Half moon song

[Emily] After the golden sun dips below the horizon, the people thronging on the summer sands fade away. They stream from the beach in dark rivers of moving limbs, of suntan smells, of garish suits. They take their blankets, and coolers, and umbrellas with them. Their overtired and sunburnt children. Their pets. Their cellphones. Their empty beer cans.

Some leave them behind, the beer cans, the take away boxes, the spent casings of summer toys. The lake doesn't have a tide like a true sea does. It doesn't reach up the beach, edging ever closer to its limits, swallowing hungrily whatever is left in its path. It ebbs and flows, but it's less moonstruck than the wide Atlantic, more temperate even than the Pacific's girth. There is stillness to be found, here, at least in one's imagination. And boats can be fashioned from the floating leaves (flotsam [jetsam]) and bits of plastic, or glass, or metal that rise like jagged teeth to break the plane of the water.

Emily has brought no towel to sit upon, no brightly colored toys, no garish swimsuit, no summer picnic, no somebody to lean against and think wistful thoughts as they look out over the water. Nothing to sigh over. No wishes for fishes. She's wrapped her arms around her knees and rests her chin on them. Her hair follows the curve of her spine, a dark wriggle of curls, a tail. Her sandals sit besider her, toes are buried in the grit, wriggle, writhe, settle, still.

The moon is a half-bright, broad boat, hanging thing. It rises slowly. It sails without purpose. Lazy. The lights reflect on the water, blur, smear, spread; they're brighter on one side of a swell than another. The dark of night rushes in, reaches down, tries to swallow up the darker-black of the lake but the stars betray it. They are not the same dark, and the light pollution from the city ruins them both.

It is a reflective place, if not a restful one, if not a happy one. It is a good place to be alone. To stand separate. To take stock. But Emily is only sitting with her toes in the sand and her mind left to wander. She isn't looking to be found; she isn't try to stay away. This is limbo, a place for waiting, a waiting that doesn't even rise to hoping.

[Declan] This was a place that he came to often. They were both reflective creatures, these two young mages. And Declan found solace in the water and the moon and the stars - even muted as they were by the city lights and the smog. He and Emily often ran into each other at times and places like these, and that was probably no accident. They were both such thoughtful, reverent drifters, you see. Their own inner oceans rose and fell and crashed and ebbed like the tides. Today, Emily's tide had receded, and she was quiet.

At some point she'd hear the sound of footsteps approaching from behind her. He didn't call out when he noticed her, or otherwise attempt to draw her attention, but neither did he make any attempt to mask his presence. So there they were: footsteps in the sand, and then soon enough Declan's familiar face would appear at her side, and he'd pull the violin-shaped backpack from off his shoulder and set the thing down gently behind them before sitting down and joining the soon-to-be-Chorister in the sand.

"It's a half moon, tonight," he noted thoughtfully.

[Emily] That was the problem, perhaps. They two were drifters, and yet she had allowed herself to get tied down, weighed down, to accumulate possessions that outstripped her means to move them. She owned furniture and it was weighty. She had people, and they were weightier yet. Emily's feet were tied down, leaving her soul-tide to do all the traveling.

Today, indeed, her tide had receded. She was quiet. She was hollowed (hallowed) and ready to be filled up again.

She doesn't look up at the sounds of footsteps in the sand. Emily can feel the quicksilver slide over her, mercurial, fluid. She knows him before his face takes shape beside hers, before his voice fills the little bit of air that separates them.

It's a half moon, he says, as she turns to him and smiles softly. It's muted, this, but she is happy enough to see him, welcoming enough for the company.

"And warm, yet," she notes. "I wonder if Autumn will ever come."

[Declan] "Soon, I think. A few weeks, and the leaves will start to turn color. A few more weeks, and they'll be crimson and gold and we'll be smelling autumn everywhere."

Declan remembered autumn. It had been a long time since he'd ventured this far North, and so the vivid beauty that he associated with it had eluded him, but he still remembered. He remembered the colors. He remembered the smell, and the crackle of the leaves beneath his feet. Autumn was a season of intense magic. It was the season of dancing spirits and howling wolves.

But it wasn't autumn yet. It was still high summer. The temperature was cooling, though, ever so slightly. The days were becoming shorter. Declan looked at the moon again, and sang softly...

And in the half light
where we both stand
this is the half light
see me as I am.

After a pause, he looked over. "Sometimes I feel like something's pushing me. But I don't know where it wants me to go. Do you ever feel like that?"

[Emily] Emily remembered Autumn. She remembered it fondly. She loved the crispness that came into the air, the clarity, the sharpness of the colors, the bite of the flavors, the spices, the twinkle of lights in the nights that grew ever longer. If she could hold the world in just one season, it would be ruddy, rusty, resonant Fall. The leaves would ever be amber and crimson and the rain, when it fell, would smell of mushrooms and musk.

But it wasn't Autumn yet, and Summer still had swaths of long days to burn away. Skin to sear off and memories to cauterize. Summer was a trial, something to endure, a fire to outlive: Autumn was the phoenix that rose again.

His voice curled against her ear and Emily smiled. She tipped her chin so that she could watch him, and the moonlight slid over her features, casted shadows at new angles. Even hollowed out and quiet, she carries a brilliance.

"I feel like that always. Even when I am weary, or when I am alone. It's bone-deep, a restlessness. Relentless, untiring." Her voice is gentle. It ebbs and flows like the water, brushes up against him in soft swells. She doesn't push, just now, and all that's left behind is the Reverence. But beneath that there is restlessness, even if she is too tired to heed it. There is no veil -- no, not no veil but less of one. That too leaves her gentled, softened in some small way.

"I feel better when I am moving," she admits aloud. "Even if I am not sure I am going in the right direction. What is it that you think you seek?" she asks, but it's just a question. It's not leading or seeking to cajole. She is curious.

[Declan] "Used to be I couldn't go more than a week or two before that feeling drove me to get back on the road again. Never knew why, really. I just... needed to move. Maybe it was the change that I needed. Like growth. Maybe it was taking me somewhere." He shrugged lightly, wrapping his arms around his knees. "Maybe it was taking me here. It stopped, not long after I got here. After I met... all of you."

His head joined his hands, chin leaning against the top of one knee. He looked small, curled up like that, but his spine didn't stick out the way that it used to. That was a blessing, at least.

"But it's started again, now. It gets stronger when I play." At this, he tilted his head back briefly toward the violin behind him. Then, out of the blue (in that way he often had of leading from one subject into another [or maybe these two things were more closely connected than he realized]), he asked, "Can you show you me something new?"

[Emily] "Maybe it's your Muse," she says, and it's not immediately clear (even to Emily) whether she's taking creative license with describing his Avatar or simply referring to that spark, that inspiration that sets artist souls apart. Emily has no such spark, that she has let anyone see. She doesn't not draw, does not play music, does not inspire with her words. Whatever brilliance she carries, it's confined to her being. She is no luminous, as he might be, if he were truly moved to and by such things.

"I can show you many things," she says, and it's true. This is not boastful, merely truth. She has lived many places, known many things, seen many things -- something among those will be new to Declan. Many of them, maybe. "What do you want to see, Declan?" she asks, gently.

[Declan] "Everything," he said, and it wasn't an exaggeration. More than likely, given the harsh realities of what this wish actually entailed, he might change his mind some day. But for now, he was young, and hungry for knowledge and understanding in the way that only the newly awakened ever could be. But everything was a tall order, so he lifted his chin off of his knees and smiled, reaching up with one hand to ruffle the back of his hair. He'd need to cut it soon. It was getting longish.

"I want to feel what moves the tide. I want to talk to the trees."

Were these things possible? Of course they were. Anything was possible. He truly believed that. More and more, lately, the limitless possibilities of the world seemed to beckon and call.

[Emily] [Some sphere 1: dif 4, -1 practiced, Extending to share]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 5, 7 (Success x 2 at target 3)

[Emily] [Some sphere 1: dif 4, extending +1, -1 practiced]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 6 (Success x 2 at target 4)

[Emily] "Hmmmm," she says, and she watches him with the same soft scrutiny she has worn all night. Emily studies him, the lines of his face, the emotions he wears, the questions he asks, but it is not a press, tonight. No it is not a need, tonight. Not even a challenge, tonight. Not tonight.

Emily uncurls from hugging her legs tight to her torso. She lets one arm fall down to rest in her brief lap and lets the fingertips of her other hand trace patterns in the sand. Her body is between them, so Declan cannot see what it is she is writing, if there are words to it in the slightest. What he can feel is the rising call of the brilliance within her, the Reverence and the Push. It sings like grace, on this August evening.

He had wanted to feel what moves the tide, and Emily's awareness of the general Forces of the world slowly seeps over him. It does not grasp him at him like a Hunger, or demand from him like a Craving; it washes over him in a sense of wonder, an awe sustained through hardship and reborn again in Faith. This is the inspiration that she can bring: the silence to the swell of the water, the rhythm of its gait, the tribal drumming of the moon-tides.

The kiss of the wind the cacophony of its uncertain shifts of direction. Emily doesn't hear these things as much as know them. She can quantify them, study them, assign vectors and measures to them. But she can also feel them, innately, and this what she shares. She doubts that Declan cares overmuch for the physics of it all... but there's a wonder in her for the order in it, and the chaos made rational by the weight of observation.

Emily says nothing, but rather listens for whatever he might share

[Declan] He'd felt things like this before. Things that a Sleeper mind would not be able to rationalize. He'd felt the stuff at the heart of all creation. He'd heard the laughter of spirits dancing on the breeze. He'd seen the imprint of a person's affection upon a treasured object. But this was an entirely new sensation - precisely what he'd asked for. Declan closed his eyes and fell slowly back against the sand, one hand coming to rest over the center of his sternum. He took in a breath, and then he laughed in quiet wonder. Almost like a child, discovering something amazing for the first time.

"That's... wonderful. The moon is singing."

Emily might not have described the gravitational pull on the lake in quite that manner, but Declan was precisely the kind of man who was given to poetic flights of fancy. To him, tho whole world sang. (That is, when it wasn't screaming.)

[Emily] For the moment, it didn't matter much at all to her that Declan used different words to describe the wonder. That there was wonder, at all, in a night such as this was enough. And she was learning, in time, to take the moments as they came, and to cherish those that were enough just as dearly as those that overflowed. It was, after all, what she wanted most: to be enough. Not too much, not too little, just enough.

He laughs and she slides her arms around her upturned knees again. She watches him with that quiet wonder, borrows on the delight he takes in the newness of it all. She is hollowed (hallowed) and his joy rushes into fill, in part, that emptiness. It displaces the ache. This is good for her, too.

So she watches him with a fondness that doesn't present itself in words. Just the quiet, lopsided curl of her mouth, and the slake of some of the tension in her shoulders. Emily wriggles her toes in the sand.

He's listening to the moonsong and the wind whisper and the rub of sand grain against one another, so it's possible he'll miss the quiet canter of her voice, the lop of its sing-song, in the margins between them, as Emily says softly:

The half-moon is singing
The water is still
As it laps at the toes of
Boy-jack and girl-jill
The wind won't stop stirring
I'm starting to see
That the Fall isn't coming
It's just you here, and me.

[Declan] [Cha+Expression]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 7, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]

[Declan] [Dex+Performance]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 7, 9, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[Declan] [...Yeahno, let's try that again]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7)

[Declan] He opened his eyes when she spoke, and smiled in a sweet, wistful sort of way. Some might have interpreted that as romantic interest, but coming from Declan, it was more likely innocent affection combined with an appreciation for the poetry in Emily's words. (Then again, he'd smiled at Riley and Kage in similar ways before, so it was hard to say. He was a mercurial creature.)

On impulse, he sat up, swiveling around to pick up the case behind him. He unzipped the nylon bag, removing a second, more easily identified violin case from inside of it. This he set carefully atop the other case, to keep out the sand. "A song for a song, I think." The clasps were snapped open, and he removed the violin that had once been Ashley's (that still was, in Declan's eyes). He'd played it earlier that day, so it didn't need much in the way of tuning. A couple of experimental notes sounded as he pulled the bow across the strings, contemplating. In his head, notes danced across an imaginary page. He felt the wash of the moon's pull tug and push, and translated this into music.

It had been a long time since he'd really attempted to compose something off the cuff like this, so his initial try stuttered to a halt before it even began. Hesitant, he glanced at Emily with something like apology. But then he closed his eyes again, and focused... and the music that came from the instrument sounded indeed like moonsong - lyrical and soft, waxing and waning.

[Emily] [Some dice, very small pool.]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Emily] She would understand, if Declan told her the violin was still Ashley's. She has a chair in her apartment that may forever be Owen's. Some gifts never leave their gifter, however cherished they become to the giftee.

Emily marvels at this gift he has, to translate what he hears of the world around him into some measure of song. To breathe new life into it and lift it, loft it heavenward. So there's Reverence threaded around her, and there's reverence in her as well, as she listens. The quiet, rapt attention of someone who understands, who feels but cannot partake in the music of their own hands or voice. She is not musical. She is not artistic. But she understands the longing, and the magic of it all.

"That's beautiful," she says, with her voice hushed and gentled. There's a brightness to the corners of her eyes that threatens to overspill, that burgeons but does not break. She blinks it back, with fat wet lashes. It touches the blue in her eyes, teases forth the grey. He knows the color of them, even though they are merely dark here, now.

"She sings," she says, of the instrument in his hands. You sing is the implication buried just beneath the words. It's a fair trade, this song for a glimpse at hers. They've each given one another something new.