Walking between worlds [STing]

[Samhain] The year draws to a close. Kaeley can feel it down deep in her bones. She can feel the shift of the world against the Veil, preparing to slip into darkness, waiting to be reborn from that cold, silent place. She can feel the long nights settle about her shoulder like a mantle of spiderweb and nightfall, hushed whispers, the innuendo hidden in a candle's fickle flicker-flame. It calls to her, the ebbing sun tide. It pulls her forward.

This is the season of the Witch.

There is no appointed day when she plans to meet up with the Hermetic in Chicago, no appointed hour when she must call to continue the Adept's tutelage. These things, too, have an ebb and flow. They happen when they happen. The Disciple wakes one more and feels the promise of frost nipping at her window panes. It is the rumble of a far off train, felt but not yet heard. Not even yet a light in a tunnel. Not the promise of safe passge. Her bare feet on wooden floors tell her that the time has come.

She packs no bags beyond her usual satchel, but gathers a worn-smooth staff from beside the hearth. She does not lock the door behind her when she goes. There is a rumble, a hesitant and sleepy sound that growls from the old farm truck when she coaxes it into first gear. It complains under her guidance, just as it had complained under her father's. It is still dark when she sets out for the place where this world thins into the next, where the margins can be eased open, where she can slip sideways and Walk between worlds.

It is still a chill and dewy morning when she breaks out of the Path of the Wyck and into the woods beyond Chicago. She has not called for the Hermetic by modern means. There is a chill in the wind today. The floors will be cool beneath her feet. Perhaps a shadow cast by a dark bird, overhead in the sky. If Ashley wants to learn about Life, she would have to listen to its rhythms and subtle cues.

Kae does not doubt the Hermetic will come. She seems content to wait, perched there on the flat seat of the King, staff proped beside her, staring out across the water at the reflected glow of Autumn colors that dapple the far bank.

[Hunger] Ashley has been awake.

She has good days and bad and sometimes the worst times are when she lies alone at night and tries to clear her mind so she can sleep. She tries not to use magic in order to shut herself down and Will her mind to rest, but sometimes there's no other option, and she doesn't have the luxury of exhaustion. It doesn't always keep her asleep for the entire night though.

It is still dark when she rises, noticing delicate patterns laid across her window as though someone had breathed on them and then carefully sculpted the result. Her eyes wander over the fine white feathers frozen over the edges of the glass. In an hour it will melt; autumn frosts are brief. She's discovered, to her chagrin, that inviting a cute kitten into bed soon means one has a fully grown and quite permanent bedmate. Right now it's cold enough at night that she doesn't mind; her floors are hardwood. She sits up on the edge of the bed and then half-propels herself, half-jumps the two feet to the rug to spare the soles of her feet the shock.

She appears in the Court fully-formed and in jeans and a cargo jacket, the snaps buttoned up against the chill of morning, the collar flipped up against the breeze that stirs the bare branches. Kae has already arrived, her truck stilled at the beginning of the path. Ashley has her black messenger bag with her, but it doesn't carry a laptop and a notebook and two or three poetry volumes today.

Bran Summers is in town. Ashley is a little weary, though he was useful in helping her with some of the things she put together for this, so she won't complain too much about his presence. On the back of one of her hands an intricate, almost beautiful, symbol in some odd alphabet has been painted in blue. Otherwise she appears much as she always does.

"Morning, Kae," she says.

[Samhain] "Good morning, Ashley."

The Hermetic may not hear music and longer, not in the way that she used to, but there's a decidedly tonal lilt to the Verbena's voice. It's a sauntering thing, not a swagger, not a boast. Comfortably lyrical. As if she could be nothing else. It is also resonant, redolent; it speaks of feather-thin frosts and warm blankets and starry nights. She is the season, all wrapped up in her tan cargo pants and heathered blue vest. The arms of her tee are white, and stand brightly out against the morning.

She does not look like she's dressed for much magic, even if it is still wreathed through the faint and tousseled curls to her hair.

"Would you care to walk with me?" she asks, without even beginning to lift herself from the tree's bulk. It is an idle question, when taken in the context of her hiking boots and staff. It is a resonant one, if Ashley considers their previous conversations.

Kae smooths one hand along the worn yew limb while she waits, draws it closer to her as if she is preparing to set off regardless of Ashley's answer. Or maybe that is only the edge of Anticipation, this build up to a breaking storm that surrounds her in the quiet of early morning.

There are silver rings on most of her fingers.

There is a small, carved wooden charm lashes to her left wrist like a bracelet.

[Hunger] Ashley hooks a thumb underneath her messenger bag's strap, adjusting it so that it fits a bit more comfortably on her shoulder. The response to Kae's question is not verbal so much as a nod, a step forward that indicates her readiness. She doesn't have any hiking boots (just sneakers) but the Woods aren't that big a place, really, and it's unlikely to be highly intensive. If it is, Ashley will manage. She always does.

She also does not look as though she is dressed for magic. Her clothing is as ordinary as it always is; her sole ornamentation are the two rings she always bears on her left hand (thumb and middle fingers) and the chain that's assuredly tucked beneath the collar of her shirt.

She seems awake. Chill fall mornings will do this for a person, no matter how poorly they slept the night before. It reminds her of being walked to the bus stop holding on to her mother's hand and meeting Justine at the Boston chantry; it also reminds her of this time last year, when she and Wharil and Rene were Working together for the first time. When she and Jarod bumped into each other and decided on a whim to go explore an old house and danced along its rafters to trawl through its memories.

She seems awake, and her eyes are alert and bright as she lets an arm rest along the side of her messenger bag as though to protect whatever's within. It's nothing particularly fragile but much of it is sentimental; the gesture is instinctive.

Now that the Hermetic is closer, Kae can recognize the symbol on her hand as an Enochian one. The woad is the color of her eyes. She's quiet, and perhaps it's all she can do in the face of this woman who feels like portent, who feels like a storm feels just before it breaks apart, is wait with an expectant sort of gaze while she falls into step next to the Verbena.

[Samhain] Ashley steps forward. Kaeley stands up. She's not a tall woman, but there is a palpable presence about her. It is sharper now, nuanced and deeper for the nearness of the holiday. She, too, nods a little. It is a welcome. They have reached some sort of silent agreement.

The symbol on the back of Ashley's hand garners Kaeley's attention. It holds her gaze for a moment, pale like sea glass, soft and remembering. It is recognized for what it is, but not what it says. Ashley is wise enough to know the difference. Kaeley tips her head in one direction, then sets off across the fallen leaf litter and soft ground, retracing the steps she'd taken when she arrived.

This hike does not take them down the soft-black paths that wind and wend their way between trees. It is a direct and yet seemingly aimless thing. The Verbena wanders as if there was some lodestone in her center, a compass pointing ever toward the thing she seeks. And that place is but a rough place in the woods where the birm of one tree's roots rises up and the shallow of a wash cuts through and there are rocks and sharp things to run up against if one should stumble.

It looks like nothing.

It feels like lingering fog and daybreak.

Kaeley glances over to make sure that Ashley has followed this far, then, without a word, she turns the ring on her left finger and bows her head.

For all they have spoken on ritual, for all they would continue to talk about ritual today, there is no trapping of it to what she does. The shallowing, here, thickens but not by any direct manipulation of the Guantlet itself. Kaeley still has not learned to manipulate or visit the Spirit realsm. But she knows how to find the places where the paths stitch this world and the next together, where they thread like silken threads between the remnants of space-time that make up Between.

Kaeley knows everything about thresholds. This is one. Where the tree rises up and the riverlet runs down and the world exhales like one great, creaking sigh toward sleeping. There's that prick of not knowing what may come next, the shudder of someone walking over your grave and suddenly something is different. Nearer. Less discrete.

Kaeley offers Ashley her hand.

"Stay close," she says. "And do not wander off the paths. I cannot find you if you do."

And so they begin. Not with a lecture, nor with an explanation, but with the open invitation for an adventure. With a ritual and a birthright. A Mystery and a rite.

[Hunger] The child of Wyck offers her hand to the Hermetic, who knows less about these natural thresholds and more about the ones that the living have imposed. The bounds of territory, barriers of Will, and the mutability of the physical. (Only she's not quite so sure, anymore, that it is as illusory as she believed it to be once. Even for an Adept, there's room for reconsidering, room for learning new things.)

Ashley takes the proffered hand with the same readiness with which she'd stepped forward into the woods in the first place. There's a trust implicit in this: Ashley doesn't know where Kae plans to take her, but she seems content that the Verbena isn't going to harm her or lead her astray. It's the sort of trust that's buoyed by confidence in her own abilities, and the sort of trust that isn't because she expects that others' intentions are pure but rather because she knows she'll be all right if they aren't.

If she's abandoned, she'll find her way. She always does. There's no reason to worry.

Ashley's eyes are like blue marbles, wide and attentive to everything that is going on. She has gone Striding from one way to the next, like cutting a hole through a curtain, many times on her own now. She's never done it with anyone else. She doesn't know whether it'll be different, whether it'll look and feel different, and it can't help but pique her curiosity.

"I'm ready," she says, just in case Kae required some verbal affirmation of her.

[Samhain] Kaeley is not leading her off through some dark path in the woods to leave her alone to fend for herself. Whatever Ashley thinks about Life, and how it is chained to the struggle for Survival, Kaeley has little patience for such teaching methods. Truth be told, Kaeley has little patience for teaching. She prefers to welcome others to walk beside her, to learn from one another, to Live alongside one another, and to part ways when the time comes.

She has taken few Apprentices, but she has taught many, many mages and young Seekers of the Truth. Her hand fits Ashley's well. There are light callouses on it. She works; her life leaves its markers on her body and skin.

This use of the Art is older than striding. It is easier, because it manipulates paths that are already there. It does not require Ashley's mastery of the sphere. An Apprentice, so inducted and aware of the proper shallowings, could do the same. This is where a little ley knowledge compliments a foundational magical skill. It is finesse and compromise over ultimate control.

Stepping sideways is like slipping through water. It is chill-cold at the margin, and then comfortable once they are inside. There is little distinction between where one's body ends and the open space begins. It would be easy, too easy, to stray without a guide or a well-worn knowledge of the pathways.

Some people say the paths are laced with lakelight. Some say they're paved with the bones of the dead. Some say that your footfalls come fall like soot and star ash. Some say the spirits of ancestors and loved ones draw near to birm the margins, to stay your will to stray, to guide you from one waypoint to another. There is, ultimately, a lot of emptiness here and Ashley sees whatever it is that she imagines lies just beyond the boundary of this world and the next.

For Kaeley it is a place of quiet, of soft-fallen snow, of footsteps that fill in and disappear as soon as they are made, of wind, of silence. It is winter. A place of Air. A place where the Mind triumphs, because it is all the conscious separateness she has left to hold on to.

They walk for awhile. They cannot have gone far. Distance is impossible to judge. The path does not seem to fork, but Ashley is conscious that there are intersections that move past just over head or below, distractions from the thin thread they walk.

Before too long, there is a thickening again, a place where the world beyond comes close enough that shapes appear, fuzzily at first and then in increasing detail, until they push through that boundary again.

This is the low point of a field laid fallow after harvest. There is a wire fence to one side, broken and falling down around its wooden supports. There is a dip just beyond where their feet meet the soft earth, and it's filled with water the color of mud and sky. The air smells of mown grass, of dust and cold. Beyond the fence slumbers the rounded shape of an old-bodied farm truck. Beyond that a gravel road that leads back toward paved throughfares.

The sun is further into the sky, now, and several hours seem to have passed.

They are not in Chicago any longer.

Once Ashley has righted herself, taken her bearings, Kaeley looses her hand and moves toward the truck. The doors are unlocked. The keys are in the ignition. In the passenger seat there are two apple turnovers and two thermoses of black coffee.

There is a Forces Ward about them to keep them warm.

[Hunger] It's not a disciple's magic that she uses to walk between worlds. Ashley's gaze is intent while Kae opens up the paths in a way that she hasn't seen them opened before. For Ashley, she is there and then not, and it all happens in a moment, but this is much less instantaneous. They Walk, and her breath catches in her chest when that chill rises around her and swells over her head.

For a moment she feels like she's going to drown, before breaking into that open space.

For Ashley there is no real world Beyond. There is simply the physical and the realm of pure thought, and this is an odd state somewhere in between, something she would never have imagined existed. But something that she has, perhaps, been seeking to understand: she knows, now, that somehow there's a bridge between them, that the physical world is not wholly false but some sort of extension of thought. She just doesn't understand what that bridge is yet.

And here they are, among paths that connect the two. Her hand is a delicate thing, slim and long-fingered, but the grasp on Kaeley's remains quite firm while they enter this place.

For Ashley it's water and they undulate their way through it, wind through roots that reach all the way to Nothing and continue into a tree whose boughs are infinite. This is how she sees things in her own Mind sometimes (though always, before, on the surface.) There are things half-glimpsed through the veil of ocean, pure Words and those tendrils into the physical that embody an aspect, but they weave and blur.

Though Ashley is silent and composed, Kae can feel the minute trembling of her body through the tremors in her hand, something that would be imperceptible were they not touching. It's not fear. It's excitement. It's Wonder.

And then her head breaks through and they're back on the surface again, and Ashley runs her free hand back through her hair as though expecting to find it wet. They walked for a long time; her legs are a little tired and the growling of her stomach has reached a pitch it only reaches when she really hasn't eaten in a while, not since last night. So she's altogether rather happy to see the apple turnovers.

"What was that?"

[Samhain] The yew staff is placed in the bed of the truck, probably about the same time that Ashley is finding the turnovers. Kaeley hefts her messenger bag in with it. She pats the body of the truck as if she's greeting a familiar horse, or other pet, some living thing. There's a fondness for it. Her rings clink against the metal body.

She leans against the truck near Ashley's door while the Hermetic finds the still-warm food and coffee. Kaeley says nothing, but this is another ritual. A simple thing. Cakes and Ale. Shared food and drink. The words are May you never hunger / May you never thirst but that is not today's lesson, and Kaeley cares very little for words on a whole.

The truck's body is cold where is rests against her. She rubs at one upper arm with a be-ringed hand as she answers.

"They're called the Paths of the Wyck. They connect shallowings and nexus points throughout the world. Some reach between continents, others only within the same city or county. They travel between, though there's much argument as to between what."

A slow smile shapes her mouth. Something faintly Southern has come out in her voice. It's subtle. It just barely distends her vowels.

"Some of us take our titles rather lit'rally," she tells the Hermetic with a self-conscious humor that is meant to be taken lightly. "Among the many rites know is this one. Walking between worlds. Or one step to the left. Some also call them the middle paths. Any Child of the Wyck can open them, with even a rudimentary knowledge of Correspondence or Spirit."

She pauses for a little, then tells Ashley with all seriousness: "It is a birthright."

[Hunger] It's a birthright, Kae tells her, and Ashley doesn't look as though she doubts that. But she does look mildly aghast, and her mouth hangs open just a fraction before she remembers to shut it. It seems like something beyond what an apprentice should be able to accomplish, and she can't fathom how the Verbena have kept this to themselves through the years. How the Order of Hermes hasn't come across it or something like it and made study of it.

She too, after a moment, sets her bag down inside the truck and reaches up to rub the space where the woven band wore a knot, digging her fingertips into it.

"What do you think it's between?" she asks Kae as she reaches for one of the turnovers, holding it lightly between the thumb and middle finger of one hand while she leans back against the open door so that she can make room for Kaeley to reach in. She doesn't eat yet; she is waiting for Kae to bite into the food first. It's one of those mannerisms - a ritual in and of itself, really - that is as much politeness as it is a sort of caution, lingering in the subconscious. The provider always partakes first.

It's appropriate that Kae does not speak the proper Words. Asking Ashley to never Hunger is like asking her to never breathe. The moment she finishes eating, she will still be hungry. (This is, in fact, the very thing that causes her to lose weight during her low moods: it's hard to see the point in eating when she knows the act will garner no satisfaction the moment the last crumb is gone. It's hard to see the point in anything.)

She lifts her eyebrows, watching Kae.

[Samhain] Kaeley takes her turnover, and one of the thermos's of coffee. She does take a bite, chews it thoughtfully, swallows slowly. This frees Ashley to eat at her own pace. It frees Kae up to consider the aghast and agog look the Hermetic was just wearing withing something between amusement and self-satisfaction. She tries not to let that permeate too much of her expression.

No, the Hermetic Ways are not the Only Ways. They are not even the Oldest Ways. Nor are they always the Best Ways. But there is a hubris to all walks of magic, and Kaeley recognizes the swell of pride within herself for what it is and puts it aside.

"There are many places your spirit and mind can go where the body cannot follow. Some traditions talk of four-fold manifestation -- intent, then ideation, then manifestation, then realization within our tangible world -- and others suggest that all the empty space between here and there is really no bigger or smaller than the space between thoughts." She shrugs a little, works the top free of her thermos, balances the lid and her pastry somehow in one hand while she drinks with the other.

"I don't think the shortest distance between two points is always a straight line, the way we conceptualize it. There's always been a lot more to life, for me, than the things we can touch and know and explain through science. So I can't tell you definitively what the Paths are, but I can show you that they exist. I can walk them.

"I suppose that's why we call these things Mysteries."

She lifts a brow in an expression suggestive of long-suffering laughter, or perhaps a challenge for Ashley to return with her thoughts on what she'd experienced.

[Hunger] The moment Kae takes a bite of the turnover, Ashley raises hers to bite into it too. For the feel of her, the manner in which she eats is not a sloppy gorging; she eats in small bites, tries to prolong the satisfaction of taking in, in the manner of someone who knows that there will be other things to be had. In the manner of someone who knows that devouring won't make her full.

It's something she's learned to do: during her first years Awake she was young and heedless, bolting down whatever happened to currently occupy (whether that was food or sex or a book or art or some new theory) and dashing on to the next with the kind of intensity that was borne of the hope that this next thing might just be the thing to...

But it never was.

When Kae indicates that she should articulate her own thoughts, her brow furrows. "I'm not sure I fully understand what was there either," she admits, but it was new to her, after all. "There's Pure Thought, which is infinite and in which our Wills push up against every other Will and concept that exists, and then there's the physical reality - which is mutable because it's an illusion, just an extension of each of those thoughts. An aspect of a greater Form or Word, if you want to think of it that way."

There's some thoughtful chewing before she swallows, following it with a sip of the coffee. Once the thermos is set down she idly reaches up to flick a crumb away from her shirt, even though she hasn't finished yet. "There's something that connects the two, something that isn't quite thought but not quite physical either. And I'm not sure what that is. But I saw water, like I do when I dream or when I speak to my Avatar."

[Samhain] Kaeley nods. Ashley's answer is as good as any she's heard yet. And it is the Hermetic's own, which is more important than anything else at this point. It's good enough. And for all they're not necessarily comparing symbolism sets just now, Ashley's lines up well enough with Kaeley's own. It's a pleasant surprise.

She pushes off of her lean with her shoulder and her hip. "C'mon. Let's get going," she tells the Hermetic, circling around the truck so she can climb into the driver's seat. The bench seat is old and though the upholstery has held up well, its springs creak when the women settle in. They're small things in its belly. It swallows them up in a cumbersome sea of metal. The dials on the dash are worn in places, were once chromed and bright shining. There's an orange needle to the radio tuner, and its numbers are printed in a long-forgotten font.

They can talk on the short drive back to the farmhouse, but first Kae has to get the truck moving, which is as much as art as it is an exercise in will, but the Disciple manages. Some things in life remain trying just to test and hone her patience, she is convinced.

"There's some interesting theories, I think they're Vedic, maybe, about the interplay between the layers of reality, and what it takes to manifest something in the physical real. First there has to be an intent, then that intent is formalized into words and concepts, then those begin to take shape and fall into place, fit in with their causation and consequences, and lastly they manifest here. And the idea that this world is malleable, by changing the underlying idea or conceptualization or even the placement or timing, any of those factors before it lands in the tangible world is an underpinning of some schools of magical thought. They're not really Awakened paradigms, usually, but they're a driving force behind measuring things like whether there's a quantifiable pyschological or physiological effect to some mind-over-matter exercises, or precognition."

Her sentences just ramble, piecing together these thoughts and ideas like things remembered at a distance. She talks about these things like they're common knowledge. Like they're something she encountered so long ago she can't quite remember where any more.

The gravel road gives was to asphalt. There are trees along the roadside now. No signs. No lane markers. The road is built up, so there is a drop off to either side of the pavement. They go less than a mile before Kaeley turns out onto a dirt path that winds up to a large white farmhouse with a broad barn. The barn door is partly open. The house is quiet. There are no animals or other cars.

[Hunger] [pause!]