We should bake you a cake

[Emily] Rain, rain, go away...

Whoever wished away the Spring grey and Summer rains has Emily's unyielding ire. The mercury climbs, mercilessly, and the warm summer nights give way to scorching summer days that swim in their own humidity. Swelter. Slowly, the body adjusts to such iniquities, the blood thins, the skin bronzes. Summer touches her hair with redder highlights, thin streaks of copper that seem warm yet out of place. Her eyes seem just a little lighter by comparison, no longer as stark a contrast to winter-pale skin.

The door to her flat is unlocked. It stands a couple inches open. Twitches on the ingress of a mid-strength breeze that greets it side-on. The sheer drapes that cover but do not obscure her windowpanes flutter. The small space sighs when the city sighs, exhales with it. A pair of box fans push the air around inside, whirr quietly, break the stifling heat down.

The downstairs door is still broken. Ashley can push right through the lock without resistence. It keeps nothing out but the wind. Up the stairs, past the lift that only works when it wishes to, down a hallway that is cooler because it is shaded and protected (not due to any climate control).

Emily's apartment has not changed much. There is no blanket, now, in Owen's rocking chair. Just a burgundy-red covered pillow (small, square, cased in rough-shod silk) and a book. There is the outline of a couch on her floor, taped into a possible position: the whispered remains of some poor, wronged bit of furniture?

The emptiness has become common, now, and is not strange anymore. There are sunflowers on the table, over a navy blue cloth with yellow trimming. A pitcher of iced tea sits beside them, on a folded towel, sweats in the heat that is no longer worth complaining about. It is summer. There are water-logged fruits in the chiller, salsa to spill over crisp chips, salad fixings -- cool foods. There's also a container of Indian curry (combatting heat with spicy food is common practice in some parts of the world).

Come on over, whenever you like, Emily had said. Possibly when they talked about ride-sharing to the upcoming meeting. Possibly when Ashley had called about the new arrival in town; the referral Emily had made for a local pub. They're friends, now. They'd turned back evil together. They don't need much of a reason to share space any more.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley's mixed Czech and Irish heritage dictates that she has not bronzed this summer despite hours spent outside walking and reading, unlike Emily (lucky girl.) She turns red, and then she freckles: her cheeks and forearms are dotted with their summer coat. They'll fade come winter, pale, only for the cycle to begin anew next spring.

The reasons for Ashley's visit are several: she never got around to helping Emily with Prague. She's promised lessons in the Ars Mentis. And they are friends. She doesn't need a reason to visit, really. She's gotten comfortable with seeing people for reasons other than work at last. (It took her long enough.)

By now she knows that the door is broken. It will probably be broken until the landlord gets off his lazy ass and fixes it - which is to say, it could be broken for years. Ashley pushes her way inside and heads upstairs to the girl's rather sparsely decorated apartment.

The Hermetic is happy. This mood is so rare for her that it's obvious as soon as she shows up: that things have been going her way for once, that she's settled into her Hunger, grown comfortable with herself. That the restlessness of it that felt like it would tear her apart has settled, become something purposeful. She's not walking around grinning or the like, but there's a brightness in her face, a sort of pleasant, hazy distance, that wasn't there before.

She knocks on Emily's door, steps in only after she's been invited. It's hot today, and she's wearing a pair of jean shorts and a red tank top; generally, not something she'd leave the house wearing, but temperatures in the mid-90s excuse it. A few of her scars are visible: long, interwoven streaks on the back of one shoulder, skin that was shredded once by claws and teeth but they're pale and mended now; a dime-sized disc of pale skin just below her collarbone. Disciples (Adepts?) acquire these things. Her hair has gotten long enough to be clipped in the back, held by a clasp like a pair of jaws, loose locks brushed behind her ears.

"Hey, Em. How's your weekend?" she asks, once inside.

[Emily] [Awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Emily] [Ahem... +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 6 (Botch x 1 at target 7)

[Emily] [It's gonna be one of those days.... I see how it is.]

[Emily] [My weekend has been awesome. Not awkward at all. Thanks for asking. Want some tea?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Ashley McGowen] Something different about the Hermetic, now: it's not difficult to notice. Something new woven in amongst the Hunger, something else that has been Willed forward and imprinted itself upon her soul. In spite of everything that has happened - her mother, Edom, Jhor, Dylan, loss of music, everything - the Hermetic is thriving. Is bright and vibrant, is still driven to consume but has finally learned to grow, to allow that growth to spiral outward into eternity. Is alive.
to Emily

[Ashley McGowen] [I love tea, but that sounds suspicious to me. +1, being an Adept hasn't made me any more empathic.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Emily] The door could be broken for years. It's possible that it already has been broken for years. Emily should mind it more, push the issue with the Super, but she really doesn't care. She's not invested in the security of the building the way some residents might be. She doesn't think of it as a long-term dwelling place. Almost anything in the flat can be replaced without much effort. Almost everything here could be left behind. The things most precious to her are almost always on her person -- the files on her laptop, the names in her cellphone, the locket on a thin chain around her throat, the prayer beads her godfather left to her. The rest could hang.

This is my temporary home.

The girl is wearing a summer dress that is little more than a shift with a tie around her waist to give it some semblance of shape. It's a pretty lavender-on-white floral pattern. Magnolia buds, broad leaves. Feminine without being fussy. Emily's hair is wound up on a bun at the back of her head, secured with a pair of unmatched pencils that are now skewed to an odd angle. Humidity is unkind to anyone with wavy or curly hair.

"Hey, Ashley," Emily says, turning when she hears the Hermetic at the door. "Come on in. Make yourself comfortable," she says, but it with a slightly self-deprecating smile. The wryness comes easily. It is a warm part of Emily's demeanor, now. She knows there are uncomfortable IKEA chairs (made passingly better by seat cushions she found at Good Will) and Owen's rocker, and beyond that only a broad expanse of floor to make oneself comfortable upon.

"My weekend's been okay," she says, as if there's been nothing special about it. There's something behind it but that something doesn't yet surface. Emily is very, very practiced at smoothing over rough edges, assuming away small slights, hiding even a winning hand behind the quiet properness of her muddled accent.

She's about to offer Ashley tea when something tickles the edge of her Awareness. It's quiet at first, and Emily has to stretch to place it as more than the lifting of a great sorrow (stress [loss]). She whets her lower lip, catches it in her teeth thoughtfully for a moment. There's a pause in her movement; she is kept, suspended, for just a small pause. It is telling. It shapes the curiousity in her tone when she says, "But ... yours has been interesting, no? Tell me over tea -- I hope you don't mind it's iced."

She waves Ashley further into the flat, moves to the kitchen to get two glasses from a half-empty cupboard. Emily pulls a bowl of fresh grapes out of her fridge and brings them to the table as well. It is story time, story time and tea time and the Orphan (for now) is intrigued.

[Ashley McGowen] There are several reasons, at present, for Ashley's good mood. Ironically the Seeking is the least personal of them, if only because it has made itself evident, exposed itself to the world in her resonance. Beginnings, well, those can go unspoken; she suspects gossip will get around soon enough anyway, but it isn't the sort of thing she talks about with other people.

Ashley lifts one foot, then the other, to tug at the ends of her shoelaces and pull her feet out of her shoes. (Hops once or twice: Chucks don't pull away easily, conform to the foot.)

The Hermetic folds into one of the (marginally less uncomfortable) IKEA chairs, and Emily manages to divert her attention; if she finds anything odd in Emily's response, it goes unspoken. And given that it's Ashley, that probably means she didn't notice anything. "Iced is fine," she says, perking as the Chorister-to-be brings forward the bowl of grapes. She picks up a few of them, rolls them in a palm and munches them one by one.

"I'm an Adept," she tells Emily, glancing toward her with an expression that isn't quite a smile, but the threat of one, something wavering, might spill over. "I went Seeking the other night."

[Emily] Ashley's weekend has been immeasurably better than Emily's, though Emily's could be teased out to sound better than it was with the proper rephrasing (I had a dancing date [A boy I like kissed me]) and some heavy redacting. This is not necessary, though, as Ashley is readily going along with story time.

And a good story it is, however briefly she leads into it. The younger girl's smile broadens at the word Adept, widens further at Seeking. There is no great leap of logic needed to assume that Adept supersedes Disciple, and that Ashley has moved upward and onward in her metaphysical path. This smile is brilliant, it lifts the corners of Emily's mouth; it touches her eyes. There is nothing veiled to it, nothing kept back just now. She is joyful, and it's all but infectious.

"That's wonderful news," Emily says. The contrast in her tone now to their oft-serious conversations is palpable. "Congratulations!" The words tumble, un-mediated, un-reservedly, into the space between them. "You should celebrate," Emily goes on, cheerfully, perhaps a little presumptively. "We should bake you a cake -- a fancy one, with real icing -- or something to commemorate. Good news is so, so far between."

The Apprentice (for now) pops a grape into her mouth. Chews. Her posture is less kept-back now, not so polite and separate. It is friendlier. She has been warmer since the Edom troubles faded. This shift is part of what prompted her problematic weekend, though Emily doesn't know that for certain.

She asks Ashley a more serious question now, but steeped as it is in her overwhelming excitement for the other mage it may not come off that way. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Because Seeking, to Emily, still implies something lost or just out of reach. Hers had left her with tangible changes. With palpable mementos and a flutter that rides just left of her heart in the cage of her chest.

[Ashley McGowen] Emily suggests a cake, and the Hermetic laughs, after a beat. "I don't know if a cake is necessary for successful Seekings," she says, "but if someone -did- happen to make me one, I'd eat it." Really, with as many people as give her free food, it's a wonder Ashley has to pay for groceries at all. Other magi are constantly offering her lunch or dinner or offering her sweets, particularly now that they know that she likes them.

"I'll need to make a short trip to Boston soon, to continue my studies with the Ars Mentis," she says. "Justine and Bran's mentor said he would teach me." Which is also no small source of pride, that Hannibal thought she was worthy of this. It's difficult not to treat the man as a demigod sometimes, even if they're now of equal rank: he was powerful and untouchable when she was an apprentice.

As for finding what she was looking for, she crunches down on a grape, nods. The bright grin has faded into something smaller, more subtle, just a little half-smile. "Yeah. I sought out my Avatar and told it that it would do my Will - I defined our path instead of allowing it to define me. I defined our Hunger." A beat. "It devoured me, at the end. But it was...well, it was the right way. We're one and the same."

And that unity, that becoming, is difficult to articulate precisely. A Hermetic might understand more, that she has become her Word, that she is Hunger, she is the Midgard Serpent. Emily gets an earnest look, something asking whether she understands.

[Emily] "Someone might, if they knew your favorite..." It's a leading question and no idle threat. From what Ashley knows of Emily, the girl might just be able to whip up something tasty to order from the collected contents of her kitchen. Whenever Ashley ate here, she ate well. Even if it was just fresh fruit and tea, or newly baked bread, or leftovers. Emily didn't seem to follow the common co-ed track of pizza for every meal and take-out when pizza gets old.

The Adept (isn't that nice to say?) explains more, and Emily gnaws on a slow but constant stream of grapes that she plucks from their stems delicately (decisively) and delivers to her mouth.

"You mastered it, your Will," Emily says, in a thoughtful tone to answer than seeking look. She shifts in her chair, stays her attack on the diminishing cluster of grapes. "But not quite, because it's of you. Not Other to you. Is that some of it?"

She presses her lips in a thin line for a moment, then continues. "Are they always like this, Seekings? Metaphorical expressions of ideas, symbolic? My Avatar attacked me, tore at me with its claws, harrassed and harried -- but in the end it wanted to be accepted, taken in, for all its blessings and its trials. You conquered yours so you could unite with it."

Another grape then. A little pause. A swallow. Emily's Avatar does not sound like an Archangel; does not sound like the Virgin, or the Son, or anything one might readily attribute to a Chorister's paradigm. She has no reason to think this odd. (Owen's appeared to him as a man with a sword. [Kage's seeking had a bloodied heart. Dying to wake up again.]).

"To not be driven by it, but to drive it onward as well? Hmmm." No, the words were not quite right, however gifted Emily could be with them at times. She is articulate, at least. She doesn't to struggle with the idea that Ashley could have conflict with the Serpent, be consumed by it, and be made whole again by this journey. It is always onward when she thinks of Ashley. Onward, upward, restless, unyielding. Pushing, always, for that growth in herself and everyone around her.

[Ashley McGowen] "Carrot cake," Ashley says, brightly. Threats of baked goods are threats she doesn't mind.

Emily asks her questions, and Ashley pops a few more grapes into her mouth, crushing them with teeth and tongue and swallowing the juice before the rest of the fruit. "Well," Ashley says, "consider this an introduction to your training in the Ars Mentis. Everything exists as an ideal, or a concept, and those can represent themselves symbolically. Your Avatar is your mind's way of giving a symbol to your path, and to the Word that you yourself will come to embody. It's you, but it's also...something else. Words and ideas exist independent from your Will."

A pause. Crunch crunch crunch. "A Seeking, likewise, is a symbol. You're understanding a struggle that you're having, and it's being presented to you as a problem to solve. That's why we use symbols. They're a tool to deal with the abstract. It's why dreams have significance: they operate in the same reality thought does. Actual reality."

Ashley pauses again, looks over at Emily. "The purpose of mine was to define the Serpent's hunger, not to drive it onward. It drives me, but if I didn't Will the path...I mean, it used to drive me to -take- from other people, and destroy and kill. I chose."

[Emily] [Enigmas + Int (Analytical): New ideas, new words, new symbols. Learn, Apprentice, Learn!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 4, 7, 10 (Failure at target 6) Re-rolls: 1

[Ashley McGowen] [Huh. You usually learn new things fast, Em!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Emily] [I do. I must be distracted. And now distracted by the distracted making me not learn. So distracted I'm not gonna roll my subterfuge. :-O]

[Emily] Emily follows, to a point. She is not Hermetically trained. She does not have the same relationship with language, as a tool, or a symbol, as Ashley does. She listens, and understands, but that understanding of sentence structure doesn't transfer into anything more meaningful. The Apprentice's brow knits; there's a bit of skepticism to her features to.

Um... really?

Abstract, apparently, isn't Emily's cup of tea today. Speaking of, she pours herself a glass of the sun tea that's already on the table. The condensation streams off the pitcher, forms a dark spot on the table cloth. Emily offers it to Ashley before setting it down on the folded towel again.

"Okay... so not so much pushing, but harnessing? Laying out the tracks before a locomotive that's going to go-go-go whether you like it or not."

It's a symbol, though Emily's using a more tangible metaphor. She's broken it down to something less abstract, more readily accessible. In this stumble, the distraction and frustration Emily is feeling comes forward. Firstly, at herself for failing to grasp the greater lesson. And secondly at some unnamed thing, a grievance, unaired. She sips at her tea, rolls the cold liquid across her tongue before swallowing it. It tastes faintly of apricot, smells like summer, is not sweet.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley notices that look of skepticism, that frustration that surfaces: that Emily is having difficulty wrapping her head around what Ashley is saying. It brings a frown to the Hermetic's face, a pulling together of her eyebrows. Ashley has little difficulty with abstract thought; this is often the level she thinks on. Things are symbols, things are Words, things -are- a manifestation of their Words. It's important for a poet, it's important for an artist, and it's important for a Hermetic.

She might have been sharp with most others, perhaps, but she also recognizes that Emily is usually fast on the uptake. The other times when she's instructed the girl, Emily has never had any difficulty understanding what she's talking about or throwing herself into a new idea.

"Something like that," she says, taking a sip from her own glass of tea. "It's...deciding what I am, and am not. If I am Hunger, and I am every possible meaning of Hunger, I choose which aspects of it to be made real, because I am also Ashley McGowen. Does that make sense?"

She eyes the girl for a second more, and then says, with some faint amusement, "It's kind of a heavy concept to just spring on you."

[Emily] [Enigmas + Int (Analytical): I am smarter than this. +1 diff to re-roll.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7) Re-rolls: 2

[Emily] Emily wades through Atlas speak with hardly any slow-down. She weathers abstract concepts in class all the time. She's been growing, faster than many Apprentices might, despite the hurdles they've all been struggling with this year. Perhaps because of them. And she's stumbling with something as rudimentary as: Words are thoughts. Thoughts are things. Things are malleable and powerful.

"That does make sense," she says, but not with her usual certainty. Not with the clarity and surety that often underscores her academic pursuits. It makes sense, but just. She grasps it, but not without effort. "I don't know where my head is today," Emily remarks, easily, as if it's nothing to stumble like this (but they both know it vexes her, gives her pause).

"It must be the heat."

More likely, the heart.

"You define yourself, within the symbols you already express -- Hunger, for instance. Use the Words of that as a scaffold. Because you're building it, focused on it, because you Will it to be, it is so. But the Words are important; without them, there's no framing. And without choosing them mindfully, then it's like building without a blueprint. Unclear of purpose, and possibly unstable?"

[Ashley McGowen] "More or less," Ashley says, with a nod, as Emily summarizes her understanding. For both of her metaphors, Emily has used something far more structured than Ashley would have: to her, these concepts are amorphous, ever changing, ever adapting. They're primal, something she understands on an instinctive level: the root of all things. So what Emily is saying has the wrong sort of -feel- to her, but she also understands that she's trying to communicate the ideas, not the feel behind them.

"It's more like...all right. Have you read Plato's Allegory of the Cave? Do you understand Platonic forms?" It's fairly basic reading for most university philosophy courses; Ashley suspects that Emily has, but asks more to bring these things to mind, to provide an example rather than because she actually expects to be explaining the idea.

More grapes. She chews them for a few seconds, shredding them to pulp with molars, before she swallows and says, "We can put this off, if you want. You seem kind of distracted."

[Emily] [You know what I'm rolling. Yes, I'm familiar with Plato. Damnit, I am actually smart. And the alternative is talking about my weekend, so, +WP it is.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 7) [WP] Re-rolls: 1

[Emily] Has she read Allegory? Does she understand Platonic forms? Apparently all it takes to kick Emily's still-distracted brain into gear is to challenge her knowledge of rudimentary philosophy.

Emily, are you smarter than a Freshman?

That gets a response. Emily rolls her tongue over one of her eyeteeth and sucks on it, not until it makes a sound, no, but just enough to pull a face that will indicate that her Academic prowess has been besmirched.

"No," she says, shying away from the less formal yeahs and nahs that have been slipping into her vernacular. Then she smiles, a bit, and bites down on a grape. "I'm just a little slow, today. I get it, now. I've had my head wrapped around some physics problems for so long, it's just taking longer than it ought."

She's not bluffing, now, either. That sharpness is back to the Orphan (for now [still waiting on the Singers]) girl's expression. She's playing with her full deck once more. Ashley's lesson has her undived (more or less attention).

Because the alternative is talking about Emily's weekend. Oh, no no, no thank you.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley seems to accept this explanation. She doesn't keep with most of the circles of gossip, who kissed who, who is sleeping with who, and she doesn't know much about Emily's difficulties with Owen, or Emily's difficulties with Quentin, or whatever happened between her and Chuck. Those things are for the younger magi, or she might be more suspicious of Emily's response.

"It takes some people a while," Ashley says. And Emily, after all, does not have Hermetic training, or a Hermetic's understanding of symbols and their use. Doesn't have hours and hours of philosophy readings to fall back on.

"But yeah," she continues, after a beat, and she does not have a problem with those casual vernacular words when included in her teaching vocabulary. Ashley may be a Hermetic, but she isn't a terribly formal person much of the time; has little patience for their famed pomp and circumstance. It is, perhaps, why members of other Traditions often find her easy to talk to. "That's the basic idea. Your Mind is the seat of your Will, and so the Ars Mentis is the study of having control over your own Will first, and then the Will of those around you after that. It operates in the same reality all of those concepts do. -You- are a thought, your Will is a thought, it has a Word, and so it can be manipulated and affected like one."

[Emily] "This sounds very much like something I ought to learn," Emily says, as if the reasoning behind Owen's initial mentoring mandate (I can teach you Prime, and then also Mind) are finally becoming clear. It brings to mind other thoughts about the Initiate of Prime-and-also-Mind. These are not given voice, even within the space of her Will/Mind.

"Early on, Charlie offered me some meditation studies. I haven't worked on them in awhile, but they seem the sort of exercise that might compliment this study well." This is a thought, voiced to see if Ashley thought it was actionable or appropriate. There is no weight to it; no commitment. Idle.

Ashley is not as swept up in the pomp and circumstance of her Tradition, and Emily does not focus as intently on the dogma of hers. It is, perhaps, why these two can work together in some ways. Ashley has also had a hand in shaping Emily's development, however unofficially, since her earliest days. This, too, helps them compliment one another.

After a thoughtful moment, the girl reaches up to ease the silver chain she wears up and over her head. It's long enough that she does not need to unclasp it, though the curl of her hair and the two pencils that secure it are causalities to this endeavour. They fall to the floor, Emily eyes them. After she's handed the bauble to Ashley, she collects them and places them on the table.

"This helps me. With calm. With focus. I thought it was just sentimental, when my Grandmother gave it to me, but Jarod said there was something more to it."

"If I need to study control, this might be a good tool, or it might be a crutch. What do you think?"

[Ashley McGowen] [Hmm. I've noticed this is magic...what is it, exactly? Watch the weaving, -1 for focus.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 7 (Success x 3 at target 1)

[Emily] This thing, this magic lies inert until it is touched by Ashley's prime sight. Curled and waiting within the broken locket that will not open. When her Will brushes against it, the echoing heartbeat of Home, home, home pushes against Ashley's senses. It sings of Belonging. There is a brightness to it, captured Quintessence. Static. It is an old tool, a lesser Wonder.
to Ashley McGowen

[Ashley McGowen] [pause!]