Καλησπέρα and I miss you

[Emily Littleton] It is late on Emily's side of the world, and the moon hangs high and lambent over head, shining. It's darker her, on the north side of the island, and the village and town lights only reach so far into the sky. They cannot dim the moon or the stars. It's beautiful. There is a warm and lazy breeze, the sound of people gathered further down the cobble-stone street, of a club that spins mostly 80s music and some of that in translation, of karaoke, of late night conversations. They're muted when they reach her balcony, even moreso when they become the subtle backdrop to her call.

It's six-thirty in Chicago's afternoon, nearing seven. Two-thirty in the morning for Emily. It has been a very long time since she called. But she's calling now. From a far away place, so her cell phone number shows up as a +1-and-then-some-digits, regardless of how he'd had it programmed.

[Jarod Nightingale] If Emily had called any earlier in the day, Jarod would have still been in Boston. Or, rather, he might have been on a plane coming home from Boston. Or in an airport dealing with any number of tedious and stressful issues that were associated with travel. Especially traveling with a child and a canine. Had Emily called yesterday, he'd have been at his sister's wedding.

But she didn't call yesterday, and she didn't call earlier today. She called... literally moments after he'd returned home to the house in Madison. The smartphone buzzed faintly from the back pocket of his jeans, where he'd stuck it temporarily while he was dealing with their luggage, and he pulled it out and glanced at the screen. A few seconds passed before he answered.

"And what fabulous and exotic location might you be calling me from tonight?"

[Jarod Nightingale] [Int+Linguistics - That's greek to me, but I'm pretty good at this language thing. +2 diff for unstudied language]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 8)

[Emily Littleton] "Κρήτη," she answers, and the R rolls delicately on her tongue. Emily does not sound like a native Greek speaker, but enough time on the island and enough exposure to locals has taught her to pronounce some words with authenticity.

"Καλησπέρα, Jarod," she says, and his name is shaped in that subtly canted accent of hers, tinged lightly with the colors of the language she'd just been speaking, wreathed through with her own Manchester roots. It might sound familiar, or welcome, or even wanted. Most remarkably, it sounds warm, bereft of some of her natural coolness, less stifled by her innate evasiveness.

There's a little pause, and the sounds of the village surrounding her seep in. They help breach the silences, the odd pauses international lines put on phone calls.

"I called to see how you're doing," she says, like it's a thing that friends-like-they-are might do. Like it wasn't so damned personal and un-closeted, and not self-protective, and out of character. She doesn't exactly ask him how are you doing?, instead she states an intent and sees if he might follow up, walk into it willingly. This is their dance, different from all her others. Jarod is a singular entity in her life, as Emily might be in his. With an ocean and a sea between them, she can afford to be a little less guarded, almost, maybe, warm.

[Jarod Nightingale] She'd called to see how he was doing. Out of the blue, and after a rather lengthy absence of such calls from either side. There were any number of ways in which he might have reacted to that, but what he landed on was...

"Tired." But there was a lightness to his voice that prevented the word from sounding broody, because he didn't mean tired in the emotional sense, and for people like he and Emily... that made all the difference. "I just got back from Boston with Ilana." (And the puppy, and Gale. He didn't mention either of them.)

The words that Emily used were in a language that he wasn't familiar with, but the sound of them was fairly easy to pinpoint, especially for someone like him who'd traveled a lot and spent a great deal of time learning and studying languages. As for their meaning... that wasn't so terribly hard to guess at, given the context. "Greece must be lovely this time of year. I should go back some day. Maybe I can pawn the kid off on some poor, unsuspecting babysitter for awhile."

He was teasing, of course. Ilana meant the world to him. He'd never leave her with someone for any prolonged length of time. (Or so he told himself for now, anyway. One had to imagine that sooner or later he'd be forced to break that rule.)

He hadn't really answered Emily's question, but he sounded well, at least. "How are you doing?"

[Emily Littleton] "Boston sounds ..." There is a pause. Emily considers her adjectives carefully. Someone does the street is singing along with a Grease medley (oh the homonym-ic irony), and it undercuts any idea she might have had of making commentary on his family members, or Ashley's acquaintances. "... muggy," she settles for this. A truth. Simple, but honest: East Coast summers sound muggy to her, like land-locked Augusts often do, too.

"It is lovely," she tells him, with a note of appreciation in her tone. For the island, or maybe for the attempt at honesty that they're sharing. Something too fragile and nascent to name, just now. "You should visit. Crete is so different from Athens," she appends.

Her words are languid, slowed by something other than alcohol. Slowed but not muddied. It takes a moment for the nuance to slip in: she's relaxed, long-limbed and draped over a patio chair on the terrace that overlooks the dark, slumbering sea. Her voice almost carries with it the hint of moonlight in her hair.

"I think you'd like it here. I'm staying in a very small village, where people are actually friendly, and I have to sit on the rooftop to really get mobile service, and the music seems stuck about a decade or three in the past. It's like time travel, without any of the ethical complications," she teases. The words cant a little toward her usual wry wit, but are softened by something warmer instead. A fondness that she isn't outright hiding.

He hadn't really answered her question, and she hadn't really answered his, but they'd given each other something honest to start from. Intimations and hints, clues to follow up on. It was more than they might have a couple months before.

"I miss you," she tells him, but the words are somehow not all that weighty. "Talking with you. Before everything in Chicago came tumbling down -- I do not miss that city," she says, as if it were a place she could unmake by ignoring it. "But I miss the people. Well... certain people."

[Jarod Nightingale] "I've been." You could hear the smile in his voice when she mentioned Crete. It had been awhile, true, but Jarod had a strong memory for places. And people. Experiences, really. Those were the kinds of things that stayed with him. "And yes, I do like it there."

Truthfully, he liked many places. Even Chicago, for all its flaws. (One would imagine that he wouldn't live there otherwise.) But a place was always nicer when one could experience it in... doses. Where the best parts of it could be relished in, and the worst parts ignored. Madison he liked too, but the more time he spent here, the more he began to feel a bit bored with its night-time entertainment options. (Not that it mattered really. That was why he had two homes.)

I miss you, she said. In a warm, light voice. The kind that you'd expect a person to use to tell a friend that their conversation was missed. It didn't feel like it meant anything, in particular, but neither did it feel like it didn't mean anything. It was, yes, honest. Still, her admission was met with a bout of silence on his end of the line. Not too long. No more than a few beats. But it was there.

"We have fractured a bit, lately," he conceded. "That happens." Friendships, to him, were often cyclical things. They could be for many people, but for him especially. One would imagine that this was probably the only way that someone like Jarod could really stay friends with anyone, given how problematic prolonged exposure to him could become. And then, after another pause...

"I miss you too."

It sounded a bit more weighty than hers had. But not much. Perhaps there was some calculation to the way he followed this up with, "Ilana got a puppy. And I got an... apprentice." Beat. "It feels fucking bizarre, saying that."

[Emily Littleton] "I think Ilana got the better end of that deal," she tells him, and Jarod can almost see the way her mouth shifts to a lop-sided smile as she teases them, and the time they've been apart contracts a little more, and this feels a bit more like the beginning, with her standing in his flat and him goading her about her newfound status: Awake. But it isn't as tense as that, this isn't (not necessarily) verbal foreplay. There's a measure of it, lurking, but it will always be between them, one imagines.

His was weightier, and brokered an answering quiet in her. It lingers, and it colors her next words but only so much.

"They must be something," she leaves the specifics up to innuendo. "If you're willing to claim them outright like that." Emily had been, but hadn't been, his Apprentice. They'd stood on muddied and uncertain ground. She wouldn't have had it any other way. It left their relationship, even now, in a place that defied words and categorization. Maybe that's why its effect was measured in the length of her silences, or his.

"You were a good teacher," she tells him, to reassure as much as to remember. "I'm more worried about you and a puppy than you and an apprentice. How did Ilana ever get that past you?"

There's nostalgia, now, wrapped around her words. A thing remembered, a kinship and a warmth, that was trying to come forward enough to rekindle that communication between them. It doesn't grasp and it doesn't over-reach, but for the first time in a long time he could imagine that she was open again. More the girl who stood, rain soaked and wondrous, barefoot in his flat that one night and less the broken young woman who'd cried against him in Madison at Halloween.

[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod laughed, and the sound contained some knowing bemusement. One could only imagine how someone like him might be coping with the combined stress of having to deal with a new puppy (they were needy things, puppies... they needed training, they needed food, they needed attention...) and a twenty year old apprentice at the same time. One could imagine that Jarod was hard-pressed to tell the difference between them, at times.

"Ilana definitely got the better end of that deal."

But then Emily said, they must be something, and his amusement sobered. There was a bout of silence on his end of the line, neither a confirmation nor a dismissal. When she told him that he'd been a good teacher a small, hesitant smile touched his lips, but again... he didn't say anything. This was one of the reasons why phone conversations could be so frustratingly inadequate. There was too much communication lost by lack of sight.

How did Ilana ever get that past you?

"Months and months of persistence," he replied with what sounded like a tired sigh. "And a few hunger strikes. I wasn't going to. You know how I am about dogs. But then Nick moved to DC and... " he trailed off a moment. "I don't know. I just wanted to cheer her up." Unspoken, but obvious: I can't bear it when she's sad.

"He's not so bad, I guess. I just hate the fucking fur. I need to learn how to cast some kind of... anti-static rote, or something." (Not that he could. He didn't have the right spheres for that. Yet.)

A beat.

"The kid... he's..." he didn't seem to know how to articulate what he wanted to say here. Or maybe he just couldn't. "He'd be a good Verbena, I think. Probably better than I am. And he doesn't really have anyone, so... he kindof latched on to me. But he's alright."

Emily was returning to a version of herself that seemed more... her, somehow. Pure in her curiosity and reverence. Jarod, perhaps, was in more of a state of flux. But he was still Jarod. He probably always would be, no matter the alterations to his life. "I took him to Boston with us, to take care of the dog." (Wealthy people had such luxuries.) "Damn near gave my step-mother a fucking heart attack. It was worth it, just for that."

[Emily Littleton] Her laugh ripples across the line, hushed and gentle but calling up warmer notes still. Emily's smile is crooked, canted to one side, lazily wry to match the snark in his tone. Had he been able to meet them, he'd find her eyes steady and just touched with that darker mirth. Very much herself, indeed. Perhaps more herself than Jarod had ever seen her.

"I take it your family is, well, still your family..." There's a balance to the cadence of her words, one that threads the tiny pauses between them into a sort of double-entendre (your family is well [... and still your family]).

Emily breathes out, it delineates a little break between levity and something less pointedly playful. "You're good to her," she says, of Ilana, of who Jarod has become with Ilana in his life. "I'm glad you found each other."

There's talk here, of Boston. And Boston necessarily leads to Ashley. Emily knows that Kage is with Ashley, likely in Boston. That the three of them are all tied up in co-localization, than the three of them (a different subset now) will be tied up in the same soon. She knows, but she doesn't touch on that. Jarod doesn't offer. He knows that she knows, and she knows that he knows, and it stays just that: awareness. Not an elephant in the room, but neither a needy thing delved into and explored.

"I want to meet this apprentice of yours," she says, rather directly, baldly, just like that, which makes it a different matter entirely, because this is Emily. And because her voice is canted just so, making this a playful thrust in a verbal joust and nothing so plain as a demand or request. "You describe him a little like a well-meaning lamprey," she teases.

He kind of latched on to me. Jarod didn't allow anything to cling to him unless he wanted it there. Some part of this was on the Disciple's terms, however much he denied it. It amused Emily to hear this, and she was curious, and the Apprentice sounded a bit like a plaything or a puppy. Emily had a kitten, now on its way to feline adolescence; she'd learned to play with (stalk) her toys, too.

[Jarod Nightingale] "My family is well. And still my family." His response was somewhat cold and lacking in inflection. This was how it was, when he talked about them as a singular unit. Only when separating out his sisters might he have flashes of warmth. "And now my sister is married to some guy who's old enough to be her father. Fucking yay for her, I guess."

Jarod had never been happy or approving of this. Emily knew that from the way he'd stared icily at Violet's engagement ring at Ilana's birthday dinner, and the brief argument the two of them had shared in the hallway in hushed, angry tones. One could point out to him the hypocrisy in this, considering the ages of some of his own past sex-partners. Violet, in fact, had done exactly that.

It hadn't had terribly good results.

But they'd made up for it later.

You're good to her. I'm glad you found each other.

"So am I." And that was all he said about that. But that was all he needed to say.

He did not mention Ashley.

When Emily mentioned a desire to meet Gale, he laughed. In truth, Gale was anything but a pet or a plaything. And he hadn't so much latched on to Jarod as he had correctly identified that the two of them were uniquely compatible, paradigmatically speaking. Certain people might choose to believe that the two of them had met for a very good reason, but of course... Jarod didn't think that way. He'd met many apprentices in his lifetime. Emily, of course, being one of the notable ones. (More than notable - important. Meaningful.) That eventually he might happen to find one with a similar instinct and outlook to his own... wasn't so terribly surprising. What was surprising, as Emily well understood, was that Jarod had allowed it to happen. It had been an incremental thing, much the same way it had been with Emily herself. But yes, there was... a sense of this being official, now. Loathe though the man could be to admit these things.

There was a reason, yes. And he'd only given a small sense of it so far, but they had more than just a natural affinity for Life magic in common. (Why was it that Jarod had taken such an uncharacteristic interest in Emily, all those months ago? Many of the answers here were the same. [Though Emily and Gale were most assuredly not the same person.])

"He is, a bit. I'm... not sure how the two of you would get along, but I'm sure that can be arranged some day."

[Emily Littleton] The Nightingales. Emily well remembered, however close to breast she kept her opinions of them. She still hadn't told Jarod how uncomfortable she'd felt, cornered by the brother whose mobile seemed surgically attached to his head. Emily was, after all (and before most things), a diplomat's daughter. But she was not a debutante. She was not meant to mingle with such lofted company. The felt apart from him, not a part of him.

The night air and moonlight in her curls suited her better. The Singer girl runs her fingertips along the line of her forearm, not quite following it up past her wrist, to where one hand presses the smartphone neatly to her ear.

"Mmmm," she says. The sound rides a line between calming and disapproving, straddles it well. It splits the difference between thoughts of Nightingales and intimations of apprentices.

"You hesitate," she points out, focusing instead on his quiet misgivings. "I'll have you know I can be social," she attests, drawing any censure toward herself, gallantly sparing this unnamed and fledgling Verbena.

Someone in the avenue below says something sharply in Greek. It rises in lost syllables, unshaped sound, between the thickly stuccoed walls. Emily pauses, peeks over the edge of the terrace and down, and then shrugs a little. Closing time: the bars were closing up. She ached for a cigarette, a habit that had never really been hers to claim. Her fingers formed the absent shape, wanting, unsated.

[Jarod Nightingale] "I know you can." He smiled, a thing of remembrance - though it was not this that he was remembering.

It seemed a very long time ago that they'd met. That they'd walked through the wintered landscape together. That he'd taught her to feel living patterns in a garden atrium. It seemed a long time, even, since they'd played soccer (football) with Ashley in the park. That was an odd juxtaposition in his head, now. The two of them. And him.

He'd been standing until now, resting a hand on the smooth countertop of the island in his kitchen. Not the kitchen that Emily knew and remembered from his place in Chicago. This one belonged to a house in Madison. It belonged to the woods and the lake and summer. And Gale. And a puppy.

It was a house that someone a little less cold might live in.

Moving now, he walked over to the sofa and stretched out on it. There was the sound of rustling, and that of a long, quiet exhale.

"How are you? I mean... how are you, really?"

Because it had been a long time. Because he knew - about Solomon, about Gabriel, about Owen. Because he cared.

[Emily Littleton] It was lifetimes ago than they'd met. She'd swear to it. Back when all of this was shiny and new. Before she had a Tradition, before she had any Rank. Before she'd saved anyone's life. Before she'd taken any one's life. Before she could see the patterns in many things. She'd been a college kid, volunteering at the food bank, because it was the sort of thing she did when she had too much time on her hands.

Barely Awake. Hopeful.

A year and a half, give or take a few months. If she thought to count them out, it would surprise her how few moons had really slipped through her fingers, sand through a sieve, time marked as weightier than its true measure. Emily breathes out instead of answering, and though she moves the phone a little ways from her head, though she tries to gentle that sound away from his ears, the quiet lingers.

"έτσι κι έτσι," comes the reply. It has the same sing-song merits that its translation, in almost any language, holds. So-so. Solala. Comme ci comme ça. It's the linguistic equivalent of a shrug, and her attention is pinned somewhere out to the darkling sea, where the moonlight does not so much as ripple on the swells.

"I'm better, don't get me wrong. Getting out of Chicago for awhile was probably the only thing I've done right this year. I've traveled with my father, gotten out from under Solomon's thumb. I feel like a person again, not just this vessel that works miracles when she has the proper clearance." There's a burr of annoyance to that, but it softens quickly. It doesn't have the strength to stay.

"I feel like me, if that makes any sense. I'm happy -- and maybe it's because I'm ignoring everything that happened," and isn't that a polite way to sum up her first Awakened year, "But maybe I'm okay with that, too. I don't know. It's so... unbalanced there. Frenetic. Dangerous. It feels good to be out, for awhile."

She doesn't say: No one's died. That's a distinct upside to diplomatic envoys; they rarely involve combat or lethality. She doesn't say: I feel like can fucking breathe again.

"It's beautiful here. Things like that can touch me again. It's warm at midnight, and I'm not too numb to notice anymore, so I'd say I'm better," she assures him. The corner of her mouth lifts, echoes a sincere and somewhat guarded smile. "A little bored with mundane life," she chuckles, rolls the sound between them like a secret, like a conspiracy building. "But better."
[Jarod Nightingale] She was better. Maybe not luminously happy, but relaxed and free of the weighty thoughts that had plagued her for so many months last winter. And despite the complicated feelings that inevitably surfaced whenever he thought about that time, he felt some relief at that - knowing that she was alright. He hadn't been worried. He had, in fact, not been thinking of her much at all.

So I let her go.

He could be frighteningly good at compartmentalizing his life. But that didn't erase their past, and it didn't change who they were - maybe always would be - to each other. It didn't mean that he didn't still care. (Clearly, he did.) When Ashley had mentioned that Emily was being mentored by Solomon; told him what had occurred between the two of them, he'd more than a little angry.

They'd never discussed Solomon before, he and Emily. This was, in fact, the first time that Jarod could remember her talking about anything related to her Tradition with him at all. And it was barely a passing mention. Perhaps she understood, intrinsically, that someone like Jarod would never be able to talk about the Chorus without at least some small twinge of bitterness. And so this subject had been a void between them.

But he didn't exhibit any surprise when she mentioned it now. He had heard, of course. Other people had told him. And if he had any judgment, he reserved it for himself.

"I wouldn't say you're ignoring it. You're moving past it. That's healthy." He breathed out quietly, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair. Strands of it fell whisper-soft against his forehead. And while there were many, many bluntly vicious things that he could say about Emily's erstwhile teacher (a man who he had never met, and now had absolutely no desire to,) what he ultimately voiced was: "He didn't deserve you."

So much an understatement it was almost laughable.

Then, a sly smirk. "Mundane life isn't so boring. Clearly you aren't doing it right."

[Jarod Nightingale] [Edit: "he'd been more than a little angry."]

[Emily Littleton] She laughs a little, taken enough by surprised that the sound catches in her throat, comes up a bit as a huff, then a chuckle, then a rueful trailing sound. He could imagine the shape her mouth or the glint in her eyes in that moment; he's seen it before. Emily looks back over her shoulder toward the glass door between the apartment and the terrace, notices the faint light echoing there, realizes that Niko is awake and possibly near enough to listen in.

There's a struggle there, between the life she had (has) and the one she's living. It's bittersweet and languid, not the sort of thing she expects to settle out in one phone call, or on one island, or maybe even in one lifetime. There is no glint of silver around her neck tonight, instead a thin leather cord. No locket, instead a small circlet of dark green jade. Her skin is bronzed; her frame a bit more generous, less starved. There's a softness to the hollows of her cheeks. It's summer here; it's Winter on the other end of the phone.

"Mmmmmm," the sound teases, taunts a little, seems oh-so-self-assured. "I rather think I'm doing alright at it." The smirk would be answered by a shrug of her shoulder, some little gesture to help convey her lack of worry, something easy and physical and undisguised. But he's not here, so he'll have to imagine it, and this Emily is not entirely the one he'd known before. She's lighter; she might be halfway to healthy; God forbid, she may actually yet learn to thrive.

"Though if you would like to come on over and show me how it's done," she offers, all very faux-prim and utterly polite. [i}Gracious[/i], Emily. Accommodating, Emily. "You are most welcome to." It's such a leading tone, but there's no press behind it. It's playful, without laying out any expectations.

[Jarod Nightingale] "I think I've already shown you plenty," he replied in a dryly matter-of-fact tone. Not quite taking the bait, but not quite not taking it either. "You're more than alright at it." Here the corner of his mouth turned up and the inflection took on a hint of wry humor. "...When you give yourself permission."

The house was very quiet. Exhausted from the trip, Ilana had fallen asleep on top of the covers of her bed with a book in her hand and a ginger puppy curled up by her feet (where he wasn't allowed to be.) In a few minutes Jarod would probably get up and check on them.

"I should go," he said with a quiet sigh. "I was meaning to take a run tonight."

He'd been running a lot lately. The change in surroundings seemed to have reminded him that activity could be enjoyable for its own merits, rather than simply a means to an end. Here it was a freeing thing - running. It was the earth and the sky and blood pumping through his veins.

[Emily Littleton] I should go, he says, and Emily makes no argument. She doesn't try to hold the line longer, this is not some sort of needful call. It's a whim, calling him in the first place, and they are not in a place to cling or cleave to each other right now.

"It was good to talk to you," she tells him. The words are plain, unencumbered by other meanings or regrets. "Enjoy your run."

Somehow that's better, in her mind, than saying Goodbye. There's less certainty to it, less implied anything. Her life is far more diffuse, now, and Emily is finding that there's a sort of simplicity in that. Niko's shadow darkens the door, and she offers him a smile and a little wave. She tips her phone just enough for the touch screen to light up. They do not intrude on each other's separate places. They are the children of diplomats. They understand complicated lives that cannot or should not intertwine.

"Oh, and, Jarod?" This is lighter, unvarnished teasing. It is not meant to be prickly in anyway. "Good luck with the puppy." And the curl of the word suggests she also means his new-found Apprentice. There's a note of fondness but that, that is the first thing she tucks away even slightly tonight. It is restrained, jealously withheld.

[Emily Littleton] [... and wrap! ...]