911 [Attn: All y'all.]

[mnemosyne]

Under what circumstances has Sera ever indicated that she didn't want to be touched? She is touch. She requires it the way most people require ordinary things like sunlight and oxygen and vitamins A and B and C and D and E and all their iterations and subsets.

Justin finds her first on this splintering bench in Garfield Lake Park, its concrete base covered in graffiti. The whole park is tagged and there's a messiness to the place that reminds you of: where you are. There are cigarette butts on the ground at her feet, but they are not hers. She has forgotten that she smokes. By the time Justin arrives after that call Sera has stopped crying but his hand on her shoulder and the sudden assertion of his resonance charges that and changes that and she doesn't get up because how do her legs work but she does lean into his embrace, crying again, but not-quite-bawling.

Justin, Pan's blood has dried enough that it does not come off on you, but there is Sera-snot on your torso and shoulder. And also: salt-tears.

--

Her shoulders are hitch-hitching with each breath she takes and her gut-wrenching resonance is prominent enough that Justin and then Hawksley must feel it, taste it, perhaps even shiver from it when they come close. The lingering residue of her magic, because she spent herself and spent herself and spent herself until her Will was virtually exhausted.

So: see, she is maaaybe in shock and certainly spent and pliant as a ragdoll, word salading this story about dreams and moths and dogs-they-weren't-alive and also blood-rain, which is way more than the cops got out of her but finally and most prominently, Pan Pan Pan, because she wants to be where he is with such intensity and could not make herself climb into the ambulance and cannot now make herself even think about it, any of it, her desire to go, her failure to go, her want to be where he is.

Somewhere in here a correction from Lena, right? She said she'd keep Sera informed and so (we are assuming) she does. Texts the proper hospital so what happens then is this corrective text to everyone magickal in her phone:

Sry. He's in Denver Health Medical Center no t ST. Ls.

Which means: to Pan's damn pager and to Jim and to Grace and to Justin and to Sid and to Mara and to Hawksley and even to Táltos if she has his phone number, which she may not, because who knows if he even has a phone. Out of context for most. One of those weird mass-texts you might ignore without said context, except Justin and Jim and Hawksley have context.

The only reason Shoshannah does not get a text is that Shoshannah does not have a phone.

--

So Justin examines her and he has a first aid kit he's prepared for these things and boy scout she tells him with a sniff when he's unpacking something-she-doesn't-understand and then also Hawksley, that low dark car with brightness dusted through the dark paint and she is not remotely surprised by his steadiness, by his stoicism, by the way he holds himself and keeps himself out of Justin's light as Justin works, as Justin applies ungent to her skin with gentle hands and stitches her up see, all needle-and-thread, but Justin may be surprised, must be, if he takes the time to notice.

Hawksley sits beside her on the park bench and takes her hand and Sera laces her fingers into his and she does not so much tell Hawksley the story as babble enough about her worry and concern that the Hermetic has some context for the blood on her ribs and stomach and soaked into her cut-offs and crusting some over the dark leather of her Docs. That context comes in part from the cops spread out around the park and also animal control van and also the coroner's van and the body bag they load into it.

And that context involves flights of fancy about her dream-of-blood and things that sound more like a Very Bad Trip than anything real except he well knows how reality bends but mostly again: Pan. Nearly dead.

The ambulance.
The hospital.

That's his blood, not her own.

Justin asks her where she wants to go and Sera sniffs and lifts Hawksley's hand and it is an explanation. If the Verbena mentions Shoshannah Sera says I don't have her number! and cue - fresh tears. God knows where they come from. God knows how this can keep happening except that Serafíne feels everything and there is nothing left of her superego to rein the bright electric impulses of her scrubbed raw nerves.

--

At her house: Dan and Dee and of course Hawksley's welcome to wander in, with or without her. There's poor Rick at the kitchen table but Dan takes one look at her and swears shit beneath / over his breath and then takes charge and hurries Sera upstairs and Hawksley follows and digs through the chair-shaped pile of clothes to find a chair-shaped chair, beneath the wide windows in her room, with a glimmering view of the dark back garden, which is alternately overgrown and withering depending on the recent rainfall. That chair-shaped chair is a lovely chair, by the by, vintage brocade and remarkably comfortable. He has his phone and games and the internet and there are also a few books on her bookshelf, mostly poetry but also, perhaps surprisingly since she is not really a Book sort of girl, a handful that seem Rather More Interesting.

Dan is Taking Care of Her. The pair disappear into the bathroom. Dee wants to help, is hovering a bit, but there's Sera's resonance and how exhausted she is and how very little will she has left to her so mostly Dan is all, I got this, and Dee wants to be useful, she's awesome, she's concerned, all the color is drained from her skin which is like-milk. She brings Hawksley a bottle of beer or a bottle of Scotch or a bottle of water and sits on the bed looking worried but not, you know, panicked or distressed and grabs some clothes when Dan needs them and disappears into the bathroom to help get Sera into them and assures herself that Sera is indeed more-or-less fine. She's injured and sore but her wounds are dressed, are stitched and stitched well. All that blood was someone else's.

So Dee lets herself out and then Sera gets it together enough to check her phone again, hoping for another update from Justin or Lena. And Sera gets it together enough to call Rosa and ask for Rafa's number. Starts crying again, quietly this time, after Rosa refuses to give it to her (but I have to talk to him you don't understand) and this is how Hawksley learns that Pan has a son and Pan's son is named Rafael and is also Awake and is a Euthanatos.

There's no bending Rosa and no updates at this hour and nothing more to be done except: let her sleep.

So, darlings, they let her sleep.