Picture it: Denver, 2pm. A quiet hour on the city’s mass transit system between people getting back to the office after the lunch break and the evening rush to get home. The weather over the city has become even more changeable than it has been over the past few months as the seasons turn and summer moves into autumn. Not quite into the season for blizzards to mingle with hours of bright sunshine, but there’s the definite promise of a massive rainstorm before the day is out. It wouldn’t be Denver without one dramatic shift in the weather at some point during the day.
But we digress. Heading east from Perry station is a light-rail train. At the back of the second car sits Alexander. He’s relaxed back in the seat, head resting against the wall behind him. His gaze is out of the window, but it’s not fixed on anything in particular. His eyes flick from one thing to another – a tree to a building to random people at stations – as the train makes its way into the city from Golden. It’s quiet time. He’s not really one for meditation – not yet, anyway; he has been trying – but this comes close. The rhythmic rattle of the carriage and the gentle passage of the city outside of the window is almost hypnotic.
He’s wearing black combats, covering the tops of a pair of walking boots. There’s also a red t-shirt, previously covered by the jacket that’s lying on the seat next to him. It’s warm enough I the carriage not to need it.
Delilah
There is a light rail heading East from Perry Station; Perry is like Peri is like Fairy, this is a root-word, this is a word-root; a light rail from the East is a light rail heading in the direction plants yearn, the direction flowers first see when they open their eyes, the direction of compass roses and of daybreak and of firstlight and Delilah is at Knox Station trying to keep herself from getting lost but she feels lost or has become lost wayward is the word wayward without loss which is all to say that while the light rail speeds East in the East there is Delilah which is fitting because
well, there are reasons.
Delilah who is standing by a track outside with the air cupped and hushed with a storm, busy with the presentiment of weather, one of the few people out and about, and Delilah has a fedora clamped down over her pale sunbeam-radiant flare of barbaric gold hair and Delilah is wearing a band shirt worn-out from age and a pair of jeans and a sweater that is autumnal colors textured knits knubby so it's reminiscent of leaf-litter moss-rot and it hangs on her arms strange architecture and slides from one shoulder and
she has one hand on the top of her hat as if to hold it down and she is reading a paper map instead of peering at the phone in her bag
and there's a craftbag by her calf, and thus have we introduced our heroes: unlikely as they seem.
Alexander[And dice, beacuse dice are fun. Especially where botched Awareness rolls are involved.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Delilah[I want to play the Awareness roll will there be a botch game, too! -1 for Alexander's Arcane.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Delilah- being Awake means being Aware, means having another sense to rely on and to flex, means being intuitive, noticing, and here is a feeling of a Mage who is radiant, radiance and lustrousnress, but filaments threading, in and out and through, stitch by stitch, forward motion, movement, action, the verb of radiance, of being bright, candescing, the verb of threading, through and out and in
AlexanderThe trains rattles and shakes and makes its way along its tracks, running the same route over and over and over… Almost the very definition of Stasis, apart from where Entropy plays a hand and takes things a little off the rails. As the train approaches, there’s a reinforcing of that stasis as an aura of… not cold, exactly. Although that is part of it. More that sensation of standing on a mountain in perfectly still air. No sound. No movement. Everything Frozen. Maybe it seems like the pause between the train stopping and the doors opening takes a little longer than normal. Or the electronic displays take a fraction of a second longer to change than before the train arrived and will again after it leaves.
It’s a bright, sunny day on the mountainside as the train pulls into the station, though, as their auras merge and spark against each other. That feeling of radiance threading through everything? Alexander does pick up on it as the train slows, squealing to a stop. His gaze is a little less random as it does. He’s looking with a little more of a purpose now. He’s looking through the window to find the source. And then to work out if it’s the portent for a new threat or a new friend. As ever, the jury is out.
The station is just as quiet as the train, so it’s easy to pick out the source. The woman with the wild blonde hair who’s looking down at her map. If she looks up, they’ll make eye contact. He’s not staring, so much as being watchful.
DelilahThey make eye contact, because Delilah does look up. He can see her look up, look around, look to the left, look to the right, look at the windows of the train, skimming the surface, a glance can be a sieve, a sieve to catch that stillness that sense of being at the heart of a glacier where everything is frozen where everything is ice and her hand falls from the top of her hat and then their eyes have met and Delilah frankly stares back (but is it back when Alexander is not staring to begin with, only being watchful, watchful as the ghost of a warrior doesn't yet know he is dead, watchful as a knight on the precipice of a challenge, watchful as oh what are other watchful things that he watches like).
Delilah is no good at pretending and her features are broad are honest and lucent certainly see through them and her thoughts are right there to be fished unguarded, and in her unguardedness her eyebrows have risen demure little arches and she lifts the hand formerly occupied with hat to her shoulder and then higher in a quick wave-or-greeting uncertainty matched by a certain stalwart rootedness in stance and then her eyebrows fall and a stitch comes between them and she wraps her arms around her arms and mimes a little shiver
then she points at Alexander, points her thumb at herself, and points toward the door
asking something and acknowledging something with a quick glance around her, straighten up, see, while a business woman wheels a trolley by quick staccato click click on the cement
AlexanderThey make eye contact and the woman waves. Even though he’s the only one at that end of the car, he still looks around to make sure that it is him she’s waving at. It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s waved back, only to find the brother-lover-wife-whatever behind waving too. He looks back to her, hesitantly raising a hand in a wave of his own. He looks, squints a little, trying to place her face somewhere. Had they bumped into each other somewhere before? The face wasn’t familiar. Neither was the aura that announced her. Maybe one aspect of it was but, then, his brief time being aware of such things had shown how much overlap there was between different people. It was only when they developed new depths that they became true fingerprints of the Mage.
She points between them and the door, a question asked but unspoken. A question he doesn’t know the words to. Does she want help with the door? Him to come out into the station? Is she asking if he minds her bringing their personal spaces a little closer to each other? He cocks his head to the side, squinting again, shrugging. Puzzled.
DelilahDelilah looks as if she should be a myth, dawn-maiden, Eosphorus, some shining woman who brings in the dawn who is wrapped up in the dawn who was called dawn by all her teachers no matter how often she corrected them she looks like a myth or a story occupying that tradition firmly in spite of the jeans and the sweater and the hat modern-day Dawn running errands, sun-soaked, rosy-fingered, something, something, but that's the only familiarty to be found in Delilah isn't it? That sense that hey she would be a good model for this or for that; and Delilah squints too leaning forward as if he were print written too small on a menu no not a menu that implies she wants to buy or to eat and she does not devour people she is a person but she squints because the menu is too small mouth slack and then she twists her mouth together and glances again this way that and she has a second to decide, doesn't she, because they're making the last call, a train does not stop for long at any station and sometimes it seems as if there's barely a chance to make it to the doors, so she has to decide quickly;
anyway, Delilah takes the head-cock and the squint and the shrug and she translates it into a quick long-legged one-two and now she is on the train and it is pulling away
and she lingers by the door then reaches for a handhold rail something that gleams dull but with a radiance of its own as that kind of aluminum always does and there is beauty in citylife isn't there even scarred up dirty it's a dark fucking world run by rote stasis static trains
and anyway, Delilah is honest and honesty compells her to say, "Uh, hi. I hope you don't mind the gazing, it's just, you know, you've got that -- well you aren't called Jack are you?"
AlexanderSome would have you believe that this was one of those pivotal moments in history. That few seconds, that decision to board or to not board, forever changing the course of what will be their history. Those same people may even go as far as saying that their meeting here, today, was fated. It had always happened, will always happen. Maybe even that reality is dividing itself in two, based on that decision. Those people are other people.
Alexander has no belief in fate. No belief in much beyond what he can sense. What he does know is that their kind attract each other – a kind of gravity that pulls them together and spins them off in new directions. That chance gets a little skewed around them and, in a city of 650,000 people, they have an unerring knack of just bumping into each other.
One of life’s little mysteries.
Another stands in the train, hanging from the handrail and making the world a slightly brighter, more colourful place. (Like that first day when everything was just so beautiful? When it all became so much more complicated!) He sits up a little more in the seat. Wary. He’s not going to bolt. But experience so far has shown that these new Resonances announce one of two things, with the potential for a third firmly drummed into him by some of the others: A new ally, a Technocrat, or the world about to turn sideways. Again. At least she certainly wasn’t dressed like the proverbial man in black.
“Hi. And no problem, I was trying to work out if I knew you too. Never heard of Jack, though. Sorry.”
Delilah"Jack Frost," Delilah says, with a quick smile; the smile is shining shook from foil, sure, but her mouth is a demure thing, a Valentine's heart of a thing, and the smile wants to be coy. Delilah is not coy. Delilah could not be coy if she tried; genetics do attempt to help her out.
"That's who I meant. I was being, like, oblique. Too oblique. I've never met a Jack who felt like the heart of a comet before. Uh," a pause. Delilah is not shy, and Delilah is not the most perceptive of magi. Delilah is forthright; see, it's there even in how she glances around the train car again -- decides to root herself where she is lean against the pole since nobody else is around.
AlexanderA moment (Second? Minute? Ice age?) passes before a smile spreads across his face. The wariness is still present, but eases a touch. Maybe they’re not about to fall into the depths of some hell dimension just yet. “I’ve never been compared to a lump of dirty ice before, either. Or had a sunrise walk onto my train. Today is just full of new experiences.”
The smile fades a little, but the amusement still pulls at the corner of his eyes. “What did you want us to do with the door, by the way?”
DelilahHer shoulders lift lift lift in a quiet shake of laughter see another brief shining shook smile which would like to be sly but it isn't and it can't be so instead it's just a neat grin and then replace that with a moment's blank incomprehension, before comprehension dawns, ah ha ha, badumbum, but truly it does dawn, her expressions are waking little things, all sifting light, and she says,
"Oh!! I was asking whether you'd freeze me out if I came on the train. I know," frank, "one's personality isn't completely defined by one's feeling, but that feeling's defined by one's personality, at least -- usually, or most of the time, right? Or," guilt, because that wasn't the whole truth: "At least that's part of what I meant. I don't know. I guess I was asking if you'd get colder. Not!" oh, hasty! "That there's anything wrong with cold. Look at how popular that Frozen song is."
AlexanderHis mouth forms a soundless “ahh!” as he shifts a little in the seat, getting comfortable again. There’s a quick glance around the car to check for anyone nearby who might overhear. Other than what looked like a student – satchel bag, attention lost in the open text book on her lap – at the other end, they were pretty much alone for the moment. “I do forget that I can have that kind of effect on people. I kinda know the why, but my personality can’t really claim an awful lot of credit for it. But as superpowers go, it’s not one I’m familiar with. So you’re safe.”
“And let’s just say that the cold never really bothered me anyway.” The spirit of the smile returns to his face, a twinkle (of ice?) in his eye.
“You probably know this already, but the chances of this train breaking the laws of physics in some have at least doubled since you boarded.”
DelilahDelilah was going to ask a question, a personal question, the movement of it a clear thing under her skin, her expressions ever plain, ever clear, there is so little about Delilah that isn't clear lucent pellucid certainly she is dew-spangled but the quote undoes her and the intake of a breath that was going to be a personal question the concern of it etched between her eyebrows evens out into a laugh and she lifts one hand to her mouth as if to keep the laugh kept within bounds; but then it fades, completely, switched turned off and Delilah she looks around the train and drifts closer (light falling across a lawn, see), says,
"What? How come? Are you doing some kinda ritual?" Her credit is this; brash she may be, and rash, and forward, but she is not loud; her voice is low but it is suddenly serious and perhaps a touch wondering or reserved. "Is that your thing? You're a gambler who breaks the laws of physics in half like they're little matches?"
AlexanderThe question itself may be unasked, still yet another mystery, but its path across her face shows. And there’s maybe a touch of relief as it passes, distracted by the song-line that had been played so frequently over the radio since the film’s release. The smile and the laughter chases it off, and Alexander? Well, he doesn’t make any effort to discover what it might have been. She’ll ask or she won’t.
But she does ask if he’s some kind of gambler. To which he shrugs, again. “No ritual, no gambling, and about all I know about the laws of physics are a memory of high school. I meant more that things have a habit to turning stranger than usual when we start coming together. I assume you’ve found that out? Or is Denver just some kind of weird.. nexus for… weird…ness.” A corner of his mouth raises in a half-smile as he completely fails to come up with something witty. “But if we’re about to descend into the eighth circle of hell together, I guess we should at least know each other’s name?” He leans forward, extending a hand in greeting. “Alexander.”
DelilahThe reserve dissipates when he explains himself. Delilah has come even closer, see, close enough to take Alexander's hand when he offers it, 'lest they get sucked into Hell and don't know whose name to scream, "I sure hope we're not about to descend into the eight circle of Hell, or any of the other ones, not that you don't seem sort of solid so maybe an okay Hell-companion, but it's not high on my list of places to visit. Would you like me to see whether this train car is unlucky? Imminent Hell-descent has to count for ill-luck."
Delilah accepts Alexander's hand, shakes it. Hers is warm but not hot and strong. Delilah carries herself as if she is well-versed in the poem that is made between bone and sinew muscle and skin and the eloquence of everything working ogether, just so; "I -- uh, have you not been out of Denver, since ...?"
Delilah glances towards that college student and maybe she's still holding Alexander's hand, uses it to pull herself closer in a 'sly' way, see how 'covert' she can be, how 'sneaky,' then let it go, hair dangling down to half-conceal her earnest features, "I mean, you new or a veteran or is it some mix of both?"
Delilahooc: whoops, put "Delilah," as Delilah accepts Alexander's hand, shakes it.
Because she totally meant to say her name.
Alexander“Well…” he pauses. With the clanking and screeching and rumbling of the train, there is little danger of the student overhearing anything. But this stranger? So far there’s none of the push for bargaining that he’s seen with the Nephandi, and he can’t quite see her resonance fitting with that guy in the other world… Maybe she is ok..?
The pause is short but its effect comes with the conversation continuing along the track is was just about to start on. “I don’t know about the circles of hell, but this side of the river that surrounds them isn’t so bad. The rivermen aren’t much for conversation, but they’re perfectly civil.” He relaxes back against the back of the seat, the wariness dissipating. He may not be about to share his deepest, darkest secrets but with this statement? He’s taking the risk that she is what she appears to be and is waiting for things to take their unknown course.
He looks vaguely embarrassed as he stops speaking, almost as if he’s talking of things that he probably shouldn’t have seen yet. If the universe didn’t have a sick and twisted sense of humour. He carries on, though, replying to Delilah’s other points.
“Nope, I’ve not really been away since…” he gestures around him, at nothing in particular, “all this happened. Not unless you count the plains or the mountains as ‘away’. Which probably gives you an idea about that last one.
“How about you? Are you new in town, or have the laws of probablility been beheving badly and not pushing you towards any of the residents?”
DelilahDelilah stays leaning over just a little, the shining sheet of her hair a veil against the rest of the (mostly) empty train, but for Alexander; this is absolutely the secretest one can be surely, surely, and see, Delilah is some mythic light lady, some luminous story about the break of day personified, but she is also a threshold, a psychopomp, or is at least familiar with psychopomps, and she nods with a neat little air of wisdom when Alexander nervously expounds, the expression in her eyes haunted and curious and cautious, and she is obviously going to ask him for more of that story but Alexander carries on and she is swept up in the flow of conversation but she stops leaning and sits opposite him putting her craftbag on the seat by the window and they are now catty corner.
"Well!" a pause, then she laughs, and in spite of the hat reaches up to tuck a lank of hair behind her ear and glance out the window before back to the frozen cop the dirty piece of ice, "To be fair I like to make my own luck or keep an eye on likeliness, so I cheat." Frank, again, direct eye contact. "I cheat probability all the time. I have met a few of the open-eyed since I got here, though. Not as many as my sister, she makes me look like a hermit or a recluse or something -- Lucy? I don't know if you know her? But I've been open-eyed for a while now, so not really new. Not really a veteran either! There's so much to learn! Do bad things happen truly that often when more than one of us cross paths?"
AlexanderHe relaxes a little more at her reaction to the little of the story that he’s shared. The lack of disbelief shows that she’s at least familiar with the downright bizarre things that they come across. And, yes, maybe an understanding of the spirit world in particular if she recognises what she’s talking about. The others he could ask about? He hadn’t seen Sera since that day in the park and wasn’t she acting a little oddly after? Maybe not the person to talk to about it all. Kalen? Again, maybe not the idea person to talk to. That other woman, what was her name..? Irrelevant, really – he hadn’t seen her since. Having someone else who might understand..? He leans forwards, elbows resting on his knees. Closing in on their little catty corner a little more.
“You’re not a believer in fate, then? That seems to be a bigger divider than liking Twinkies in these parts.” He leans to one side, fishing a coin out of a pocket. He runs it between his fingers absent-mindedly. “I’m acquainted with the idea that probability can be played with, but it’s not something I can do. Hell, I have a hard enough time just looking at the damned stuff sometimes.” He looks down at the floor. “People talk about the wonder of what we do, and all I see in that is dust.” There’s another shrug. As if he really doesn’t know an awful lot about what he’s doing.
Then he sits up again as she mentions Lucy. “Yes!” It’s a little louder than intended, and he glances behind Delilah to check that the student was still distracted. “Yes. I’ve met her a couple of times. That’ll be what felt familiar about you, then.” A question crosses his face and escapes. “Does that happen with brothers and sisters? You share the whole,” he wiggles his fingers, “feeling thing?”
Then there’s her final question. He thinks, maybe longer than is exactly reassuring. “Maybe a little more often than things happen when we’re alone… I guess. But even then that doesn’t seem entirely rare. Maybe we’re just cursed. Or blessed. If you believe in that stuff.”
DelilahLooking down at the floor, he misses whatever Delilah's expression is (and of course it would be eloquent, of course it would be telling; of course it would be wordless and clear) when Alexander says all he sees in wonder is dust. Expressions are fleeting things, and anyway, Delilah also peeks around toward the other rider when Alexander sits up and is suddenly loud-loud and then she is grinning that almost-coy almost-sly but oh never just limned in gold sort of grin which diminishes once her attention returns to questions at hand. Her attention is solid, stolid, planted; her mouth is pursed (oh, neat, precise), flower-woman, a heart, listening.
She doesn't even interrupt when his silence spins out, because she is thinking, thinking about this idea, see, this idea that she has, and what she says is this, counting points out on her fingers, leaned forward and gaze still direct as anything could be.
"I do, but I don't. Believe in blessings and curses, that is. I mean: people aren't just blessed and cursed usually, but I know some people can do that, and circumstances, well, we don't live alone and solitary, y'know? There's always something going on somewhere, I guess. I don't know if brothers and sisters share the whole feeling," a delighted lift of her eyebrows, because he used her word!, "if they're blood relatives. Lucy and I, it's not by blood. I've never met another set of siblings bef--no wait. I did. They had different signatures, but I don't see why maybe it wouldn't happen some of the time."
"As for fate, I do and I don't believe in it. Well! It depends on what you mean by fate. I believe that any fate out there it comes down to choosing to take it on, I guess; it's not like a trap where you can only be one thing."
"And as for wonder, and - " she looks around and leans closer closer, her hands wrapped around her knee, and she looks a bit nervous and a bit hopeful, "okay. You can say no. But I think - maybe I have an idea? Well I know I have an idea. But I thought maybe - if you - we can check to see if bad luck is nigh. We. Maybe together. If you want to. I'd like to, like. Help you. And you'd be helping me, too. But how do you look at probability, when you do?"
She touches a knuckle to her lips and glances out at the window, just a flick of glance, before her eyes go back to Alexander's, at ready.
"I guarantee no dustiness."
AlexanderHe sits back in the seat again, back against the rest. Not wary, but considering. Contemplative silence, looking first at her and then down at the coin that he was still rolling around. Running his fingers over the coin that he’d been slowly – very slowly – getting to know. The feel of the face on one side, the slight scratch around the edge. It still the same coin that he’d picked out the first time Kalen had helped him to work things out.
He takes a breath, returning the coin to his pocket. “I think I’d like to try, and to talk some more, but another time? My stop’s coming…” And maybe he’s already given away too much. Delilah just felt.. well, like someone he could talk to. And wanted to talk to. Possibly in slightly more private surroundings. He fishes around in his jacket and pulls out an old coffee shop receipt and a pen, noting ‘Alexander’ and the number of the phone he’d bought to get the wonder of Ginger added to. “I think we should probably meet again, though. I think we probably can help each other.”
The train begins to slow as it approaches the next station, the platform visible in the middle-distance as the train rounds a curve in the track.
DelilahDelilah smiles and of course it is an unabashed brash sort of smile, for all the shape of it is demure, and it is still behind her knuckle so given to him as a cheshire sort of half-thing, and then she straightens too in order to dig in her bag and come up with a bonafied business card somewhat dented and carved and it will have her first name and her last and a number and an e-mail, and she is ready to trade Alexander.
"Okay," she says, and that's stolid too, bovine, because Delilah is stamped over by a fleeting time of twilight between but it is steady it is there, "I'll be seriousy happy when we get together again! Unless Hell is on our heels, but," she shrugs, sitting back now, glancing out the window to regard the slowing slowing slowing here they are at the station, "You know, before that I will still be delighted."
"It was nice to meet you, Jack!" Here, one of those smiles where it's like a bulb turning on wink half-a-grimace can-she-get-away-with-a-nickname guilty consciousness of the boldness.
AlexanderHis own business cards maybe give away a little too much about what his business is, and he’s still well aware of how some may react – have reacted – at discoving that. That the suspicion of “Union” follows the uniform. Or, at least, how people’s reactions can change entirely when discovering what it is they’re talking to. So he stays with the crumped receipt for the moment and slips her card into a pocket for later on.
He gathers up his jacket, slinging it over and arm, as the squealing of brakes builds to a climax and dies away suddenly. The smile’s back as he says, “I think I prefer Jack to Rocky. But nice meeting you too, Sunshine. Until the next time.” He bows his head, touching the peak of an imaginary cap, before standing and making his way out of the now-open door. He looks back in through the window as he walks past, waving farewell.
No comments:
Post a Comment