Breaking storm [STing]

[Hunger] Very soon, the Court will be draped and swathed in the colors of autumn, brilliant and bold and golden just for a few weeks before winter will set in. For right now, everything is still green, and Ashley is going to squeeze whatever's left of summer out of the month or so that's left.

She visits this place because it's one of the things that keeps her from thinking of this as a Summer of Loss, because it wasn't. Not entirely. Everything with Daiyu spanned this summer; she and Kage came out to the Court and went swimming this summer and talked about poetry while they floated on their backs near the King gazing up at the broken branches. Just last week they came back with apple seeds.

So here she'll be in this lonely sanctuary, in this place where she can be alone and away from everything. Not shut in with her books, stuffed inside, not among other people where she can't feel free to grieve. Just: out.

And she's found a place near the King, at the base of the Throne, at which to sit and write. She does write, and write often, and right now it's one of her only outlets. She's never published anything she has written; she's never wanted to. Up until she started leaving things at the Court the only eyes to view her work were generally close friends.

Right now, though, she's just gotten through with a burst of activity, with an emptying. And now her hand has stilled on the page, the pen come to rest a shining silver bar across the lined pages, smeared dark along one side where her hand rested too long, the neat black script filling its lines.

Ashley has long since tipped her head back against one of the branches of the throne, scoured bare like bone by rain and snow and ice, and let a hungry gaze wander out into the woods. She looks; she looks just to look at nothing for a while.

[Breaking Storm] Reap what you sow, but do not sow sadness,
Though it is a fine crop, it will o'ertake you
And you will be lost to the dying
While your eyes are still clear.

It is mid-day and the Late Summer sun is high in the sky. There are clouds, but not too many. The rains have not yet truly begun. They have not swept clean the city of its summer-dust, sunlight sprinkled in motes and shining moments, lustrous, golden. These are golden days. Warmth. Abundance. Days of reaping what one has sown in this dying year.

That Ashley and Kage and Emily and others have found their way to the Court is not entirely a surprise. This place, with its resonance of Lonliness and Sanctuary is old. It is Ages Old. It is sacred. It has weather too many seasons and too man sundowns to be thought of in the meager timelines and language of man.

And it is due to this history, this lineage of places named and places kept, that our scene commences thus:

Ashley rests with her head against the bone-clean branch, at rest, at reverie. Perhaps it takes a moment for her to notice the gathering mist. The tug. The gentle shadow thrown over the court as if a passing cloud has sailed between her perch and the lofted sun. There is a prick of ozone, clean and anticipatory. It smells like a storm brewing. The air thickens, dampens, chills just so. It feels like a storm coming.

She's a half hour's walk, if briskly taken, maybe more from the parking lot. From shelter. And it seems like it is about to start storming.

[Hunger] A storm this time of year: it isn't unexpected. There have been hurricanes in the south that have made their way to the north, blown by the winds toward Chicago. What is surprising, though, is how quickly it's coming on. How sharp that smell seems and when she peers up through the canopy, all she can see is blue the color of her eyes through the break of leaves.

There's a sadness that's settled over the Hermetic while she's been sitting, that she's allowed herself to feel in full now that she's out here. It's why the Court seems like such an appropriate place to go, this place where it's safe to feel lonely.

But there are no tears. Maybe occasionally they blur her vision but they're stoppered up just as quickly. She didn't come out here for that.

Still: the hovering storm, the damp air. Ashley can Stride home; it was how she got out here in the first place. It's why she doesn't come here often: she has a headache, tension, there between her eyes and where her jaw connects. Occasionally she reaches up and rubs it.

Still, it'll be how she gets home anyway, and so she isn't worried now. It might storm it might not. And until then, she breathes in the ozone, closes her eyes, and waits for rain.

[Breaking Storm] Ashley waits for rain that doesn't come. She can feel it ride her skin, the crackle of a building storm. She can feel the breaking, the moments when the first, fat raindrops should be falling. They should be kissing her closed eyelids just now, but instead there is a stillness. A quiet.

A silence. As if the woods held their breath for just a moment, and then very slowly began to exhale and bleed back into their normal patterns.

The feeling of an oncoming storm fades, falls away as quickly as it has built up. It gives way to a new sound: footsteps in the leaf litter, off the beaten path, coming toward the Court.

The approach stranger pauses, several steps away from the clearing, and waits. She is only a few inches taller than Ashley, only a few years older. Her hair is flax-and-honey, lighter now because of the summer sun, and her skin lightly sun-bronzed. There are freckles across her cheeks and down her shoulders and upper arms. Her eyes are warm; they're pale green fields rimmed with a very dark green.

She wears a long skirt that brushes against the forest floor. A thin-strapped black tank top. She's carrying a satchel, a traveling back, round tall duffel like soldiers shoulder. This she sets down with a quiet sound, but keeps upright by holding taut its strap.

She watches Ashley, in the court, with her head leaned back and her expectations of rain. She watches, and she waits.

[Hunger] [Footsteps wut?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)

[Hunger] This is an old place, and perhaps it is to be expected that sooner or later another Willworker they don't know would come out this way. Perhaps some already have; perhaps some that have seen the shards of self she's left in the Heart Box have been themselves Awakened.

Ashley has little to no directional hearing left. She can tell, sometimes, which side of her head the sound is on by how faint it is, but that isn't always an accurate tell. So that crunch of leaves beneath the stranger's feet, she hears that and doesn't know where it's coming from at first.

The ripples of sunlight across her face flicker and slide off as she lifts her head, thick hair tousled by the breeze. Ashley, at present, is only in a pair of jeans and a plain purple T-shirt, form fitting. Her shoes and socks were peeled off and set aside so she could feel the grass and forest soil underfoot, could curl her toes into the cool blackness while she sat.

When she raises her head she looks first in the wrong direction, and then whips her head around and sees the woman there, watching her. And it's perhaps fortunate that this woman doesn't mean her harm.

Ashley takes her in, the bright blue of her eyes sharp and focused, looks at the traveling bag that she's set down there. Breathes in her resonance, tastes it, almost. Ashley herself: it's hard to mistake her for anything other than what she is. There's just too much of her there, a corona of poignant hunger, of relentless thriving, of determination.

So she looks back, for a moment, and they regard each other, these two. Then Ashley says, "Hi. I'm Ashley."

[Breaking Storm] The woman observes, more than anything. She sees Ashley look in one direction, then pivot her attention back to the right area. She sees, too, the Hunger around Ashley. Or rather she hears the howl of it, feels it against her skin like a ravenous thing.

Her own resonance is not subtle. It bleeds off her, marks her plainly for the thing of nature-and-cosmos that she is. It is not as strong as Ashley's, but it is also more focused. She is not as diversified. All these flavours speak to the same thing: Breaking Storms, Weather Witchery.

"I'm Kae," she answer, bows her head a little in greeting. It's a wordless recognition of their unequal weighting in the way of Willwork. When her eyes settle again on Ashley's, she asks, "May I?"

And gestures with one hand into the space the King and Court occupies. If Ashley thinks on it, she'll find Kae stands just at the edge of where the Court's resonance begins to bleed back into the forest, dim and render itself unclear again. Where the pull stops. She is neither in nor out of that circle. Kae stands on the threshold.

[Hunger] Kae stands on the threshold, as well she should: if she's new here she doesn't know what this place is to Ashley. It could be claimed territory, it could be a place where she comes to Work even. It's not, but it could be; stranger things have happened.

"Good to meet you, Kae," she says, and then cuts the air in toward the Court, toward the King, as though slicing through the dampened air left by the breaking storm. "Feel free."

Ashley's eyes are still intent, are still curious as she watches the woman step in. Ashley hasn't yet risen, though she is attentive; she is relatively sure Kae is not a threat, but she does not yet know whether she is friendly. Who she is, whether she claims a Tradition. Whether she's a new Willworker who intends to remain in Chicago.

Whether she's allied with the Nephandi they are going to kill this Tuesday.

She folds her hands over the notebook and studies Kae for a moment more. Doesn't close the pages, not yet. After a few seconds, if Kae does not break the silence first, she says, "Where are you here from?"

[Breaking Storm] She shoulders her bag once more, and carries it with her into the space. Kae steps across the threshold quite mindfully; her feet come up a little higher; she marks it as if it were a tangible boundary. For her, it is.

As she comes closer, the witch casts about for a good place to sit. One hand controls that duffel bag, and the other marshals her skirts. It's a fluid, practiced thing. She is innately aware of the bounds of her body, how that reacts with the world-space around her. There are no misplaced footfalls, nothing tentative. Ashley has seen a similar but very different grace before. Finding nothing promising but the King, and seeming to recognize that space for what it is, Kaeley sets down the back and sits atop it. Its contents are tightly packed enough to offer her a make-shift stool.

"Most recently? A small town in south-east Missouri." There's a faint southern twinge to her voice when she says the state name. It comes out more like Mis-uh-rah than anything else. She looks up, then around the space again, and shrugs slightly. "I'm supposed to be on my way to Maine. I think I took a wrong turn along the way."

There's a sense of acceptance underlying her words, a nonchalance. Unfettered. It's easy to pick up on, even for Ashley who is not as keen with vocal nuance any longer. If this woman means her harm in any way, it is utterly absence from the her features, her movements, her voice. She does not seem to keep much (if anything) back, rather laying her intentions clear in everything from her carriage to the cant of her smile.

"Do you mind," she asks, leadingly. Its wrapped in her tone, in the curve of her arched brow. "Telling me where I've landed?"

[Hunger] Ashley has seen a similar grace before. It doesn't occur to her immediately, but as she watches Kae move into her space with her duffel bag, there's a flowing, a movement, that hits that chord. Twangs it, makes it pang in the pit of her stomach. Those errant thoughts: they happen.

She's gotten at least a little used to them, enough so that she can turn her thoughts away from them and instead toward the woman who is here, to what she is saying.

She understands how this could happen: she has gone Striding distances before, and sometimes it is easy to poorly gauge, especially if you aren't entirely familiar with where you're going to end up. If you can't visualize it. Space may be an illusion, but it's one the Consensus keeps strong, a thick curtain that has to be shredded apart.

So Ashley's mouth quirks when Kae tells her that she'd meant to end up in Maine. Wrong turn indeed.

The question is answered readily. "You're a little outside Chicago," Ashley says. "Not far. I live close to downtown and it isn't difficult for me to get here." Of course not. But it isn't that long a drive when she comes with Kage, either.

A beat. "It's not the safest place to stop right now, but it's pretty safe out this way."

[Breaking Storm] "Chicago?"

Surprise. Dismay. Then, laughter. It's a warm sound, mellow and mezzo-soprano. Rich and well supported. There's a melody underscoring it, but Ashley's mind doesn't process those just yet.

"It's good to know the paths lead here," she says, turning her misstep into some positive for later adventuring. "But not at all where I'd hoped to be."

"This place," she says, spreading her hands a little, inclusive of the court and the water nearby. "It's pleasant. Quite different from the city. Do you come here often?" she asks. The words tumble out, unabated.

Another pause, a bit of correction. A point of formality returned to, as if it had been forgotten. "I've not been in this city, proper. Do you stand on formalities here? I am so-and-so, bani this-and-that?"

The question is lightly voiced, but not irreverantly. Leaving out the particulars of the request leaves in innocent enough to Sleepers. There's little guile to her, but plenty of warmth. Kae smooths her fingers out over her skirt, slides them down her thighs, then brings them back to rest in her lap.

Her skirt is patchwork, all autumn colors, they blend into one another, fade out into another. Some patches have been mended, some need mending. It fits the flow and cadence of her, somehow. It fits the coming season, too.

[Hunger] Ashley hears the dismay in her voice, and the Hermetic's response is a rueful smile, at first. Shares Kae's amusement, once the stranger begins to laugh at her mistake. Ashley can't hear the melody it contains, but laughter is one of the few melodies that hasn't become unpleasant. Too much like speech. It doesn't break her heart to hear it.

The woman is fairly talkative, and Ashley is actually rather comfortable with this. She appreciates it sometimes, when there's someone else to take the lead in conversation. Someone who will give her something to latch onto, someone who won't make a first conversation awkward.

So often she finds herself the one approaching people, the one expected to get to know them and lead them. It's refreshing sometimes to not have to do it.

She raises her eyebrows at the mention of formalities, of bani, because generally this is something other Traditions sneer at if they know those formalities at all. It's a very Hermetic thing. "This is a pretty informal city," she says. "I'm from the Order of Hermes, House Tytalus, and I don't really stand on ceremony much myself, and most of the others don't either."

Ashley tolerates ceremony. She tolerates it because pomp and circumstance is so very much a part of the Order, and it is a necessary evil.

[Breaking Storm] "Ah," she says.

"My... cabal-mate was Flambeau," she says, hesitating a little before choosing that name. The fingertips of her right hand skim a thin silver band on her left ring finger, though. It's a common tell. "So you might say I'm used to it."

There's a smile, now. Spreads quickly across her features, shifts them to something brightly amused.

"Some said he tamed a Primal into manners; I'm Verbena, you see." This cannot come as much surprise. Kaeley runs her fingertips through her short hair, and some of it sticks out at odd angles now. There's enough curl to it, even short, to be willful. Not enough length to let that run wild.

"Can't say I've met any from your house before. 'Tis a pleasure."

[Hunger] [Was? Wedding band? How sharp am I today? +1, I'm not Little Miss Empathic, +1 don't really know this chick.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 7 (Botch x 2 at target 8)

[Hunger] She says her cabalmate was a Flambeau, and Ashley utterly misses any other significance that might hold for her. Can't see her touch her wedding band, wouldn't be able to put it together even if she did. Misses, in fact, the hesitation, even the was that indicates that it's all in the past now.

"Both of my former cabalmates are Flambeau, actually," she says, though she's obviously pleased when she says it. A common tie: being in good with the Order's largest house often proves itself useful. Then, "Did he change Traditions?" Almost curious, that. Perhaps he only changed his house.

Kae says that it's a pleasure to meet a Tytalan, and there's a wry smile that sketches over a corner of her mouth. Perhaps her Flambeau cabalmate just hadn't told her much about them. That Kae is a Verbena: she can almost see Ashley's eyes grow more alert at that. Brighter, somehow.

"Nice to meet you," she says. "We don't really get many Verbena in Chicago, actually."

[Breaking Storm] Ashley asks if Will changed Traditions. Kaeley draws a up a little (confusion), tips her head a bit. It's faintly bird-like. Then some small epiphany dawns, and the pull of her brows smooths and her smile shifts to something a little sadder. (Loss)

Ashley needs less empathy than usual to read this woman. What she says is intrinsically interwoven with what she doesn't. The words are just a familiar vehicle for people who have not learned to listen other ways. She carries a sadness, but not grief: Loneliness, like this place. There is also acceptance there. No anger. No struggle.

"Will passed." Her eyes are clear as they meet Ashley's. "He told me when we met that his House burns brightly and then burns out. I had him longer than I'd expected to."

She catches the widened eyes at the mention of her Tradition, but in Kae's history that expression had not often gone well for her. It brings a keener watchfulness forward for a moment, something she does nothing to hide.

[Hunger] At some point, she might reach a point with her own grief where she feels much like Kae: an acceptance, just something left behind. Right now, there's too much a roil of loneliness, of rage, of pain and Hunger for her to even begin to think in those terms yet. She didn't know Daiyu for that long, but it will still take her a long time to make peace with it, likely even after she has tried to move on.

"Oh," she says, and there's chagrin for having brought it up, for having not noticed those hints and tells. She still meets Kae's eyes without hesitation, but Kae can tell she's embarrassed; it also isn't hard to tell that she's been stricken by the words, in a way. "I...sorry. My, um. My cabalmate passed, too. Two weeks ago."

In absence of other things to offer, because real sympathy isn't easy for her, she offers just that: solidarity. Understanding. She doesn't say I had her for less time than I'd expected to. It isn't necessary.

If Ashley is in any way hostile toward Kae's Tradition, it doesn't show. She reaches up and rubs a hand over the back of her neck, ostensibly to whick moisture away but mostly because she is embarrassed, a little nervous. It leaves a smear of dirt; she doesn't seem to notice or care.

"House Flambeau is like that, though."

[Breaking Storm]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to Breaking Storm

[Breaking Storm] Listening to what Ashley says, and what she says without saying, puts the Verbena in a bind to reconcile them for a moment. It's a wordless place, wherein she turns the things she might say over, tumbles them until the sharp edges are worn away. The Hermetic's grief is still new, sharp, raw enough to cut out around her words. It bleeds, still.

She nods, slowly. Kaeley reaches down and picks up a fallen leaf that is not yet dried and dessicated. It's one of the first fall-touched leaves to find their way into the Court, just yet. She toys with its stem; it is still pliant.

"It is hard to be the left behind when someone you care about starts a new journey." She smooths her thumb over the slick surface of the leaf, then turns it over and rubs her fingerprint over the side that evidences the veins more clearly. This is idle. It does not have much meaning.

She offers the leaf to Ashley, saying: "Tell me about your friend?"

It's a request. That much is clear in her cadence, in the upward slope to the last few syllables. In the softness underlying them.

[Hunger] Ashley, too, finds a leaf and picks it up, runs the ball of her thumb over the edges. They're dry now, beginning to crinkle a little with the time they've been separated from the branch. The touch is gentle enough to not even bend the leaf inward, to not deform it and make it lose its shape much less brush away little crumbles. She can have a light touch, when she wants to.

She's being asked to talk, and Kae isn't the first person in the past two weeks to make this request. It's been made by the people Ashley's closest to, though, by people who knew or surmised: Ashton, Israel, Kage. Always when you're ready, sometime you can tell me about her.

"She was an Akashic," Ashley says. "We have Nephandi here. They meant to hit me, I think, but she attacked them." Whether it had been Daiyu's intent to draw their attention away from her, she doesn't know. Whether it would have killed her if it had struck her instead: she doesn't know that either. It's hard to know with magic, and Daiyu had been heavily wounded already.

She twirls the leaf between her fingers. "I didn't know her very long. Just a few months." It had been intense, though, for all that. Ashley doesn't quite need to state that either.

There are no tears. She's at the point where she doesn't have to shed them, where her voice just grows a little thick. Where her chest just constricts a little. Then, "I'm sure I just need time." A glance toward Kae. It's for reassurance, almost; Kae might or might not understand that. Ashley can be a difficult person to read.

[Breaking Storm] Kaeley settles the leaf in her lap. It's bright against the square of russet-red-brown on which it rests. It's golden-touched, poignant: like the resonance of the woman beside her. Kaeley listens, again, for more than what Ashley is willing to say.

"That's possible," she offers, but it is not the whole of what the Priestess has to say. There's no magic to this moment between them, no drawing down of the Moon or Viel. But it is very much a part of Kae's Tradition, nonetheless. That may surprise Ashley, depending on what the Hermetic knows of the Life Mages. The words amble, slowly, until they find their way back home again.

"Some people need time. Some need their lives to fill back up, busy, become less empty again. Some need friends. Others words; endless words, stories told, opinions shared. Wakes and Eulogies. Some people seek revenge," she says, without judgment, as if this were a natural thing.

"Most, though, just need to go back to doing. Grief is like waiting. It pulls you in and weighs you down. Keeps you from moving. It makes your whole body sad, so sad that when I asked you to tell me about her, you told me how she died. How long you knew each other."

There's a pause, here, and there's sadness in her tone. Echoed, reflected, perhaps sympathetic as well.

"But you didn't tell me how she lived." Kae's quiet for a moment, and then she asks again: "Tell me about your friend, Ashley, if you will. I'd like to hear how you will remember her."

[Hunger] There's this, too, about grief: it makes people feel guilty. Ashley's intelligent, she's logical; she knows, in that logical manner, that she could have done nothing. That she could not have known what was going to happen, that rushing to learn the Ars Vitae sooner might have done no good. She knows that she is not expected to grieve for a certain length of time.

Grief makes people feel as though they should be miserable, because to be less makes the loss feel less significant. People feel guilty, moving on too soon, as though it means the dead will be forgotten and easily brushed aside.

Kae asks her to tell her how she lived, and the Hermetic's throat tightens, at that. It's harder to tell, and it's harder to tell someone she just met. It's more difficult to dwell on life (because that brings home what was lost.)

Ultimately, though, Ashley is an honest person, and it is not in her to shy away from a question because she feels that she's not ready, because she feels that it's too hard. Nothing is more than she can bear. So after a second, she speaks. "She was a dancer," Ashley says, "and a soldier. And I can't...actually hear music, not since I Woke Up, but it was still amazing just to watch her move even without it. And she was an Akashic so she'd be really...really contained, a lot of the time, but sometimes who she actually was would come out. Just this very...she was very alive. Really spontaneous and brave."

Listening to Ashley talk, it might be difficult to believe she has the way with Words she does. Speaking of these things is awkward, though, much moreso than writing about them. Then again: these things don't need to be polished. Sometimes the words chosen and how they're said confer as much as they need to confer, just in that raw state, just as they are. "She liked poetry. She'd ask me to read. And was...really kind and warm and I just didn't expect it."

She isn't a person who has encountered much warmth, all told, save from her former cabalmates (save from the people who have started to treat her with warmth now that they've seen her as she is). These days her general demeanor usually forbids it; the Akashic hadn't been intimidated. Ashley stops, after a moment. Voice frozen, maybe. Then she says, "Tell me about yours."

[Breaking Storm] There are a lot of words in this language that Kae does not care for. Should is rather high up on that list. The idea that someone should grieve in one way or another offends her; it's like telling someone that the best breathing happens under-water. Nonsensical. Utter inanity. She dislikes should and with it must and also always and never.

When she asks after Daiyu's life, this is what Ashley offers: dancer, fighter, contained, warmth, lyrical (poetry [motion]), spontaneous, brave, kindness. She paints a picture, however haltingly, of a woman who was both loving and loved.

The Verbena smiles. It's a small smile, a warm smile, but appreciative and also somewhat sad.

"Will was... very rules bound," she tells the Hermetic. The words are not weighed down with grief, but they carry a resonant tone. They're heavy with memory and affection. Honest to a fault. Unocculted in anyway. "Very ritualistic. His study had to be just so, his magics just so, even his office at the University, just so. His Apprentice? She used to move things about, just to see how much it vexed him."

Her grin broadened.

"He turned purple once."

The laughter touched her eyes, then faded away in its own time.

"For all that particularness, he was devoted to teaching. To his students, both at the University and at the Chantry. He was unwavering in his dedication to the Order, to eradicating every Enemy of Ascension. I had not met someone so full of purpose and so unafraid of self-sacrifice, who walked the line without becoming unnecessarily reckless -- it frightened me about him. Because he wasn't mine. And I wasn't his. And one day, one of us would be alone."

She glances out over the water now, turns her mouth into a pensive moue for just a fraction of a second.

"He loved, completely. He gave me every freedom, without fear of what that might mean. He trusted me, down to giving me his True Name. When we fought, we fought intensely but only over ideals. Not to tear at one another.

"I called him mo chroi. It means 'my heart' in Gaelige."

She glances over at Ashley now, lets her gaze rest seekingly on the Hermetic. It is open. She wishes to know if this is enough, this offering. If there are things Ashley would want to know more of. It invites; it does not push the other woman away, does not close any doors.

[Hunger] Ashley had asked out of a sense of reciprocity, because an offer of something personal should be met with an equal offer. It's something she looks for, tries to balance, in her dealings with most people. She is particularly open about it when she speaks with Verbena: she has the sense that they will understand more than most.

And she listens to Kae describe Will, the Flambeau. Will the Flambeau who, if the truth must be told, sounds very much like Bran: sounds very much like the things she loved about Bran. (Bran, though, Bran had a silver tongue and a way with twisting people. How can you trust a man like that, in the end?)

It tells her another thing: Kae knows a lot about the Order of Hermes.

Kae finishes, gives her that seeking look, and Ashley just nods. Her throat is still painfully tight. All she really offers, then, is "I didn't get a chance to really tell her how I felt. I was stupid. I hesitated." Daiyu hesitated, too; Ashley is much harder on herself in this regard. She is not terribly forgiving of cowardice.

She folds her arms against her chest and leans back against the tree, letting the leaf drift away. Letting her toes curl into the forest loam, which is soft in spite of how thickly packed it is.

Then she says, "You must know a lot about the Order." That isn't a hostile question: nothing to indicate that it is so. Not suspicious.

[Breaking Storm] "Words are a very small part of letting someone know they are loved," Kae tells her, perhaps not as gently as she might have. Ashley is hard on herself; Ashley is Hermetic. There is a firmity needed to break beyond all of that Will-this and Order-that. It can be gentle persistence (a sprout breaking through winter-hardened ground [water wearing down rocks and riverbeds over time]), or it can come across as something firmer.

"From the things you've told me about her, I am certain she knew her importance to you."

Kae is saying that not everything is about Words, not everything is about saying, not all of this comes down to the one thing Ashley regrets enough to say aloud to a stranger. Kae is saying this with the unbroken surety of someone who cannot imagine any other truth.

"I know enough. I've been on friendly terms with your Tradition for some time now. It's strained a little, with Will gone, but at some time in the now-distant past, they decided to tolerate me and I stopped turning the Chantry's rosebush's thorns invisible. We all got along much better after that."

There's lightness to this, still. It's an answer, and a way out of the deeper things they have been discussing. Something to grasp hold of, perhaps a little smile to tug at both their mouths.

Though the mention of invisible thorns leaves the Verbena attempting an angelic countenance. Attempting, and outright failing. Subterfuge of any design was not her forte.

[Hunger] Ashley nods, after a moment. It isn't an unfamiliar concept to her: her father was an Akashic, and they place far more importance on action than on the words a person says. It was one of her sticking points with the Tradition, in fact, one of the reasons she decided not to join. And Eileen asked her whether she was kind, stressed the importance of kindness.

This regret too will pass, after a while. "I know. It's just you...you speak something, you make it real. But you're right."

In the end, Ashley suspects that dealing with this will be much like dealing with her Jhor was: a period of mourning, and then there has to be a period of living again. There's a reason that kind of taint touches people after they've been wracked (broken) by a death. It's easy to get lost in.

Mention of the rosebushes and their thorns does bring half a smile to her face. Then, almost apologetic, or as apologetic as Ashley will ever get for the actions of others, "Yeah. Some of my Traditionmates aren't, uh, very friendly toward yours. There actually isn't much tension here along Tradition lines, so sometimes I forget the way it is in other places."

Sometimes she forgets how she was when she was new in Chicago, knowing most of what she knew about other Traditions from books alone. Sometimes she forgets her words in front of Kage's apartment in reference to Dylan, the Marauder (some unstable Orphan.) Kage hasn't. Likely won't. That kind of callousness is hard to forget even in your friend.

There's a hesitance before she says, "It's unfortunate, honestly. I've been, uh. Thinking of studying with the Verbena for a while."

[Breaking Storm] "You speak something, you make it real. Deny it, you make it real. Go out of your way to ignore it -- real. Think it, live it, hate it, believe it: there's many ways to shape reality. I find it fascinating..."

The thought trails off. It's mostly musing, anyway. Kae shifts a little, twists on her perch-seat until her back cracks, and then twists the other way until she realizes it won't crack again. Somewhere in the midst of this movement, the leaf falls of her lap. She does not seem to mind.

"Even in a peaceful city, that can be a difficult sell," she notes. There's no malice to it, only observation. "A lot of Old Tradition folk have long memories, hold grudges beyond their usefulness. Have you had any luck with that? Found anyone willing?"

[Hunger] Ashley considers this: it's true, really. She doesn't use only Words in order to impose her Will on reality, in order to bend and break and shape it. In fact, she often does not. Often there is only conflict, only the raw drive of one Will against another. And after a moment, there's just a slow nod. One of acceptance.

The first of many. These things happen slowly.

She wiggles her toes where they're embedded in the soil, watches them move. (Recalls, vaguely, distantly, burying feet in the sand when she was little at the beach a bit far down the coast from Stonington. Recalls telling stories about a buried monster surfacing to menace the sand castle, which of course was then stomped on. Flicker of memory.)

There's a look up toward Kae then, a wry twist of her mouth when she mentions difficult sells, when she asks about the willing. "A Verbena I know recently got back to town," she tells Kae. "He's the only one here, and he refused. Said he didn't have the time or the inclination and told me I was still thinking like a Hermetic when I pointed out that it would be handy to have an Adept owe him a favor." She isn't sure what she did wrong; Ashley is a straightforward creature.

[Breaking Storm] Kaeley lifts one eyebrow in a stereotypical expression of surprise, but when paired with the shape of her mouth and the way her hands gesture (sign: Oh...) it speaks more to recognition. Amusement. It is not at Ashley's expense, however.

"Owning a favor from an Adept is a powerful thing. If it is the right favor, and the right Adept," she says. Kaeley is usually quite direct, rather straightforward. This, though, is delicate footing. She thinks, re-considers, hews and re-works her sentence before speaking it.

"Many Verbena follow Old Traditions -- we use that like a title, too, and it's separate from what it means in context of the bigger community. When I say I'm an Old Family Tradition witch and a Verbena Traditionalist, they mean different things. Words are tricky like that; sometimes they're unclear on accident.

"Old Traditions have rules, some as strict as your own Tradition and House." She uses these conflicting connotations of Tradition deftly. Ashley can hear the difference, without really worrying about it. Kae is very deft at some forms of expression; she is an easy book to read.

"Perhaps his teachings do not allow it. Maybe he is not ready to teach, just now. His cup could be full, too full to take on a student. It happens; life is a busy pursuit."

[Hunger] It's delicate footing; fortunately, Ashley responds quite well to honesty. She responds well to how easy Kae is to read, to her questions: this makes it easy for Ashley to understand what she's getting at, makes her clear. More than that, the questions and suggestions allow her to speak freely herself. Few people are willing to speak to Ashley this way, to disregard how aloof she sometimes seems (or to disregard her Hunger) and try to get her to open up.

She listens to Kae speak on her Traditions and she does indeed understand. Perhaps at one point she might have thought the Verbena much too primitive to have the sort of complexities the Order of Hermes does. She knows much better than that now, and to hear these things does not surprise her.

"I don't know a lot of specifics yet," she says, and this is not apologetic, not really. Just fact. She hasn't had much chance to speak with any Verbena at length about the specifics of their Tradition. "Mostly aspects of the philosophy. What I've talked about with others and what I've read."

That's what she's truly interested in, anyway. The other things can be learned, and Ashley is much too intuitive (and a little too much of a dreamer) to worry overmuch about details until they are pertinent. Until it is just pragmatic to know them.

There's thought when she makes those suggestions about Jarod. "Maybe," Ashley allows. "He never seemed like he had much to worry about before. Maybe it's different since he's come back, I don't know." Beat. "Regardless, I want to learn the Ars Vitae, and I still want to learn. I may seek out someone near Chicago."

[Breaking Storm] "If you wish to learn the Ars Vitae, there are many skilled magi within your own Tradition," Kae points out, without so much as stumbling over the Hermetic name for the Sphere. It is a practiced sound, easily spoken. "Is there are a particular reason you wish to learn it from the Wyck-born?"

She reaches down again and pulls two leaves into her lap. One is the same yellow-green-gold leaf that had escaped and fluttered to safety, one was browner, dried and dessicated, rendered fragile. These wait, resting against the patterned field of her skirt while she attends to Ashley's questions, as if they might be props for a future conversation point.

[Hunger] Jarod had pointed out much the same thing; Ashley had explained to him, then, her reasons for wanting to learn from his Tradition, her reasons for giving consideration to joining. It is not as easy to illustrate for Kae; she barely knows the woman yet. Then again, this will probably have to be explained (and defended) more than once.

"I want to learn it from the Verbena because it seems to me to be the best way to understand the Tradition," she tells Kae. "And there's a part of me that feels pulled toward what I understand of the Verbena's methods." She bites at the inside of her cheek for a moment, thoughtful. "Like I told Jarod, I don't feel stifled by the Order, exactly, but I don't really feel like it...like it completely encompasses my approach, either. I think this could help me grow, if it is what I feel it is."

She's watching Kae handle the leaves, pull them up into her lap, but without any real thought to what they might be for. They've both been idly touching things in their environment; Ashley assumes that is simply what this is.

[Breaking Storm] "So you would like to study not only the Art, but the Tradition as well," Kae repeats, musing the words thoughtfully as she traces her fingertips along seams in her skirt.

"The Verbena are not as singular as the Order. What you learn of the Tradition, as a whole, will be highly dependent upon the Mage you choose to study under. It's a broad umbrella, the Tradition; I believe we have yours, in part, to thank for that."

The corners of her mouth lift in wry amusement. There's no bite or jibe to the words; it's an acknowledgment of the common history of their houses.

[Hunger] "Yes," Ashley admits, because Ashley is honest. She'd been forthright with Jarod about this too, what she was thinking of doing, that she had no intention of leaving the Order of Hermes. Magi that walk two roads are rare, but one does encounter them from time to time. They're just rarely such disparate roads. "I may claim two Traditions. If it works out."

Many of the decisions she makes are intuitive, are made because they feel right: that doesn't always mean they're impulsively made, done without thinking it through (though she can indeed be impulsive sometimes.) She simply waits for a long time before committing to a decision.

Then, a nod. "I understand that. It's why I wanted to work with Jarod, actually. But I usually try to get a variety of perspectives if I can, besides."

[Breaking Storm] Kae nods again. This is thoughtful. Her brow is gently furrowed and her gaze finds purchase on something unseen, midway between herself whatever she appears to be looking at. Her mouth purses a little, relaxes.

"I have told you I am an Old Family Tradition witch. I'm not sure if that means much of anything to you just yet, but I grew up in all of this. When I Awakened, it was a natural extension of things I had always known. Much like Seeking has been since then. Much of what I know about Life is colored by what I know about living.

"I cannot separate the tradition from the Tradition. There are many like me, in that respect; if you study with one of them, you will also be learning their traditional beliefs, cultural and mystical secrets. It is like becoming a member of their family: joining a Circle."

She picks up the younger leaf, now, toys with it in her hands. Bends it. It is supple enough to yield without cracking still.

"We call ourselves Witch; it comes from witta. To bend. Beneath everything, you must be strong enough in who and what you are, what and how you believe, to bend without breaking. To change, and yield and adapt and grow without sacrificing that which makes you you.

"This is one of the first mysteries. To bend, but not to break. Like a living plant; like a thing not yet dessicated and brittle."

She brushes a finger over the other leaf, disturbs it just roughly enough that it crumbles in places. Cracks.

"Does this sound more like your approach?" she asks, folding the lesson back into a question for the Hermetic. Curious now, openly so, for the other woman's reply.

[Hunger] The Hermetic is quiet while she listens, turns her good ear toward Kae and takes in what she has to say about the traditions she was brought up learning and the Tradition she ascribes to. It would be a lot of learning, this Ashley knows: not just accepting a new philosophy and entwining it with her own. What Kae is talking about might be (almost) as rigorous as her studying with the Order.

Jarod said as much. Spoke of training with them for a year, said it was not an easy Tradition to join.

Her brow furrows when Kae speaks of bending without breaking. And she is hesitant at first, when Kae asks if that is like her approach. What she says is, "A lot of my approach involves the way Wills come into conflict, because of the philosophy I was taught in my house. One person's ability to affect the world through concept comes into conflict with another, and the stronger one is successful."

A pause. "So, I mean...I haven't really ever given much thought to bending. Because I'm not supposed to lose." Nevertheless, it happens, and it has happened many times. But she's thinking this through, is speaking while she thinks. "But, I mean, obviously there's always something bigger than me out there. So I've learned to let conflict strengthen my Will as I overcome."

She has described this as a sort of evolution, before. It isn't unlike the natural world, really.

[Breaking Storm] "Yielding doesn't necessarily mean you lost," Kaeley says. This is one of the largest sticking points between their Traditions, one of the things that kept her indecisive about traveling the very path that Ashley is describing. She'd considered joining the Order; she'd considered it and let that ride for years, until Will had passed and it seemed unlikely. There were natural frictions, surmountable but sizable.

"If you come into conflict with another idea, and it challenges your paradigm, and you find yours unchanged -- that's a victory; it galvanizes you. If it challenges you, and you agree that it's an impasse, and to allow the disagreement to stand -- that is it's own type of victory as well. And if you find something that challenges you, challenges you enough to change you, and it forces you to grow -- that is perhaps the greatest victory; you adapt. All three are winning, in some sense. The only time you lose is when you encounter conflict and are unwilling to let it run its course."

She reaches up to toy with her bottom lip a little; it's a thoughtful gesture, idle with nothing more invested. Kae makes no motion to hide her tells or secret her true nature from Ashley. She and Jarod are very different in this way.

"Each Will has an intrinsic right to its paradigm. Everyone owns their own beliefs. Yours are not innately more valid than mine, except that they are yours and mine are mine. The way I believe, and what I practice, tells me that I have a responsibility to allow you your beliefs and their consequences. We will find points of conflict, but it is not my place to dictate if or how you change in respect to them."

Again she asks Ashley, "Does this sound like a path you would walk?"

[Hunger] Ashley nods after a moment, thoughtful: what Kae said is much the same as what she believes. The semantics would be different, but it is rather similar as far as winning and losing is concerned. "Adaptation is important. But I would still call a loss a loss. If something is taken away and you end up gaining something out of it in the end, that doesn't make it a loss to start with."

It's just that: a sacrifice. Ashley regards her loss of music as a loss even if she Awakened from it. There was a price.

The second part of what Kae says earns her more hesitance. This is a word Ashley does not like, responsibility. Obligation. She does not like the thought of having her Will restrained, of being fettered. "We affect the world by extending our Will onto it," she tells Kae. "Saying that I would allow everyone else their beliefs would mean taking no action. I don't force change, but that doesn't mean I won't fight."

[Breaking Storm] "It doesn't resign you to a life of inaction. It's more about being conscious that every action has consequences, and that the weight or merit of that action is the sum of its consequence.

"Just because I seek a middle path, does not mean I always choose it in the moment. My tradition has a saying: that hand that can heal can also hex. I have to know both alternatives, be proficient in them, willing to walk them, and choose in each moment the path that best fits."

It is not so black and white for the Verbena. Her world exists in many shades of grey; responsibility and respect are paramount to her worldview. They go hand in hand with the exertion of Will.

[Hunger] Ashley's world is not black and white - not morally, at least. The Hermetic, in fact, has no real concept of good and evil, and does not think in these terms. Does not think in terms of two forces balancing each other (this, too, was one of her difficulties with the Akashic Brotherhood.)

She listens, frowns, and leans back on her elbows. "But I don't think anything that conflicts with something else really gives much thought to seeking a middle path. I mean, if a dog is hungry and it kills a rabbit, it isn't giving much thought to action and consequence. It just knows it's hungry."

There is irony here, something that is just beginning to dawn on Ashley: Kae's approach to the Verbena is far more methodical than hers would be, and far more methodical to her approach to the Order of Hermes as well. These things happen even in other Traditions.

[Breaking Storm] "True," Kae says, but there's a caveat lingering just below it. "But most dogs don't Awaken and bend the world toward feeding their Hunger either."

Her mouth is wryly canted here. Her head tipped a little to one side. Curious again, reading Ashley with open interest and not a lot of shyness.

"There is a lot to learn from the savageness of nature, surely, but it must be tempered with Her subtler truths to be complete. The whole of the world is not just dogs running around eating rabbits. There is room also for cooperation, symbiosis, community.

"There's a rhythm to the world. To living, to dying. To the year itself. You're in the belly of it just now. This is the season of saying goodbye, letting go; counting blessings and airing grievances. It's time to determine new paths, set new goals, give up on the things that weren't such a good fit from last time around."

Kae stretches her arms up over her head, lenthens her torso, grimaces when the tension from walking so very far does not recant. When she pulls her arms down, again, she rubs at a knot in her shoulder.

[Hunger] Ashley does not seem troubled by the way she's being watched. She studies people with that kind of curiosity herself: at the very least, she seems willing to extend to others the same, should they be bold and direct enough to do it. She's this way with most things, when it comes to getting to know her.

At mention of animals Awakening, feeding their Hunger, Ashley's mouth quirks too. "I'm sure they would if they could." In this she's much like Jarod: does not draw much of a line between human beings and animals, save that human beings are Enlightened, save that they are intelligent and capable of a new range of things. They still have those instincts.

She's stretched out farther now, resting on her back and propped up on her elbows to regard Kae, letting her head and shoulders rest against one of the branches at the base of the Throne. "There's cooperation and community," she says, "but generally it forms in response to overcoming something else that you can't take on alone. If people don't have something greater and more dangerous to fight, they fight each other. It's pretty much the same elsewhere. It's still conflict that forges those bonds."

Rhythm she does not debate: this she could see, this she can understand. The idea that patterns exist. "I mean, it's not like I go around mindlessly devouring and killing whatever I see. I just don't believe in restricting my Will unless there's something worth holding out for. What's the benefit in that? Nothing else is going to restrict itself either."

[Breaking Storm] "I see," Kaeley says, and she seems content to let this thought of Ashley's linger for a moment. It is a sad one, to Kae, but she's already said it's not her place to dictate how or if Ashley's paradigm shifts. Instead she nods a little, sorts through the things they've said to one another and shared with one another.

"I think, perhaps, you should tell you friend he thinks rather more like a Hermetic than he might know."

This is what she chooses to offer Ashley, this and a small smile. Not knowing, but still warm.

[Hunger] Kae would not be the first one to find Ashley's outlook to be a sad one. Others have commented on it to her on many occasions: called it cynical, told her she must be lonely. (Doesn't it get lonely, when it's just you against the world?) At this point, well, she's hardly troubled by what others think of it.

"I don't think he thinks much like me," Ashley says, with a shake of her head. "Or, like most of my Tradition, rather," she concedes, because she'll be the first to acknowledge that she's a little strange. Then again, she still doesn't know Jarod that well, really. "And I doubt he'd be happy to hear it."

A pause before she wiggles her toes to shake the soil off of them and glances up toward Kae. "Are you planning to stay here, or are you going on your way?"

[Breaking Storm] "I'll find a place to stay, here, at least for tonight," she answers, glancing up momentarily to place the sun's progress in the sky. To measure that against the season. To approximate the hour of the clock it might be. "If I'm not needed where I was headed, just yet, I might stay awhile longer."

"If you would like to talk more, I'd welcome the company."

There's a smile, here, for Ashley who is putting on her shoes. Kae doesn't worry much about whether it would please Jarod or not to hear he thought like a Hermetic. Her reason behind saying so was canted in a different way; if Ashley passed on the message, then likely she would have to explain it, and she'd talk to another Verbena about all of this. Perhaps gather more information and another point of view, regardless of his willingness to teach.

"A thought, though? People fight each other, but they also create Art, pursue Science, and invent countless religions in search of something higher when they have time to themselves. It's a choice, really, to seek conflict. A valid one, but a choice nonetheless."

[Hunger] "I would like to talk more," she says as she pulls on her socks, wiggles her shoes on regardless of the dirt on her feet. After spending most of the afternoon sitting here in the woods her clothes and skin are rather gritty; she's going to need a shower when she gets back anyway.

"Do you have a cell phone, or...?" The hesitance, because she's more than well aware that not all Verbena are like Jarod. Or even Alice, for that matter.

A glance toward Kae, then, when she offers her last thought. "A lot of those things are created as a way to further our own ideas," she says, and this kind of pragmatism, this kind of dismissal of even art, is unflinching. (What she says in intellectual debate and what she feels: they're two different things, sometimes.) "Conflict isn't really a choice. It finds you, even if you don't seek it out."

But there's another pause. "We do those things because we want to do them. As a way of living, so that it isn't just...it isn't all mindless brutality." Life is joy, too, and she knows that.

[Breaking Storm] "I do. I have a cell phone and an iPod," she says, with the proper level of self-effacing awareness about her Tradition stereotypes. "Neither like the paths too well, so I leave them off when I'm Walking."

She offers Ashley her number. When the Hermetic stands, so does the Verbena. She doesn't shoulder her pack just yet.

"I hope you find what you're looking for," she offers. It's genuine, heart-felt even. "If nothing else, maybe your friend will talk to you more about the Tradition -- just not under the guise of teaching you. You can tell him you met a crazy witch-lady in the woods."

A grin. The debate hasn't seemed to upset her much; neither did talking about the people they've lost.

"Is it a ways into town, yet?" she asks. And she'll follow it up with either a request for directions, or an announcement that she'll backtrack, a little, and see if she can find a shallowing nearer a motel. One way or another, the Verbena was going to find a warm shower and a soft (enough) bed for the evening.

[Hunger] Ashley, too, offers her number. Offers a small but slightly skeptical smile at the mention of Jarod talking to her about the Tradition: he'd seemed rather firm the first time. Still, Ashley takes it as a challenge, in its way, and for all she knows that's all he meant to do in refusing. Make sure she was determined to do it, make sure she wanted it.

"Thanks," she says, as she picks up her notebook and pen. Tucks the pen away into her pocket.

She gives directions as best she can; they aren't very good apart from telling Kae which way the city is, approximately how far. "It is kind of a long way. I'd drive you back," she says, "but I Strode here." The unfortunate side effect of blindness in one eye.

She sees Kae off before making her own way home, left, as she has been over the past few days, with a lot of things to think about.