December 21.
--
Sera and Dan arrive together and attend the party at the chantry: together. The day itself has precisely no sacred or magickal meaning to Sera, and little enough sentimental meaning. That morning, Dee is making a bit of a fuss over which roller-derby solstice party to attend (competing parties organized independently by a jammer and a pivot who had been a couple since she joined the team, but who have more or less completed a Very Messy breakup no one really believes will last) and Dan has to explain to her the difference between the solstice and the equinox and oh it makes sense when she thinks about the words but beyond that, neither Sera nor her magick care about where the sun is in the sky or where the moon is in her cycle or whether the ground beneath her feet is sleeping-dormant or waking, waking, waking.
She has more of an emotional, existential connection to Christmas for all that she rejects everything else about that religion and Dee starts to explain about co-opting and center-periphery or something and Sera looks kinda bored, mostly because she hasn't had more than a cup of tea yet this morning and, honestly Dee? Kinda boring. She is more interested now in how you tell the darkest day from the next one, and the one after that, and whether she will feel a sunrise yawing in the back of her throat, can she read it in the ragged edges of the sky?
Maybe. Maybe.
The point is: the pair of Cultists appear for a time, and Sera is wearing these thigh-high Saint Laurent crystal-and-fishnet tights with silver-heeled boots, denim cut-offs that are both threadbare and trimmed in a brocade so rich it could've come from some upholstered footstool at Versailles and an iron, leather and burlap bustier and Dan is wearing something, who notices what Dan is wearing, at least when he shows up with Sera, and they bring booze, and they bring drugs, and it doesn't matter that the building feels now to her: too settled, too real, too inhabited for it to be a place of refuge for her, or retreat, she does come. She knows these pagans. They will drink with them and celebrate with them and then leave and go on out into that longest night to do it: more, and more, and more.
--
Something about that sign, though, gives her pause. To keep you safe ... . This is the only flicker in her countenance, it is the smallest hitch, a scratch in the vinyl, but a small one, nearly imperceptible except for the way the beat jumps, and not the way it was meant to.
She takes one, Sera. Gives one, also, to her friend. Makes him tuck it away.
(Oh, and here are her tights:
![[Image: tumblr_mj5wvwd9um1qctjfio1_500.jpg]](http://www.oystermag.com/sites/default/files/tumblr_mj5wvwd9um1qctjfio1_500.jpg)
and also her bustier:
![[Image: Architectural-Elements-Bustier-A.jpg]](http://theironstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Architectural-Elements-Bustier-A.jpg)
)
--
Sera and Dan arrive together and attend the party at the chantry: together. The day itself has precisely no sacred or magickal meaning to Sera, and little enough sentimental meaning. That morning, Dee is making a bit of a fuss over which roller-derby solstice party to attend (competing parties organized independently by a jammer and a pivot who had been a couple since she joined the team, but who have more or less completed a Very Messy breakup no one really believes will last) and Dan has to explain to her the difference between the solstice and the equinox and oh it makes sense when she thinks about the words but beyond that, neither Sera nor her magick care about where the sun is in the sky or where the moon is in her cycle or whether the ground beneath her feet is sleeping-dormant or waking, waking, waking.
She has more of an emotional, existential connection to Christmas for all that she rejects everything else about that religion and Dee starts to explain about co-opting and center-periphery or something and Sera looks kinda bored, mostly because she hasn't had more than a cup of tea yet this morning and, honestly Dee? Kinda boring. She is more interested now in how you tell the darkest day from the next one, and the one after that, and whether she will feel a sunrise yawing in the back of her throat, can she read it in the ragged edges of the sky?
Maybe. Maybe.
The point is: the pair of Cultists appear for a time, and Sera is wearing these thigh-high Saint Laurent crystal-and-fishnet tights with silver-heeled boots, denim cut-offs that are both threadbare and trimmed in a brocade so rich it could've come from some upholstered footstool at Versailles and an iron, leather and burlap bustier and Dan is wearing something, who notices what Dan is wearing, at least when he shows up with Sera, and they bring booze, and they bring drugs, and it doesn't matter that the building feels now to her: too settled, too real, too inhabited for it to be a place of refuge for her, or retreat, she does come. She knows these pagans. They will drink with them and celebrate with them and then leave and go on out into that longest night to do it: more, and more, and more.
--
Something about that sign, though, gives her pause. To keep you safe ... . This is the only flicker in her countenance, it is the smallest hitch, a scratch in the vinyl, but a small one, nearly imperceptible except for the way the beat jumps, and not the way it was meant to.
She takes one, Sera. Gives one, also, to her friend. Makes him tuck it away.
(Oh, and here are her tights:
and also her bustier:
)
But my heart is wild and my bones are steel
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula