Faith alone is empty

[Emily Littleton] It is a warm night, but the stone walls of the Great Sanctuary keep the vaulted space cool. The heat rises up the rafters, swells and billows before the stained glass tableaus. The light of the full moon (Corn moon [Barley moon]) illuminates the discs of gold around the saints and sacred heads; it makes them glow warm; it makes them glow argent. There is a silence to this space in the summer evenings, a hallowed hollowing out. Even the faithful are out with their families, or the heat is too pressing to let them come in.

The pews are hard-backed, severely lacquered, kept just this side of gleamingly neat. How they managed with Owen gone was a quiet mystery to Emily. She came here as much to miss him as she did to watch the stoic face of the Lord on the Crucifix; immovable: resolute. She came here, too, to light three candles at the alcove, to breathe life into little flicker-flames that danced and swayed and leaped in time with some unheard cadence. And lastly she came here, tonight as like any other, to stand before the lump of earth with its thickening coat of grass, and to recognize the tiny God's acre for what it was: the last terrestrial home of an innocent girl child, whose name they'd only known because her young brother had spoken it in sorrow.

There is a prayer book in her lap, opened to the Psalms but resting under her clasped hands. Emily is one of the few who come here with their heads covered. It is an Old World custom, unfamiliar to the Chicagoans and their heavy summers. Her head is covered, but it is not bowed. Her attention is let to wander. There are sounds, now and then, of Father Benedict moving throughout the Church. Perhaps one, maybe two others could be found on the grounds at this hour.

[Carraway] Chicago is a city in flux. She's been here only rarely, but it seems as though the faces are never the same, like the magi come and go, filter in and out and beneath the radar. Consistent is the chantry house, with its white picket fence, the smooth picture of Americana that might as well have been a Technocratic front for how deceptive it was. She'd visited her old room, run her hands over the rails, spoken briefly (blissfully briefly, she doesn't like Hermetics) to the dean. She suspects that the next time she comes by things will have changed again.

She's here to see Father Benedict. She's seen Father Benedict. She's done. Handled professionally, precisely, her dealings are.

Her head is not covered (Old World custom, and this woman is entirely of the New World): her dark hair has been pulled back into a loose knot at the back of her neck, the few stray strands tucked behind her ears. It takes Emily a while to notice her, and there's a reason for that. Her appearance is pleasant but relatively unremarkable, her facial features long and narrow, her body thin and long-limbed and tall as though it were sketched out of straight dark lines. Her plaid shirt is dark blue and rolled up at the sleeves.

It's that there is something so intrinsically human about her that she could be anyone. She reminds Emily of students she knows from class, a face she maybe saw once in England, a singer she saw on the street, beautiful and touched with the light of the performance.

She sees Emily first. Looks at the girl there with her head bowed, with the prayer book open in her lap. She arrives in the pew next to Emily almost silently, but says nothing yet. Perhaps she doesn't want to interrupt.

[Emily Littleton] If she had lingered at the Chantry house long enough to find the message board, it's possible that Lisa might be familiar with Emily's name. Have a memory of it paired with a neat, careful script. Practiced. She might have formed nascent opinions of a girl raised to this millennium in a home or school that still valued penmanship as an art and a tool. It is possible but unlikely, but bears mentioning on the off chance it was so.

Emily is wearing a dark skirt that comes down to her knees and a plain white button-up shirt with short sleeves. It is a crisp look, almost like a school uniform. It weathers the heat well enough to look presentable, at this hour. There is a faint smell of crushed grass and grave dirt to her, for she has stood by Emma's plot for a while before coming inside. Perhaps this is where she was when Lisa met with Father Benedict.

Neither of them are outwardly remarkable. Dark hair, likely dark eyes, long straight-thin lines. Emily could be an echo, an out of phase shadow. Perhaps similar in nothing more than circumstance, and yet somehow they are both here, tonight.

She closes the prayer book and leans forward enough to slip it into the little trough at the back of the pew that is there to hold just these things. Emily is an unremarkable vessel, but one that is not quite so empty as it was her first night in this church. She glances over to the woman sitting near her, now, and offers a small smile.

It is polite and warm enough. It is not overtly friendly. Then she glances away, before letting that look linger overlong. There are many reasons to find oneself in Sanctuary, and almost all of them were solitary pursuits.

[Carraway] The smell of the grave dirt, of the grass, is observed and filed away. There is very little in the world that will escape this woman's notice. It isn't Ashley's hunger, isn't the kind of drive backed by the unrelenting burning desire to pit herself against everything: it's something quieter than that. A little detached, even.

Her eyes, when they meet Emily's, are not in fact dark. They're a gray so pale they're nearly colorless, have a sort of mesmerizing stare, the kind that makes you feel like you're being taken apart. Like there are no secrets. They're cold right now, hard; when she smiles later and life leaks into them their cast will be entirely different.

They aren't now because the smile she's giving Emily doesn't entirely reach them. It's practiced, in a way, exactly the way a person would smile and carry themselves to appear nonthreatening, to put forward an aura of friendliness that isn't yet genuinely felt. It's a good approximation. It would fool most people.

"Hi," she says, quietly, once she's acknowledged. "Am I interrupting? Father Benedict said you were a singer here. I thought I might come and introduce myself."

[Emily Littleton] It's a good approximation. It would fool most people. Emily has a smile like that, but instead of keeping something back hers pretends to offer something forward. To be easy and carefree. It inspires thoughts of friendship, of fellowship, or even the sense that she might someday confide in the observer. It makes empty promises. It, too, would fool most people.

They are, apparently, not most people.

Emily's polite (enough) smile does not faulter under the weight of Lisa's observation. For all that her eyes are cold, a something hard to run up against, the girl seems steady. Unmoved by the inherent challenge in being dissected and built back up again, reputedly whole in another's eyes. Emily's eyes are just dark, in this halflight. They're blue in others, stormy upon occasion. There's no clarity in them, but there is remarkable depth. So much can be said about eyes, but often those details only obscure the person who is most decidedly looking out through them.

"I'm pleased to meet you," she says, and her voice is touched with many places. Muddled. The clearest note is British, but there are soft echoes of many other lands there too. There is not a rising Continental note. Emily has fought hard to keep the Midwestern edge from sneaking into her pronunciation. "My name's Emily," she says, but doesn't offer her last. "And I'm more an understudy than a singer, just now. Someday I hope to join the choir."

The words are simple enough. To the right ears, they are just remarks about the Wednesday evening practices that fill the chancel with sound and glory. To more keenly tuned awarenesses, they speak of her status within a greater Congregation. She doesn't work at the deception or double-speak. It comes as easily as breathing.

[Carraway] Emily doesn't have to work at the deception or the doublespeak, and suddenly, that smile is tinged with something genuine. Pleased and amused at once. Most deviants, Lisa finds, don't make any effort at that kind of discretion; they think nobody is watching. They think it isn't necessary. That could not be more the case, and one day those who talk openly will likely discover that to their sorrow.

"Pleasure to meet you, Emily," she says, extending her hand forward for the younger woman to shake. This, too, has a sort of exactness to it: her palms are warm and dry, her hand exerts the right amount of pressure, comes off as authoritative without being too controlling. The kind a person gets when they've been to a lot of job interviews. When they've lived a highly professional lifestyle. "I'm Lisa Carraway."

Lisa Carraway is a knight, a practitioner of magic, mantled with human glory and grace and capable of connecting to consciousness itself. None of that is in her bearing, in the way she crosses one leg over the other and turns a dimpled smile in Emily's direction. "I'm from another chapter, and I'm going to be here a few days so I thought I'd take a chance to get to know some locals. You wouldn't happen to have a few hours, would you?"

Networking. It's one of those skills that transitions well. Most do; her job hasn't changed. Just the enemies.

[Emily Littleton] Emily knows a Knight. He wears body armour and brings to gatherings more guns that she thought holy men might ever touch in a lifetime (nevermind all at once). She has known a Knight as well, whose duties were service to humanity and his Faith and were often more mundane than magical. She has not known a Knight like Lisa; does not know that they exist behind professional smiles and confident hand shakes.

Emily's fingers are long and narrow. Her grip is confident but not too firm. She gives little away in how their hands meet. Her father was a Diplomat, she has learned much from the immersion in strange lands, cultures and situations. There is always call for double-speak in Emily's world, and when it is not a necessity then it is a welcome game. A lightness. An agile mind and tongue is never amiss.

"Actually, my evening is quite free," she says, with a small note of surprise underscoring those words. This is to say that it is not often so, she does not sit idle in wait of Enlightenment; Lisa has caught her at a happy convergence. A quiet place. Reverie.

"Is there anyone in particular you have mind to see while you're here?" she asks, and it is at once an offer to assist and a subtle prod at Lisa's connections. The girl is careful, but not overt.

[Carraway] "Let's go for dinner, then, and I'll pay. You know anywhere that's good to sit and talk?" She doesn't have to be explicit with the sort of place she wants; Emily's shown herself to be capable of word games, capable of subtlety, and Lisa simply responds in kind. It's automatic for her, comfortable.

When she rises, she offers a hand down to Emily to assist her in rising; it's a thoughtless gesture, one that a man might more typically offer, but comes from the disciple with a sort of grace. They'll be of a height, when they stand.

Her muscles are relaxed and loose as she follows Emily out of the church to wherever she should choose to go. One finds its way into the pocket of her pinstriped pants, balls up casually, and she somehow manages to seem attentive to the rest of the city while having eyes only for Emily. Her manner is intimate, but not sexually so, not even in the manner of close friends: it's the sort of intimacy one has with another person when they already know they have a lot in common. When they're making friends and bridging gaps.

"I've been up to the house already," she says easily. "I used to have a room there when I lived in Chicago a couple of years ago, but other than Ashton Winters I think everyone else is gone. I should be dropping in on Ashton, though, and I chatted a little with the dean." She glances toward Emily, then, mindful of the fact that she's an apprentice; they can know a surprising number of people. "I'm just here for a couple of days while I wait for someone. I thought it would be a good chance to revisit, do the nostalgia thing, you know."

[Emily Littleton] She thinks for a moment, and weighs the question against her local lexicon of eateries. There is a Thai place, not far from here, with a few tables nestled into a back corner behind a sound-filtering fountain. Emily has eaten there a few times and gone pleasantly unnoticed while she studied afterward in the evening. Politeness and offering to share their business cards around campus (a few catering orders for lab meetings, too) meant that they were amiable enough to letting the co-ed linger.

So she asks, "Do you like Thai?" with a lightly arched eyebrow, as she accepts the hand up without any apparent pause. The assistance is offered with grace, it's accepted with grace. The social niceties are not remiss, just because of their genders.

As they exit the church, Emily pulls the scarf away from her head and shoulders. She folds it neatly, tucks it into the small purse she carries in lieu of her messenger bag tonight. This is a practiced thing, almost rote in its execution. That practice makes it easy and unassuming. Her hair is gathered low at the base of her neck, in a tidy collection of dark curls.

There is no sharp flicker of awareness as Lisa drops appropriate names, just the general (and genuine) warming of Emily's smile, the relent of a little tension at the corners of her eyes. These are the gentle tells for her epiphany, whatever it may be.

"I think, if I moved away and then came back to visit, I should want to visit the Cloud Gate," she says, thinking on the iconic mirrored jelly bean with some measure of fondness. "Mmm, and a word of caution for visiting the Winters," she says, as they turn a corner toward the restaurant. "Marcelle has graduated to throwing things, any thing. Her aim is steadily improving."

These last things are offered easily, warmly, and toward that same end of bridging gaps and building relationships. The temporary ones are easier for her, in many ways more genuine. A bright flash, something to anchor it in memory, and then no slow fade or burn out.

[Carraway] "I like Thai," Lisa says, agreeable, as Emily offers up that suggestion. She doesn't seem to be that much older than Emily, perhaps the age of many of the disciples in town - mid to late twenties. Chances are she'd fall into the graduate student group, which is rather fond of the large quantities of food at Asian restaurants for relatively reasonable prices.

The grin she gives Emily has a delighted edge, something surprised and wondering, is followed by a sharp little note of laughter as the apprentice mentions Marcelle Winters. "I never met Marcelle, actually," she says. "Ashton was nine months pregnant when I left town. I can't believe she's old enough to be throwing things. I'm sure she's a terror."

The thought of Awakened children gives Lisa a slight bit of pause, all told, and she's glad that the ones like Ashton are usually the ones that choose to reproduce. They're responsible, they're bound to duty. It doesn't always mean something, but often it does.

She seems to carry a pack of toothpicks in her pocket; she draws one out and slides it into the corner of her mouth as though it were a cigarette. Recovering smoker, perhaps, or just a habit in the manner of chewing gum. "So how is Chicago? Always seemed like it would be a busy place to be an understudy."

[Emily Littleton] "It seems a restless city," Emily answers, as their footfalls trace a steady pattern down the sidewalk and Lisa chews on her toothpicks. The words are wrapped in a quiet thoughtfulness, not the nonchalance of the city never sleeps. This is no cliche, for Emily; it is a concern. "It feels very much a different place than the Chicago I knew before waking up."

This may be telling. There is a tension to the words, however artfully disguised they are.

When they reach the door to the Thai restaurant, Emily holds it open for Lisa. She follows the Disciple in and holds up two fingers -- a thumb and index finger -- then smiles when the hostess looks their way. There is no magic, there are no words, but the hostess gestures in welcome, and Emily points toward the back near the fountain, and the other woman nods. It's a little ritual to circumvent speaking, the sort of simple rites that Sleepers keep every day. When they are settled at the table, there is a low background noise of falling water to smooth over nearby conversations. It is not loud enough to disturb.

"I imagine it isn't like this everywhere," she says, as she turns her menu over and trails one finger down the margin to mark her position as she skims it. Emily cannot imagine everywhere is as constantly under siege and beset with malevolence as Chicago, else how would the world hold itself up? "I think your word was best: busy. Perhaps also challenging. She doesn't let you just tread water, or hold your own."

[Carraway] Lisa hasn't been so long Awakened that she's forgotten the chaos that followed Awakening. Her experience was different from Emily's: the notice she immediately garnered was not that of the Traditions. There was no vying for her, no explanation of how many different philosophies there were to figure out. There was just science and discovery. And a lot of studies, and a lot of paperwork. The Traditions have been a relief from all the paperwork, at least.

The smirk Emily gets in response is tinged with sympathy around the toothpick, which flicks to the other corner of her mouth a second later as she looks toward the hostess and gives her a polite nod. "Thank you," she says when Emily holds the door, then steps inside after the apprentice and adjusts her sleeves. It's a hot day, and the cuffs are already a little damp.

"It's like this in a lot of places, actually," she tells Emily, almost regretfully. "Seattle, too - that's where I am now. It's just that I don't think most of our type really notice how many problems everybody else has." She's quiet for a few seconds while they wait for their seats, one of those natural little lulls in conversation before she expounds.

"You don't have to do much to hush it down and keep people thinking their little corner of the world is the worst off. It'd just overwhelm everyone otherwise." It's a tactic Lisa knows the Technocracy has used to its advantage, to isolate the Traditions. Good Technocrats can't afford it. There's another look toward Emily. "It's a lot of responsibility."

[Emily Littleton] Lisa knows a lot about the Technocrats, who are a phantom worry to Emily just now. A constant shadow to consider, when more pressing things are not drawing her interest away from the word. The current watchword is Nephandi, one she has had more experience with thus far. Awakening so far after the War has given the apprentice a very different view point. For all they may have in common, there is much on which they will differ.

"I suppose a little down-playing can help, at times, too. To gentle the enormity of it, and to let people live in the moments they have between late-night calls for help, or unforeseen emergencies." Water comes, for each of them, and they're asked what they would like to drink. Emily sticks with just water, no ice. On a day this hot, she doesn't seek the cool. (She has lived in hotter places, learned to eat moderately spicy foods and drink room temperature water to best moderate the heat).

"I'm not on the receiving end of too many of either, just yet." It's a one part explanation (I am too new to be on the crisis management team), and one part assurance (We have things well in hand [as well as can be expected]). Somewhere in the past few months, the community has become intrinsically intertwined with Emily's sense of self. She would balk at it, were it pointed out to her so plainly, but she is no stranger to the words we and us now, and she, too, has met magi newer than herself with calm words and careful explanations.

She is not yet an Initiate, but not entirely an Apprentice any longer. It is an in-between place. This Summer is one of waiting, of indecision or stalled momentum.

[Carraway] There are Technocrats, of course, and there are far darker things: Lisa knows quite a bit about Nephandi. It troubles her that there is a war between the Traditions and the Technocracy at all, even cold as it is. There are worse things out there, and yet human beings spend time fearing each other (themselves.)

Lisa asks for an iced chai and for a glass of water, and sips at the water, apparently deciding to leave the chai for when her actual food arrives. It's one of those things that's good for removing the bite from most varieties of Thai food, mellowing it a bit on the tongue and cooling it. The toothpick is tugged out of her mouth and set aside on an ash tray.

"Well, people do what they have to do," she tells Emily, and there's no judgment there. She knows that a lot of Sleepers Sleep because of how terrifying the Awakened world is, and she knows that a lot of Awakened feel overwhelmed by everything and can't turn their attention elsewhere. It's understanding.

She draws a sip of her water through the straw, holding the glass in one long fingered hand after she's done and leaning back in the chair, an elbow draped over the seat. "So I take it you aren't all official yet? Word to the wise, it takes you a couple of days to wash the damn oil out of your hair."

[Emily Littleton] "Ah, no," Emily says, and she does well at disguising the thin burr of frustration there. "My application is, let's say, pending. Perhaps held up a bit because my sponsor, as it were, had business elsewhere to attend to, and I'm once again an independent party." Which the Chorus seemed to adore, perhaps almost as much the Order might.

Her mouth curls a little, wryly, when Lisa notes the oil. Emily can only imagine it will be used for annointing (or, from the sound of it, a veritable immersion). "Cheers. I'll keep it in mind."

She rests her wrists on the table edge. Emily was trained out of putting her elbows on the table at a young age, and she falls back on better manners around strangers. Usually.

"You mentioned you're from another Chapter," she hazards, using this turn of conversation to lead toward a question that had been brewing for some time. "Might I ask which? My teacher," it sounded odd to her to name him that, and perhaps Lisa would notice the word's imbalance on her tongue, "Is a Monist. I do not know as much about the other groups as I'd like."

[Carraway] It's a little known fact about the Chorus: they can be as structured, as thoroughly political, as cutthroat as the Order of Hermes. The two organizations were monoliths at the same time, bastions of power that the medieval world thought it would not see the end of. Given the way Lisa's eyebrow arches as Emily puts stress on the words independent party, she's both well aware of the Tradition's politics and finds them rather tiresome. Necessary, but tiresome.

"I'm sorry," she says, upon hearing the younger woman's frustration. "Do you have someone else here who could take you on? You can do a lot on your own, but having a name to back you sure as hell helps a lot with all the red tape." It's one of the reasons she's in a Tradition at all, in fact.

She lets her arm slide back a little farther until it's almost draped over the back of the chair, curved around with her hand resting on the edge of the booth. It's comfortable and open. She takes another sip of her water as Emily asks about her faction, setting the glass back on the table. It requires them leaving safe speech, but Emily was right: the place is quiet, and so are their voices, and there's the fountain running nearby.

"I'm with the Order of St. George and the Dragon," she says. "It's pretty small, now, and used to be a lot bigger, but a vampire ate through most of the members a while back." It's not said casually, but with the sort of detachment that indicates that she bears no sorrow for those fallen brothers. She didn't know them, and she hasn't long yet been a member. She looks up at Emily, then, fixes pale eyes back on her face. "I try to do a lot of things to further the human ideal, and I don't just fight. But actual monsters exist. We protect humanity from them."

[Emily Littleton] "There are two others here," she says plainly, as if she were working on this somehow. "I do not know how that will sort out, just yet."

There is redtape already, and the finding and keeping of mentors is not an easy thing for her in this city. When Father Ward returns, there will likely be an uncomfortable discussion. By then James either would be her Praecept, or would have rescinded his offer. In the meantime, Emily is waiting, studying, and idling. She reaches for her water glass, sips from it, and sets it precisely back in the ring it left on the paper placemat.

She wonders, at times, if the redtape is worth it. She wonders, at times, if it would not be better to remain as Kage is. But when voiced this thought to the woman herself, Kage seemed to think she ought stay. So Emily is idling. It does not suit her well, this waiting.

"I believe you," Emily says, steadily and with an appropriate gravity, whne Lisa tells her there are real monsters in the world. Not just the evils of man. She may be an apprentice, but this is a truth she knows marrow-deep; it's scored on her bones already, in the space of less than a year. There are monsters, and demons, and people gone Mad. Her eyes meet Lisa's and do not flick away from that fixation. Hold. And only just relent as she shifts her position, slightly, in her chair.

"I understand the theological groupings, how one might petition for entry or join based on the beliefs they hold and how that fits with others. But I do not know how one joins an Order like yours. Were you invited in? Are you trained up into it?"

These are direct questions, curious things. Pointed. Clear.

[Carraway] Lisa does not know Solomon Ward or James. It is likely that she won't, unless she happens to stay long enough to make their acquaintance or unless she chooses to seek them out during a return visit. Were she still a permanent fixture in Chicago, she might offer herself; as it is, she has a permanent establishment of sorts in Seattle. She has a home.

Still: she isn't unsympathetic. She remembers well enough how lost she felt when she first defected, even if she didn't need someone to guide her along magically.

Emily's questions are pointed and clear, and Lisa's responses are likewise pointed and clear. It's the voice of someone used to giving explanations. Used to giving reports. Aware of how to make information clear and concise and how to invite questions, how to tantalize with information. Aware, too, of how to evaluate Emily as they talk.

"I was invited in," she says, "but I came to the Chorus late, actually. I just joined...about a year and a half ago, and I'm a disciple. With most of the guardian orders, there's someone within who deems you suitable for membership and then knights you. Usually it's because of qualities that you've established, so typically, only initiates and up are invited."

Lisa drops her chin into the L shaped by her thumb and forefinger and regards Emily thoughtfully for a few seconds. "There are a lot of theological orders. The Alexandria Society wanted me, for example. They push for the integration of technology and faith. But I think the guardian orders do a lot more to actually help people, and I'm a field op at heart."

[Emily Littleton] Emily listens carefully. Avidly. There's a slight tension to her shoulders, an alertness, that speaks to readiness when paired with her posture and what little touch of her resonance that Lisa might pick up. There is a lot that they can learn from one another's carriage, from their diction, from the subtle cues that neither can wholly keep from giving away.

Lisa reports. Emily recites. They both organize and categorize information clearly, regroup and redirect to address missing details. They are sharp minded, technologically savvy (this speaks to an adaptibility), unafraid to mix their faith with the trappings of the current Millenium.

"When you say they wanted you, do you mean they courted you outright?" Another curiosity. Emily has not been invited in (perhaps because she is unremarkable in many ways), has not been made official yet. That could raise questions in a Tradition known for heirarchy and redtape. It could also mean that there are things here going on above the Apprentice's paygrade.

"I feel service is an integral part of Faith and Fellowship. I am glad to hear that there are others within the Chorus who feel this way, and live it. I will go where I am Called, or where I am invited in," she says, and there's no hubris to this. It's a surety, perhaps uncanny for her age. "But I've seen what Sleepers can do in the name of humanitarianism, and it pleases me to know there are Awakened that walk the same paths."

[Carraway] There's no hubris to Emily's words. Lisa hears something else, something quite different: she hears that call to Home, and she hears it in a desire to belong somewhere, to belong to something and someone. She hears someone who is looking, seeking and waiting for sanctuary. Her eyes measure Emily in silence, because she understands.

They really aren't that different. Lisa has found Home. Some day, she is who Emily could be. Not the same, of course: no two human beings are the same in spite of those ideals that bind them at the core. "They did," she says, of the Alexandria Society. "But I've done some unusual work. I did my dissertation and most of my post-doc on studies into a collective consciousness. They thought I could help promote those ideas."

A pause, and then, "Which I still do. I just do it on my own time."

The rest of what Emily says, that's just getting the same long look, the same consideration. And all she has to say in the end is, "What do you believe, Emily?"

[Emily Littleton] Emily understands that Lisa is remarkable. Not just that she has an Awakened will and the strength and perseverance to reach Disciple-hood. (She does not carry herself like an Apprentice; she is more solid and sure than the Initiates Emily has known.) Emily can understand that Lisa was remarkable, well established in her singularity, long before she found the Singers.

It is a challenge, then, unremarked upon to be more. To find that thing at which Emily, herself, would excel. Some unique voice that she could bring to the Choir, to strengthen it, to expand its multitudinous diversity, to blend in with all the other voices that currently make it up. There is no courting or invitations, now, but someday there may be.

"That's an open-ended question," Emily observes. It is not judgmental. She lays that simple statement out before she answers, and she considers the question carefully. Lisa could mean many things by it; Owen often asked her questions in this way. She rarely felt she'd answered them adequately or correctly.

"I believe that there is a fundamental purpose or reason to why we are here -- not just to why some of us Awaken, but to the mundane lives we lead as well. And that seeking that purpose, and aligning oneself to its pursuit is a worthwhile endeavour. You can name it His Will, if that suits the Congregation vocabulary best, but I believe there is a why for everything and it's in that why--even more than the what or the how--that we find meaning. Possibly even grace."

[Carraway] Lisa listens, and when Emily remarks that the question is open-ended she just smiles. Doesn't make a reply, not yet. Then she waits, and when Emily does begin to speak, her gaze is attentive.

If that suits the congregation vocabulary best - this draws a shake of the older Chorister's head. A shake of the head and another smile, something that could be condescending or disappointed or communicating a failure but is none of those things. "Don't worry about what you think I want to hear," she tells Emily. "I want to know what you believe. There's no wrong answer. The importance is the significance the answer has to you."

Lisa is not wearing any of the trappings of many members of the Chorus: there is no cross about her neck, no rings about her fingers stamped with the brand of some holy order or other. There are no stars, no moons, no heavens. There's a reason for that: she's not religious.

"I want to know your why. I'm not part of the Congregation, so don't bother with the vocabulary."

[Emily Littleton] Emily watches Lisa for a moment, but doesn't pin her with the weight of that blue-grey stare. It's a seeking look that asks no questions. As if, given enough time and enough silence, she might just divine something of what was going on here that was beyond words, greater than the sum of their articulated thoughts. But that attention shifts away, she looks down and the corners of her smile flex slightly for a moment. Gentle. She smiles.

"I have lived many places, seen many cultures, looked in a lot of windows," she says, and the last is meant metaphorically. There is a different cant to her voice, now; genuine. This is not a pretense of self-disclosure, rather the real thing. "I believe that there are truths that transcend language, cultural or regional divides, politics and semantics, and that among these truths is Faith. And also Grace.

"I believe in something higher, but I don't believe I need to know definitively what that is. Faith for me is not absolute clarity but the willingness to accept that there is something in this world greater than myself, or my will, or my aims alone.

"I also believe that that Faith imparts a responsibility to serve something greater than myself; that Faith alone is empty without acts. That gifts and strengths are given that they might be used and may uplift more than the gifted him- or her-self. I believe that I Awakened, so that I might give something back. And my why, just now, is finding what that might be and how to use it wisely."

It is a lot of words all at once, but they do not tumble out of her mouth with haste. They are measured, thoughtful, calm. These are not thoughts that came into her life anew in the months since she Awakened; many of them have been dormant, planted long ago and left to grow alongside her own choices and experiences. They are as much a part of her sense of self as anything else. (She was a child who breathed in Winter and out Wonder.).

[Carraway] Given time and silence, Emily does not manage to divine Lisa's thoughts. (Though Lisa could teach her to do that, if she were to ask: could teach her how to look into collective consciousness, how the human mind and the human spirit push the body, how the essence of humanity itself is strength.) But for what it's worth, she at least doesn't seem to have an ulterior motive here; her aim seems to have been entirely to get Emily to articulate these things.

She can tell when Emily crosses a divide and the words become genuine ones, when they become personal. When they become words that Emily likely wouldn't offer to most people she met an hour ago. They have the bridge of Tradition, which helps.

The words are carefully considered, and they're deeply meant, and Lisa just gives her a nod. "That's what you need to hold on to. Being in the Chorus just means you have a responsibility and a desire to do right by other people, really, and I think as long as you keep that philosophy you'll find people approaching you when you're ready."

That's what she says, though the words may as well be you belong here, they might as well be you're here for the right reasons. "A lot of people get caught up in the language and ceremony of the Chorus. You don't have to. I don't even call what I have faith, strictly speaking."

[Emily Littleton] They have the bridge of Tradition, and something more. Lisa is not from Chicago, just now. She does not intend to stay. She is passing through, and in that transience she is more familiar to Emily than anyone who stays here. Lingers. She can speak freely with the Knight, can air deeper thoughts and Truths, because they facilitate a conversation and do not promise to build anything bigger.

It's a freedom she doesn't enjoy here in Chicago. It's a confidence she'll have to learn, if she intends to stay in one place out of habit from here on out.

"Thank you," she says, after a long pause. There's a little less accent to the words; they're clearer, pared down and clean. Neat. They're honest. "I had begun to wonder, a bit, about whether I belonged. Talking with you is helping, though. It makes me hopeful."

The words are plain-spoken but they belie the uncertainty that bubbles up from time to time, that undermines her integration into the Chorus. There have been fits and starts along the way, since Emily Awakened, and at times they set her back. At times they push her forward. She has stuck in an eddy, a curl of consequence and time, for a few weeks. A few weeks at the wrong juncture can feel like forever.

"What is your Why?" she asks, now. Curious. Bold enough to turn that question around, where usually she would let it alone.

[Carraway] Were Emily to articulate that ease of expression that accompanies transience, Lisa would probably understand. This is a woman that can pass through crowds of Sleepers unnoticed, who most people don't remember the name of shortly after they've met, who might be described after a lengthy conversation as that girl...the one with the dark hair.

There was a time in her life where it was how she lived. Lost and disconnected: she would pass among the deviants and meet with them for work and then pass on, she would spend nights with Sleepers and leave by morning knowing that they would never seek her out, wouldn't remember much about the encounter, she would play music on the street and give what she could and then walk on. She knows that emptiness, and she knows the fear of taking the first steps toward filling it.

"I wondered whether I belonged for a long time too," she says. "I don't think it's that unusual a thing."

She's untroubled by the bold question and takes another sip from her glass of water, glancing once toward the kitchen. It's not impatient. It just anticipates. "I did my studies into a collective consciousness, like I said, and it opened a lot of doors for me," Lisa says, with a slight smile. "This...wellspring of ambient thought and experience that can be tapped into. There's something incredible about touching it, and there's something incredible about people and what we're capable of. I want to make the world into a place where they can pursue their own knowledge and enlightenment and raise themselves to the heights they're capable of. I want to help shape them into the sort of human beings they're meant to become. That's my why."

Secular humanists. Not what one would expect of the Celestial Chorus, but it invites all types, these days.

[Emily Littleton] "I am curious about your studies," Emily admits, though this can hardly surprise Lisa. It's a fascinating topic, collective thought, persistent cultural awareness. The extent of Emily's understanding of it begins and ends with a required Jungian reading from one Embassy school or another, but she's pulling that back up as she listens. She eager to learn more about the (apparently) endless possibilities of how the other Awakened she meets use their gifts, both to strengthen and erode the ideas that have come before them.

"Did you find your field of study before Awakening? Did it feed into that awareness? Or was it more the other way around -- stepping into this world shifting your studies, somewhat?" The questions are not perfectly formed, they're shaped well enough to get the query across but not honed to a pointed and definite shape. She'd meant to leave them open-ended, but she had less practice at that than Lisa, or the Dean.

Odd, perhaps, that Emily does not express skepticism at the idea of a collective consciousness. Merely curiosity. She has stopped, already, asking if this thing or that is possible. Anything with a non-zero probability is possible, however unlikely.

Lisa glances toward the kitchen, and Emily's looks over, too. Then back to their table. She sips at her water. Thinks.

[Carraway] Lisa is, indeed, not surprised to hear Emily express curiosity. Many people do, when she first explains what she means by collective consciousness and mentions that she has real research backing it up, using the scientific method. It's not a theory that the neuropsychologists she knew in Iteration X appreciated very much (she'd once had trouble with one who used to say 'may the Force be with you' until she had her revenge by wrapping him in red tape), but the research is still there.

"I enlightened during my first semester of college," she says, "and I'd already had a lot of interest in psychology before that, but most of my theories developed as I did my research. You might have read some Jungian theory...I started with that, and I started to wonder if there might be a little more truth to it than modern science credited based on some of my own observations, so I began to research on it. It was..."

And here she pauses, thinking of how precisely to articulate it, how to explain this to Emily. "I developed my scientific studies and my enlightened studies concurrently. For a long time, I wasn't really aware of what I was doing as anything other than exceptionally advanced science. It was only after I got my PhD and had an understanding of ambient consciousness that it started to take on a more spiritual meaning for me."

[Emily Littleton] She's listening, but Emily is also thinking. It breaks her carefully tempered manners and she leans one elbow against the table. Rests her chin in her palm and taps her fingernails against the curve of her lower lip. There is a bridge, somewhere, between the type of technology and science that Emily studies and that which Lisa has made her life's work. It's a tentative thing, and it wanders through the fields of AI and cognitive science, it dances along the margin of what was understood and still emerging, but she can't quite find the piece to pull together what she can do and what she thinks the Knight is alluding to.

But it's right there. It's right there. A big, fat, sans serif question mark begging to be looked into. And the promise of broadened horizons, not just thresholds darkened with one danger or the next. At times Emily lost track of the Wonder, under the weight of the worry.

"Were you able, then, to generate quantitative data?" she asks. Because Emily is an engineer. Because Quantitative and Qualitative were discernible different. She understood Psychology as a discipline, but had often held quiet qualms with their rubrics. She catches herself, pushing at this disparity, and pulls back a little. Smiles.

"Ah... I suppose you probably don't want to talk methodology in precise detail. Apologies. This is what abstracts are for, after all." It's likely she would be looking up past papers to delve further into the idea, and the science (and even the enlightenment) behind them.

"Perhaps the better question -- if you don't mind talking about it -- is how you define ambient consciousness. For some reason it brings to mind a fog, and individuals moving through or around it. Or a heterogeneous mixture -- which makes me think I might be missing the point." Because Emily thinks of herself as part of a collective, but never relinquishes her individual identity. The idea of a collective or ambient consciousness seems to require just that, and she struggles with it. As a rational being, and as an Awakened Will.

[Carraway] "I did manage to produce quantitative data, yes," Lisa says, with a small smile. As though she'd expected to be asked that question - maybe not specifically from Emily, but given the strangeness of the idea for many people, she has probably gotten it before. "This isn't a good place for precise detail, but if you're interested in seeing any of the research, there are several published studies on the topic. I could pass them along to you. Or my dissertation, even though it's pretty dry reading."

She's a scientist, not a writer, and doesn't really claim to be one. Lisa tips her chin back onto her thumb, watching Emily and listening to the other questions that she has. She's most certainly interested, and if anything, she seems cheered to have found another Traditionalist with a mind for science. They're rare, with the exception of techgnosi.

"I wouldn't really call it either of those things," she says, after a moment. "When I've described it before it's generally been as a...hm. Think of an ocean, and collective experience and emotion goes into it, but there are still individuals that swim within that ocean. There's general humanity and we are an amalgam, but that doesn't take away from the significance of us as individuals."

She smirks after a moment and adds, "I'll have to apologize. I'm a scientist, not a poet."

[Emily Littleton] Lisa smirks and Emily chuckles, softly, at that. It's an amused and commiseratory sound, but resonant none-the-less.

"That's okay. Believe me, I understand. Explaining what I study usually gets reduced to the weird things that happen when you make very powerful, very small electronics."

There is a smirk from Emily, too, because Lisa is one of the few who will realize that she means her particular interests intersect the threshold of understanding, where the inviolate laws of physics are not quite so certain. It's just this side of more deeply theoretical pursuits, because Emily relishes the tangible, but she may get there in time.

"I would be interested in reading, or seeing what you've worked on. I understand the ocean metaphor. And that one can be part of a greater whole and yet fundamentally individual. I'm having trouble, just now, imagining how to move beyond the necessarily invidualistic vantage point and see the ocean for what it is -- probably I think of myself primarily as a self, not a thing subsumed into a whole and yet also unique. I can conceptualize it with things like data, but the nuances of each data point being rationally self-interested and directed ..."

She stops, there, and leaves the rambling to trail off. Thinking aloud just leads her back to more questions. Emily chews on her lip a little, and then says:

"People are terribly complicated. It seems so much harder to study what you have than what I do."

[Carraway] "Well, you are a self. You're also whatever group you're a part of or identify with," Lisa says. "If you're a member of a cabal, or a Tradition, those groups are part of your identity. Being human is part of your identity too." When Lisa talks about being human, it's clear that she doesn't mean homo sapiens sapiens, the biological form: she means the human ideal, she means human grace and intelligence and ingenuity.

Unbothered by Emily's rambling, she lofts an eyebrow and adds, "Maybe you just aren't yet at the point where you're ready to move beyond the data. I was like that too. Data seemed very concrete to me, and it was a lot easier to grasp than something as broad and all-encompassing as human experience." She doesn't say that Emily is just an apprentice, and she doesn't say that Emily is young (sometimes I forget how young you are, Em); both of these things would be rather patronizing, all told. She doesn't wish to patronize.

There's another smile, a lifting of the corner of her mouth, when she says, "I think it's just where your particular talents lie. My inclinations have always been with people. I like to analyze them and figure them out, and I like to analyze myself. Electronics would be more difficult for me."

[Emily Littleton] Emily is young, and that youth is tempered by a different sort of experience than most young twenty-somethings have. It's an argument, that thought, the implication that biological age is the sole predictor of -- it's an argument she should have with someone else, not Lisa.

"Analysis is predicated on a solid understanding of a system, first and foremost though. If you choose to analyse yourself, and the people around you, further onward to Humanity as an entity and a whole, I'd hazard that it's ultimately more fulfilling and enlightening than pushing electrons around a circuit diagram." Emily wiggles a finger in a circuitous path when she mentions that diagram. She's tracing out something from memory. She stops before she completes it, though, as that tracing out and mapping down is something she uses as a focus. And she is not will working here.

"I've kept these two avenues separate, more or less. My studies and my enlightenment." She borrows the word. It seems more comfortable to her than Awakening. It's a thing she understands better from the Occidental world, and can shape more readily on her tongue. She'll use it, too, long after Lisa has left, without ever thinking it might cause trouble.

"I mean, at times I'll use another sense to trace a board for breaks or try a find a weakness -- but that's utility. I'm still trying to get across the break between sensing, seeing, and doing. The things I feel called to do, magically, are less about electronics and more about people."

[Carraway] Emily expounds on what she means by more difficult, by easier, and Lisa clasps her hands together and rests her chin on them while she listens to the younger woman talk. A sort of contentment has settled into the Knight's limbs while they've been talking: it's so rare to find someone else who shares a similar mindset, who appreciates the way science and magic can blend. Who appreciates science at all.

It does make her regret a little that her stay is going to be short. She would like to stay and help Emily answer these questions, help Emily find her way Home and help guide her to the sort of connection that she herself has found. She would like to be a mentor.

"Well," she says, "you might be able to find a way to blend the two, given some time. If you think about it as just circuit boards or electrons and diagrams, then there isn't going to be a lot of space for you to find spirituality or Oneness in that, even if there would be a way to do hyperscience through it," she says. Emily's an apprentice: she can get away with using these words without raising eyebrows.

"Or," she adds, after a moment, "if you really don't want to keep your mundane work and your enlightened work separate, maybe you should consider a change of career. I found a lot of satisfaction in blending the two. You might or might not."

[Emily Littleton] "I don't think I want to change my career, just yet," she says, and it's not about favoring one over the other, or rejecting blending the two halves of her life. (They're not halves, really, as she is more than just a student and an apprentice.) "I like what I study. I find it engaging, challenging, fulfilling. I enjoy it, where others might find it tedious work and on some, small level it amuses me the chaos one finds when one extrapolates simple, rational laws to such an extreme as we do in the lab."

Hyperscience. It's a curious word. She does not ask after it, just yet, but she files it away with the new vocabulary she's learned in the last year. It gets slotted in beside Awake, and Tradition and Avatar. She doesn't assign an perjorative meaning to it, and likely won't if she digs further into it. Emily is an Apprentice, but she is an exceptionally driven one. And one with a knack for turning up information.

"At the same time, englightment has pushed me back toward some of the ideals I was raised to. I think a person can go too far to either end of the spectrum, and as much as it's pushing me forward I also feel a need to balance them both. Maybe in time they'll come together, somehow; I'm not overly worried about it.

"I don't feel that everything I do needs to be overtly spiritual or directed toward spirituality for me to be a spiritual being. I am that, and it informs and shapes what I do." It flows outward, from her, is what Emily is trying to articulate. It flows inward, too, but she doesn't chase it. The influx happens, the egress can be more planned, but whether she devoted her life to the Cloth or never walked into a Church again, Emily Littleton was a child of God. It was a Truth, however she shaped or obscured it.

"I don't see the conflict many people do, between science and Oneness. I want to know how things works, and I don't feel we lose any reverence in learning these things. What we lose in mystery, we gain in awe."

[Carraway] What we lose in mystery, we gain in awe.

Something in Lisa seems, for a moment, to be a little shaken at those words. It isn't overt; the woman is a former NWO spy, and she's rather used to schooling her expressions, to keeping them in check. But there, just for a second, something in her eyes, around her mouth, falters a little. As though surprised, as though it triggered some memory.

Which, in fact, it did.

Seconds later, she gives Emily a nod. "I agree completely," she says. "I don't think the act of scientific discovery devalues the world around us, or devalues the place spirituality or humanity has in it. And actually, that's exactly what the Alexandria Society thinks too, so you might have a place with them, if the Monists don't end up appealing to you. Or if, say, the Order of St. George wouldn't appeal to you."

It's not a direct invitation, not yet. But the way Lisa glances up at Emily for a second or two does let her know that she's considering it.

"I was actually suggesting that you find something more in line with what you want to do...magically, I guess you could say, since it can be hard to divide your focus. But if you feel it helps balance you, and you think it's what you want to do with your time, that's just as important."

[Emily Littleton] This happenstance meeting has been an unexpected boon. Not only has Emily found a little more footing in her chosen Tradition, she's met someone who has similar beliefs and values, who has made a place for herself with the Chorus, who has her own language and interests but can appreciate Emily's. It's a change, a clear and present shift, from the majority of the Singers than Emily has met. It strengthens the foundation she's building of her Awakened life.

As human beings, we seek the familiar.

It's good to know that she has like-minded company within the Chorus. That the Monists and Templars here in Chicago are not the whole of the Singers. It's a differnet knowledge, talking to a member of another Order, sharing these ideas and thoughts, than it is to read about the Alexandria Society or hear passing mention of them Order of St. George.

This growing comfort evidences itself in the easier smile she wears. It's something more akin to honesty, and warmer by degrees. There is something of Emily, as she was, showing through now that hadn't been there before. Not the Diplomat's daughter, not the Monist's Apprentice, not the newly-minted graduate student, but that self she'd been cultivating, quietly, all of this time. Waiting.

"I'd like to learn more about both, about either," she says. That curiosity has not receded. It is Unrelenting, in its own way. She could burn herself out treading too many paths all at once. Sooner or later, she'd have to focus and choose. "Of the two, just now, the Order calls more clearly."

Because, in the end, Emily would rather be out there doing. She doesn't call herself a field op, but her track record so far is leaning that way. She's made some of those sacrifices already, and while they're heavy she feels they are also worthy.

[Carraway] For as detached as she can be, for all her tendency to allow most things in her life to remain impermanent, Lisa makes friends easily. Her connections are of that nature: intense and bright, for however long she keeps them. There are a few people back in Seattle who she's found to stay with, to live with, and one who she hopes will be a permanent fixture in her life, but most don't last anywhere near that long. It doesn't make them any less important. Any less human.

Today, she can tell that she's done one of the things that she likes doing the most, and she'll go back to her hotel tonight with a sense of satisfaction. She'll call home and talk on the phone with a certain Cultist who is near and dear to her heart and talk about the girl she met.

She is out doing. She wouldn't have it any other way.

She gives Emily a nod, and their food is close to arriving. She says, "I can see that. Honestly, I think you would be a good candidate, and we're trying to rebuild the ranks. So why don't you think on it."

Not a promise; after all, she doesn't yet know what Emily's contended with, what Emily's done. She'll do her background research. She's good at that. "I'm going to be in town for a few more days, too, so you can give me a call if you want to talk more or would like help with anything. I'll probably just be bumming around with my guitar otherwise."

[Emily Littleton] There's something aflutter just behind the bars of her ribcage. It's distracting, now, because it's been so quiet since she let it in. Distracting and insistent. So, at first, the girl just nods and lets the broad (genuine) smile and their conversation so far speak for themselves.

Then, when she's mastered back the talons and things just right of her heartbeat, she answers. "I'd like that. I've really enjoyed talking with you."

She sounds surprised, a little. Pleasantly, of course, but surprised nonetheless. There is no one at home for Emily to call and tell about this meeting, besides Gregory -- and she might tell him, in slanted sentences that play on a delicate misunderstanding between them. The person who might have been near and dear to her heart, just now, is away without means to contact him. He's receding further with each passing week. She will probably discuss this matter with that flurry (wings [a rush of air] Unrelenting) of symbols and talons and dove down, as it has an opinion, apparently.

"If nothing else, I'd like to hear more about your work." This is genuine interest. It will persist. But their food arrives at just this juncture, and complicated science is best shared either in the lab or over pints. It isn't a solid-food subject (though philosophy is excellent with wine and cheese [and feeding programmers makes them finally stfu]).