Ring, ring

[Emily] It's mid-evening on a weeknight, not too late, nothing out of the ordinary. There's nothing about this person calling at the hour that necessarily raises alarm. It's Emily's number on the caller ID when Ashley's phone rings.

And when she picks up?

"Hey Ashley, it's Emily." A little pause. "Do you have a moment?"

There's the whisper of street traffic behind her, the bustle of the city. Nothing alarming. Nothing to peg this as business beyond the slightly tighter tone to the Emissary's voice.

[Ashley McGowen] "Hi, Emily."

Ashley has learned to give weight to the situation when Emily asks if she has a moment. The (new) initiate is not very forthcoming when it comes to her personal life or things that might be bothering her, and that usually means that anything that might require a moment of Ashley's time, said like that, is along the lines of potential horror and suffering.

Ashley's side of the phone, by contrast, seems very quiet. She's probably in her apartment: it's a silent place. She can't listen to music and doesn't watch much TV, and the animals often leave her in peace.

There is a little pause from Ashley's end too before she says, "Sure. What is it?"

[Emily] No potential horror and suffering, this time. Well, perhaps a little, but on a very localized scale -- nothing much to worry about. There's no fear or obvious frustration to the (new) Initiate (still) Orphan's tone.

"I've another person for you House list, not that I think he'll go anywhere near it." Now, isn't that an odd way to start things out. "I just ran into Jarod, at Grant Park. Apparently, he's just moved back."

All very how-do-you-do is this tone of Emily's. Her tone and phrasing doesn't seem to offer up any hints as to why, or any foreknowledge of the Disciple's return. It makes even less allusion to what he'd been to her before his departure.

This is, after all, what Emissaries do. Keep the Dean informed. Keep the house guest list up to date.

"When I get a chance, I'll let him know the new rules and guidelines."

[Ashley McGowen] There's a few second's hesitation, and the voice on the other end of the phone sounds a bit startled. "Oh. Um. When did he move back? I didn't think he was coming back."

More awkward than the conversation where Emily had told her he'd left, this one. There's a beat longer before the Adept asks, "Is he going to be mentoring you again?" She doubts it: Emily seems set on the Chorus, now. But one never knows, and Ashley's understanding is a bit colored by the conversation about Emily and Owen.

[Emily] It's a button with the younger mage. A very big shiny red button. This whole Mentor thing. How she needs one. How she finds one. How he leaves. It's never that simple, though, and that's partly Emily's fault. But Ashley asks, and Emily's feature pinch.

It's a good thing they are not having this conversation in person. The Initiate (only barely) pulls the phone away from her ear and exhales, sharply. Then she fixes a nearby inanimate object with an expression that could peel paint. Then, and only then, she puts the phone back against her ear.

Maybe a second has passed.

"Ah." A pause. "I doubt that's likely."

And then: "I didn't think he was coming back either. I was fairly certain he wasn't. I suppose people surprise you, now and then." There's a verbal shrug underlying the words. They're otherwise calm.

The poor fire hydrant took the bulk of Emily's agitated reply. Ashley didn't have to.

[Ashley McGowen] [Did I push a shiny red button? +1, +2 for this being over the phone and tone is hard for me.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 9)

[Emily] [Oh, no, there are no buttons anywhere in the vicinity. This jacket has a zipper, thank you. -- Subterfuge]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[Emily] Emily is not entirely happy with Jarod's return. She's even less happy with the question Ashley's asked.

Why yes it is a button. But that's either because Ashley had threatened to take Emily's personal life to Father Ward, or because Owen was still on his walk-about through wherever-the-hell he'd gone, or because Emily's own relationship with the newly returned Verbena was anything but uncomplicated. Take your pick, here. The subtext is rich and curiously nuanced.

And this much is for Ashley, who has trouble with tone-over phones, and emotions in general.
to Ashley McGowen

[Ashley McGowen] Emily, good at masking her tone and expressions though she is, does not lower the phone as much as she thinks. Ashley catches that exasperated exhale, and though the Adept is not the most empathic of people, she realizes that she has irritated Emily. A moment later she makes the connection with mentorship.

Ashley's silence heightens, and if Emily could read the Hermetic's expression right at this moment she might see a lot of things; she might realize Ashley's considering an apology. One that, ultimately, goes unvoiced. She just leaves that topic by the wayside.

"Well, I guess I'll...add his name to the list," she says, after a second. "I should probably meet with him before I do just to say I've done it, with everything that's going on."

[Emily] "Would you like me to ask him to call you?" Emily offers. Then a small pause, and she adds. "His number hasn't changed, if that helps." She's trying to be helpful. Emily does not know if Ashley and Jarod were friends before he'd gone away. There was a lot the two hadn't talked about then.

Emily does not warn the Dean about Jarod's new circumstance.

"On the Mentoring front, though. James offered to teach me." A small pause, and then Emily's continuing to say, "And then he left. Within the Chorus my only recourse now is Father Ward. I'll talk to him after the upcoming meeting."

Oh, there's the burr again. And it's easily attached, now, to the idea of being forced into a de-facto apprenticeship. That's not the whole, unvarnished truth of it, but it's enough to give Ashley something to go on.

[Ashley McGowen] The thought of calling Jarod is a little mortifying, because Ashley expects it will be awkward. The thought of meeting with Jarod is a little mortifying, because Ashley expects it will be awkward. The thought of Jarod calling her is not much better. But it is better.

"Yeah, that might be for the best."

Beat.

"I'm, uh. Sorry about James. I didn't know he left." Then, perhaps catching the burr in Emily's voice, she adds, with a touch of humor, "I'm sorry about Solomon too."

[Emily] Emily catches the humor and turns it into something wry, still light but almost biting.

"Oh, don't be." Easily said. Nonchalant. Ashley can almost see the Orphan's mouth twist into that familiar smile as she replies. "Maybe if he mentors me, he'll end up leaving, too."

Not that she wants the Priest to go, and not that he's necessarily earned the tone there. But it's an uneasy peace they've struck, and Emily is not at all certain it would endure if she formally studied under him. They were not of a mind about many things, God not being the highest of those differences.

[Ashley McGowen] There is a pause there, quiet, because Ashley can't help but remember that there is an assault soon. She can't help but remember that the threat of death is hanging overhead for a number of the people going in. It's sobering, complicated, but the Hermetic keeps whatever thoughts she might have to herself.

"Yeah," she says, though the humor has faded from her tone. And because she doesn't want to leave it on that note there's "I'm...sure Owen will come back."

[Emily] Now Emily's footfalls stall. Her progress down the sidewalk stops. She presses her eyes shut for a moment, then looks upward as if for guidance. This, more than anything that came before, is a quiet Ashley can read. She can well hear the resignation in the girl's voice now. The honesty, and an underscoring of hurt acceptance.

"I'm... not."

Emily whets her lower lip, and then continues.

"I don't really have any reason to think that he might. It... doesn't work that way. He had to go. He might come back. He might even come back before it's my turn to go but he won't be coming back for me, as his student or even as his friend."

She swallows hard. This is hard, for her. This might be the hardest part of Jarod coming back: Owen being gone.

People come into her life, people walk out of it. Owen left, but he left her key, and now she's stuck in between. And Emily can't abide it.

[Ashley McGowen] She wouldn't have expected honesty from Emily, or vulnerability, not like this. It isn't the sort of advice she's good at giving. Particularly now: she wants to be sensitive, she struggles to be, but it is hard to see past her own grief at the moment.

She doesn't say what is immediately on her tongue, aware that it would be said only out of bitterness. There's another brief spell of quiet, and then, "Just because someone leaves doesn't mean you're obligated to wait."

[Emily] "I know," she says, and it's soft.

"All the same, I think it's the only thing I can do just now. And it's strange; and I don't like it. I'm far better at goodbye."

She's aware of Ashley's grief; Emily doesn't know how to balance it. So she pulls back from this. She has to pull back from this. The Orphan starts walking again, puts that piece of the conversation literally behind her.

"At least I've plenty to keep busy with," she says. Brighter tone. Moving on now. Less guarded, less vulnerable. "I think I may have learned a trick that might help us with those apple seeds," she tells the Adept. This, this is not sorrowful: there is pride, a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. It's good news, for once.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley doesn't encourage Emily to move on, doesn't say that no, she should say goodbye and not let herself be strung along. Whatever Ashley thinks on the matter is, in fact, rather unclear; Emily has said what she wants to do (what she Wills.) Ashley doesn't force it.

She, too, lets that line of conversation fall behind them.

"Oh?" she asks, about Emily's new trick. "More of the Ars Vitae?" And she's reminded, then, that she wants a teacher, that she wants to be taught by a Verbena. It's another complication of Jarod being back in town.

[Emily] "Yes!"

Okay, there's more than a little pride there. There's a bit of ah-HA, take that crappy year and long, strung out summer underlying that very pleased note in her voice. Ashley can't know that the first thing Emily pushed herself to do (well before she was ready [long before it was wise]) was to heal herself. A feat she'd finally accomplished.

And not with the years upon years of studying that Jarod had told her it might take.

"I met this Knight, at St. James', the other day. We talked. She helped me with a few things, and this was one of them. And then I tried, and tried, and... I'm pretty damned excited, and without a mentor to knock my head back down to size, I may be insufferable for a few days."

She tells this to Ashley in very good humor. It's a friendly warning. Emily doesn't really know enough to name herself an Initiate now, but the day is coming when she will not have to answer to Apprentice any longer. It will be a very, very good day indeed.

[Ashley McGowen] That day appears to be today. Surprise colors Ashley's murmur when she hears Emily mention the knight until something, a blurred face, a woman with...dark hair...tugs at the edge of her memory. Wharil is this way, too, from time to time. It doesn't disturb her.

"So you're an Initiate now?"

[Emily] "Am I?" she asks, a little surprised. It sounded like a title; she wasn't sure she could just take them for herself. But if anyone in the city could bestow them, it was Ashley.

An Initiate.

"Is that what it takes?" she asks, and (likely not for the first time) Ashley must wonder what her trio of mentors had taught her -- if anything at all.

[Ashley McGowen] "It requires a certain amount of knowledge," Ashley tells her. There is a touch of irritation, but it isn't at Emily: she does indeed wonder, and unfortunately everything Emily is, all of her potential, is a credit to them in spite of whatever they haven't done. "I mean, obviously you'd need to demonstrate it before it was official, but yeah. Once you have that knowledge and ability, you have that rank."

Even Orphans, after all, have their rank recognized. There is no process in which a Tradition approves it; once a person is there, they're there. Though, of course, some magi take an Orphan's proclamations of rank far less seriously.

[Emily] "Ah," she says, but it still a pleased sound. "Then I suppose we'll need a show and tell, before it's official, but it's nice to feel like I'm making progress."

If Emily's progress is a credit to anyone (as a mentor) it would be best be shared out among the Adept, Disciples and a few Initiates throughout the city. No one soul has shepherded her from Awakening to Initiatehood. It's been a group effort. It takes a Village. Emily isn't the sort of student, regardless of her rank or affiliation, who would set that aside just now, either.

"When things quiet down again, I'd like to study with you some more," she says. It's a tentative thing; it doesn't push. Emily would like to learn, but she understands needing time and space. "Maybe by then I'll have grown enough to make the charms like Israel does. It can't hurt to have two people filling the stock room, so to speak."

A clear goal: she's found a reason to move forward. It's not enough to heal herself, she wants to help provide for the others. Perhaps this, when taken in lockstep with the mention of the Knight she'd met, would give Ashley a clue as to where Emily was headed. One day. Some day.

[Ashley McGowen] "You don't need a show and tell," she says Emily. "It's just that if you claim the title, be ready to back it up if someone doubts." Ashley is a Tytalan: she expects some things, expects so what, expects to be challenged and told to prove it. She isn't sure whether that will happen here, but better to be prepared.

Emily suggests teaching, and there's a "Sure," that is amenable but lacks the enthusiasm Ashley might usually display for teaching. A lot of things are subdued about her, right now; it's perhaps to be expected.

"After the Labyrinth is dealt with."

[Emily] "Agreed."

And now the appropriate title is once again Emissary. The Labyrinth is Chantry business, is Council business, in Emissary business and until Emily can get another member of the House of Leaves to step up and fill that role, she'll be attending all the doomsday meetings and political throw downs.

Lucky, lucky girl.

"Hey, so, I've kept you on the phone about thrice-over what I meant to. Should I let you get back to things?" Emily asks. The language is a bit less formal, more friendly, but she's still aware that she's encroaching on the other woman's evening.

[Ashley McGowen] Emily's tone is friendly, and Ashley does her best to be responsive to it. Emily is a friend of hers, after all, though she might have called on more official business. Business for the Dean.

"Yeah," she says. "I appreciate you letting me know about Jarod. Have him call me when he's ready."

[Emily] "Will do," she says. Emily is capable of running messages, she's competent at this much. Jarod will get Ashley's request and he'll call (or not [no accounting for cats]) on his own time.

"I hope you have a nice evening," she says, and it's genuine. "Good night, Ashley."

[Ashley McGowen] "You too, Emily. Good night."