down-streaming, too. There's no room in her heart to be angry just yet, the sorrow wells up (the water rises up), the uncertaint too. "I was... I had hoped, maybe, to join the Chorus, but the Singers; they won't take me now. And Owen..."

This tails off, mournful, and feeds back into, "And Riley. Chuck. I--" a false start, regrouped upon, redoubled. "I should check in on them... but I don't even know how. I don't know where to start. I don't know what to say," she says, echoing the other Orphan.

"I just don't know what to say."

Do you know? What to say?

[Kage] Her shoulders (scant [slight]) rise and fall when she inhales the wet air. There is no grace, no elegance, in the shift of her body, the hitch of her hips again, so she has scootched a little closer to Emily, so that her arm stays around the dark-haired for-now-still Orphaned mage. Strange, that: how the Traditionalists name Orphans a thing that means having had and lost instead of a thing that means having never been found having never had. Strange, that: how the name is something few would choose (truly [really]) to be, Orphaned, without family, without past, without a place, without a Home. Emily can't wear Home around her throat right now, she just can't, she can't stand it, and it is at her apartment, maybe locked away in a drawer, and she thinks that now she doesn't Belong where she thinks she might Belong.

It's all a mess.
It is.

Kage presses the cannister of tea into Emily's hands, takes the paper-bag if she must, maybe drops it into the mud, because her violinist's fingers are not at their most dextrous now, and mundanity is a thing thought-after afterward. "Oh, Em. It sure is a mess." A pause, like a dash -- like a hyphen. "If you like, I'll go with you to check on Riley, Chuck, Owen." A beat. "The first step is reaching, though. I mean, if you don't, Hallmark-card as it may sound, then you won't touch anything, and if you don't touch it, how will you know it? Or yourself?" A beat. "Just say what you want to say."

Another beat. And this is complicated. "Do you really think the Chorus would unwelcome you now?"

[Emily] What she wants to say? It is not so much about what Emily wants to say, more about who she wants to be, what she wants to hear. She wants to belong; craves it; hopes for it; runs from it. She wants to be enough that even some such sin as grevious as this one will not tarnish her everything, will not corrode the few friendships that steady her soul. She is blemished, blighted, broken: aching.

It's all a mess.
It is.

"I want them to still be there," she says, and there is great doubt in her that they will be. There is doubt, in her, that she would be unchanged in knowing that any of the three had done what she has done. Had taken away what she has stolen. Here is a heavy sigh, that presages self-awareness. "I want them to be stronger than I am, and I have no reason to expect that. It won't be the same, now."

I want, she should say, to go Home. But home is never where we leave it.

This is what the dark thing has stolen from her, this begrudging beginning to building a something, a foundation and a new beginning. It's eroded now, weakened, fragile. It's easily sundered, like the girl who fits somehow into the curve of Kage's arm. Who is smaller that her height belies.

"And I don't know," she says, of the Chorus. Of the Choir Celestial who sings in His name. She does not know, but she suspects, that her sins are too great, too heavy, too worn. She measures the weight of the sum of her worth against the lodestone she carries (sometimes, Lord, I think that you overestimate the breadth of my shoulders, the strength of my back). She finds herself lacking.

"I ... can't imagine that they would."

[Kage] Her eyebrows draw together, and a drop of water glides, slides down a Melusine-ruddy tress, drips onto the sodden collar of her sodden teeshirt. It was a light gray, once, but the storm has darkened it, transformed it into slate, into stone, and the lines of her bra are visible through the light fabric, like flaws in the earth, bark to a tree. Kage sniffles once, blows out, spray of droplets, see, spray like a halo, inverted, broken, drip, drop, fall [descend].

It won't be the same, now. "Doesn't mean that it won't -- can't -- still be good. And Em," brief pause, hesitant. "You aren't weak. There's nothing wrong with taking a moment to be quiet. As long as you don't ...stay there."

It would be difficult for anyone to accuse Kage, with any justice, of - when confronted with one of the newly awakened - trying to sway them away from the Nine, trying to beguile them to her personal Vision, her own [heresy (revelation)] version of the truth. Although opinionated, and it would be difficult for anyone to deny that, too, the Orphan doesn't say, No. They're bad for you. No. Make this choice. Make my choice. Make any other choice.

Emily probably doesn't even know that Kage has her own history with the Chorus [thanatopsis (katabasis)]. That she is thinking, right now, words that aren't hers, that might make sense to Emily Littleton, might help her, might uplifted her, might be just what she needs, and she can't quite remember them, so she's trying to figure out what they were, or what she could make of them, and she's thinking, Hah, this one's for you, Virtue, but without much punch or impact. Her attention is on Emily, after all. A friend in need. A friend, needing. A woman who just killed someone. Who isn't dealing.

Who thinks she's, what, too dirty to Belong, too wrong. Screw that.

"But why not? Are you so changed? Did you lose your voice?" A beat. "You aren't Wrong, Emily. You aren't a monster. Do you actually think you are? Do you actually think that you're worth less than you were a week ago?"

[Emily] [Emily?
... Yes?
Are you listening?
... Yes.
It's our sin that separates us from God; it's these choices that hurt Him. It's what pushes us away, makes it difficult for us to come home. It's what keeps us from sitting in Fellowship with Him.]

It had been so long ago, so very long ago, and the man who had told her, told Emily-young and Emily-bright and Emily-Faithful about the ways of God, he was gone, returned to Fellowship with the Father he followed. All she had left were memories, memories and stories, stories and Faithfulness, Faith and a set of worn prayer beads. All she had left was the Reverence, twined through her pattern, and the echo of Wonder on a cold winter's night.

"I can't lose what I didn't have," she says, and the sadness wells up in her, bubbles up like laughter, it's a low chuckle that's wry for all the wrong reasons. But it's laughter, none the less, it's release (catharsis), it's letting something so odd, so ridiculous, so strange that she couldn't help wonder: What was I thinking? Oh, it's warmer than the rain, this, and for all of its wry-ness it's hopeful. Hopeful. "You showed me, the Priest did, someone ... else ... did long, long ago. I know that Owen can hear it; you all have your voices. But how could I Sing when I can't even hear?"

And maybe it's Wanting she had to let go of. Let loose like a sigh, like a something; give it up to the rain, to the bounded-in Heavens. Let go. (Surrender.) Let. Go.

"I don't know," she says, to the last. The tears are not coming, now. They do not rise up to meet the rain that falls down. Calmer, now, these eyes, they do not echo the waters. Not still yet unruly. Just quieter. Quieter.

"I think that I thought I was worth more than I think that I am now; but maybe that's not wrong. Maybe it just is. It's hard, Kage," she says, with an edge of straight honesty. "It's hard to think of myself as someone who could -- someone who would -- not just would did. It's not theoretical, not anymore. It's writ; there's no changing it. That's what I am now, not all that I am now, but part of it. Always. There's no going back."

[Kage] Kage pats her thigh, her pocket, feeling for something within, finding nothing, no telltale lump, no mark where a cigarette is kept. Kage doesn't smoke, not usually. She is one of the rare: someone who can smoke, casually, for sociable purposes, without craving another later on, without unthinkingly reaching for another because, why not, five minutes to kill, it's something to do, it's something to be. It's too damned wet for it, anyway. Her matches probably wouldn't catch. Her lighter probaby would bow, flame sputtering, ruination.

I can't lose what I didn't have, Emily says, and Kage's expression grows graver, longer. She wipes her face, sweeping water, sluicing water, through her fingertips, into her hair, because that's where her fingers go, see, bury in the red, stay. Her other arm is still around Emily, though. Companionable, sisterly. Practiced, maybe [there's no Practicing moments like these].

"Well. How can you hear, if you don't first listen? It'll happen. Maybe slower than you'd like, but it will. Not everybody opens their eyes, rolls out've bed ready to sing like a rockstar. One with talent, I mean. And without a studio to play with levels. You're live. You know?"

There's no going back. Kage takes time with that one, too. The rain lessens, a little. Hush, follows. Hush begins to work its way through the trees, and birdsong, scattering, elsewhere, seeds -- tossed, rattles into a descant. Then explodes: frenzied, twittering, twitterpated. Then the hush again. "Would you go back? When all's said, when all's done, would you?"

[Emily] The rain-song is shattered, flung far, disturbed by the outbreak of birdsong, of feather-take-wings, and there's an echo, an argument, an undeniable press from the flutter at her breast. It pushes, it pushes, it pushes: then hush again.

Would you go back?

"I would go forward," she says. It's a midpoint. Not quite what is asked, but also not quite what it seems. "I would go forward and into it all over again, just to know that I'd learned -- that I'd do something differently this time." And this, this is the problem that's be haunting her, harrowing her, all of the Springtime and on to Midsummer.

I would go forward ... just to know ... that I'd do something differently.

Here, the reason for all of the late night wanderings, the flirtation with danger, the Bad Ideas (trademark that), the push-away pull-away, the distance, the silence. To go forward, to go back again, to find that place where she'd know that she'd do it all differently this time: to the place in the river where the water is glassy and all that's reflected is moonlight, is moon-bright.

It's hope and it's heartache. (I need to do [be] better.)

[Kage] The red-haired Orphan, whose glance is so green today, so water-dark, lets her gaze drift from Emily's profile, or Emily's face, from Emily's eyelashes and Emily's eyes, to the mud at their feet, the crumpled, sodden, dirty bag that probably still has scones [summer fruit (goblin wares)], moistening, ripening, within. Fit feast for the birds, now. Not for humans who aren't starving, who don't need grit-beneath-their-tongue, to have grit catch-on-their-teeth. And? She smiles. It's a brief thing, doesn't stay, but it's easy, because it is easy to smile like this: an impulse, unthinking, thoughtless, unenigmatic; just a little bit of smoke, the moon tucked away behind, a gleam, a brightness, my apple-tree. A smile, simply because that's a good answer, or she thinks it is, anyway.

"Good," she says, soft: a clot of sound. Unravells in the drowned world. Kage clears her throat, says again: "Good."

[Emily] Good is what Kage says. Good is what Ashton said, what she said just before she said I'm coming over in that Mommy-firm, Euthie-firm tone of dead Winter. Good is what they seem to say, these Disciples, when she has said something wrenching, something difficult, something to pulls out of her a pound of flesh, a pound of aching. Here, it says, here is my suffering palpabale, real. And they look upon it, these Elders, with their hallowed-bright eyes, with their moonslip smiles, with their Enlightenment showing.

And they see that it's good.
They say that it's good.
So, it must be good.
Must be good enough.
Must be enough, this suffering.
Good.

Emily exhales, down to her well-bottom, down through the cushion of excess air that keeps us buoyant, keeps us afloat; she pushes it out of her, all of it, expelled, so that she can breathe in again. Breathe again. Breathe. So that she can breathe in again, now that the rain-song has faultered, now that the water-face stills, and the mud glistens. And the tumor-white mushrooms are quiet, they're listening. Listening. Whispering. (Shhhh.)

Good is what Kage says.

"Mmm,' replies Emily. It's a low sound, but resonant, building, brightening. Then: "Tell me," she says, "About the things you went seeking?"

[Kage] "Between you and I," Kage says, after a moment [spooled (spun)], measured out [a silver spoon (a cupfull)]. "I'm worried -- that's not the right word, not really, but closest I can think of just now -- about passing through the threshold. I'm uncertain about what I've walked into." A pause, a beat. Cadence, rainwater has it, rivers have it, streams, braids-of-water, twining through the earth: they have it. Cadence, rhythm, meter, metronome steady, intricate. "I know, in my bones. I know, in my heart. Behind my breastbone. Underneath my tongue. But I don't, not yet. Not quite yet."

There. Confession. Kage makes a circle in the mud with the toe of her boot. Her boot is so mud-covered that, honestly, it matches almost perfectly, she blends in, she dissolves. And then, "But, okay. This is what I found. First, I found this shop of rare things, and I went into it because it was calling me, because it seemed like there was something I wanted there. And inside there was a man who was afraid of me because I could see something that was as clear as water, but water that hasn't touched earth, you know? Water that hasn't even touched the air, something distilled. And I was given a choice: take one, know-it, take one, not-know it, take nothing, go through the door - or leave.

"I took nothing."

"Next, I found a garden. The garden was dark, the sky was full of stars, and in the garden was Him. He, my, uhm: my Avatar. That's what they call Him. And in Him, I found questions. Old questions, and new questions, and," she sighs, quiet: an exhale, barely there. The rain is kicking up again, the rain is picking up again [but how can it pick up, when it falls?]. "Longing, I suppse."

"And then I found a Boy by a well, and then I found his heart, which had been taken from him." There is a shadow, when she says that; and in the shadow, there is This: the metaphor was real, was visceral; was splayed open, was bloody. "And then I found out what it is like to be dying, and then to die, and then to be re-made, re-created. I found..."

Kage trails away, and then her mouth hooks upward: "Out that Ashley won't look at you like you're crazy if you wake up on a park bench and start gibbering 'I'm Alive, I'm Alive.'

[Emily] There is a quiet magic about being so worn down and empty, so aching and heart-sought, so all alone, lost again, found again. The magic is that whatever finds you, be it the rain or the moonslip smile or a tale of wondering, or seeking, of things lost and found. Whatever it is, it fills you up. It lessens the emptiness. You take it down deeply, deeper than you otherwise might have.

This is what she draws down, this story, this Seeking. Kage. Kage of the starbright night and the Avatar (Him) Garden, and the Longing. The visceral, the metaphorical. There is a little echo of wonder, of wariness, of worry, of lost-and-found-too in the shape that her lips make, in the set of her eyes.

What it is like to be dying
and then to die
and then to be re-made
re-created.

There's Reverence, rekindled (you're good at that Kage-friend), remembered, uplifted. Just gently. Just so. Like the corners of Kage's mouth as she turns this into commentary, about their mutual Ashley friend, who is solid and surety. (Who is aching, surely.)

"Does the water, the Knowing, follow when you're reborn?" she asks, she muses it outward, quietly, hushed. Hushed like the rain fall, which is picking back up again. Fat fingered tapping at the tops of their head. Picking back up to wash them back down again; down comes the raindrops and up goes the river and all around puddles fill, puddles spill, branch into new berths, are reborn, are remade.

And then: "Ashley is good at that." Nothing more. Just this. Appreciative, weighty, honest. Just that. Oh, well, and: "She's good at understanding things that make no sense at all."

[Emily]
to Emily

[Kage] "On occasion, it certainly seems so," Kage says, and this isn't dry, because there is too much rain in the air, too much summer in the bark, too much water in the trees, too much heaviness in the air, too much lightning in the ozone, and lightning, well, it's just an alphabet, just a snarl of some secret sign, violet, violent [and each fork is a map (and each map is a road: to follow [someone should write it down (trace it)] in the sky is sharp against the teeth, is a crown of luciferous things, a brief, fleeting glimpse at irradiation: at what it means to be a fuse. They don't now how to read it. Perhaps a shaman would, or a Verbena; some wood-witch, some witch-more-woodsy than these two women with their cannister of tea their bag of broken [bird-given] scones. The sky just cracks: just opens like an egg, and the heavens fall on their heads.

Over the sound of it, the din, the waking noise of the storm, Kage says - "But I think so; I certainly feel it sloshing," this, a descant, an ascent: touched with surface-amusement, "in my bones. Em, let's go back to the parking lot."

Let's walk back to the city.
[Let's leave the Court.]
Move forward, remember?

A beat, and, "Ashley," she says. And: "Who was it?"

[Emily] "Ashley," Emily says, and the name passes between them like some sort of agreement. Like a talisman against the rainfall, a watchword, a promise. Ashley, one says; Ashley, one echoes. The Hermetic is infamous, well-sung in this Court.

They pick themselves up from the tree-seat, now. And Emily hands Kage back her cannister of untouched tea. There are honey sticks (three) in her pocket still. Emily's brown crinkle-crackle bag is damp and almost tissue-soft. The birds will have no trouble with it; the scones are getting soft. It is time to go home again; to go back to the city; to go forward.

Forward.

Kage asks who and the look that she gets is both uncertain and testing. It's a lifted shoulder, lips thin-lined and pensive. Uncertainty. Secret not-secrets. It is not hers to tell but neither has Ashley said to Emily she was my mother. There were things said in that basement, the cave-damp-wrong place, but she keeps them there. They do not rise with her. They cannot come back from the death-plane below. Emily leaves this alone, smooths the hair back from her eyes and says:

"She's hurting." Present, not past. It's enough; it's a tell; it's a tell nothing. "I'd worry about her, but she'd give me that Look when she found out -- and she would, find out."

They both knew the Look. The Tytalan Look. Almost titular, that.

[Kage] Kage doesn't suspect that it's Ashley's mother who was stolen (taken) and killed (drowned [poisoned]). She suspects it was Bran Summers or Justine Noble [she could just ask Hannibal before she sees Ashley next (that way [knowledge])]. She'd be surprised. And made unhappy, very, at this: people-snatching, across a continent; just for this thing, this localized thing, here in the city of Chicago. Every time she sees Ashton and they speak on (around) current affairs, Ashton says that this city eats people. Makes a morbid joke, but means it: knows it as Truth. That'll start to touch a person.

The mud wants to take them both back. Kage takes her cannister of tea, slings it over her shoulder again, lets it beat a tattoo, some counterpart to the rain. They should stay away from tall trees.

"'ley doesn't find out everything," Kage says, with a brief smile. "Don't let the Look stop you."

[Emily] "Perhaps," she says softly, with an edge of her wryness, "When I have gone through the gates of Discipleship, then shall I not fear the Look of Ashley." It's lighter, but not light. It's lilted, but not warm. She's trying. It is a beginning but not yet an end. "Or, by then she'll be -- whatever you call truly horrifyingly powerful -- and I'll be threefold as worried."

Perhaps. The sky cracks open white-bright and sundering. The crash comes almost concurrently with the blinding light. Somewhere, Emily imagines, there is a bright fork of lightning across the sky. Here, under the thumb of the storm, there is only the shudder of her shoulders and the clap against her ears. It's a flicker-bright, not a bolt. Their footsteps are quickened.

"She stayed at my flat that night," Emily says, as if it's enough of an answer. It doesn't give away what Kage is looking for, but it answers enough. "I offered; she accepted. That was the whole of it."

The whole of the bargain, but not all of the night. Not clearly. If Kage knew the Hermetic as well as the Apprentice suspected, it would be enough to color her expectations appropriately.

[Kage] [you know what? for kicks. dex+ath.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)
to Emily

[Kage] Kage half-smiles, a lopsided thing, and also easy; it could as easily be written by the tangle of branches, of lightning-illumination in the branches, the stray, heavied glow of afternoon [somehow, it found a passage through the clouds, a road, a path] quenched-now, the play of shadows. Casually sardonic. The Look of Ashley. "I think you'll be fine," she says, meaning in this future, where Ashley is truly horrifyingly powerful and Emily is threefold as worried, a Disciple.

Then: more information, dropped. Pebbles: white ones. Or breadcrumbs. Kage slants a glance toward the dark-haired Other, the Orphan-who-won't-be, the Chorister-supplicant, and then she reaches over, combs her fingers through the taller girl's wet-draggled hair, says, "We look like the cat didn't want to drag us in on account of her dainty, delicate kitty paws, Em."

There is a bend in the road. Very, very slippery: the cliff is falling, the loaming is breaking, Kage goes skidding down, but she doesn't fall. There's no reason to go down.