At the Chantry [attn: Grace, Shoshannah, Sera, Hawksley, Sid]

[FadedNoel]

The fluidity of Sera, the way she just moved on from every little bump in the social landscape like it was nothing, was turning into a point of envy for Grace. Be like that, sometime, okay? And then, the thought was banished.

She followed Sera down the hallways, listening to the words, and zeroing in on the back of her head quite absentmindedly. Secret magickal hideouts in internet did sound more her style. But again, there was nothing to go on really.

And another option, Grace the Cultist of Ecstasy? Again, Sera knew someone Grace should talk to about it (did she know everyone? Wouldn't surprise).

"Okay, but, I saw you unpacking your ritual equipment? Yeah, I don't really drink much, or do pot much. I don't know if that's a necessity or something. I wasn't on anything when I went down to that power station, though, I know the description kind of sounded like it."

"But I have another question. Why should I be careful of the people who fix broken computers? Techs?"

[Howl]

[This is just a note to let everyone know that Justin and Hawksley seem to have disappeared somewhere, and will not be found downstairs or in the library. At least for the moment.]

[mnemosyne]

They're headed down the stairs to the lower library level when Grace remarks that she saw Sera unpacking her ritual equipment and oh that makes Sera laugh. Grace cannot see the sudden flash of a widening grin across Sera's sharp features, but that tip-back of her blond head, the swing of her curls against her spine are frame enough of the laughter beneath. Which is mostly embedded rather than uttered, framed by her body.

At the foot of the stairs, while Sera's sorting out the technology required to enter, she turns back and gives Grace a wry little look, through the width of that abating grin.

"I was being a little over the top when I called the barware ritual equipment. We're not quite so formal," chagrin? Not quite, just the a certain degree of self-awareness and a certain understated bemusement. " - and honestly, alcohol isn't as good for expanding consciousness as other substances, especially hallucinogens. But it's more experiential - sex or music or energy, right? Like a fucking crowd when they're vibing on something, all moving together, just this one pulse and you lose yourself into the expanding mass of that movement. Or even," a mild smirk, the slightest arc of distaste, from the Cultist-on-a-fucking-fast, " - denial. Exercise, yoga, breath control? Those things aren't for me, but yeah.

"Honestly, I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek." There's a directness to her gaze her, steady and certain, "but you know, when it doubt, recruit recruit recruit. And you should still talk to Jim. He's fucking awesome and he'd like you. Oh, but I hope you drink at least a bit. Hawksley's going to throw you a party as soon as his Collins secures him a permanent place to live."

The door to the library swings open, and Sera gives Grace an after you style gesture.

"The techs, fuck. I don't know where to fucking begin. I suppose with the fact that we call them the Technocracy, and they know what we can do, but they prefer the status quo.

"I've heard that they call us Reality Deviants. Which should tell you something.

"And I know that there are some in town."

[FadedNoel]

So, it wasn't just a collection of like-minded people, it was a collection of wildly differently-minded people? Well, that's almost even better, right?

Sera's description of the Cultists didn't exactly make Grace feel any closer to them. She was more a kind of techno-monk, an information-age scribe than anything else. Much more content to sit by herself in quiet focus than in a crowd. Denial wasn't exactly the word for it, Grace did what she wanted, she just didn't want much.

But a world without people like Sera? Boring.

"Really? A party, for me?" she said, and the introvert in her cringed. But hey, networking, right? Just put on a smile, and take it. It was intended to be a gift, no doubt, or just an excuse to party.

When Sera unlocked the library, Grace's face lit up, and a tiny "eeeee" noise escaped her before she could control it. Immediately, she beelined to the nearest bookshelf and started reading titles. Unfortunately (intriguingly) they all sounded quite... Odd.

Sera continued, and Grace tried paying attention to both books and voice, until a word struck her, "Wait, Technocracy? The rule of technology?"

[mnemosyne]

"Hell yeah, are you kidding me?" Sera returned glancing over her shoulder at Grace to take in the other woman's expression. A certain directness to the look with which Sera favors her, this steady and quiet survey that takes in the expression around the edges of the smile as well as the smile itself. They're in shadow in the library until Sera reaches for the lights, and in the darkness her eyes glitter with reflected light from the living space up the stairs. "Waking up's a Big Fucking Deal.

"People mark passages, right? Crossings, borders. Places where definitions start to blur, and that's what's happening to for and by you, isn't it?

"It's so fucking amazing, Grace. You have no idea. - "

And then the library doors open and Grace makes that eeeeeee noise and Sera falls a little bit in love and throws her head back, laughing out loud in the quiet hum of the sealed library. Oh yes, the titles were... Odd.

While Grace starts to browse, Sera starts to circle to a particular shelf. She's spent enough time in here on her own research (which might suprise anyone who knows her) that she knows exactly where to go, but then Grace asks about the Technocracy and Sera pauses, glancing back at Grace. The chasing note of puzzlement on the Cultist's features suggests that she has literally never considered the provenance of the word until Grace just broke it down for her.

"Huh," like a lightbulb, " - yeah, I mean. I guess that's what they are. Like Big Brother right? They're like the Reality Cops or something. The man. Make a spectacle of yourself and you might bring them down on you." And then, a little chill, Sera's eyes all unfocused and searching the room, the library, its rafters, the hushed quiet of its mechanically cooled air. She breathes out sharply; breathes out the memory of an unconscious girl and a bullet through the heart and a wholly different awakening, collapsing entirely into ash. The blitheness leaves her voice, and Sera's eyes find Grace again. Fix on her, this brief and haunted air about her as she admonishes, quietly, with a spare little smile. " - so, you know. Don't do that."

[kai]

There is a knock at the library doors. Who could it be?

[errin]

[Sid could probably benefit from this conversation, do you guys mind if I drop her in somewhere?]

[mnemosyne]

Sera opens the library door. Is that Hawksley!?!?

(If so she looks oh three seconds or so from hugging him because yes being absent from her company for anywhere from five minutes to twenty-three years might earn you yet-another-hug. Except uh, he may be still half-naked and she is resolutely Not Touching Him. So the potential hug sort of metamorphs into an open-armed this. is. the. library. sort of gesture that may be more than the place really demands or requires.)

"Hey! C'mon in." Sera wants bonus cool points for being the first person to let both of them into the chantry library. But she says this only with her shining grin. "I was telling Grace you were gonna throw her a party. And we were talking about the Techs and stuff."

[niko - throw her in the ring! maybe she's already in some corner reading and overheard? That is okay w/me. ]

[errin]

[yay! she IS in a corner somewhere, actually, stop reading my mind, Liz.]

The visitors may have noticed the old as hell truck parked in the drive. Up until Sera and Grace entered the library, that truck's presence has been the only clue that a particular Orphan is on the premises. She must have arrived sometime after Justin and Shoshannah went off to build a fence or she would have offered to help. She missed the fireworks in the kitchen and whatever happened in one of the rooms on the second floor.

When the door swings open for Sera, she'll see that the lights are already on. Sid has been in the library for who knows how long now, curled up on one of the loveseats, back pressed into one of the arms, a book opened on her upraised knees. She missed the entrance of the other magi due to a combination of an incredibly lowered guard (it's a library, a library in a basement behind a high-tech security door, chances are it would survive a zombie apocalypse) and an attention that is thoroughly engrossed in the text she's reading (something about mass and Matter and physical things).

Sera's laugh is like the piercing of a veil, or the snapping of a twig in the forest. Like some prey animal Sid comes alert, and she tenses a second before she recognizes the voice as belonging to a certain Cultist. Tucking a slip of paper between the pages of her book to mark her place, she sets it down on the cushion near her feet before she swings her legs to the side and rises. She's peering around a bookshelf just in as the discussion of the Technocracy starts to gain momentum.

Slipping her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, the Orphan reveals herself in her entirety. She is wearing, Sera will notice, a light green t-shirt with grey stars over a pair of new jeans, both items purchased recently while in the company of the Ecstatic. Her feet are bare and her hair is down, curling over her shoulders.

"Reality cops," she repeats, voice quiet in the aftermath of its revelation. "I only knew they were bad news."

No hellos, no hey how are you or nice to see you Grace. Even as her old self starts to assert itself over the new, some of Sid's habits aren't fading.

[kai]

That's Hawksley!

He has put his shirt on again. Having left Justin upstairs, balance has been restored to the universe and it is no longer necessary for the chantry's feng shui that Hawksley be half naked and disturbing to teenagers or landscape architects. Not, of course, that he needs to be shirtless to disturb anyone.

He sidles in and she throws her arm to show him the library and he gives her a pursed-lip smirk, a smile trying not to be a laugh, shaking his head. "You showed me last time you brought me here, you mad thing," he tells her, and leans over her, because in her highest of heels she is not his height, to put his hand on her back and plant a kiss on the top of her head,

like one she might have given Dee. Quite like that, in fact.

He smiles at Grace, giving her another nod of hello, though he saw her not so many minutes ago in the kitchen. "I will throw you a party. Would you want one before or after my birthday party?" Fuck no, he's not sharing his birthday party, he doesn't care if she's a newly Awakened mage and it's sort of her birthday, too. "Also: fuck the Techs. Never forget what you are and the power your belief has to shape your world. As soon as you decide that they're omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, that's your reality."

His fingers snap, as though it's that easy. Like it's magic.

Which he's saying: it is.

Sweeping away from Sera, mercifully sliding his hand off her back, he gives a sharp whistle through the library, which is just... not... library behavior. "SID. HEY. I SAW YOUR TRUCK, SID. HEY."

But Sid is right there, and stepping out from behind some shelves and Hawksley just beams at her. "Sid!" As though he wasn't just shouting her name like a kid who hasn't been taught the rules yet... which is one of the more accurate descriptions of Hawksley, and one he'd be proud to wear if he could hear the unreliable narrator of his existence saying it. He opens his arms. "Hug? I put my shirt on, I'm totally safe."

Granted, since she wasn't upstairs to see he and Justin shirtless, this comment has no context, but nevermind that. Maybe he means that hugging Sid without a shirt on would drive him out of his mind. Could be.