A Middle Path [STing]

[Hunger] Ashley isn't sure whether the Verbena she spoke with is still in Chicago. She doesn't know how urgent Kae's business in Maine was, and a few weeks is a while to delay travel time. She didn't ask her to stay. So it's convenient that, when she finally does work herself up to asking Kae to meet her out in the wood again, Kae is still around.

Ashley is waiting there for a little while. She has to Stride out to the Court, can't really get there easily on her own any other way. It's one of the major inconveniences of her particular disability.

The past few days have been what's referred to as an indian summer, a last few days of summer heat as fall lays a golden touch over the world. Even those last vestiges have gone now. The rainclouds have rolled in low enough to push the heat east, away, and they hang heavy with the promise of rain. As yet unrealized: just there, just sticky and humid and smelling of moisture and stirring the air now and again.

Today marks four weeks, and it's appropriate that the summer's fading; the grief's dulled a little too, by now. But she'll still count like this for a long time.

Hunger can be found lying on a tree trunk, the bark rough against her stomach even through the fabric of her shirt. She's resting her head against the top of one hand, writing in her notebook with the other. Journaling, maybe. Maybe writing poetry. Her shoes have again been discarded and the soles of her feet are visible, dotted with bark and soil and debris, toes curled against the trunk.

[Walks Between Worlds] Kae was not around, in the way that Ashley might imagine it. She has been away, and back through, and making lazy figure-eights through the midwest, darting hither and thither as needed. Kae wasn't around, but she could be on fairly short notice. She was a little drive away, and it's a dark blue pick up truck that she's borrowed to drive herself out to the woods on the edge of this particular city. This is a farm truck; it has dirt in conspicious places; it is too tall for the woman who must climb up into it, and jump down from it. It's a standard, which gives her fits and starts at times, does not have power steering, makes her that much more appreciative for the soft bed she will find herself in at some point late this evening.

When her feet find the path, her hiking boots are already covered with several colors of dirt and muck. The brown-black of Tekakwitha is another hue, but no besmirchment. She carries a messenger bag with her, and it's flap is boldly decorated in a patchwork of unmatching fabrics. Taken together, they are a lot like autumn leaf litter. The style is called crazy patch, it's more organic and less regimented than most patchwork styles. In lieu of a long skirt, she wears worn and patch blue jeans -- the splotch of chocolate brown courderoy on one knee is not for show. She wears a light sweater-jacket in a similar brown, and a plain white blouse underneath.

It is not a long hike out to the place that the Chicago mages call The Court. There is birdcall and wind to rustle the overhead leaves, a symphony of color, a shifting of suntides. She feels it in her bones, this little witch, this Walker Between Worlds who does not come out of the Paths of the Wyck this time but up a brown-black walking trail, one that winds through and darts between and always returns to the same head and tail.

She walks, because it the best way to get to know the forest, to shepard her thoughts, to approach without fanfare (but not with overmuch humility).

When she reaches the clearing, she stands, just beyond its margin, where the bleed of its resonance begins to fade, to become indistinct among the other bits of divinity and calls of creation.

She stands, and watches Ashley, until the building anticipation, the flush of storm-coming, the call of her own resonance lifts the Adept's eyes, piques her interest, and she beckons the Verbena in.

This is a sacred place. It bears marking. It bears remembering. One does not walk boldly into another man's temple without repercussions. Mark the sacred circles, however you find them; Keep the Sacred Spaces, wherever they may be. There isn't enough sanctity left in this world. There aren't enough Keepers.

[Hunger] If she felt any guilt at making Kae drive out this way, it has passed. Kae is a big girl, she can decide whether or not she wants to go out of her way for a Hermetic she barely knows, one who has shown some interest in her Tradition - and perhaps some promise too, regardless of their differing approaches.

Ashley is a splotch of bright color amidst all the green and brown, wearing a red shirt and a pair of jeans. It's easy to spot her from a while off; she's not worried about camouflage. With the scent of rain in the air already, she looks first up at the sky when she feels Kae's approach. And then around toward the Verbena, waiting at the edge, waiting at the threshold.

"Hey," she says, and beckons her inside. There are no formal greetings, there's no ritual. Ashley isn't the sort for these things; her manner remains casual. Small wonder she at times feels a little awkward within her own Tradition.

She clicks the top of the pen to retract the tip and flips the cover of the notebook shut. It's a nice notebook, bound in plain brown leather, the edges of the spine a little worn down from being carried and set in different places. From where her hand has worried the hide, stroked it while she thought about what to write next or where she supported it while walking. She leaves it there on the trunk, for now.

And swings into a sitting position on the trunk, one leg tucked up against her chest and the other dangling down off the side of the tree. She doesn't launch immediately into telling Kae that she wanted to talk more about the Verbena. "How'd things go in Maine?" she asks first.

They can be taught.

[Walks Between Worlds] She waits for that Hey and the beckoning that comes with it, and then Kaeley sweeps into the court with a smile. She moves easily, some might say with a sense of grace, but really it is an absolutely awareness of where her fingertips end and the curve of her hip stands and the line of her leg or the turn of her shoulder. A long association with particular spheres lend one a nearly preternatural awareness, especially when one is keyed into the placement of the tangible world as a necessity.

She glances around the space as she moves into it. Kae owns it, from the moment she crosses the threshold, leaves behind neither-here-nor-there for the enclosed space of the open court. It is palpable, but subtle. There is a shift to her carriage (proud [regal]) and an absolute surety to her step. These are some of the small cues, hallmarks of a priestess so near to a high holy day. One could imagine the birdsong was just that much softer, anticipatory, waiting on baited breath --

-- there is a little shrug when Ashley mentions Maine, and a smile that slowly works its way from bemused (Oh, you know the way of these things...) through patient (Well enough, all things considered) to pleased (I can't complain about the results). She may find herself feeling that she knows the whole of the story, before Kae's lips even part to answer: "Things went well, thank you. It's always nice to welcome Fall in New England, too. The leaf turn is spectacular."

She doesn't stop moving to talk. She's entered from the west side of the clearing and she walks the arc around, through the northern point, to come across the eastern boundary and then toward where Ashley sits. Kaeley slings her messenger bag's strap up over her head with practiced ease, she nestles it against the trunk of the Fallen King. She studies Ashley, but not so overtly that it seems impolite.

She is watchful. Aware. Curious. These things do not always dampen with age.

"And how are you? Has the year gone any more gently for you, since we last spoke?" There is genuine concern, there, underlying the question. Kaeley cares for this Hermetic she hardly knows; empathizes. It can be a heavy thing to bear, the weight of someone's worry, but she offers it like a thin and weightless thing, a gossamer mantle, a warmth without burden. There, and gone again without questions if it is not wanted.

[Hunger] Fall in New England. Ashley's smile is wistful: it's the smile of someone whose life has carried her away from the place she will always, always consider Home. She doesn't say that the leaf turning is pretty up there, that she has long memories of them and perhaps considers those days as golden as the foliage; she can be expressive too, and that smile says it for her.

She studies Kae too, and her study is intense enough to border on impolite. Long, solid stare, watching the grace of her movements and taking in her clothing, that ease with which she communicates. People don't often watch other people as plainly as she does. It could be a challenge. It's not.

There's a slow exhale when Kaeley asks how she is, and her arms wrap around the leg she has folded against her chest. Her chin comes down to rest on her knee. "Some," she says, because there's a constant effort to remind herself of the little gains, of the at-least-it-wasn'ts. It feels a little like settling to her, that constant effort of weighing pebbles against boulders just to try to make something balance in the end. Maybe that's just the way life is. She doesn't know any different, really.

There's a vague gesture when she realize she let the pause hang too long, tries to keep it from being too telling. "We got rid of the Nephandi. No one died. That's good news."

[Walks Between Worlds] When she sits, the woman folds her hands into her lap and uses her feet against the tree's girth to keep her balanced. Her legs are too short to reach the ground from here. This is a small concession she has made time and time again, this feet-as-stablizers configuration, hardly worth noting, save that Ashley is new to her and Kae thinks so little of it.

Ashley studies her, so Kaeley's study of the other woman intensifies. She watches the way the Hermetic's mouth shifts as she speaks, she weighs the cant of her shoulders and the length of her silences, everything that Ashley chooses not to give voice to -- everything she hides or smooths over, these are the cues that Kae follows most keenly.

It is frustating, at times, to be around someone so unwilling to listen to the what of what you say but so keenly tuned to the how of it. (The medium is the message.)

"Some times the small victories are just as important as the vast ones," she says, but without aiming it at Ashley. She offers it to the court, with her eyes shifted away from the diminutive Hermetic. They study some thing in the leaf litter, or raise to study a leaf that has not yet fallen but soon would.

"I'm glad your friends and your people are well, and that the Fallen are gone." These words are like bedrock; they sound the same as they speak. She means what she says and her tone conveys the same. It is resonant. It is eerily powerful how potent the naked truth can be.

"Is that why you've called me?" she asks, but the question is really just a segue. An open door. A threshold. Kaeley may well know what Ashley wants, but she is more curious in how the other woman answers than precisely what she says.

[Hunger] Sometimes the small victories are just as important, Kae says, and Ashley just nods once. She's trying to remember this. Though her difficulty is just as much in reconciling that the vast ones are always paid for, and sometimes one pays with more than what they're worth. There's always a sacrifice for any kind of gain. It's a difficult thing to accept.

That realization and her attempts at acceptance are precisely some of the things that have driven her here. Sacrifice doesn't always need to be blood.

Ashley is not difficult to read, when one turns oneself to the task. She makes little effort to hide the small tells, the slope of her shoulders or her expression. She's not deceptive, and there's no overt subterfuge. Just layers and layers to her that one could peel out of the way if they had the time and patience and inclination. Who knows what would be at the center. (Maybe nothing. Maybe those layers are all she is, and a person would just be left with a broken husk.)

Kae asks why Ashley called her out here, and the Hermetic reaches up and rustles her fingers through the short hair at the back of her neck. It's a mannerism that is at once thoughtful and nervous; she tugs at a few strands of hair like they were tails of thought and she could pull them forth and make them intelligible.

"I called because I wanted to talk more," she says. "I want to learn the Ars Vitae, but I don't know where to start. I want to learn more." Period. There's finality there.

[Walks Between Worlds] Kae interlaces the fingers of one hand with the fingers of the other. One thumb smooths over the silver band that encircles the other thumb. She does not seem surprised by this comment, or particularly moved. It is. Kaeley lets it be. The thought stands between them for a moment, given life by Ashley's speaking it, given form by the words she has chosen, and given heart by the myriad of other cues that surround it.

After a moment, she asks: "You wish to learn the Art, or you wish to learn about the Tradition, or you wish to study the Wheel of the Year?"

All three are presented as equal options. Neither is given more weight than the other two; all three are, effectively, the same question to Kaeley. So she asks, and she waits, and she does not seem at all perturbed or anxious.

If she took the time to peel away layer upon layer of Ashley, and found nothing left but a broken husk, Kaeley would be likewise unperturbed. Because the whole of a thing was as significant to her as the parts, and the understanding one gains through longstanding friendships is just as vital as the core of whatever drives another person. She cannot imagine Ashley as empty, in any way. Perhaps a vessel as of yet untapped to carry its own truth; but not empty. Waiting was not empty.

[Hunger] All three are presented as equal options, and the Hermetic's brows furrow for a moment. One is of a more immediate concern than the rest, one is more immediately applicable: she wants to learn to touch Life. She could learn it from a Hermetic, speak to Bran or to Hannibal or even to Israel, who has a similar understanding, and have done. That isn't what she wants, though.

"I'm hoping that in learning the Art, I might learn something about the other two," she says, after that brief hesitation. The words are carefully considered for precision, because it is important to Hermetics. But Kae knows that.

"But failing that, all three." She has the sense they are all interconnected, in the manner that the way of life of Hermetics is interconnected with its magical practices, with the philosophy the Tradition studies. All Traditions are a way of life, really. A code, an ethic.

It's going to be hard to walk two. She knows that already. But it won't be the first time that Ashley has attempted to forge her own truths. Her outlook on House Tytalus, after all, is rather different from that of her mentor. It isn't what she could have learned from that hard period of initiation.

[Walks Between Worlds] She listens, and considers this for a moment. Then her mouth bows downward in a thoughtful moue, her gaze shift up and to the right a little, she rolls her shoulders in an easy way and shifts forward on the log enough to reach down and fish her messenger bag's strap up with one toe, to bring it near enough to grasp with a hand, leaning precariously, so on the edge of falling forward until finally she catches and hoists it upward into her lap without any fanfare or triumph.

She opens it and begins to cast about inside for something as she answers.

"In my experience, walking the Year will teach you the other two."

Not finding what she wants, Kae gives up and holds the bag's mouth open. Gazes down into it. Frowns. Shrugs. Sighs and takes an apple out instead. An apple and a small knife, bound in a leather scabbarad, with a triquetra on its heartswood hilt.

She begins to peel the apple slowly, taking her time, taking the peel off in one winding piece. It is a green apple, tart but crisp, not juicy enough to run down her fingers as she works. She doesn't seem to look at the task, either, but rather follow it with her fingertips and her minds eye.

"Do you come here, often? To write?" Ashley had her journal out when Kae arrived. The other woman had noticed. It had taken this long to remark upon it, though.

[Hunger] A year seems like a long time to walk. That isn't something Ashley necessarily minds, though: she expects these things to take a while. Her Hermetic training did, too. The problem is that "...I'm not sure what you mean by walking it. Live in accordance with Tradition, or...? I mean, without a proper mentor, it seems like I'd just be floundering around doing what I imagine Verbena do."

For some, this might be exactly what that Year would consist of. Not all Verbena teach with the kind of structure Kae has had, with the kind of structure Ashley is used to; she doesn't know that. Not yet.

She too sighs a moment, watching Kae peel the apple, watching the light green skin come away in coils, leaving the white sphere beneath like an ocean bare. Catches the tart scent that wafts in her direction the moment the blade pierces its outer skin. She's eying it with curiosity, a different sort of hunger than that with which one would normally look at an apple: she suspects that there's a point to be made of this.

"I wouldn't say often," she says. "It isn't easy for me to get here, and I write everywhere. But sometimes, when I'm in a certain mood." She came out here more often in the summer. When it gets cold again she will avoid it: fingers don't script well when they're red with cold.

[Walks Between Worlds] "Proper mentorship is not easy to come by in a Tradition of individuals who prize individualism as a means and an end," she says, perhaps echoing a portion of Ashley's concerns. She's still half-concentrating on the peeling process, it keeps her from bringing the whole of her attention down on the woman beside her.

"And by walking it, I do mean living it in accordance with some tradition, or principles. But more than anything it is a year to be mindful. To write, often. To go back and re-read what you have written about at this time of the year in years past. To be thoughtful about how this time of year may revisit you in years to come. To read resonant stories. To have meaningful conversations. To eat foods that are in season, and long for those that will come about again soon. To notice what you notice. To be mindful is an important skill for any witch, for any writer, for anyone who wishes to see their visions and hopes and Will come seamlessly into this world."

She's freed the peel from the apple, and hands it now to Ashley.

"Here. Cast this over your left shoulder," she says, in all seriousness. As if this is an important juncture in Ashley's proposed apprenticeship. As if this matter is weighty, this casting of peels, and resonant, and a powerful Oracle. She watches the Hermetic, then, with slightly hooded eyes. Waiting on her reply, or her actions, or her inaction.

[Hunger] "But I do all of that already," Ashley says, and there might be a touch of impatience in her tone there. Missing the point, perhaps, that what Kae is telling her to do, in essence, is live life, is try to experience it in its richness. At least, at first. And when it occurs to her that this is perhaps what Kae is saying, she bites the inside of her cheek.

But first, here's the apple peel, and Ashley looks down at it when it's offered. Kae tells her, in seriousness, to throw the peel over her shoulder, and Ashley takes it and throws it over her left shoulder without hesitation. There's no weight with which she does it. She just accepts the peel in her hand, lets it drop backwards with a flick of the fingers.

There's no scoffing in this: ritual is ritual and everyone has theirs. At one point there would indeed have been, but to a certain extent Ashley is past such things now. All of her friends are from different Traditions (or none), and some of them have odd customs. She doesn't give them any special respect in the way of a universalist, but she doesn't mock them either.

When the apple peel has been cast, she looks up and her eyes meet Kae's. "I had Jhor from January to June," she says, "and it was really bad. My Avatar fed off of it. So dealing with it was...more or less a process of learning to do all of those things you mentioned." There, an explanation, an offering. "That was when a lot of my interest started."

[Walks Between Worlds] Ashley throws the peel over her shoulder, and Kaeley does not even look to see where it lands. See, this? This peel? Ah, yes, well what Ashley has just done is technically littering in a State Park. If Kaeley fell prey to some of the more questionable bits of superstition, things not rooted in folklore and history, things not tied to the sun and moon tides, she would tell Ashley that a peel cast over her shoulder, in a sacred grove, on a day of power (plus or minus three days, for leeway in observances), under the light of the full moon -- this is a thing pleasing to the goddesses who oversee matter of the heart and in the shape of the peel, as it lies once cast, she will find the initials of her truest true love.

Instead, Kaeley begins sectioning the apple. She does not core out the seeds. The first piece is offered to Ashley, while the Hermetic tells her how she has lived. The Verbena nods, as if this is very good news. This is a pleasing thing. That Ashley has lived.

"It pleases me that you have found your way back to this side," she says, studying the woman anew. "Tell me about the journey from January to June. From the land of death, the dark damp Underworld, the spirit realm of death, back to the summer throne. You have lived it, you have been mindful, you say. Tell me the story. If not your story, then another's. Persephone's. The Oak King. Tell me the story of a seed, seemingly dead and buried, that becomes a sapling and one day a tree."

When Ashley takes the apple slice, Kae cuts one out for herself. Nibbles at it. The Athame she carries is used like a kitchen knife. It is not holy, just now. Or perhaps it is every bit as holy, and the apple they eat -- seeds and all-but-peel -- is the truer ritual.

[Hunger] [Charisma + Expression]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6) [WP]

[Hunger] Tell me a story, says Kae, and Ashley is good at telling stories. She likes them, she likes to construct symbols and likes to weave words and make them resound like chords, plucking at the strings of a heart.

Except that this request catches her a little off guard, and the written word is what she excels at. This isn't a story she's sat down to write out yet in its entirety: she's just had reflections, she's just scattered poems throughout the journey and left them like breadcrumbs trailing into her past. So there's a hesitance before she chooses her words.

"It happened because an acquaintance of mine was tortured until he became a Marauder, and I looked into his mind to try to help him out," she says. "And it was...he thought he was trapped in hell," and an avoidance of eyes here, a skimming of detail, is all she needs to show how disturbed by it she still is. She doesn't want to recall specifics of what she saw there; it was too intense. Too real (thought is all that exists.)

"And then I started to feel like it was what my Avatar wanted, and like what I was supposed to be doing. It felt right. So I listened, and I killed someone for the first time, and it got worse." January was dark: Ashley barely recalls most of the month. She remembers meeting with Wharil and Gregor in the chantry house, she remembers delivering Dylan's dog tags back to Michael Willis. She remembers learning to shred Patterns apart. She remembers sleeplessness and collapse and feeling too drained to cry. She doesn't say any of that.

"My cabalmate - " the one that's still alive and here - "is a Euthanatos, and he told me that you get rid of it by doing things that make you feel alive, but I..." Pause, beat. "I wasn't really sure what that was, anymore, because I'd sort of gotten into a way of thinking after leaving Boston. So I just tried reading a lot and playing with my dog. Because I like to do that stuff. And it didn't really help. But then I tried Seeking, and my Avatar wanted me to leave this girl to die, burn to death in a tower and just walk past and do nothing. I saved her."

The glance Ashley gives Kae then tells her how successful that was. "I kind of thought I was going to Fall, for a while. Or might. Because it was so...it just made sense, to be the Midgard Serpent and destroy everything so it could grow again."

Ashley begins to nibble thoughtfully at the apple again. Slowly: she's crushing it against her tongue, tasting the juice and pulping the piece thoroughly before swallowing. "Then a friend told me that I should try feeling connected to other people. Which I'd kind of stopped doing, only it wasn't just people, just...you know, I was kind of drawn into myself. So I started doing that. Making actual friends."

Another bite of the apple. She chews it before continuing. "And then..." Pause. This is something she doesn't relate often; she relates it now because it is important for Kae to have the full picture. So it's offered without reluctance, without self-consciousness. "I was a really talented violinist. As a kid. Well, not just...I mean, I could sight read some really hard stuff when I was ten or eleven. I was good with other instruments, too. It was my life. And when I woke up I stopped being able to hear music."

The length between words is a lack of practice with saying the words. An uncertainty of how to communicate just how she felt about music to this woman. She has no idea if Kae has ever felt that way about anything, that passionate, that all-consuming drive for something. All of that had to go somewhere, after she lost it. She's still trying to figure out just where it goes, still seeking, still pouring sensation and input into an ever hungry hole.

"The node we have here is...there's a Mind in it. Catherine. And she let me hear music, and it was the first time I'd heard it since I Woke." Her throat tightens a little just at the tendrils of memory she lets surface; she doesn't let herself experience it in full, in the telling. She doesn't with any of these things she's communicating, if only so she can make it coherent. "And then it was gone. That was in June."

[Walks Between Worlds] Ashley speaks of her trials. Of the dark of her Winter. Of the strength and trying and trust it took to break through the hard-crusted ground of her Spring. She speaks of the things she's lost, and the glimmer of hope that crowned her midsummer. Kae does not need to say that she has something she feels as passionate about as Ashley's violin, or that she has fallen away from the community to live sequestered at times herself. Just now, she needs only to listen and to eat her apple.

She chews thoughtfully, and swallows it down, seeds and all.

"Now that you know the walk from darkness to light," Kaeley says, gently, because these paths are sacred and they are hard to tread. "And you know the signposts and the sacrifices. Will you be ready and willing to go down it again?"

And she does not mean the path that trails along the edge of Falling, but she means the dark places without hope and the hard and frozen paths. Ashley has walked a hard one, but it would not be her last Winter. Kaeley has had her share of Winters. They always end the same: in Spring.

[Hunger] Kae asks her that, if she's ready and willing to tread it again, and there's a silence in which the Hermetic's breath catches in her chest, in which her eyes trail away and deep ridges and valleys form along the skin of her forehead. In which her lungs, still full, hold for a moment before she releases it all in a long sigh.

The truth is that no: she would rather not. But if Daiyu's death drove anything home it's that summer doesn't last forever. Summer, in fact, is all too brief. But she already knew: joy is transient.

Kae is eating the core of her apple, and while Ashley had been eating around hers, when she notices she eats hers as well. Part of whatever ritual Kae might be trying to do, maybe. She suspects there's some sort of significance at the very least.

"I don't know if ready has anything to do with it," she says. "I mean, that's just...kind of how life works. It throws shit at you. You adapt." And those words, she doesn't mean to lend any greater significance to them, but it is there anyway; this is how she sees things. Life is hard and brutal and she thrives anyway. She is not the sort who will accept a winter. Just grimly await it, and conquer it when it comes.

[Walks Between Worlds] She nods. This is one of those teachable moments, and many in her Tradition have better stories or scripted rituals or something to offer at Harvest Home beyond a circuitous conversation. But those Witches are not her peers, though they may be her equals. Kae cleaves to a stricter path, and Ashley is not her student. Not yet.

"You can look at it that way. Or you can see it, as some of us do. There is a cycle to all things. And all of those cycles are interwoven. A year has a beginning and an ending. It dies to start new again. Each life begins and ends. Every endeavour begins and ends. There are similiarities threaded through that make them resonant, easy to manipulate, easier to endure. The Winter may be dark, trying, and cold -- but there is always the promise that Spring will come."

Kae hands over another piece of Apple.

"I'm not asking you to accept anything beyond what you can see by keeping your eyes open for the space of a year. We hold these truths to be rather self-evident." There, a gentle smirk. This is lightly offered, like anything else she's given Ashley.

"Life follows these patterns, too. You'll hear another Tradition talk of turning the Wheel, or being Wheel-bound, but they're not the only ones who walk into the dark each Winter, and have to find their way back to the Light each Spring."

Now, she glances over her shoulder at the apple peel.

"There's a lot of other trappings wrapped up around it, if you want to go into love spells and portents and the like. I cannot teach you any of that. All the Mysteries of our Tradition are laid out, plain to see, if you're willing to listen and be mindful. If you can trust that the sun will rise, and the Spring will come, and find solace in that."

Kaeley shrugs a little.

"It may not be what you want to hear, or what you thought you'd be Seeking." She says this as if she half expects Ashley to rescind her interest.

[Hunger] Kae is asking her to seek out a light, to hold tight to the knowledge that Spring must follow Winter. Kae is asking her to breathe onto a spark of hope, and if the truth must be said, this is not something Ashley has had in a long time. She forges her way through the world through Will, not hope.

It isn't even necessarily something she secretly longs for or wants. She has learned to make her way through winter not by looking ahead and waiting it out until spring, but by appreciating the bite of the cold in all its bitterness and the beauty of the snow.

The Hermetic's nose wrinkles at the mention of love spells and portents; these are not the sorts of things she'd thought to seek when she came asking for knowledge. There's something much more visceral that she wants from the Verbena. But she doesn't rescind her interest.

What she says is, "I'm not sure if I'd...take what you have from it, but I understand what you're saying about Seasons." She does well with symbols. Then she thinks about it for a moment and adds, "I understand it, but thinking about things as cyclical is hard for me to wrap my head around. I just kind of deal with what challenges my Will at the time." Perhaps that is something that needs to change. She isn't sure yet.

[Walks Between Worlds] "You aren't meant to take from it what I have. We are not the same, you and me. You'll make your own path, and that's how it is meant to be.

"But the problem with believing in our own Will, or in God's -- any God's, or Goddess's for that matter -- is the belief part. To believe necessarily invites doubt. You have Faith in spite of that doubt. In what we do, the Art we practice, in Life there is no room for that doubt. Someday you may hold another's lifeblood in your hand, you may be the only thing that separates them from this world and the next.

"In that moment, it is not enough to believe you know enough. Or are strong enough. Or will triumph. You have to know it. There are places on this path that are too narrow for Faith."

She hands over the last piece of the apple to Ashley.

"I know, whatever happens, that the Sun will rise tomorrow. I know the Spring follows the Winter. What will you carry with you when the path is at its narrowest and there is no margin for belief?"

And then, with a smile. "Thinking in cycles is not entirely anathematic to thinking linearly. You can do both, at the same -- we call it the Spiral. You don't have to give up anything, unless it doesn't fit you any longer when you reach this point next year."

And then a pause. "That is, provided you find the right teacher. So you aren't casting about, doing things that seem to you to be Verbaenic." Here a warmer smile, but not an overt offer.

[Hunger] Kae compares Ashley's belief in her Will to a belief in a God, to a sort of Faith, and she can see a flicker of argument alighting in the Hermetic's eyes. No cold chips of ice, those: it's a hot sort of blue, the part of a flame that burns hottest, and her jaw is already setting. There is nothing in Ashley that thinks that her knowledge of her Will is tantamount to faith in anything.

Nor is there much room in a Hermetic's life for doubt either. To doubt is to lose Will; to doubt is to lose a fight even if one's body keeps going. She manages to hold her response, though, manages to hear Kae out until the Verbena has said everything she is going to say.

"What carries me is that I'll die if I don't fight and if my Will isn't strong enough to carry me through winter," Ashley says. "That's not belief. I know it." It's with the same sort of instinct that causes an animal to attack or to flee: it isn't a conscious thing, really. She's just somehow made it into an enlightened one.

Kae reminds her of next year, if she finds the right teacher, and that's a big if. Enough of one that Ashley bites the inside of her cheek thoughtfully; Jarod has already refused. She knows no one else. To do such a thing might require her leaving, at least for a time: Boston perhaps. She's heard of people there.

It would be a long time, that year, if she were to choose to do it. "Well, the one I know in town has already refused. I may be seeking outside Chicago, in that case."

[Walks Between Worlds] This argument that doesn't break is one she has expected. It's one she's had with several of Will's Traditionmates. It's one of the main reasons she could never find a place for herself within the Order, even when parlay on such things was offered.

"If you know what carries you, and you are so certain of your Will, why do you seek a second path? Maybe you have everything you need on the one already laid before you?" She pauses, wipes the Athame clean on her jeans and sheathes it.

"It's possible he's refused for these reasons. I can't speak for him. Have you told him the things you have told me? Does he know that you have walked the path from Winter to Summer, and that you know what carries you through the narrow paths?"

[Hunger] Kae asks again why she's seeking a second path, and Ashley hesitates once more. She'd been very certain of her decision to look into two when arriving in the wood; now she's not, so much. It's difficult to articulate or argue a feeling, and a feeling is not something that would convince any of her Traditionmates, to be sure.

She shakes her head after a moment; she's already explained to Kae, and understands the other woman's question to be rhetorical. "Seeking a second doesn't mean giving up what I know from the other," she says. "I'm not seeking it because I doubt my Will. Or because I want to doubt my Will. It's because there's more to what I think and more to the world than Will alone."

As to Jarod's refusal: Ashley can't speak to that any more than Kae can. But she does shake her head. "I didn't go into those specific reasons with him, no. I'm not sure it would change his mind if I did. He seemed pretty unwilling to argue the point."

[Walks Between Worlds] The ritual knife goes back into Kaeley's bag, now. It's not to be used for ritual, just yet. It's not going to bite into her wrist, share her blood with the stones -- not here. The Life that Kae gives to turn the Wheel is not a rite she shares with Candidates, or Apprentices, or even the Cabalmates she has kept. Sacrifice is sacred, and it must always be personal.

"There is undoubtedly more to the world than Will alone. There is a whole great, wide world that cares nothing at all for Will -- yours, mine, anyone else's. And a great deal of Will-workers can nothing for the the vastness of that world. These things pass like ships in the night. The inhabit the same plane without ever bumping into each other."

She shrugs a bit.

"So now that you know, what is it you want to do about it? To set aside the narrow focus on Will to see the broader world may cause you to lose sight of some of these Truths you have hard-fought to know. Just as setting aside a broader view forces one to accept other Truths -- that selfishness is not evil, perse, or that the Will is not entirely about Will-over another.

"In the middle of these paths or places, we find guidelines like the Rede. Like Crowley's Love above all things; love above law. Or the ideas of as above, so below. Do you want to find an middle place, between these worlds -- or to choose between them in each moment, to wield them both as necessary but not necessarily in concert?"

She lowers her bag to the ground again.

"I've seen both done. I've walked one more surely than the other. I mean that to be heartening: There are they out there who have managed. It is not insurmountable. It is not even, necessarily, a terrible challenge to you or your Will."

[Hunger] There is a long moment in which Ashley contemplates those questions, those words. She turns them over like stones, looking to see what's beneath and deciding whether it's something she wants to pull out into the light, speak and make True.

There is something here that is bothering her, something that she is having difficulty figuring out so that she can even articulate it. A want that she isn't sure how to voice because she hasn't yet fully realized it herself, and it takes a bit of this turning before she settles on precisely what it is. Hesitates to make sure it is what she actually feels.

"I intend to follow a middle path," she says, "but I think to an extent, I've already reached it as far as my Truths go. It's not an intellectual perspective that I think I need to learn." Her mouth quirks into a wry smile for a moment. "I think I'd benefit the most by...not having to think so much, honestly. I mean, the rest of this - I can weigh it out and find a middle path easily. That's not what's going to be difficult for me."

[Walks Between Worlds] Ashley has not seemed too terribly interested in bending, or middle paths, or consequence. Not to Kaeley. Not overtly. But that she called the Verbena back to the Court at all spoke to something. So Kae tipped her head a little, rasied an eyebrow, studied the Hermetic with open interest.

Go on...

There's no verbal cue here, because there does not need to be. Though if Ashley does not expound upon what that difficult place might be, Kae will ask after it directly.

[Hunger] It's difficult in part because she is a bit unsure of what it is. And here is a truth: Ashley McGowen is not entirely sure of who she is anymore. She's come far, and she's done it very quickly, and she's spent the past year and a half separated from strong members of her own Tradition. It's left her a lot of time to drift. It's left her with a lot of new perspectives and points to consider.

When Kae just nods and Ashley realizes that she didn't understand, that she's looking for a more elaborate answer, there's a glance in her direction that is a little lost for words. For how to make it more plain, how to explain her problem without the sort of vulnerability inherent in saying these things. She presses her fingertips together, lets them flex and spring for a moment. Sighs.

"If I knew exactly what I was trying to learn, I wouldn't be coming to you to study," she says. "I'm not used to that. I'm trying to figure myself out right now, so, I mean, what I think might change in the course of that, but I can't say right now whether it will or whether what I know already will be enough. What I know right now is that Willing through the Jhor wasn't enough. And overcoming it - that was difficult, and it was new, and I want to understand it better."

[Walks Between Worlds] "I will be happy to talk to you, whenever you like, but I seem to be an imperfect mirror to reflect your search. There's no criticism in that, just that we view things very differently. And, if you so choose, you may join me at times in my walk through the year -- to turn the Wheel, to celebrate the seasons, to live the way I live my tradition. In pieces but not as a whole."

Here her mouth purses slightly. There is a thing that she would like to offer, but cannot. Tradition keeps her bound, in some ways, but it is all for a reason.

"At times, though, it will not feel like you are studying anything. Which is all the more frustrating when you are as far down a path as you have come with Hermeticism. But most of what I can offer you is time, like this, and time with a lot less talking that speaks to all the same things. I can't promise that you'll find what you're looking for in that."

Kae thinks for a moment, and then suggests:

"Your friend, who will not teach. Perhaps he would make a good person to talk to. About the things you write at these times of year, or the things you crave, or the challenges you overcome. These things are not strange for friends to talk about, but you might gain another perspective."

[Hunger] Ashley's mouth purses too; there's frustration there. Not necessarily at Kae: she understands that what Kae has to teach is not the whole of what she is looking for, and she understands the laws of Tradition. It's simply the situation; she has been seeking a teacher for months now. Knowing she'll have another year of study even should she find one makes her impatient, to say the least. She's not a particularly patient woman when it comes to her own progress.

Still, she says, "I appreciate the offer. I'd learn from joining you." And she means it, regardless of her frustrations. Should this end up being another Tradition she follows, understanding several perspectives will be helpful to her. "Your time's already helped me a lot."

And that does manage to sound more genuinely appreciative.

She suggests talking to Jarod because he's a friend, and a corner of Ashley's mouth smirks even as her eyebrows tilt upward, giving her a look that is a bit wry and self-conscious at once. "Well, we don't really know each other that well. We haven't talked a lot," she says. She isn't even sure whether Jarod would want to hear it; she has difficulty figuring him out. But she hates feeling apprehensive. About anything.

[Walks Between Worlds] There's frustation in Ashley, and for a moment Kae isn't sure why. Then she thinks she might know. And a little later yet, she's certain she shouldn't ask after it.

"You already know the path from Winter to Summer. You know the importance of Autumn. You have less than half a year left to walk mindfully, and then it all begins again. You are farther than most who go Seeking, Ashley."

When Kae says her name, it is a thing of respect. She understands names, and knows that this is most likely not Ashley's true one or any shade thereof. Nevertheless, it is the Name that Ashley has trusted her with, and she treats with it respect worthy of that trust.

"I don't think my tradition, the one my Family follows, the heritage I keep, is something that calls to you. As such, I cannot Initiate you or offer you a formal Apprenticeship within that Circle. It's not likely to become the basis of your magic, anyway; You are beyond that, in many ways. I can offer you someone to walk beside, another perspective, and recognition should you decide that you are Verbena."

Kae does not say that Ashley might become a Verbena. It is not a transformation, to her. One either is or isn't.

"I can show you the Mysteries, teach you rites -- if this is what you want to learn. Perhaps in studying them, or in working them, you'll find some of the answers you're looking for."

[Hunger] Kae offers some reassurance, that it isn't as long as she thinks it might be, and the Hermetic just nods once. Slowly. It might not be how others see it, and she's rather prepared to accept that possibility.

"I understand," Ashley tells her. "I'm sure there'll be someone closer to my own perspective at some point." Here, maybe, or elsewhere: she isn't sure. She doesn't reiterate that Kae has helped her. She's said it once, and the way she looks in the other woman's direction and holds her gaze locked says enough besides.

"If you're willing to teach rites, I'd like to learn them," she adds. "I might at least have a better idea of where to go once it's started. Or if it's even what I want."

[Walks Between Worlds] The Verbena pushes herself off the log to stand, now. She knows the tide of this conversation is headed out. She knows that there have been too many questions and too little doing for these two meetings. Sometimes it has to go that way, but the words are heavy and they make her tired. They are not her first language, but Kae cannot share that native tongue with Ashley just now. Not any longer. Not since the other woman woke up and had her voice taken from her.

She bends a little (but does not break), stretching out the muscles in her back.

"Alright, then," she says, and it's a prelude to something, a transition as much as her standing is. "Next time we meet, bring me an item that speaks to each of these things: Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer; Water, Air, Earth and Fire; the Heart, the Mind, The Body and the Spirit. Bring your notes about the year."

[Hunger] Hermetics disparagingly call them primals for a reason. Everything is broken down into these simple things, the elements, and Ashley can't help but hear these things and have that kneejerk reaction: barbarism, hedge witches, people who paint themselves with mud and dance around a fire. It would be disingenuous to say that this is how she's heard Verbena described; she believed it too. For a long time.

She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes for a few seconds. Wonders for a good moment or two if she is making a horrible mistake that will yield nothing but shame and embarrassment. It feels, to her, like something these magi play at without really understanding.

In the end she's not really afraid of embarrassment either. Dive in, and if she's wrong she'll at least have reaffirmed something she was doubting: that's how these things work.

"All right," she says. "Thanks again for the help, Kae. I'll bring all of it."

It's a promise, and perhaps that torn look can be forgiven. A middle road is hard to find, after all. Sometimes it has to be carved from nothing but the knowledge that one is between two points.