Compassion before contempt

[Lara Wrathburn] She was down, and she was homeless, it wasn't her usual grandstanding today, her usual position in grand places, playing music to enthrall the masses and earn her coin. She sat on a side walk now at the corner of an intersection watching cars and pedestrials go by. Her hood concealed her face and made it almost impossible for those who didn't know who she was...to identify her, a large backpack sat next to her as did her open violin case.

The violin itself was extracted from the case, and sat upon the woman's lap. The soft interior of the case had a small amount of change in it, not much more then your average pan handler, and certainly not the amount most would acredit someone of Lara's skill with, but maybe she was just off today, eitherway, it seemed she was inbetween sets, waiting for...for something.

[Emily Littleton] [Awareness: I am more perceptive than a rock, true/false?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 8, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Lara Wrathburn] [Nightmares]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[peep] [just to be a dick: Riley's awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] There are places in the world where street musicians were normal at this time of year. Places like Princes Street Gardens, where the Fringe festival wraps around, embraces, enfolds the Tattoo. Emily knows them. She also knows the streets of London; she knows the corners of Old Cities in the Old World where artistry is not as entirely lost as it is here in the vaunted New World.

Emily also knows that even the most talented musicians make little to nothing whilst busking. A Juliard trained concert violinist failed to stop New York subway goers. She knows, because the world of Art is not entirely lost on her. It is a difficult way to make a mark on the world; it's no more difficult that the things she's devoted her life to.

The dark haired girl is wandering. It's Thursday night and there's no World Cup match to watch. It's warm and humid and sticky, so her hair's swept up in a cluster of curls at the back of her head. She's wearing a light-weight dress in layered blues and purples. The pattern is geometric at its heart, but small formed and abstract. She's wearing sandals, and her messenger bag is oddly absent. There's a small, woven bag instead, and it sits between her arm and her body. Kept close. Kept safe.

She's crossing the street, and it will bring her near to the woman with her instrument and her hood drawn. Emily has not recognized her, for all that she is hidden. Emily is not looking for trouble. The Orphan is lighter than when Lara saw her last. Unencumbered. Freed.

[Lara Wrathburn] Lara recognizes the woman from beneath the hood, see's her crossing the street as she had almost brought the violin back up to her chin. But at this moment she stops, stops and watches the woman who now looked so liberated, so care free and she wonders, wonders what could have happened to bring that on.

Lara is dressed lightly as well, best as she could be to avoid the sweltering heat that beat down upon the city. Her legs were covered in red, peasant's skirt, and the shirt she wore was light, and airy, the matching color of red to her skirt. She was hard to miss sitting there on the corner, dress all so brightly, but perhaps it was all part of the act...or perhaps she simply loved that color.

As the woman lands on her side walk, not ten feet from her, Lara rises, kicking the top of the violin case closed with the gentle touch of a sandal covered foot. She turned towards Emily and took the few steps it was necessary to meet her before speaking outloud. "Hello Emily."

[Emily Littleton] The moon is a whisper overhead. Barely a sliver. It darts in and out of the clouds like quicksilver. Ethereal. A fishing-line thin glimmer of something argent, pure (there's a lady in the moon, you know). It is almost too thin to notice. Almost.

That's the way Lara's resonance feels against Emily's skin: almost too thin to notice. And they'd met on a strange night, made stranger by tequila and suggestion. Emily's memories of it all were hazy, clouded by alcohol and stronger feelings. She doesn't trust the flush of suspicion that rises first, rises quickly, at Lara's voice. Instead she turns, pivots on one heel, and skirt of her dress flares out just so around her knees, and her curls sway just slightly.

"Hello," she says, and the smile that touches her lips is warm enough. It's slightly warmer than just polite. It touches her eyes tonight, which are simply dark (too dark to seem blue in this half-light). The Orphan stills, there, a few steps from Lara's now-shut case. The Cultist is presumably still holding (cradling) her instrument (voice).

"Oh," she says, putting a few cues together. "Are you playing tonight?" She doesn't ask why, or why here. Just if Lara's playing. The smile widens, slightly, and that is for reasons all Emily's own.

[Lara Wrathburn] Lara cant's her head and then nods. "I am...but the music is bitter and sad. It hasn't made for very good money." She says as she stands there all in red, the fabric of her skirt and her shirt flutter about in the evening breeze, giving the woman an etherial quality. The woman regarded Emily with a curiosity.

"Maybe your own experience could help me feel better? What has you so happy and free? So...alive?" She asks as she lets the violin dangle in her hands, waiting to see if the woman would open up and share.

[Emily Littleton] Curious this. The woman in red, in passions, in throes, in innuendo and moonstruck music: Lara, she asks of the lady in blue (in repose, in balance, in half-light, comportment: calm) her freedom. Emily cants her head, a little to one side, and regards Lara softly. It is a curious look, this, almost quizzical. As if she is puzzling out something, looking for a moment to say, Ahah! I take your meaning soundly: epiphany.

But there's moonlight between them, and the sounds of the Mile, and it swallows up all the innuendo; it takes away the passions; it leaves them both there, quiet and moonstruck, no music, no magic, just red and blue.

"Juxtaposition," she says, muses it out as a collection of sounds. They're purposeful, these syllables. Carefully chosen. Emily is not a creature of apparent passions. She keeps her cards close to breast. But when she does play her hand, bare her heart, share her soul, it's artful.

Thus: "There has been darkness -- figurative, literal -- and much suffering of late. I do not know how much you know. I've laid a babe to rest; I've comforted a child who lost his entire family in one foul night; I've ended a life to save another. There has been darkness, and it has been soul deep and aching. I have lost, and I have sacrificed, and I have come to know that these things are different."

A pause, then. There is something somber in her features, serious, grave. This thing, these words that she is giving to Lara have been earned. They are not flippant. They radiate from a deep place, like the marrow of her bones, the squeeze of her heartbeat. And yet they are just words. They are ripped away from the two of them by the cadence of the Mile night. They get lost in the crowd. Impermanent.

"Right now that darkness has lifted. It may only be for a handful of days. It might stretch on into a week, or a month, or even a year -- but I've walked into the shadow, and I've come back alive. There's joy in that. There's freedom in accepting you might lay down your life, and a lightness to reclaiming it and knowing it is not yet your time to step over. I told my brother than I love him, I hugged my friends. I went to the Farmer's Market, and ran in the park. Right now, for a few days and possibly no more at all, it's not as dire. And that juxtaposition, that contrast, makes the little things brighter."

Another short pause. Then she asks: "Is that what were looking for?" A lightly arched brow. Curious. But still not asking the whole of her question.

[Lara Wrathburn] "In a sense." The woman in red, voice curling out from beneath that hood, smokey and sensuous, she swayed for a moment to allow more air around her, to take for a brief moment, a respite from the heat that assailed them.

"It was not what I was hoping for....but it is something I suppose. Things have been..resolved then. Well thats good." She says as she takes a step closer now, almost waiting to see the woman's reaction to her presence. A need there, a need to sense something more then she was now.

"How is owen?" She smiles beneath the hood remembering that night, and what had happened, in her mind...it all made sense, it was all for the betterment of all. "I hope he's doing well."

[Emily Littleton] [Answering without answering. My favorite die pool.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] And see? This is what happens. You give a Cultist an inch, and they're suddenly encroaching on your personal space bubble. Emily, who is usually quiet capable of keeping her immediate reactions to herself, takes a little step back. And in doing so, she formalizes the space between them. It hardens, coalesces, unti it is not a thing of moonlight and innuendo and whispers, no, but rather a lines-on-the-pavement, measured-to-the-inch, strictured place.

She hardens. Lara gets a reaction, and if that's all she truly wants then it should be enough. She gets a reaction, but not a welcome.

"I assume he's just fine," Emily says, and the tone of voice gives away more than she would have liked. There's distance there, and it grates like asphalt against bare skin. There's a roughening of their relationship and it's all laid out for Lara to read. So Owen is clearly not one of the friends she hugged when the twilight receded. And there is more to it, more to it than Emily will recognize or say.

"I'll let him know you asked after him," she adds, though it is possible Lara with see the Initiate before Emily does.

[Lara Wrathburn] Lara hadn't truly meant to step inside the woman's personal space, simply to close the gap on a busy street corner. But when the woman reacts, throws up her shield and hides from her, bristles against her Lara for once backs down, taking that step back, further increasing the space between the pair, leaving Emily with more then enough space.

"What went wrong Emily?" She asks as she folds her arms infront of her, her face still hidden, and unlikely to become visble at anytime in the near future. She seems to be shielding herself with the outfit, as much as she shields others from herself.

The woman seems to have little to say about this whole situation, and she simply stands there, quietly for the time being, waiting to see if Emily will respond again, or simply walk away.

[Emily Littleton] There's a pull of emotion on the younger woman's face, canted plainly toward irritation. Then Emily sighs and pushes it aside. This is a willful thing, putting aside their differences. She whets her lips a little, purses them, then says:

"If you insist on asking such personal questions, the least you could do is push back your cowl." This is said without the burr of annoyance, just the normal clip and lilt of her very foreign accent.

"It's impolite: both to pry, well, to presume any close kinship between us, and also to hide yourself when you talk to someone else. Treat me like an equal, or don't speak on private things. Your choice, Lara."

The younger strips away the thin veil of anonymity. She will not play, tonight. Even lighter and unencumbered. She is a creature of other places, other customs. They come out clearly now; they're evidenced in the strength behind her neatly squared shoulders and proudly tipped chin. Emily does not cow to her or the etherealness Lara's wrapped around her.

[Lara Wrathburn] Lara smirks at that, and reaches up and draws back her cowl. "Very well...Not like it matters anymore." she tosses her hair a little as her face is revealed to the world,. She would straighten her hair, if both hands weren't occupied with different parts of the same instrument.

"Besides, I'm making conversation, not asking for your deepest most intimate secrets." She says with a huff as she moves back towards her spot, apparently expecting the other woman to follow. She begins picking the lean amounts of money from within the case, putting it into pockets hidden in the folds of her skirt, a hand thing to have when your out and about.

She takes a moment to look up at the woman as she fits her violin gently into the case, and seals it. "You won't miss me at all...infact I think you might smile." She says as she muses over something before returning their prior topic.

"So....what did happen then?"

[Emily Littleton] Ah, yes, two can play this game.

"I won't miss you at all?" Emily asks, choosing to focus on and amplify the side comment over the other woman's direct question. "Pardon?"

They are oh so very different. Lara is strikingly beautiful and Emily is humbly plain. The rowan-haired Cultist thrives on pushing past boundaries; the raven-haired Orphan (for now) guards hers zealously. They want different things out of the world; they live different lives.

Emily wants to know why it might matter what she might think were Lara gone. As Lara is not gone, and therefore not missed at present to begin with.

[Lara Wrathburn] Lara raises a brow to that, and stands up slowly turning her body to once more imply that her attention is completely on Emily, she seems skeptical, a rare thing for her. She usually simply accepted, not that Emily would know that.

"Do you really care Emily? Or are you simply asking out of morbid curiosity and the idea that I might be gone sometime soon?" She asks as she tilts her head to one side, taking in a variety of views of the woman before her, discerning which is the true one.

[Emily Littleton] "We will all be gone sometime soon," Emily says, and it is not morbid. It is not even about mortality. Social connections are tenuous, at best, in the younger girl's life. At any moment she may get the phone call that changes her life -- yet again -- and carries her away from this place. She's left behind lovers, friends, homes, all too many times to count. Lara cannot know that, but perhaps she can read it in the calm acceptance Emily has for these things.

"You may leave, I may leave, Owen may leave," there, a concession. She says his name, unbidden by the Cultist. She lets the spectre of that relationship linger on the periphery of their conversation. It is a subtle thing, but to one as practiced at manipulating others as Lara surely is... it should be apparent.

"Why do you worry who will miss you, or what I might think? Why does that matter to you at all?"

[Lara Wrathburn] Lara rests her hands on her hips and shakes her head slightly at Emilys assumptions. "It is simply curiosity on my own behalf. Wondering perhaps...who would attend a funeral." She says with a wry smile as she tuns back to her spot and moves to sit down on the hard concrete beneath her. She sighs as she relaxes there, as if she were on the finest lounger one could afford.

"Do you really think I don't care Emily? Do you think everything I do is simply a game for some sick perverted amusement?" She asks seriously, her brow raised in question, but the look on her face shows that she already thinks...yes emily does think that.

"If you do you'd be wrong...dead wrong."

[Emily Littleton] [Awareness as Empathy: Hey, is there more going on here than you're saying? Cuz it seems like it.... just sayin... (Or maybe I'm as perceptive as a rock, still.)]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Lara Wrathburn] [Lara is tired, frightened and feels all together betrayed by someone, or perhaps a group of someones, she feels like her life really could be over, very...very soon. The more shocking part for Emily anyways, may be that Lara believes the words she speaks, about caring and having purpose in what she does.]
to Emily Littleton

[Emily Littleton] Emily isn't making assumptions. Lara is assuming that Emily is. This is a dreadful spiral, and it leads all the way down into hell (its path is twined with the Road Paved With Good Intentions). The Cultist plants her hands on her hips -- Emily's gaze flicks to those pale hands on the scarlet fabric, then back to Lara's face. She watches as the other woman plants herself on the concrete, lounges there against the wall.

"Well," Emily says, thoughtfully, as if she is just now considering it -- so clearly this is not a thing she's devoted overmuch concern to -- "Were you to pass, and were there to be a funeral or other services, and were I to be in town at that time and invited -- assuming all these things are true, then I would go to pay my respects."

This is said gently. It is matter of fact. There is no glee or joy or sadness or strong emotion. Emily does not feel strongly about Lara, not strongly enough to hope for her passing. Not strongly enough to weep at the thought of it coming. It is just a thought; this is just a question.

"And, to be utterly blunt, I don't often think about your motivations. We've not met often, we're not terribly close. Aside from sticking your nose utterly where it does not belong -- namely into my relationship with my Mentor," this word is stressed, "I haven't had call to consider your personal world view. I try not to assume to understand other people's motivations; it almost always makes an ass of someone."

"So, no, I do not think that everything you do is for some sick or perverted reason. And no, I don't think it's for some lofty ideal either. I think you are human."

There's compassion in all for this, for its firmness and resolution. She is not calling Lara out on anything, nor is she rising to any bait. Emily says that Lara is human, and she means that to be all-encompassing. She means it to be enough.

All the same, there is a softening in the younger girl. It starts at the corners of her eyes. It pulls down the corners of her mouth. She is a gentle thing, at the core, for all that she puts up walls and draws out separations.

"You're out here on the street," Emily observes. She twines this observation with the fear and hurt she reads off the other woman. "Does that mean you have nowhere to stay tonight?"

It is a leading question. Lara does not yet know where it might go.

[Lara Wrathburn] "I am not welcome at the Chantry this week, so says Ashley, the all powerful deacon." She says with sarcasm dripping. "So here I am....on the street, out in the wild you could say." A beat in time before she speaks again. "Not that I care...i grow tired of that places depressing nature, all sorrow and fear and loss. And of the resistance to making it a place that is more then that."

She seems to think back a little, perhaps on the events that had transpired recently, on the things she had done, and on the people she had done things to, not that there was anything that would make anyone blush.

"And if Owen was simply JUST your mentor...then I never would have seen what I saw, you can continue to deny it all you want...the both of you. The more you do, the more of a problem it will become."

[Emily Littleton] "If you leave off on the unrequested advice, for a moment," Emily says, and she's just irritated enough, in this moment to hold her out in the classic stop sign; to cut Lara off at the pass of this insistence.

"I do not know Ashley's motivation, but she must have had some. She isn't really prone to flights of fancy or whims -- but, politics aside," and sarcasm, too. For all that Lara is pushing at Emily, Emily seems to stand there, resolute and unyielding. She hasn't walked away, despite the barbs and the lashing outs.

"If you can shelve the attitude and stop telling me what to do about Owen, at least for the next fifteen minutes, then I know a place you can stay this evening that is not the street and that might afford you some privacy to get your thoughts in order."

[Lara Wrathburn] "And what place is that?" She asks, it would seem for the moment she sets asside her helpful advice and sits there, waiting for the woman to respond, to give out that little dollop of information.

"Besides, I wasn't telling you what to do, I would have provided instruction then..I was stating what I saw, and what others notice as well." She says slightly defensively, but then she shuts up completely and waits for the woman to decide if she would give out that information or not.

[Emily Littleton] "My flat," Emily says plainly. As if it is no great extension of self at all, but it is. There are very few magi in the city who have spent time at her apartment, much less slept over. Lara cannot know this, all she knows is that the Orphan is offering her haven for the night.

"It's small, but there's enough of a breeze that it's tenable, even in summer. And it's quiet." Emily watches her, watches for any flicker of a reaction. "We should head that way if you're interested, though. It's a bit of a walk, and an El ride from here. I even have an extra ticket."

[Lara Wrathburn] Surprise is what registers, surprise, and then a hint of suspicion blooms beneath the surprise and the woman regards Emily much as Emily had regarded Lara not a few moments ago. She smooths her hand down over her skirt, processing this possibility.

"I am...but why? You don't like me...one way or another you don't like me. For what reason could you possibly want to share your home with me?"

[Emily Littleton] "Let's talk while we walk, then. The night's not getting any younger," Emily says. There's a small sigh underlying the words because, really, Lara's questions are fair. They're almost grounded in some understanding of Emily; almost, but not quite. Emily tips her head in the direction of the nearest El station, as if to say C'mon; this way.

"It's not my home," she says, and it's a gentle correction. Maybe for Lara it's splitting fine hairs, but it matters to Emily. "It's where I live. For now. In this city."

She offers a bit of a shrug, and then a hand up to the other woman. Presumably they are walking, now, which makes all of this easier. It makes it decided, and no longer mutable in Emily's mind. She can't rescind the offer. No take backs.

"And you need this, right? Somewhere to sleep, somewhere safe to be. You need it more than I want to keep you at arm's length. I can offer this. Maybe it's a mistake; maybe it's an olive branch. We'll see."

[Lara Wrathburn] Lara looks at the woman for a few more moments, and then something tips in her consideration, and for the briefest moment she has a look of 'what the fuck' on her face. As she rises and pulls her pack on, and picks up her violin.

"Alright.." She says as she watches the woman, still disbelieving. "Lets see which of the possibilities it really is."