Someday it won't be like this

[Emily Littleton] It is a cold night, as cold as any before in this January new. The ground is a blanket of white and grey, touched here and there with less savory colours. The sky is an unbroken shield of clouds between her and the firmament of the heavens. Somewhere above, the stars twinkle, pinpoint brightnesses against the void of eternity: infinite possibilities inside such vast emptiness.

She hasn't told very many people that she's back in Chicago. In truth, Emily has told more people this year of her homecoming that others. The sense of duty, of being tied so heavily to the Chantry House and its clique has lifted with the collapse of her cabal. She is, in many ways, freed from yet another tie that binds. Emily comes closer and closer to her natural state: untethered, unbound, free to translate through this plane with little encumberance. In other words, alone.

She is wearing a pewter-colored turtle-neck beneath her heavy winter coat. It keeps the glint of silver at her throat shielded. Her slacks are neat, recently pressed, and the heels of her boots click on the stairs as she enters Ashley's building. It's well below freezing tonight, but the usual flock of graduate students and their friends are huddled in the shadow of the building, smoking their cigarettes, ruing the non-smoking clauses in their leases.

She bids them a Happy New Year. Vanessa's friend actually smiles at them tonight as she passes.

She's carrying a small wooden box in one hand, and wearing her messenger bag's weight as usual. She knocks on Ashley's door and waits; waiting is no longer such a burden to Emily. There is a calmness that wreathes her now, a sense of detachment that has superceded the immediacy everything seemed to cling to hear at the tail end of last year.

When Ashley opens the door, and they exchange Happy New Years greetings, and Emily hands over that small box as a present from Far Away and Not Here, once this is over then she will crouch to remove her boots and -- of course -- pull a small stuffed Christmas Tree chew toy from her pocket for Zane... It already looks wrecked and toppled over, the better to nom on ceaselessly in the cold. It doesn't jingle or squeak -- the better for Emily to survive Ashley's temper. Luka gets a feathered toy to bat about the apartment's hardwood floors and argue with Zane over.

"It's good to see you," she tells Ashley, when she's finally made it through the front doors and into the apartment proper. "I was starting to miss people, I'd been away so long -- certain people," she adds as a correction, with a knowingly little smile that Ashley can doubtless place. Emily is saying that she missed the Hermetic, but not others. Ashley is free to presume who the others might be.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley has spent this week recovering from last week. Her holidays were emotionally charged, though likely in a different way than Emily's. There were some unexpected arrivals on Christmas Day, and she went to China over New Year's. There was that quiet late night vigil upon her return - comforting, but exhausting too.

Still, the weariness has finally eased its way out of her muscles, the darkness beneath her eyes has faded. Maybe there's a kind of peace to be found in the fact that last year is over, that this is a new one and it can be made into something else.

Emily gets a half-smile from the Hermetic (Verbena-to-be) as she opens the door to let the Singer in. There are indeed greetings exchanged, and Ashley too hands over a box. Heavy, and noiseless in her hands: whatever is within has been thoroughly padded.

"Good to see you too," Ashley says, turning an amused glance toward Zane, who is staring at the Christmas tree with his ears erect, wagging his tail as though he expects it to get up and move. He barks at it once. "Thanks for not getting him something that's going to make more noise," she says, lifting a hand to rub at her good ear.

A glance toward the Singer girl, because Ashley doesn't know who certain people are and doesn't care to guess at it much. Emily is here; that is what matters. "Where'd you go over Christmas?" she asks, with a glance down at her box as she wanders over toward the couches and chairs.

[Emily Littleton] "Seattle first," Emily says, as she settles on the couch and brings the gift from Ashley to rest on her lap. She keeps it there, positioned and sure, with one hand. "Then to Marseilles to see my parents, on through Prague," she says with a little lift of her chin to indicate the box that Ashley is holding, "And then home to Manchester."

That her holidays encompassed four countries and time zones seems to mean nothing to Emily. She has extra visa pages in her passpot; she considers O'Hare's international terminal as a sort of second living room. This time of year makes that disparity between the Singer (world citizen, no hometown) and everyone else she knows a little clearer.

"It was full but very, very good," she tells Ashley, with a quiet sort of incredulousness. A sort of reverent awe and surprise. Her trip could have gone far worse, and still been within the realm of expected outcomes. That it resolved positively has buoyed her, somewhat. Brightened her. "I've started to tell Gregory about all of this. And he didn't have me committed -- win, as Molly would say?"

The little box that Ashley's holding is not wrapped. It's tied with a ochre colored ribbon, soft and smooth against her fingertips. The box itself is highly polished, with neatly beveled edges and almost invisible seams. There's no inlay or engraving. It's just a box. Emily's very of just a... anything is usually of simple and high quality.

Inside is a cut-glass ornament. A six pointed star with deep grooves and gold leaf. It's a beautiful and delicate thing, but weighty. It has gravitas. It is not made for decorating a tree, but rather for hanging in a window to catch the light. When hung like that, star seems to capture the ambient light and amplify it: it appears to burn with a lamplight of its own. the There is a small, handwritten card tucked underneath it.

Even in the dark and lonely places, there is light. Prague, 2010.
-Thank you for all you've done for me this year, for being a fixed point in the changing sky, a beacon and a friend. Brightest wishes for the New Year. May it bring a measure more joy than the last. ~E.L.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley is not a world citizen. There are a lot of things she has in common with Thomas, really, though she doesn't speak of them and doesn't wear her background the way he wears his. Her father has been called a lowlife by her Traditionmates in Boston, and she had the misfortune of hearing it once - because most people, even in the place she's from, don't know that he's her father in spite of the fact that she has his eyes and there's some echo of his mannerisms in her. She's not from the kind of background in which that kind of travel is familiar.

So her eyebrows lift, once, when Emily mentions all the places to which she went over Christmas. Reminded, again perhaps, of the disparity between Emily and herself. It's not something Ashley could afford to do; she joked about the plane ticket to China costing a kidney and a piece of her soul when she mentioned it to Kage. "You went to Prague?" That, apparently, is the bit that is worth commenting on.

Though she does wonder about Seattle, and there was that question there, but - this first.

Emily's box contains rectangular objects that have been carefully wrapped in tissue paper. When she pulls this away, they are revealed to be a series of black and white photographs of architecture in the city. One of the house itself, but more of places around the city - the Cloud Gate, one of the ones on Northwestern's campus, random places around town. They're quite good, shot from a perspective that seems to make them soar skyward, and carefully framed.

Having contacts in the art world has its benefits sometimes, apparently. Ashley, though, carefully lifts the ornament out of the box, after she has run her fingertips over the box itself to take in its texture. She doesn't hold the ornament up to the light yet, just quietly examines it, reads the card within.

The look she gives Emily has weight, something solemn and, for Ashley, oddly soft for a moment or two. "Thank you," she says, before carefully returning it to the box. Later, it'll find its home in a window, probably in her study.

[Emily Littleton] Emily can afford to do these things, because her father is a diplomat. There are all sorts of discounts and frequent-flier fares when your employer is the Federal Government, and those are easy to extend to a college age daughter who has no real sense of a permanent residency. She calls a travel agent to make her plans, doesn't think twice about cancelling and rebooking. It is not a perspective shared by many -- Emily knows it's a privilege; she also knows its price.

Of course Ashley asks about Prague. Emily's smile softens a bit, shades a little. Like always, she is keeping something back for herself. After more than a year of building a friendship, this should not read as a slight or an impoliteness anymore. It is simply Emily, being Emily, the best way she knows how.

"I... felt I needed to. And I was so close, anyway. I spoke with one of the police officers who was on duty when they found me. I got to say thank you, and to see the street corner where I was taken and put it all behind me. Make it real, and not just memories and nightmares anymore.

"It's a beautiful city," she tells Ashley, with that same sense of surprise and discovery. Prague had never been beautiful to Emily before. This thing, this past hurt, now scabbed over, has let her see it with a renewed perspective again.

When Ashley opens her gift, Emily does the same. With the Hermetic, she doesn't have to worry about wildly inappropriate presents, or things that echo just how little they know of each other. Ashley is a friend, now, more than an acquaintance. It's a good thing. Emily lifts each frame up a little and studies the pictures, smiling openly.

"These are lovely," she says. "Thank you. I've needed some good pictures of Chicago," she tells Ashley, who no doubt remembers Emily's timeline of photographs. Chicago being notably almost absent therein. "I think I'll put the Cloud Gate one in my office on campus, though. Every time I pass it, I think of you and Wharil now."

She carefully puts the pictures back into their box, closes the lid, sets it beside her on the couch.

"How were your holidays?" she asks, giving Ashley and invitation to share as well.

[Ashley McGowen] Whatever softness had been in her expression fades to something more intent, when Emily tells her exactly what she'd been doing in Prague. That she'd been looking at the street corner, speaking to an officer. Facing her fears down. Ashley doesn't say: it's about fucking time, woman, and also doesn't offer any condolences or encouragements, which are the two things one might reasonably expect from her in this moment. She says, "Good. It is a beautiful city."

She's been there; for her, the place carries very different memories. The years she spent in Europe with Bran and Justine were probably the happiest ones in her life - or her Awakened life, at least.

"I'm glad you went," she says, after another moment has passed. She sets her own box very carefully on her coffee table and glances back toward Zane, who has given up hoping that the stuffed Christmas tree will move and has instead taken to carrying it around the main room in his mouth, looking for a place to hide it. He settles for stuffing it between the couch cushions.

"You're welcome," she says, when Emily opens up her own present. Smiles, briefly, when Emily mentions the Cloud Gate. She does indeed remember Emily's timeline; it might have been what gave her the idea.

Emily asks about Ashley's own holidays and the Hermetic sighs, running a hand back through her short hair. "Good and bad," she says, honestly. "I went to Boston with Kage. Bran and Justine's mentor surprised us on Christmas. He's not very happy with me right now. And I went to China." Her brows furrow a moment, but she doesn't seem inclined to linger on this long. "It...I guess it was still pretty good for all that though."

She doesn't explain this last part, but maybe Emily can extrapolate; Ashley has a lot more people in her life this year than she did last year.

[Emily Littleton] Ashley doesn't chide her for handling her past on her own terms, as Emily imagines others might. But whatever it was she'd entered the city to find, Emily had always known she'd have to find it on her own. She'd had help arranging an interpretor, a guide, but she'd had to stand on that bridge and look down at the water's edge without her family, her friends, or her brother beside her. She had to feel as much emptiness around her as she had then, so she could let go of it and not bind it up in other people's expectations.

Not one of them knows whether she cried that night, or drank until she was numb, or simply went to sleep in an unfamiliar city (like so many other nights passed). The reconciliation and reparations are hers alone. It's a lighter thing to carry this way.

She reaches down to scritch the top of Zane's head when he burries his disappontingly inert and silent toy into the couch cushions. Emily glances over to Ashley when she mentions China. It is impossible for the Singer to miss what the Hermetic implies, and yet the younger woman's expression does not cajole or push, does not ask without asking. Emily has usually been good about allowing others their space and their own thoughts.

"I'm sure their mentor will get over whatever it is he's unhappy about," Emily tells Ashley, because Ashley doesn't seem the type to let someone else's opinion stand between her and her happiness for long. And then: "That's a long flight... did you have trouble adjusting when you got home?"

She doesn't ask about what Ashley had been doing there, but she does make eye contact for a moment and offer her friend a warmer, more inviting smile. A little softness: understanding without expectation. If Ashley wanted to talk, the opening was there. It was not a demand.

[Jarod Nightingale] [Awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Jarod Nightingale] [Well that was narratively convenient]

[Ashley McGowen] Emily went alone to Prague; Ashley went alone to Kunming, and it was much for the same reason. She was left to go to the temple by herself without someone hanging over her shoulder, without someone listening to whatever words she wanted to whisper into the air. She was left to explore a city she'd never been in and try to understand a part of someone she didn't get to know nearly as well as she wanted to.

She, too, reaches over to rub Zane beneath his jaw when he comes to hide the toy away for a later date. Perhaps she's grateful that Emily doesn't push; there was a period where a lot of people did. Emily wasn't one of them, but it's debatable whether Ashley would have felt comfortable speaking on it at the time.

"Their mentor can go fuck himself," Ashley says, with a roll of her eyes. Not the sort to let someone else's opinion stand in the way of her happiness indeed. A beat. "I've been studying Life with the Verbena," she says, "and I told Bran about it, so I should've figured it'd get back to Hannibal. Neither of them think much of the Tradition."

A lot of Hermetics don't, in fact, but Bran and Justine themselves have personal experience speaking against it. Well, in their point of view. Boston's Verbena and Cad Goddeau would probably beg to differ.

"I had less trouble adjusting than I thought I would," she says. "I was tired, though." There's a bit of a sigh released then. "I don't know how much you've heard about the Asylum and the node, but we had a meeting on Wednesday."

[Emily Littleton] "Solomon doesn't seem to think much of them either," Emily says. She doesn't call him Mr. Ward just now, for reasons that are not even clear to herself. The Singer shrugs a little, reaches up to tuck some of her unbound hair behind her ear. "I think it's wonderful, though, that you're studying with them. I told Bran as much when he mentioned it, too."

Emily isn't searching for a reply when she drops this bit of information. She's not failing anyone's confidences. She's just leaving it there, as a clue to the interconnectedness of the people in their sphere of common acquaintances, because one of the suffocating things about December was how close they'd all come to living in one another's pockets, accidentally, and far too personally.

"If his mentor can't appreciate that you're broadening your horizons and challenging yourself to learn new things, then yes, fuck him," she agrees to the vulgar call of solidarity. It isn't very Emily to swear about people she hasn't yet met, and perhaps she'll regret it if she ever does meet Hannibal, but for now he is a disapproving shadow on the periphery of Ashley's friendship. Emily has no room for these things in her vision of the new year, and renewed hope and wellness for her friends.

"Mmm, no, not much. Just what Israel told me before I left on holiday. I know there's a node, and that there was trouble there at the end of last year." Her expression tightens slightly, almost imperceptibly. Meetings usually mean serious things afoot, largely because meetings are so damned inconvenient and frustrating that no one calls them without good cause.

"An Emissary meeting, or one of the Guardian's war councils?" she asks for clarification. There's an implicit question to it: How can I help?

[Ashley McGowen] "I think people think better of it here than in most other places I've been," Ashley says, with a bit of a frown touching her brows. "I mean, there's not a lot of Traditional division in Chicago. I think we just don't have enough people for it to matter as much as it does in places like Boston." It is, perhaps, an explanation for how the city's Orphans have managed to become respected and prominent.

Ashley grins once, then, something a little sharp and pointed. "We're a savage city, apparently." Which is, apparently, of some dark amusement on her part.

Ashley herself doesn't seem aware of how much Emily might have been living in her pocket; she has not been living in Emily's. Whatever subtext there is here, the Hermetic is (perhaps blissfully) oblivious. Sussing out these things has never been a forte of hers, and maybe the Singer will be grateful for that.

She sits back against the arm of her couch, leaning, listening to Emily tell her what Israel has mentioned. "We had both," she says. "War council and an emissary meeting. Fortune favored you and you missed both." This, even though Emily's cabal dissolved; maybe it still causes Emily some distress, too much to joke about it just yet, but Ashley is not always sensitive to these things. It simply doesn't occur to her.

"The Technocracy has taken possession of the node. We wanted to keep it out of their hands to deny them a foothold here. Unfortunately it seems that the only way to do it is to destroy it. Israel wanted you to go in with the two of us to overload it with Quintessence and destabilize it."

[Jarod Nightingale] It was snowing lightly outside. On the sidewalk below Ashley's building, Jarod stood looking up at the sliver of moon in the night sky. Tiny wisps of white caught in his hair and left a scattering of muted glitter on the soft black wool of his coat. The world was beautiful tonight, even with its dirty sidewalks and clouds of smoke. Even with the cars, and the billboards. Even though the stars lay behind layers of smog and cloud and streetlight. It was, after all... the same moon. The same earth. The same stretch of space in the sky that stretched out into infinity. And here, around him... the same ever-constant movement of life.

Lately he'd been spending a lot of time looking up at the moon and wondering about the center of things. As if he could pare away all of the details and decoration and just reach into the heart of what made the world... alive. Real.

There was understanding looking down at him. He just hadn't reached it yet.

Nearby, one of the girls smoking by the door called out to him, and he glanced over. It was cold tonight, and she was the last one remaining where others had briefly stood. Jarod had been here before. She recognized him (he was difficult to forget.) "Hey, I'm going in, if you want me to grab the door for you..."

He did. There was a smile offered in gratitude as he passed by her. She offered him one back, and her eyes lingered on him as he disappeared up the stairs to the second floor.

This was a casual visit. He hadn't called. That was not wholly unusual for him. Unlike Ashley and Emily, he was not adjusting to being home after a long and busy holiday. For the first time in a long time, Christmas and the New Year had been relatively quiet affairs, and all the better for it. There'd been the snow, and the Chicago skyline. There'd been a large tree in his living room, decorated with tiny white lights and small, velvety red glass orbs. There'd been clementine oranges and peppermint tea. There'd been a literal mound of presents, all in sleek, simple, elegant wrapping. There'd been piano music. There'd been Dana and Ilana.

There had not been Dallas, or old family. There had not been arguments, or drinking. He'd tried that last year. There'd been no catharsis. (Perhaps he just wasn't ready to find it yet. Perhaps catharsis simply wasn't available to people who were deeply and intrinsically broken.) As it has been said...There was no there there.

Jarod knocked at Ashley's door. He didn't know that anyone else was inside, but after a moment he heard the muffled murmur of female voices. Whenever and whoever happened to answer, they'd find him standing there in a knee-length black coat and a soft black scarf, hands covered in thin leather gloves.

[Emily Littleton] Fortune favored you... Ashley says, and it is not too soon to joke about missing meetings or being freed from the political constraints of Chantry Council membership.

"It's about time..." the Singer says, as if Fate owed her a favor or three by now. There's a familiar curl to the corner of her mouth, wry and darkly amused. It lingers for a moment, and then fades due to the seriousness of what's afoot.

Now her lips purse a little, thoughtfully, and Emily eyes lower to the coffee table while she thinks. This is consideration, not hesitance. There is no sudden stiffness or stringency; only a calm consideration. She's tempered, somewhat, in her time away from the general Chicago populace.

"I apologize if this has all be covered before but isn't that paramount to desecration? Is destroying a sanctuary really the only option?" Because, of course, Emily views the Node as something sacred. It is an upwelling of starstuff; it is a stitched through place where this world meets the one that He intended; it is sacred. "I'm sure there was yelling on this point already but humor me with the highlights of their reasoning, if you will?"

[Emily Littleton] [Awareness: C'mon Kahseeno, it's a new year, we can do this!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Ashley McGowen] [Awareness!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] [Oh, you think you're funny, don't you diceroller? *le sigh*]

[Ashley McGowen] By the way Ashley's brows lower over her eyes, storm clouds threatening crystal waters, Emily can perhaps tell that Ashley does indeed see it as something akin to a desecration. "I don't like the idea of destroying it at all," Ashley says, "but I was the only person at the meeting arguing against it. If we leave it, they're going to use it, and we only have so much time. I offered several other ideas."

Still frowning, Ashley reaches back and tugs at the hair at the back of her neck. And it's around this point that something nudges against the base of her brainstem, the touch of a now-familiar Will as it enters the building and makes its approach. The look she gives Emily is a quick one. Gauging, perhaps, whether she should warn her about the Verbena's approach.

But Ashley is rather ignorant of everything that transpired toward the end of last year. So far as she knows, they are friends with a little tension between them, and she sees no reason why Emily would be displeased to see Jarod; in fact, she might have already visited with him. "I'm sure it could be saved," Ashley says. "The problem is that the cost is too high."

The safety of Sleepers she might be willing to sacrifice. The safety of most of the chantry members, she is not.

And that's when Jarod knocks, and Ashley gets up to go and answer the door. "Hey," she says, offering him a brief smile. She holds the door open so he can step in. "Emily's here."

[Jarod Nightingale] [Subterfuge]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]

[Emily Littleton] [Me too (specialized)]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Ashley McGowen] [Eh? +2, I'm special.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[Emily Littleton] "That's a shame," she says, when Ashley lays out the cost to benefit analysis of their predicament. There's more to Emily's reply than that, though. There's a sort of reluctant acceptance of this immediacy, this need to act now rather than later that leads to absolute judgements. Destroy rather than preserve. Attack rather than counsel. There's a warlike mentality that underscores the city even when it sleeps -- perhaps Savage is the right word for Chicago, after all.

It is a long held habit that forces Emily to stand when Ashley moves across the room to open the door. It's the sort of habit that she doesn't immediately recognize as incongruous with her friendships here. So stand she does, and she lets her arms hang loosely at her sides, her shoulders are back -- she is a diplomat's daughter, indeed.

She can't tell, at first, who has come to Ashley's door. There's no familiar tickle at the back of her spine. She is numb to that side of the world tonight, frozen, incommunicado. His resonance does not creep up her skin to announce itself, even Hunger is a muted presence immediately across the room. She is cocooned in her separateness, but that will not last.

When Jarod enters there is, indeed, nothing amiss about Emily's expression. It warms, more than is professional but not so much as to be overtly telling. She is, for all intents and purposes, pleased to see him and this much is truth: there is warmth for him. This much is hidden: it is a tangled, wounded thing that breathes out like icicles whenever she wants to breathe in; it pains, this fondness; it is a think she has not been able to make whole again, not yet.

"Happy New Year," she tells him, and there is Ashley's cue. They have not yet seen one another. It's a week past 2010 and she's still greeting him this way. "I didn't know you were coming, or I'd have brought your gift and Ilana's," she explains. Emily clears the box from beside her on the couch, moves it to the coffee table that he might have more choice in how he joins them. If he joins them.

And so they dance: at least this much is familiar. What is said is often less clear that what remains unspoken.

[Jarod Nightingale] It's not exactly what he expected, but then... Emily had texted him to say that she was back in town. So the look on his face when Ashley opened the door and he glanced over her shoulder to note the Singer's presence was not one of shock so much as subtle, polite surprise. It had been... a long time since they'd seen each other. A long time since they'd really spoken. Life had intervened. Since then, Jarod had left two notes in her mailbox - one on her birthday (unanswered, but that had been largely expected given the time of year and everything that had happened,) and one on Christmas. He'd also left a gift for her in the woods (something beautiful that should not have been able to survive, but did, and would... for awhile.) More of himself had been poured into that gift than anyone might suspect. It was... a memorial. He didn't know if she'd seen it yet. Ultimately it didn't matter. Its creation had been as much for himself as it had been for her.

Emily stood when he entered the room. She smiled warmly. What was hidden would remain hidden. He didn't look for it today. (Let buried things stay buried.) His own smile was a little slower in coming, but no less warm for all that. It lingered with his gaze when he looked at her, then slowly disappeared as he turned to unbutton his coat and unwrap the scarf from around his neck. He was familiar with the layout of Ashley's apartment, and made his way over to the closet without any assistance. There he pulled his hands free from his gloves and tucked them neatly into one of the pockets of his coat before he hung it and his scarf on a hanger and shut them away until they were needed again. Underneath the coat he had on a burgundy sweater layered over a black collared shirt.

"Happy New Year to you as well. Don't worry about the gifts. Ilana can wait a few days. She... had plenty of things to open over the holidays." There was a wry touch of humor there, something a little self-deprecating as he turned his attention to Ashley. "Sorry to interrupt. I suppose I should have called first. I was just driving back from Nick's place and figured I'd come pester you."

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley misses the subtext here, too, whatever undercurrents are drifting between the Verbena and the Singer. Whatever awkwardness, whatever feelings they might be burying, whatever time has transformed and then shaped back again. It's not unusual for Ashley to miss these things; their smiles say one thing, and it's their smiles that she sees and recognizes and understands.

She can tell that Emily hasn't seen him yet, which perhaps pleases her a little - that she was the first, or one of the first, that the Singer chose to see. Evidently a few months are enough for Ashley to forget whatever resentment or irritation she might have had. Say what one will about her, but she's not the sort to hold a grudge (and if she ever does, there's a hell of a good reason.)

She shakes her head at Jarod. "It's okay," she says. "You can drop by whenever you want. We were just talking." Which seems sincere. "I was updating Emily a little on chantry stuff."

[Emily Littleton] She'd seen it. Emily had followed the note where it led, out to a place deep in the woods, and she had knelt beside this memorial and cried. Perhaps harder than she had since last Easter, when she crouched before another memorial, of another bright thing both cherished and lost, and let go of tears that were two years too late. Like Prague, she had been alone in this. Unlike Prague, though, the very existence of this marker, this gift, served to remind her that she need not have been.

There are reasons why she hasn't called, things that threaten to come welling up in her just now, but none of them matter just now. They're pale and flimsy things, excuses more than reasons, that protect something uncertain and fleeting. They do not belong here; they are inadequate, immature, incomplete, unconvincing.

So she stands, with her hands sliding into the pockets of her slacks, and her attention drifting from one friend to another, until she is content to let her subconscious sum this up as circumstance not a contrived and forced reconciliation. She waits until he finds a place to sit, or doesn't. And yes, she notices that he knows his way around her now as well as she does, perhaps better.

She notices that Ashley tells him he can drop by whenever he wants.

Emily holds her tongue.

"Ashley doesn't let me get away with resigning from local politics," she tells Jarod, with a wry touch to her tone. A dark humor. "She's as persistent as my father," she adds, gently teasing the Hermetic. For all Emily disagrees with her father, she seems to hold him in relatively high esteem. This is a rib, but not one without a hidden compliment to it.

[Jarod Nightingale] There'd been another interesting slip hidden within that greeting - Ashley was apparently familiar enough with Nick to know who he was (and who he was in relation to Jarod.) Funny how such a large city could seem so small and interconnected, at times.

There was snow on his boots, so he took them off near the door before walking over to the couch. In between two of the cushions, a lump marked the place where Zane had buried a stuffed toy. Jarod... contemplated this. (In a very Jarod-esque manner.) Then he lifted up the corner of one of the cushions and carefully extracted the toy, being sure not to put his fingers anywhere that was marked by dog saliva. After regarding the toy for a moment like it was an alien object, he tossed it back to the floor a reasonable distance away. "Ashley, darling, your pets are taking over your apartment."

He sat down and made himself comfortable then, leaning back into the crook of an arm rest as he often did. When Emily mentioned her political responsibilities, he smirked a bit, softly. There might have been a joke there, somewhere... regarding how to ensure that the local chantry-head did not remind you of responsibilities, but if so he didn't make it.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley follows Jarod back toward the couches and chairs, moves back toward the seat she usually takes at the one side, with her back against the armrest. She often sits this way, faced out with her legs crossed, rather than facing forward the way most people typically would sit on a couch. Ostensibly this is because it allows her to face everyone in the room at the same time and see them all out of her good eye - it does - but it's also because her feet...well, when she sits in the couch normally they don't quite touch the ground. Ashley receives reminders that she's tiny often enough without giving other people additional notice.

She smirks when Jarod extracts the dog toy from the couch. "Sorry," she says. "Emily brought stuff over. They're still kind of wound up." The pets both received about as much as Ashley did this year, as a matter of fact, which was of no end of amusement to the Hermetic.

A look up toward the Singer, then. "I bother Kage too," she says, as though this is justification. "Anyway, if you want to avoid meetings for a while, I'm not going to brainwash you into going. I'm just put out that I can't give bitch work to somebody. Like keeping Molly in line." A grin, then, because it's a joke; Ashley has expressed appreciation of Emily's presence at meetings often enough that hopefully the Singer knows that. If not, well.

As though to give credence to Jarod's earlier comment, Luka prances by with the feather toy in his mouth. Dropping it, he bats it once, chases it over toward Emily, and then trills up at her once or twice. Apparently it's the people who have his attention now. He rubs against her leg once, then spins, leaps toward the couch and winds around behind Jarod's shoulders. Ashley eyes him once with a look of tired tolerance.

[Emily Littleton] Emily has gotten more patient with Ashley's cat since Molly presented the Singer with a small, feline tyrant of her own. In An's defense, she was a discerning blue-eyed monster, bent only on the destruction of textiles that wandered to close to her rocking chair. But she did have a habit of rubbing her white-furred patches against Emily's black slacks, like Luka was doing now.

She looses track of him somewhere in the acrobatic manuevers, until he re-emerges close to Jarod, daredevil kitty that he must be. She watches with a quiet amusement, like the cat is little more than an idle distraction by now.

"Aha. Molly." Emily says this, with a quirk to her smile that is not outright complimentary to the Cultist, or at least to her politics. "Now that I am not at all sorry to miss. I have a hard enough time having a conversation with her, much less imagining her in a meeting. But she's, how to say this? Mellowed? A little, since last summer. Just as many questions, all at once, without giving you time to answer half of them. I bet that's fun."

This is Emily's assessment. This is Emily's unapologetic glee at not being there the first time Molly inserted herself into their usually well mannered band of Emissaries and Council Members. Aha, she says. It's short of an ahahahahahaha that turns into a cackle somewhere in the recesses of her mind.

[Jarod Nightingale] There was a cat behind his shoulders. More often than not, Jarod's attitude toward domestic animals ranged somewhere between resigned and downright haughty, but he'd been around both Zane and Luka enough now that they may have been starting to grow on him. Either that, or he welcomed the distraction. Whatever the source of his change in demeanor, when Luka came over to say hello, the Verbena glanced over his shoulder, contemplated, then reached up to lift the cat away and set him down on his lap. Tonight there was no expensive suit to potentially destroy with fur and claws - jeans were less of a cause for concern, in that regard. All the same, he did pluck open the buttons at his cuffs and roll up the sleeves of his shirt and sweater. Then he set about petting the cat, rubbing fingertips behind its ears, around the sides of its cheeks and under its chin. If Luka tolerated this, soon enough the petting would work its way into a full-on cat massage.

It was like watching the prince of cats come down from his mountain to spend time with the common people.

"Don't you have an apprentice?" Jarod pointed out when Ashley complained at having a lack of underlings to take on some of the less important and more tedious tasks. Of course, they both knew that Morgan wasn't likely to be keen on this sort of thing, and that sending her to work diplomacy might not be the world's best idea in any case, so there was a knowing cast to his expression when he glanced at Ashley. Then, after some more consideration, he turned his gaze back down to the purring cat in his lap. "She didn't seem all that difficult when I talked to her. A bit... silly."

One got the sense that he was being polite in using that description.

[Ashley McGowen] "I have a couple lint rollers," Ashley says, with a glance in Emily's direction, at the fur that's been left on her pants. Ashley doesn't maintain a fastidiousness nearly to Jarod's degree, but has always had a sense of professionalism about her; that does not leave a place for being covered in animal hair.

Luka seems quite happy, for his part. He's a shy animal but friendly enough once engaged, and he sets about milling in circles in Jarod's lap until he finds a place in which to curl up. Curling turns into a sprawl within short order. If he's only a distraction, he doesn't seem to mind.

"My apprentice isn't part of a cabal yet," Ashley adds, when mention is made of Morgan. Yet, because she hopes Morgan eventually will be; Morgan is an initiate, though, and to some degree outside the circle of Ashley's influence at this point, left to her own devices beyond occasional tutoring and nudging.

"She's not difficult," Ashley says. "I like her most of the time. She just...yeah, she talks a lot. It can be hard to follow at meetings." A glance toward Emily, who doubtlessly commiserates. "But she feeds me pretty much every time she sees me, so I guess there's something to be said for that." More aware of her own resonance than people sometimes take her for, apparently.

[Emily Littleton] She's not difficult.

Emily's eyebrows almost raise in challenge, but she keeps that bit to herself. Alas. They are trying to be polite tonight after all. She shifts herself into the corner of the couch, tucking one foot behind the other and adopting a sort of ready near-slouch, a comfortable posture that appears to be more open than it is. She rests an arm along the back of the couch, so that she can tip her head into her hand and prop it up there.

"Saying Molly talks a lot is like saying I'm not particularly forthcoming, or that Ashley is sometimes direct," Emily adds on to the Dean's assessment, clarifying the extent to which Ashley's statement should be extrapolated. "And it's not that I dislike her, per se, but she has a habit of taking whatever situation is happening and amplifying it."

This is polite. This is carefully chosen and gentled. Emily has sheathed her claws and is playing nicer, without giving much ground.

"Those meetings are in no need of amplification, if memory serves," a touch rueful this, tarnished but not corroded, these memories are once-bright in their own ways, sharp. "When is Israel planning to go back to the Assylum?" she asks Ashley, returning to their previous conversation and simply enfolding Jarod in it by failing to exclude him.

"Or is she hoping to do this remotely? What do you need me to prepare?" There's a steadfastness to her that had been notably absent since her fellow Singer left town last Summer. She's regained it, somehow, and is holding tight to it just now. Even in the face of the wanton destruction of another of His wonders. She is Unrelenting; her vows to protect and to serve do not waver, even in the face of waning Wonder.

[Jarod Nightingale] [Cue Pleasant British Narrator (a la Stephen Fry): "As a matter of happenstance, it turns out that it was indeed a chair that Emily sat down in, and not the couch after all."]

[Jarod Nightingale] "This makes me rather glad I never attend meetings," the cat-prince commented dryly after talk of Molly and amplification. He quieted though, when the conversation veered back into more serious territory. He could be good at feigning indifference, but truthfully these kinds of events worried him as much as they did anyone else, and he wasn't going to make light of what was... not a terribly light situation.

They were planning to destroy a Node. It... did not sit right with anyone.

Luka's status as casual distraction had just been promoted to stress reliever, but since the cat didn't seem to mind terribly - and in fact, appeared to be thoroughly enjoying the attention - Jarod continued his ministrations, working his fingertips in little circles around the cat's neck and shoulders, then down its back, then back up along its stomach. And so on. Slowly, meticulously, and with a kind of innate understanding of how touch affected a living body. When the cat's purring grew into a steady vibration, he smiled a little. Charmed, in spite of himself.

[Ashley McGowen] Of all the people at that meeting, Ashley is probably not the one other people would have pegged to take the idealistic approach: that nodes are sacred by default, that its destruction was unacceptable. Other people were surprised when she did. But few people can be said to know Ashley well, and even fewer can be said to understand what drives the Hermetic. Last night she spoke with Nathan about it, told him that she didn't think that sort of destruction was ever worth it. But sometimes, it's the only choice that makes sense, given very limited options.

It doesn't sit with her well either. It's evident in her tone, in the way the delicate lines that sketch her jaw and hands and shoulders have tensed. "You should be," she says to Jarod.

Then, to Emily, "We're unable to do it remotely. They've set up a series of wards using the Ars Conjunctionis that are also warded against magical tampering. I could bring those down, but not without taking a lot of time. So we're going to take out a wall, which will let you, me and Israel through to destabilize the node. Israel wants me to bring Kage, but...I doubt Kage is going to want in on something like this." Perhaps a mark of how well she knows the Orphan. Together they'd tried to find a way to restore a Marauder to sanity; Kage champions lost causes, and she knows this.

"If it helps, the node was...sleeping, I guess, for lack of a better word, for a long time and it's only partially there now. It's highly unstable and its continued presence is probably going to cause problems for Sleepers at the very least." The bitter edge to her smile suggests that this is not good enough for her, that it's barely consolation.

[Emily Littleton] Emily shakes her head. She digs the fingerprint of her middle finger into her temple. There is no hiding that she is likewise displeased. Idealism and duty were not easy things to balance. There is someone she would talk to about this, as a peer, but he's not here. It's the first time she's felt that particular flavor of missing him; it's a notable transition; it's a thing she doesn't stop to wonder at just now.

"Working with Traditionalists to destroy an irreplacable thing of Wonder and Grace, simply because we're afraid of what it might do? No, that does not sound like Kage. She was against destroying the Chalice, this past summer, and that was more directly malicious. You could ask her -- but I wouldn't expect her help."

Once Kage was Emily's rowan-haired Other, and their paths kissed in the wood, at the hollow marked by The Court. Now the Court belongs to a broader kith, more hands to hold it, more feet to trod the paths. Her path and Kage's greet one another less often, they kiss rarely, they've grown cold. There are fewer meetings at the heart-box, secrets passed between fingertips like whispers, like sighs. It is a deeply felt absence; she is diminshed for it. Just as she is diminished when either Ashley or Jarod is gone over long.

Emily exhales and blinks her eyes open again.

"Do you have any of the charms I made left?" she asks. "I don't have access like I used to, and I don't have any more Tass. I can't make more, but those should still be active. Barely." Time had passed more quickly than she'd anticipated.

She shifts again, brings her elbows to rest on her knees, leans forward like that, thoughtful, studying the shape of the box of photographs, of the kitten in Jarod's lap, chewing on something. Seeking something.

"Damn," she says, and it's a low and whispered thing. It's not veiled in another tongue. Rueful. "Tell me. Is this Solomon's idea? Is he pushing for this as much as the others?" It was the Templar's way, but it bothers Emily. Almost as much as it bothers Ashley. "I'm sure it's too late to dissuade anyone from this course, but I wish there was someone else within the Chorus to talk to about this. It feels wrong, Ash. This is the sort of thing we're supposed to fight to save isn't it?"

[Jarod Nightingale] He had nothing to contribute to this conversation, so he didn't. Though this was not due to lack of interest, as evidenced by the way Jarod glanced up from the cat in his lap to watch the pair of them and listen with muted interest. Of course, when the Chorus was mentioned, he glanced back down at the cat again, though that... might just as well have been completely meaningless.

They were making friends, him and the cat. And so long as Jarod was being on good behavior, this was likely what he would continue doing.

[Ashley McGowen] "Solomon and Israel's," Ashley says, "but the others backed it, except Gregor. I presented every fucking alternative that I could, but it was pretty much just me." The iron in her voice isn't for Emily, and neither is the anger; fortunately, the Singer probably knows her well enough at this point to know that. Perhaps she's a little frustrated, to hear of others' reservations that weren't voiced at the meeting after the fact.

In fact, that is almost certainly what it is. "Fuck, I hate it too. It's settling. For safety. But apparently there's nothing that can be summoned to guard it, they're sitting on it and they're going to sterilize and ruin it if we leave it in their hands, and trying to hold it would be suicide. I could have argued with them for hours, but saving it....isn't pragmatic. The argument is that destroying it makes me feel bad. That doesn't fucking sway anyone."

There's a bitterness underlying all of this that runs deeper than this incident. Recognition that preserving these things, fighting for them, has so far been a losing battle.

There's a look shot toward the cat in Jarod's lap, and Luka at this point has rolled onto his back and curled around with a sigh, seemingly quite content with the Verbena's ministrations. Ashley, whose breaths are a little shallow at this point, pauses to attempt to right herself. She eyes Jarod a moment, silent as he is, but does not attempt to tug some opinion out of him.

"There are two left," she says to Emily finally. "I'll give them to you. They're planning to move on Sunday."

[Emily Littleton] "Isn't pragmatic," she echoes. There's a touch of sadness to it. Emily all but recoils from that thought. She's had thoughts like it before, very much like it; she's acted on them. She knows what sort of sacrifice comes on their heels, and that it's never what she would have offered freely. It's different, this year, to talk about these all or nothing discussions. She's achieved a bit of perspective. Enough to make her rub her palms together and interlace her fingers, shake her head a bit, frown softly.

"There's a lot we let burn in this city," she says, to no one in particular. She's thinking of a place that isn't here, now. It looms at the edge of her memory. She tips her face up a little, glances upward for just a moment and then back to Ashley.

"No," she says, of the charms. "I'll take one and you the other. I have no cabal to support, now. Even if I did still, they wouldn't have come into something like this with me." She's calling out Chuck's cowardice and indecision plainly. Without apology. Ashley will know it. "Israel should be able to provide for herself, and for Solomon. This small thing I can do for the two of us."

She has to bite back her reply to what Ashley says is her argument. Emily has to keep herself from explaining that it's not about emotion, at all, not about making someone feel bad. She has to stop herself from condemning the others for losing sight of the few sacred, hallowed things around them, evidence of Grace, just because they have lost any sense of what that means. Because Emily is not so high, nor is she so mighty; she has fallen away from that Grace, she has been reborn into its awareness.

She swallows it down.

"Sunday?" She glances away and mentally calculates something. The immediacy of this leaves her little time for thought or preparation. Decisions have been made and Emily is anything but a compliant, willing, thoughtless soldier. It bothers her, it rankles her visibly. She glances to Jarod and Luka with a sort of wistful envy for a moment, and then nods.

"I should go brush up on a few things. I'm out of practice, thanks to the holidays," she tells them. "I'll touch base before Sunday, with both of you," she says, and there's a look to Jarod that says more than words might have. That she does want to talk to him; that there is welcome enough to extend that.

"I just --" Emily exhales as she stands, and it comes out in a rush of sigh. And no, she doesn't finish that thought as she collects her things. Whatever stillness she'd brought in with her tonight is swept away, brushed clean from her. Emily has things to do, and quandries to settle, and miles to go before she sleeps. (We are always on the anvil [Sometimes I wish You didn't think my shoulders were so broad]).

"Someday it won't be like this, Ash. I'm going to hope for that," is her parting for the Hermetic, just before the door closes behind her.