A morning after ...

[Emily] It is midway through the morning after, and the medications that Ashley gave her have worn off. Emily awoke, aching and groggy, in one of the upstairs bedrooms of the Chantry. The backlash had faded, mercifully, but the morning had not brought a magically appearing set of clean clothes or miraculously unbruised ribs. She moved gingerly through the motions of showering. Of rinsing as much of the grime and grit and gore from the surface of her clothes as she could without turning them sodden.

Her hair is spiraled back, secured with a long thin something she found laying about. Most likely a pen, or pencil, from the library (study). Her shirt sleeves aren't long enough to hide the bruising on her arms (again), and its body is too tight to hide the careful way she carries herself.

Our intrepid Initiate has made it as far as the kitchen, where she is attempting to make tea. Everything happens in slow motion, for Emily, and there are times when she sets the kettle down because she just needs to breath for a moment. Then continues with placing it on the rangetop. Lighting a burner.

There are dark circles under her eyes. She's a little waxy, somewhat ashen. She is barefoot, in the house of Ill Portents. And, most importantly, Emily has not been answering her phone. That's off and swiftly running out of battery.

It is quiet in the house just now. She can listen to the slow build of steam in the kettle. She can count the moments until it almost yells. She can focus (breathe in [breathe out]) on something simple and mundane.

It's a good start.

[K. R. J.] The House of Ill Portents is a good name for the White Fence House. There's rarely good news; even the retaking of the Node, back in the day, wasn't good news. The House was full of nasty, nasty things; Solomon may remember, and Israel, and also Ashton. That's good news: that there are those who remember. Also good news: that nobody died, last night. Especially good news for one K. R. Jakes, who fell out've time, lost herself in the skip of a record, and would never, ever have forgiven or forgotten. Emily's the reason Kage is at the White Fence House.

Kage hates the White Fence House. It isn't about protecting the beautiful thing at the heart of it. It isn't about protecting the true, gleaming star-cinder smoulder, the well-spring of radiance, of music, of connection to a concert, symphony. Kage hasn't gone back down (isn't allowed, not if she's a good keeper of rules, and she is) to see the well since, beside it, attempting to re-defend the House, she and Emily were sent sprawling on the ground, bruised like a lock, slammed into skin, stunned.

This begs the question. What's it about, then?

People. Of course. And what's right. That, too. And right now, it's about Emily, making tea very slowly, dark circles around her eyes, harried-seeming, horrible, wan and waxy, an omen-thing if ever there was one. The patio door opens, or slides open, and Kage steps in from the backyard, and she says, "Em?"

It's a good start.

[Emily] At times, Emily found herself wishing that the fallen star at the heart of the well-room might un-fall itself and whisk away the magic and leave this place just a house. Just a residence on a street without anything worthy of politics, or gun battles on the lawn, or redecorating the carpets with bloodstains, or Striding in at the middle of the night.

Some times she wondered if the House didn't want to be just a house, too. Maybe it wanted the pitter-patter of children feet running up and down it staircases and halls rather than the panicked boot-falls of (defend the Chantry) mage feet. Emily knows a house that has fallen back into being just a house. It is a quiet place. A place with history, but first and foremost a Home.

The White Picket Fence House is not a home. It has walls and a roof and beds and staircases. It has horrible, horrible secrets stained in its floorboards and painted over on its walls.

Emily is watching the kettle with a distracted single-mindedness she can only conjure when ill or exhausted. Conveniently, she is both. This distractedness leaves her open, leaves her honest. When Kage slides the patio door open, Emily doesn't even hear it. It's not until the fragment of her name reaches her ears that she looks up, then looks over, a little belatedly, as if it took time to process each thought (the distraction and then the source).

"Oh. Hey, Kage," she says. There's a slow-starting smile for the other Orphan. A little bit of warmth dug out and offered up.

"I'm making tea," she tells her, as if the scattered accouterments did not speak for themselves. They're placed wherever -- but within arm's reach -- rather than laid out in any orderly manner. "You want some?"

[Ashley] [...]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[K. R. J.] Kage cannot push her gaze slantwise and look at the flaws and the strengths of a human (a living) body. With Emily, she needn't. Emily looks like shit. Emily also doesn't appear to have any gaping wounds, clear and visible. Maybe she's not physically injured at all. Kage closes the door behind her, and the glass wavers in its pane like a soap bubble [pop (this is all a dream)]. There is sun, slanting as Kage's gaze cannot. Sun, warming the tiles, sunny honey rectangles, transforming everything into wanness.

Kage joins Emily at the counter, which is to say: Emily is at the counter, a scatter of tea-making accoutrements before her, and Kage joins her just beside, her eyes all loam-grave, moss-grave, grave-as-grave-moss, as remember-here stones, as signs. Kage is a reserved creature, and she doesn't hug the Chorister [mentor or no, you Sing]. But she touches her elbow, briefly, gently, sidewinding, and says - " - sure. What I really want is some lavender and white chocolate cookies. I believe Ashley's given me a craving for them." A beat. And,

"How are you right now?"

[Emily] Emily does not flinch away from the small touch at her elbow. She marks it, looks down and over a little bit. She is curious at it, and that query tracks all the way back to Kage's loam-grey-grave-dust eyes. Emily's are unrecantingly blue. Deep blue. Dark and shod through with tiny flecks of slate grey. They are stormy without breaking. Just now they are unguarded, unpoliced. The Unrelenting push is missing; she's gentled and hollowed and quieter now.

The corners of her mouth turn up a little. It's the ghost of a smile. It's meant to reassure, to soothe, to gentle Kage's gravity. She should not get pulled down by all of this.

"Thirsty," she says, for all they are waiting on tea. And it dawns, slowly, over Kage that the flicker of a smile was supposed to be wry. It was supposed to be familiar. She is trying, albeit thinly, to keep to that.

"I don't have a recipe for those," the lavendar and white chocolate cookies. "Or we could make them," she suggests. As if it were normal, her being barefoot in this kitchen. Talk of baking in this oven. As if it were normal for her to be here, sleep addled, bedraggled and shower-wet. As if she wasn't hurting at all.

Emily probably shouldn't be leaning against that counter, much less contemplating bakery stuffs.

"Ashley gave me some meds last night," she explains. "I slept pretty hard. It's all groggy this morning."

[K. R. J.] [wait, what's this about a tainted halo of taint?! Awareness!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[K. R. J.] There's something Else, something Other, and something Wrong, which is staining Emily's resonance, a dark halo, an inverted halo, and Kage -- this close -- can feel it buzzing in her bones, a snarl of thorns, something that scrapes 'gainst her shadow and sets it to (wrong) burning.

Which is to say: Emily's smile does absolutely nothing to alleviate the gravity, the solemnity of her oh so studious gaze. Indeed; it shades darker, more thoughtful. Turns inward. Reflective: look, this is you; not me. Kage is, of course, considering whether or not the cleansing approach she took with the black-beads, with Marla and Jackson's tools, would work with Emily's -- with Emily. Of course: the beads, the other tools -- they were destroyed.

Different cleansing necessary. "We could google it," she says. "But I don't imagine the kitchen is well stocked for the pursuit of baked goods." Beat. "Did you have dreams? You -- Em." Kage drums her fingers against the counter, torn between asking what happened, wanting details, needing them, and not wanting to -- "You don't feel right," she says, finally. "You feel sick. Maybe you should spend the day sleeping, with chicken noodle soup."

[Ashley] There are three bedroom options in the House of Ill Portent. In one of them, Ashley and Kage wiped blood and viscera away from Li Daiyu's body before it was taken away to be cremated. That's the room Emily slept in last night. In another, Ashley killed two men: one seized her wrist and looked into her eyes when she pulled the trigger. The last one used to be Gregor's, and she remembers a shattered mirror, and the coat she gave her cabalmate as a gift is still hanging there in hope of his return.

Given a choice between these three options, she would much rather have gone home to sleep last night, even though she wouldn't have slept much. But there was Solomon, wounded and dying and with tainted bullets burrowed beneath his flesh, and it took her Working as much as his and Israel's to scrub those black fingerprints away. He might have died, if she had not been here last night.

It means that she has no Will left, didn't even want to move, and so when she fell asleep in Gregor's old room it was without a thought to not having a change of clothes.

She was up much later than Emily, and she usually would have slept much later. Something brings her startled out of sleep, though, something that tightens around her chest and that she can't remember seconds after waking except for fear, something that tangles her in blankets and sends her sprawling out of a bed much smaller than the one she's used to. They've snaked around one of her arms, around a leg, wrench her elbow painfully as she thuds to the ground: but she manages to catch herself before it can result in more than a bruise.

And against the hardwood floor she just lets out a long exhale, presses her cheek to the smooth surface. Slowly extricates herself from the blanket that is clinging desperately to her (no, don't go, don't leave.) Curls into a ball and eyes the edge of the bed above like an adversary to be surmounted.

She's tired enough that falling asleep again here on the floor is tempting, and she even closes her eyes, but the fall and the memory of terror, the wrenching sense of loss, has her heart pounding: no recovery. There is a long moment where she folds her arms over her chest, holds either side, spends a while in that self-embrace to calm herself down. Then, the bathroom: no change of clothes, no toothbrush, but a mouthful of mouthwash is better than nothing.

[Emily] It clings to her, the resonance of that place. The dark, twisted wrongness into which she'd walked (stumbled) like everyone else. Emily doesn't have the means to push it from her pattern, to unfetter herself from the sooty cobwebs and oily stains. It lingers, after her shower, the way the dampness clings to her curls. The way the filthy clothes from yesterday are only damped, not clean. It sticks to her.

She's a little beyond caring just now.

When Kage asks after her dreams, Emily decides the kettle is just right. She turns off the burner. Carefully lifts the tea kettle (things seem heavier when every muscle between your ribs cries out in protest) from the burner and goes about making tea in a far less fastidious way than usual. She would like to be more cautious, careful, precise; she just doesn't have it in her today.

"What's the good of playing hookie if I'm just going to lie in bed?" Emily asks. Her voice is a little clouded, still. It doesn't lilt the way she wants it to. She doesn't seem to notice, really.

The water mostly goes into the tea pot. The leaves mostly steep the way they ought to. Emily is making something black -- clear and simple -- without too many flavors.

There is a thump upstairs. She looks up, the water goes out of the tea pot. It goes out of the pot and over the counter and it is hot enough to steam as it floods toward the edge.

Emily curses, some lost syllable-sound in a foreign language (Chinese). She sets the kettle back on the stove. Looks around for a towel to mop up the spill. Upstairs, the bathroom water runs. Downstairs the Singer (supposedly) tries to rein in the mess she's made. She grimaces while she works, breathes out a little too sharply when her side bumps into the counter's edge.

[K. R. J.] Upstairs, there's someone on the move. Downstairs, Emily is having difficulties with the teapot; Emily actually curses. This would be the time for some new cabal (gaggle) of Magi to come in like a murder of crows, settle themselves on the White Fence House, stride in all jovial, cheerful, take over with a snap of their fingers, and rewrite the history of the House. This would be the time: when all of the House's caretakers are at low ebb, in terms of Will; when some of them have wounds that shan't be (won't be) healed easily; when they've got sticky pus-bad fingerprints all shot through their signatures.

The redhead pushes away from the counter, straightening when Emily mishandles the tea pot. She grabs a roll of papertowel, and smooshes the whole thing over the spilling water. If Emily still wants the towels, she won't stop her, won't take something to do with her hands away from the (cracked [temporarily broken]) Chorister.

" - I never understood the good of playing hookie at all," Kage says, still solemn. "But the good of bed seems more clear. And universal. Medicated sleep is like ants in the throat: unsatisfying. I think. Let me get the mugs. Honey; milk?"

[Emily] Emily does not worry about another cabal sweeping in and claiming dominion at the Chantry. In fact, if they did, all light-hearted and quick-to-action, she might just smile on her way out the front door. If they wanted meetings, and Nephandi blood in the carpet to clean, and bodies to haul off the front lawn, and doomsday convocations, and lists to maintain and protocols to draft -- they could have it. They could have all of it.

Though she knows that it's a precious place, a sacred place, it's also a place of gravity and remorse.

Kage steps in with the paper towels and Emily, relieved, steps out of the way with a small sigh. Kage is still talking on bed, and its merits, when Emily breathes out: "I don't really want to sleep in these clothes any longer..."

And she nods, when Kage says she'll get the mugs. There's a small, threadbare "Please," as she's asked after milk and honey. This is a segue, a transition. If Emily does not slowly scoot out of the kitchen before the redhead, then Kage will decide where they are settling. Where they are sitting. Kage would march her right back to bed.

So Emily moves into the living room, finds a chair with a soft enough back to brace her body, support it. Sinks into the upholstery with little more grace than rag doll. She settles. Like a slow, careful exhalation. The tension of standing slakes, but Emily does not quite relax.

[Ashley] The bite of the mouthwash evaporates the rest of the sleep that had been hanging over her eyes, fogging her thoughts. It scours her cheeks and gums, burns at the tip of her tongue until she spits it out. Her eyes are watering, and she lets water from the faucet pool into her palm, swishes it in her mouth (ow, ow), rinses.

It leaves her mouth tingling, and it isn't long before she decides to scrub her face too, and that leads into eying the shower, longingly. But there are few things worse than putting on dirty clothes after a shower - at least, few things she can think of in her present state. (Few things that she wants to think of, in her present state, because Ashley can think of plenty.)

After re-inserting the contact lense in her right eye, she's able to make the trek downstairs. But: her pants are still in the bedroom. Pants are good.

She, too, does not worry about a rival group of magi laying claim to the chantry. Even exhausted as she is, Ashley thinks she could probably take them. A Hermetic simply can't doubt these things, can't lose the Will to fight even when they don't have much Will left.

Barefoot, she tromps her way down the stairs, perhaps with the intention of edging in on that tea that is being brewed there in the kitchen. She sights Emily first though, and stops in the living room. "Hey, Em," she says, reaching up to try to comb her fingers through her hair, even as she succeeds only in rumpling it further. "How are you feeling?"

[K. R. J.] [Jess therefore bangs gavel of PAUSE.]

[Emily] [And there was much pausing? And it was... good?]