Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Littleton] The winds blows, so hard that it displaces the summer heat, so hard that it rattles the leaves on trees (too green to fall, too tightly held to sunder), that it blows the street litter around, makes it dance: revelry. It is a chill afternoon and the sky threatens rain, looms dark and heavy in every direction. Emily has pull the collar of her coat up again the breeze. Her hair is braided back, flat against her head, flat against the back of her neck, down to where it is secured by a tight rubber band. Still, the wind teases curls free and they form a loose, dark halo around her pale face.
This is not the Court, with its fallen Kings and whisper-rush of moving water. There is no tumor-white mushroom, no upward-reaching coat-rack branch. There is a broken neon sign, panels missing, rust at the corners of its ballast and a building with a brick facade. There is a parking lot where all the lines have worn down, rubbed off, and only the concrete stopblocks reman as vague suggestions of spaces. There is an unkempt lawn, shaggy and in need of a clipping.
They've decided to meet here, instead, tonight. Emily comes in dark-washed jeans, her tennies, a softly pink polo under that black jacket. She waits, wind-whipped and bright blue-eyed. Messenger bag slung shoulder to hip. Hands in pockets.
It is a far cry from where they began, these Others. Their paths do not kiss here as much as purposefully converge. Green mid-90s compact in the parking lot; too old to worry about it getting stolen. Kage's truck soon to follow.
Chuck's Gun Shop.
Chicago, IL.
[K. Jakes] Kage doesn't put the radio on when Ashley is in the car with her. Ashley hasn't asked her to keep the music off, she just doesn't turn it on. When she has other passengers in the truck, she often has the radio on, or her ipod plugged in, but the volume is at reasonable levels. When Kage is by herself, when there is noone else in the truck to worry about, she listens to her music with the volume cranked up high. Today, as the black truck with the windows rolled down turns into the parking lot outside of Chuck's Gun Shop, Ain't No Grave, a la Johnny Cash, chains slinking in the background, Gabriel, don't you blow your trumpet, 'til you hear from me. Ain't no grave can hold my body down.
The music dies when the truck settles in for sleep, when the driver's side door opens and Kage, red-hair luminous in the gray-sky of summer-storm, pale-skin luminous in the dingy, washed-out parking lot, against the could really use a wash black of her truck, hops to the ground. She has a bag, a more specific bag, a wallet, and when she sees Emily, she smiles. The smile draws lines around her mouth; around her eyes. She heads over to the dark-haired Other, soon to be a member of the Chorus.
The last time they spoke each to each, which wasn't a phonecall, Emily told Kage how she'd killed a man, how now she couldn't Belong where she wanted to, because she'd killed a man.
Now they're at Chuck's Gun Shop.
"Hey, Em," Kage says, when she joins Emily by the shop. The wind tosses her hair in her eyes, embers, gotta burn, that, but Kage just blinks and drags a hand through her hair, holding it back. "I've already made the appropriate arrangements. We've got an hour, no instructor. They'll let you rent inside. I told them that would be a possibility. Unless you want to buy, too?" Kage's eyebrows draw together, and she exhales, quiet. Then: "How are you?"
And they're heading in, although Kage doesn't mind lingering. There's no rush.
[Littleton] They're heading in because the wind, while not cold, does nip at and annoy the tips of their ears, their noses, the corners of their eyes. It dries them out, fills them with pollens and other things-tiny. It invades, sticks its whisper-sharp fingers between layers of clothes. It harries, tangles, torments. The wind is no one's friend today, for it is Mid-summer and cool enough to storm.
"Thank you," Emily says, once Kage explains their arrangements. "I wouldn't have known where to start." Her fingers lace around the strap of her bag, now, steady it as they move toward the door. The building comes between them and the wind, and it is just now that they realize how loud its whispers have been in their ears. Emily reaches for the door, pulls it open, lets the rowan-haired Other pass by.
"I'll rent for today. I may end up buying, if I like it enough. It seems silly to borrow from Nathan every time there's trouble." She's saying this like it's old-hat, but that old hat is borrowed. The door closes behind them, blocks out the wind, and it is comparatively quiet. The white noise shifts. The younger woman smooths her hair back, tames the tiny curls that crown her.
"I'm ... better," she says, sinking into the seriousness of that question. Sliding under its surface like weariness into warm water. "Largely due to you. I talked with Father Ward and Owen, as well." Confession, comfort -- these two names are resonant, unsurprisingly, for the Singer-to-be.
"Before the meeting, that is." This is said as if it is wearying. There are meetings. And then there are meetings about meetings. There are meetings to decide who should go to meetings. It's not quite that much redtape, but Emily feels it encroaching. "The most recent one."
There's a pause, now, and her gaze flicks toward Kage. It is searching (Are you worried) without seeking (About the weekend), and then it flicks away. They are not here for a purpose, not doom-mongering. Not now.
"Have you been here before?" is what she asks instead.
[K. Jakes] "You could buy from," Kage says, but her voice is still wind-level loud; she pauses, adjusts her own volume -- speaks, lower: more intimate. Kage's voice is a cool thing, moonlight and shadow; husk and loam and apples. "You could buy from Nathan," she says. "Then be off-record. That has its advantages, and its disadvantages. He might," a brief smile, impulsive, "be convinced to cut a most excellent deal, considering."
The inside of Chuck's Gun Shop contains no stereotypes. At least, not just now. All told, it's a relatively quiet day. The guns are under lock, are chained in place, or are under glass. It's not a place someone can run into, grab something, run out. There are hunting magazines and bounty hunter magazines on racks, there is ammo behind the counter, also on racks, and a clothes rack of hunting gear, some boots, etcetera. In the foyer, there are fliers and advertisements. There is, posted somewhere obvious, the Gun Laws of Illinois, and another chart that shows what Hunting Season is When, and there's some cop stuff too. Smells good, somehow. There's an office behind the main counter, and they can walk, look at the guns, look at the antique pieces, look at the newer pieces, their innards splayed for the elite customer, and next to the office there's a door, and through that door is the range. Also, the bathrooms.
There's an old guy in the office, and a younger guy at the counter, blue eyes, orange hair, scruffy cheeks. He looks at the two women as they approach, as they chat. Kage is smiling, something sardonic there, and also amused, at Emily's weariness as relates to meetings, and she has something to say, but it'll keep. "I have," she says, to whether or not she's been there, and it becomes even more evident when she gives her name to the blue-eyed guy, and he grins, says, "Oh, right. And guest. You guys have the place to yourselves today. What'll you two be using?"
Kage - for her part - chooses a Beretta. Emily - she'll advise, based on what she borrows most often from Nathan.
And then, after Emily's been read the safety rulesof the firing range, very earnestly, twice, once by the blue-eyed boy, once by the old man in the office, who comes out when they go through the door, eyeballs them as they get set up, the Orphan and Chorister-to-be are on their own.
"Did talking to them make you feel better?" Earlier topic, revisited.
[Littleton] Emily accepts the advice, the assistance. She is new to this, clear-headed today and ready to learn. She takes note of what the man says, is able to answer questions correctly and clearly, is patient with whatever proficiencies she must gain to accompany Kage to the range itself.
She has no idea what she borrows from Nathan, except to explain its relative size and shape. From there, it's more about fitting an appropriate firearm to her, because Nathan's heavy pistol may not be what is best appropriate.
And then they are on their own, in a place that smells of gunpowder and cleaning residue. It smells precise, effective, efficient -- if such things had olfactory cues. Emily slips off her jacket, hangs it over a chair beside a table at the far rear of the room. Her arms are lightly tanned, no longer moon-bright-white.
"It helped," she said, though there's a gravity to it that does not lift. "I feel like I'm fitting into place, somehow. Even with everything going all wrong, more and more I get the sense of where I am supposed to be." Her movements are measured, but her voice ambles, it wanders, it's resonant and warm but without any great push, without conviction.
"I'm not looking forward to this weekend," she says. "But at least I have hope that this will be over soon. And that next time, I might be more prepared."
[K. Jakes] [And ... on, automatically. Entropy 1/Corr 1 Where Are The Flaws. Coincidental +1. -1 so very, very practiced.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[K. Jakes] "I am, actually," Kage says, of this weekend. Her voice is clear, and so are her eyes, although they are on the weapon in her hand. The weapon she puts aside, the better to show Emily the proper way to hold a gun, the way Hollywood does not often cleave to, to steady her hand, her wrist, to check her posture. Then, Kage's clear, dark eyes are on Emily, steady, steadying, and one eyebrow is slightly lifted.
"Is that comfortable?" the Orphan asks Emily. "That's the thing, really. Comfort. And I've some ear-plugs, if you'd like." Kage isn't of the Nathan school of teachers, where point and click suffices. She has morals, Kage, and she also has concerns, and a gun is a weapon, a tool, and tools should be used properly, there is skill involved, more than dumb luck. For all dumb luck can be very, very helpful.
Perhaps Emily feels, too, Feels it, when Kage's hand gets keener, when her eyesight sharpens: and she can see the world through symbols; she can feel the instinct, guiding her bones; the connection. Her hand knows where to shoot Emily, for maximum effect; it knows where to shoot, too, to hit that target all the way over there. Nothing amorous about this: all draining, all withering, all immanent.
"I wanted to tell you," Kage says, "That I've noticed how much more comfortable you are now. I think you're finding how you belong, too. And I'm glad you're still in the city."
[Littleton] This is a Never. An I would never. A moment that Emily-then would never have copped to, never expected, never seen coming. This sense of near-normalcy while handling firearms, while the Other with her cold-fire hair bends the weave and the warp of the world around them. Sees with keener eyes, guides with a more deadly hand. This is normal, the nearness of having Kage adjust her grip, stance and posture. The confidence (let's call it that) of stepping forward, taking her destiny and Fate by the hand, shaking it, grapsing it: Here, now, we'll play by my rules.
It's comfortable in a way she never expected, but the comfort unsettles her. For herein there is Power, beyond what she might have imagined for herself. There is Temptation and the allure of self-proclaimed Righteousness. She sees it in the others, feels it in herself. This Never has cost her, some assumption, some Always, and while Emily cannot name it now she can feel it slipping away.
When one door opens
Another one closes.
Eyes open, then. Awake. Kage imparts skill to fill in the blankness where before was only instinct, respect and the reverence of things greater-than-self. Knowing she knew nothing is likley the only thing that saved Emily from the point-and-click hubris; the assumption that it was enough to know which way to point the gun, which end went toward the other (wo)man.
"Where else would I have gone," Emily asks, with her mouth wrily canted. Because the answer is Anywhere, Everywhere, Nowhere. That she has stayed put this long is a lesser miracle. "You're stuck with me for awhile," she says, certain of this. Certainty (surety).
There is a glimmer of silver at her throat once more.
Emily has (is) Home.
[Littleton] ((Dex + Firearms: dif 6))
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Littleton] ((No, no, really: re-rolling +1 dif))
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 7)
[K. Jakes] The first time Kage ever handled a gun it was a mistake. She was fifteen years old, and when she fired it, her shoulder dislocated and the bruises blossomed a poisonous purple. A flea-body purple, and stayed. Kage, at fifteen, had been half-forced onto a camping trip-cum-hunting trip with her older sister, some of her older sister's friends. Kage had been the youngest on the trip, and the older kids had decided to scare her. It was lucky, that she was such a poor shot. Lucky, that when the Bear was done growling around her flimsy cabin, when she found the rifle in among Kenny's things, her shot hadn't been so poor she'd actually hit Kenny and Graham in their stupid bear costume, when all she'd intended was to scare the Bear away, because what if someone got hurt. It was lucky, and Margot'd felt bad for weeks, and not just because of the parental fall-out.
The first time Kage ever struck out to deliberately learn how to defend herself with a weapon was after she was Awake, but before she'd been almost-recruited to the Traditions; after she'd Seen things, things that she knew she wanted, more than many things, to be certain never to need Touch up close, things she would like to keep at all possible. She'd tried to shoot Him, once she'd learned how to wield a weapon; He'd laughed at her.
She doesn't look like the kind've woman who is conversant in firearms.
Usually, when Kage reveals a skill, people take a moment, and then just accept it. Perhaps it's because of her confidence; perhaps it's because of her assurance, the casual, callous grace with which she asserts herself. Perhaps it's because this -- self-defense: it becomes far more important, Awake, than it had ever seemed, Asleep. Then, the threats were scary, are still scary, but they also seemed easy. Guns are illegal.
So is killing with them.
Yet.
" - the Moon," Kage says, not continuing the moment: "Or Neptune." A beat. And then: "All right. Shoot. Let's see you in action." The red-haired Orphan is in her own 'box', is standing back to give Emily plenty of room. If Emily were claustrophobic, the reinforced plastic of the 'cubicle' might wear on her, for all it's clear, segmented by lines.
[Littleton] In action is hardly that. There's focus, and calm and nothing pressing in but the nearness of glass. No pressure but performance (Show me) and no (grave) consequences to failure. There is nothing here to steel her resolve, no fear of death. No fear: motivation.
Maybe it's that she closes her eyes before she pulls the trigger, or maybe it's the tremble that comes to her hands -- this is the first time, since that shot him home, since another expired their last breath. First time she's held a weapon. First time she's taken aim at something as intangible as a paper target. First: it echoes in her head, tauntingly. First: it torments.
The shot goes wide, wild, unaimed, into the mortar-block-solid walls, cacophony. It is the wrong sound (Danger!); it is all wrong. Emily's eyes open, wide and unsettled. Her body tremors (fear [echoes]). The blue-eyed boy and the old man come forward from the office, wearing concerned and stern faces respectively.
There is a lecture. Review. Rebuke. Emily has lowered the weapon, she has set it aside. Her eyes are bright, stinging. She apologizes. Says yes, sir and no, sir. She is shaken, where is your confidence now, uncertain. There is a glimmer of silver at her throat. The menfolk recede, rush out like the tide.
She's pale.
It is terrible, still, this gun-thing. Terrible and wan-making. Emily presses her lips into a thin line, breathes out a shaky breath, apologizes to Kage with blue eyes and no words. It is quiet again, and it smells of gunpowder. It is clean, here, but not quite completely sterile. She is better, she tells herself, told Kage, tells all of then; she is better but not practiced, and that's why they are here.
"Not... not quite how it's supposed to go, eh?" A weak smile. Daunted.
[K. Jakes] "Try again, Em," Kage says, when the old man and the young have receded, have disappeared to their hideyholes, to their watchful observance. Her voice is steady, cool; a touch appraising, perhaps, but not cruel. "Happens to everybody. The first time I fired a gun -- it was a rifle; I almost shot my older sister's boyfriend. Thankfully, that did not come to pass. They're unthinking things, guns. Trust your hands. Trust your eyes. Connect with them, and the target -- see? You're already in line."
The red-haired Orphan stepped forward, touched Emily's arm; now she steps back again, giving the dark-haired young woman space to work, space to breathe, space to make mistakes. "But speaking of your eyes," she says: "Try keeping them open."
[Littleton] ((Dex + Firearms: This time with more successes!))
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Littleton] ((Re-rolling: If this doesn't work, I'm gonna have to spend WP and work some magic. Don't make me!))
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 7 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Littleton] Try again.
It takes Emily a little while to stop her breath from shuddering, to pull down the anxiety, the adrenaline rush, the rush, to let it go, to let back in the calm. There, see, her hands don't have to shake. There, see, her eyelashes need not press so firmly against one another, blot out the light, if I don't see you you can't see me. She breathes in, breathes out. She is.
Kage is calm, she is level, she is that fixed point at the center of the horizon; however Emily tips her head Kage is steady. Kage is the steady point that loaned her the tiny slip of moonbright that sloshed around her in stomach and helped her get home to Owen. Home. To where she was beginning to belong. Held her up long enough to ask her questions; this borrowed brightness. Kage is steady, immanent, rekindling.
Emily exhales carefully, picks up the firearm with a sense of regained purpose. She checks her posture, her grip, her line-of-sight. Checks her heartbeat: too quick. Waits. Waits. Waits. Her heartbeat: slower, steady, calm. She breathes out. She breathes in.
Pull.
And only after the shot fires, after she can see it go wide but not wildly so, then do her shoulders slump somewhat as the firearm is lowered, carefully, and her eyes press shut. There is no calamity this time.
Progress.
She smiles, faintly, and says: "Your turn?"
[K. Jakes] [Uh. It can happen to everybody, right? -1 diff.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 9 (Success x 1 at target 5)
[K. Jakes] [Again? Practicing?]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 7 (Success x 1 at target 5)
[K. Jakes]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)
[K. Jakes] "Well done," Kage says, and her smile is unchecked. Honest. Kage will never be someone who drools over weaponry, who looks at is like a piece of artistry. Kage respects a weapon because it is a weapon, just like Kage respects a mind because it is a mind, and she respects, and is courteous to, both because both can be very, very dangerous. Then: one isn't one without the other. There's no whooping, so outpouring of glee, no overbrimming of ha HA, that's the way you do it, let me throw my hat in the air. Just: well done, a job well done indeed.
Her turn. Kage takes position at her own spot -- her own room -- in the firing range. Takes aim, and she is skilled, but not impressively so: she hits the target once; she hits the target twice; the third time, she hits, dead-center, with the precisoin of a better markswoman. The gun does not steam; it doesn't even gleam with deadly purpose. It's a game, in a self-contained range like this. When she is done, she checks the clip, puts the safety back on, does maintenance, rejoins Emily.
"How have your studies been going; has Owen or Father Ward been helpful yet in that respect?"
[Littleton] Check the clip, safety on, do maintenance -- these things she learns by mimicry, by copying Kage. It is not precisely the same for the firearm Emily uses, but it is similar enough that she can figure things out. She is bright enough, even if the nerves got the better of her today.
Perhaps today so that not this weekend? One could hope.
"Father Ward more than Owen," Emily says, glad to be stepping away from the lanes for awhile. "Thought it may just be that Owen and I haven't seen much of each other and Father Ward is more-or-less spearheading the current efforts." This is said easily enough, does not directly belie whatever she may feel about the arrangement.
"Do you remember what you showed me at the Court this Winter? I've been working, on that. I am getting closer," she says, and there is a small smile at this, not yet triumphant (but soon!)
[K. Jakes] "I've never spoken to Father Ward," Kage says, meditatively. She leans her slim shoulders against the wall, and looks off toward the door, the office, the shop of Chuck's Gun Shop. Her spine curves; her slouch is careless. Poised; cool. Without care. Her eyes, though; they're thoughtful, concerned. "What is he like, outside of them?"
Emily wants to know whether or not Kage remembers what she showed Emily at the Court. They've started calling it that outside of their own heads, and it feels Right; not at all Strange. Then: it takes a lot -- or seems to take a lot -- to make Kage seem self-conscious about wordplay or a trick of language. Kage remembers, and her eyes find Emily's.
"How?" A beat, "How do you think of it, when you try to Work it?"
[Littleton] Kage slouches against the wall, her hair a brilliant shock of red against the grey-wash wall. She stands out, vivid, bright: brilliance. Emily, comparatively her shadow, settles into a low chair, kicks her feet underneath it, rests her elbows on the table and her chin on her fists. Her back is long, mostly straight and only gently curved. Their eyes find each other, hold for a moment, then the bluer pair blink shut.
"He is firm but not unkind; wary but not ungentle." She offers up her assessment of the priest in a pair of juxtapositions. It is clearer than what she might have said of Owen; it keeps much back. "Righteous. Resolved." It is enough to offer up these adjectives to the cold fluorescent light of the firing range. It is everything she needs to say to paint out the man in colors oft kept hidden beneath the ceremonial frock.
How do you think of it? Kage asks. Here Emily's expression shifts to thoughtful, gently wistful: remembrance.
"I think of it as the underlying firmament, the starstuff of which everything is made; the bit that calls back to Creation, the Big Bang, whatever you will call that moment when there was first Nothing, and then of that Nothing... All." She is religious, Emily, in so much as she believes in something higher. In something both Immanent and Transcendental. She does not say Holy Spirit and she doesn't call it Divinity, but there is an innate and unmistakable Reverence to how she speaks of it. This, this gift she had not Opened her Eyes with, this is what she Awoke to see.
"It is something I have waited a very long time to see of my own accord," she says, and she is speaking of long year, of decades, not just the time she has spent Awake. "You showed me, and Father Ward has, but before either of you, a very long time ago, I heard it as something else."
She lifts her head off her chin, now, smiles a bit more brightly. There is something of an echo here, though Kage may not know what she's hearing. It's a private thing in the soon-to-be-Singer. It's protected and oft-unshared.
[K. Jakes] Kage is an observant woman (or, at least, thoughtful where she is not observant; she has the ability to think about people, to put them together, or a picture of what they are together in her head: part of the way she mythologizes the world). A man, a Mage, who feels as Father Ward does, like a Crusader, like a King limned in Faith, harshened by Fanaticism, sanded into sharpness by Duty, well. To hear Emily say that he is righteous, that he is resolved, is unsurprising; the juxtapositions give Kage a better idea of what the Priest is like when he is not at a meeting, where he wears his brusqueness, his impatience, his lack of diplomacy, his politicking, his earnestness on his sleeve.
"Hm," she says, quietly. A response. "What of Owen; when he has taught you, do you find yourself believing in what he says? Does he make sense to you?"
And Emily is answering, has answered, Kage's other question, and Emily's answer is given close attention: "As something else?" she queries, perplexed -- or mystified; mystification touches Kage's oft-inscrutable glance with a warmth darkness, something like water, which can be Oracular. Something bright, but dark.
[Littleton] ( ... Pause! ... )
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