[Declan] It's saturday afternoon at the chantry house, and later this evening, an ominous notice will be posted encouraging the local magi to stay away. Upon reading this warning, the unobtrusive drifter will gather his meager belongings and relocate himself back to the city shelter, but as of the moment, he is blissfully unaware that anything untoward has been occurring. Given his general state of affairs, one might argue that blissful ignorance was a state that Declan was very well suited for.
One did not often catch him inside during the day, unless he was either sleeping or in need of shelter. Point in fact, he was not often caught in general. For someone who effectively lived at the chantry, his presence was an elusive one. Today was different, though. Today he'd wanted to stay in. Today he'd wanted to read, and that was precisely what he was doing. The book was an old paperback that he'd borrowed (in the less legal sense) from one of the local libraries. It was faded and torn in a few places, and he held it carefully in his hands as he sat curled up in a chair in the common room, legs tucked into his chest in a manner that made him look smaller than he actually was.
[Emily Littleton] There is a gentleness that follows the Singer-to-be as she mounts the steps to the House's wide veranda. It skates along her skin, seeps into her bones like the moonbright she once stole from Kage. This carries her, as she knocks twice on the door to the Chantry, steps across the threshhold into the house of meetings and other mayhem.
"Hello?"
If there is no answer Emily makes her way to the Chantry board first, to take in the news and other announcements. From there she'll find her way to the kitchen, and on to the Node and the Library. It's one great circuit, made all the more important by talk of Member rotations and Sentry patrols. She is mindful, now, that this place weighs more heavily on her conscience. She is mindful, because the title she did not request settles like a mantle on her narrow shoulders.
Emily puts the kettle on, leans into the corner of the kitchen counter, and folds her arms over her middle. Before there can be patrols, there must be tea. Before there can be tea, there must be boiling water. Before boiling water comes waiting. And this is where she is.
[Declan] [Per+Aware(let's try out that shiny new dot!)]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] [Awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] [Awareness: Everyone else is doin' it.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 5, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley hopes no one has noticed the missing black and white photos inside an L-shaped frame that had hung inside the chantry door. She also hopes no one has noticed the missing lamp. Both, you see, met their untimely ends during a rather undignified struggle with Ashton one week prior. Ashley learned that Ashton is stronger than she looks, and Ashton learned that trying to hold on to a struggling Ashley was much like trying to force a cat into its carrier prior to an annual vet visit. The cursing and thrashing means it just isn't worth it.
There's a curl of resonance that strikes her as she makes her way up the porch with two wrapped packages under one arm, and Ashley pauses. Ascertains that it is -not- someone who will question her putting new furniture in the common room (Declan might not even notice), and then makes her way inside.
When she opens the front door, her gaze flicks toward Declan for a few seconds. She hasn't seen him in a while; in fact, she'd almost assumed that the drifter had drifted on out of town. He still gets a nod as she shifts packages and then starts to open one of the boxes. The one that contains a lamp. And glances at what Declan is reading.
[Declan] The book is an old fantasy novel. Dreamsnake, the block letters on the faded cover spelled out. When Emily entered, her familiar resonance washed over him, and he smiled quietly to himself before answering (without looking up from his book), "Hi, Emily." It was a notification, as much as her own hello had been. She was alerting anyone present to the fact that she was there, and so too was he answering, so that she might not be surprised if she happened to wander into the common room.
She had her mind on tea-making, and his was still thoroughly engrossed in his story, so for a few moments, this casual acknowledgment was all the interaction that occurred between them. Then Ashley came in, and her presence hit him strongly enough that Declan did indeed look up from his book to watch her. There was quiet curiosity written in his gaze as he watched her unpack the boxes.
"Something's different about you," he commented, without entirely understanding what it was that had changed. This was often the way that the Orphan interacted with the magical world. His insights were stronger than one might expect, but he had no frame of reference with which to define them.
[Emily Littleton] Hello?
Hi, Emily.
Hey, Declan.
And on to tea-making. It wasn't until she was standing in the kitchen, partially lost amidst her own thoughts, that the exchange sunk in and she found herself wandering back to the common room. By the Ashley had arrived, with a new lamp. The Singer-to-be glanced curiously at the Adept.
"Hey, Ashley..." Glanced curiously at the lamp. "I put the kettle on." There is an implicit question, but it doesn't leave her lips and muddle up the clarity of Declan's.
She sets her messenger bag in a chair, claiming it as hers for later, and tucks her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. This is casual, very unalarmed and easy. The house is starting to lose some of its abattoir overtones for her. Slowly. Very, very slowly.
"Does anyone mind oolong?"
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley, though she saw the same things Emily did inside the house in early January, hasn't really had trouble shedding the images of its bloody interior. She had more traumatizing experiences she was contending with at the time. She navigates the chantry with a sort of ease: she sees the place as hers. She's a possessive creature, Ashley.
"I like it," she tells Emily, glancing up at the younger mage with an expression that implies that she is not surprised to see her here. It reminds her, though, that regardless of whatever she's going to spend the next week doing, she should remember that she has a code of conduct to put together. A new set of responsibilities. (They also include calculating chantry finances, which is a thought that brings tension to that area between her eyebrows. Ashley is not an accountant.)
There's a look toward Declan, then, and she says, "I'm an Adept now." Beat, because it occurs to her that Declan might not know what she means, before she says, "I went Seeking, and I understand things a little differently now." Which might or might not help to clear things up.
[Declan] Does anyone mind oolong?
Declan shook his head and smiled graciously. He wasn't picky. He'd eat or drink... pretty much anything. Since coming to the chantry, his diet had improved by leaps and bounds, and this was noticeable in the look of his skin and hair, and the fact that he'd filled out to a much more healthy-looking version of thin than he'd once been. Truth be told... he didn't really look homeless anymore.
Ashley answered his observation by clarifying things for him, and Declan initially looked a touch confused, but after a moment he seemed to put together something that made sense in his head, and he nodded in acceptance. "I think I understand." In truth, he didn't understand all of it, but he'd imagined something that wasn't entirely far off from the truth, so that was close enough.
"There's... a lot that I need to learn, isn't there?" He laughed once, very gently and under his breath. Self-deprecating. Then he dog-eared the page of the book he was on and shut it so that he could set the thing on an end-table nearby and pay attention to the other people in the room.
[Emily Littleton] This is a teaching moment, potentially, and so Emily offers Declan a small (comiseratory) smile and a little shrug. She, too, has a lot to learn. It is a lifelong process. The girl doesn't take a seat, just yet. She keeps an keen ear tuned toward the kitchen, for the first signs of the kettle beginning to boil.
"You and me both," she tells Declan, reaffirming that small solidarity, should he want or need it. Emily lingers at the margin of this, though, and then quietly excuses herself to make tea for the trio. In just a few moments, she'll be bringing it back, setting three mugs and the teapot on the coffee table, and finally settling into one of the armchairs.
[Ashley McGowen] There's a lot that I need to learn, isn't there?
Declan asks those words, and then gives that little self-deprecating laugh, and the Hermetic just looks at him for a few seconds. Then she sighs, and her diminutive frame settles into one of the chairs in the common room, leaned slightly forward with her elbows on the tops of her thighs. On many people it might be a familiar position to adopt, something comfortable and almost intimate. With Ashley, it merely looks intent.
"Probably," she tells him. "But that's typical of...any apprentice, really." She eyes Declan for a few seconds more. "You haven't found someone to mentor you yet, have you." It's not a question. Emily disappears to go back into the kitchen - making tea, a prospect which rather pleases Ashley - and a pair of bright blue eyes follow her as she goes before settling on Declan again.
[Declan] Ashley wasn't the only one who watched Emily. Declan's eyes strayed toward her when she offered him words of solidarity, a small smile still hovering at the edges of his mouth, and his gaze followed her until she disappeared from view. It was a comforting thing to have her nearby. She was probably more familiar to him than anyone else in the city.
He could not say the same thing about Ashley, who felt a little... intimidating. But she'd never been anything but helpful, and he remembered that she was Kage's friend (and too, that it was by her will that he was given access to this place to begin with), and so she was not looked upon with that same anxious defensiveness that he often gave to people that he found threatening. Instead, it was more of the quiet respect that one gave to authority figures.
She asked him about a mentor, and Declan imagined a tutor of some sort. Like he'd had with his music, once. Perhaps being Awake, and understanding the full possibilities of reality, required a great deal of study and training as well. Declan seemed thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I've... some people have helped me, a little. Emily, in particular." He nodded in the direction of the kitchen. "And Kage. But I don't think that's what you mean."
[Emily Littleton] She found a tray in the kitchen, and so it's carrying this that Emily re-emerges. There is a faint trail of steam rising from the nexk of the teapot. There's a faint scrape as she slides the tray onto the table. Emily sits on the edge of her chair, waits until the proper time has passed, and then pours the tea out for the three of them.
Her attention flicks to Declan when he says she's been helpful. This garners a small smile, again, pleased and warming. But she doesn't interject. Emily has given this particular spiel not too long ago. Instead, she passes a mug to the Dean of the Chantry, and one to the drifter, before taking up her own at last.
She blows across the surface to cool the liquid, casts a look from one mage to the next.
[Ashley McGowen] That Kage had been teaching Declan a little, that Ashley hadn't heard - but it isn't all that surprising. While they're rather close (close enough that after her Seeking Ashley ran the two miles to Kage's house at three in the morning and pounded on the Orphan's door, yelling to be let in, breathless and Thriving) there are things they don't tell each other. Who they happen to help and pass knowledge along to are some of those things.
"No," she says, after a few seconds. "I mean somebody who...is responsible for you, in a sense. Someone who makes sure you know everything you need to know, and can teach you properly."
And there's a little hesitation there, because Kage is an Orphan. Because common Hermetic policy states that one does not encourage anyone to -remain- an Orphan by suggesting that they learn from another, more experienced, person who just refuses to pick a damn side and affiliate. When Emily offers her a mug she turns her attention to that, picking it up and letting it rest on top of one leg, a hand curled around one side. So instead she asks, "Do you have any idea what Tradition you might want to join?"
[Declan] [Pause!]
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