911 [Attn: All y'all.]

[mnemosyne]

Sid does have to wait for an answer. And waiting is always the worst: heart-in-throat, that battering assault of adrenaline with nowhere to go and nothing to do but glance at the phone, and ask yourself if you should call someone, and assure yourself that no, no, give it time, everything is okay. Right?

That wait, that worry, because Who comes over the ether, the airwaves, the interwebs, Sera doesn't even know, doesn't understand all these pieces of connectivity, the way information soars through the air and ends up in her hands. Hell, when she wants new songs on her iPhone Dan has to handle that since she always gets confused by the connections and the options and the click-thingies that need to be clicked, and sometimes, some nights, she gets so fucked up she cannot even operate it. Just stares at it and it gleams back, buzzing hungrily as each new text comes in.

Anyway: who comes in and its small and buried and she's looking for other things and is distracted and distraught and is mostly not-crying but then starts crying again and then there is sleep.

It is ten-thirty-eight p.m.

Some nights she gets up at this hour.

--

Sera sleeps.

And nothing wakes her when she sleeps, nothing external that is, but her exhaustion is not really physical. She'd been awake for no more than seven or eight hours when Dan put her to bed, while Hawksley sat in the chair-shaped-chair uncovered from the pile of Sera's bizarre and wrinkled clean laundry. You can imagine what that consists of.

She wakes at two twelve a.m. and the house is silent and Hawklsey is asleep in her chair and she has the bizarre thought that it is dawn, that the sun is rising, and then: why isn't the sun rising, why is it still dark, tangled up in her sleeping mind.

Half-sleeping mind.

Her head aches from all that crying; throbs, really. And her arm throbs a bit too, but the wounds smell clean, antiseptic. Justin, she thinks, remembers, when she looks at the dressings, then reaches for her phone, scrolling through the updates, hoping for more.

And this time that text from Sid Who pings a bright point against her consciousness.

So somewhere in the neighborhood of two eighteen a.m. Tuesday-into-Wednesday night Sid receives a flurry of texts. They start small:

Pan.

And escalate.

Its bad, Sid.

She's slipping out of the bed, uncurling her legs, which are long not because she is tall, but because of the way her body is put together. She's wearing a Joy Division t-shirt and loose boxers which are black and covered in skull and crossbones. Half of the skulls are smiling.

The room is dark. Sera's mouth closes. It is two a.m. and this is like a confessional, this bright little device in her hand, the only light in the room.

We were attacked by these - things. Dogs.

They weren't alive.

Lena's with him @ hosp.

Remembers, abruptly, with a sharp breath out:

She was hurt too. IDK how bad.

And then, a few beats later, a few fresh tears in her eyes.

I cldnt make myself go w/them.

Call you tmrw.

More texts, at two twenty-seven a.m. Justin gets a Thank you.

And Lena does, too.

--

By now she has crossed the room, on soft bare feet. A few coils of her hair are still damp from her shower, which was hours ago. Which was Dan holding her beneath the hot water while she cried in his arms and he scrubbed the priest's blood from her skin. The garden is peaceful and so is the city and so is the room and so is the house. She looks out, through the windowpanes, which are old enough that the glass is wavy and imperfect.

There's Hawskley, sleeping in her chair-shaped-chair, all sprawled out - already a tall guy, taking up more-space-than-is-necessary. His elbow on the arm, fist beneath his chin. Sera wakes him with a hand on his shoulder, then reaches up to tuck his hair behind his ear. The gesture is likely unnecessary, won't his hair be perfectly toussled even in chair-sleep? but -

- she leans in, tips her forehead against his. Tells him, murmuring into his ear as he wakes, " - that can't be comfortable. Get up and come to bed." Holds out her hand as he stirs. Invitation, welcome, thanksgiving.

Looks up again, then. Out at the dark sky, flexes her arm and feels the stitches Justin worked into her skin. She wishes, Sera, that she had the magic to find him, whereever he is. That fucking hospital. It doesn't matter which one.

But she doesn't: not now and not yet. She's stuck in her skin, in the here and in the now. She can bend reality, yes, but only so far. And only in certain directions.

--

Sera sends a text, to Francisco Echeverría's fucking pager. Which is the stupidest thing in the world because it is a pager and the text will be gooblydigook, meaningess, nonsense, but she doesn't care.

Don't go anywhere.

You could call it a prayer.

If you die I will fucking kill you.

[errin]

Sid is awake in the neighborhood of two eighteen a.m. Tuesday-into-Wednesday night. Not because she's still awake. Sid is not a particularly light sleeper, but tonight she sleeps in fits. The first time her phone gives off that odd little blip she's either just drifting off or just drifting up. Her phone goes off and for a moment she imagines or dreams an orange-rimmed hole leading into a void. Then it goes off again, and again and again and again in rapid fire succession and the holes are all over the room and Sid is frowning with her eyes closed as her consciousness starts to stir and then she moves. She squeezes her eyes open in the dark basement of her room. A hand pokes out from beneath the blankets to feel around the side table until her fingers knock into her phone.

She gets the last message first and scrolls up to:

Pan.

Does it make her a bad person that Sid's first reaction is relief? She doesn't think so. As has been mentioned, she doesn't know Pan, she's not connected to him like the others are. And also: he's a Disciple. He is older. He was there for the Ascension War or whatever. If Sera isn't texting Sid to let her know the man is dead, then some part of her mind believes he's not going to die. Not tonight, anyway.

She sits up as she scrolls back down, the light of her phone's display casting her face in an eerie blue light. She can't see Sera walking around her room in the dark. Sera can't see her sitting in her own room in the dark. But in some way they are connected in this moment, these two women, by technology, by the darkness.

Sid types back:

Okay.

Okay she got it, really. Okay message received. Not It's Okay, Sid's been terrible at optimism ever since her Awakening when all the optimism in her was, shall we say, knocked out of her.

Then:

I can come over.

And she can, too. She can go and spend time with Sera, she can call in sick to work - she gets sick time now that they're taking her one full time, she gets benefits, too, whoopdee doo - and she can spend time with her friend. She realizes right after she hits SEND that she kind of wants Sera to say OK even though it's the middle of the night.

And, in the interests of being open and honest despite where that's gotten her in the last few days, she sends, before Sera can outright reject her, too:

I want to.

[mnemosyne]

It is so fucking hard to be human. To say things. To reach out. To get them right. To figure out when it hurts and when it heals and who else is out there with you, in the dark. When to lay yourself open, all wounds, because what else are we sometimes, except scar tissue and hope and want and desire and fear and love. Some of us, and walls, and doors, and strange little windows, with half-drawn shutters and one-way blinds. Dark stairways, secrets, basements full of half-remembered monsters. Perfectly imperfect, to a one.

So: thank you goes out to Justin and thank you goes out to Lena and Sid says I can come over - it pops up on the screen in a little green box. With a tail leading to the cloud like a piece of dialogue.

And see, what will happen next is rejection or rather not rejection but something else - thanks that's not necessary, probably no longer falling apart, get some sleep. What will happen next is you don't have 2 which Sera is already typing. Because it is two twenty-nine a.m. and Sera does not have a job but she knows that Sid does even if she's never, not once, asked Sid about it. But: paychecks and I don't have the money until Friday and thrift shopping and that beaten up truck and those days in the motel, oh, Sera knows.

Then three more words: I want to.

Sera erases the half-written text and instead, responds to Sid with just two words. Listen, Then come.

--

"Sid's coming over." A moment later, to Hawksley, her raw voice quiet, as she's sliding the phone back to sleep. Then waking it one more time, hoping for another update. Then sliding it back again, closed. If Sera gives a half-smile then, it is small and a bit worn and a bit sad but also finer than she might ever think she is. And it is dark so he can't see it, but - it infects her voice, inflects her voice, just so. "She wants to."

[kai]

At two-twelve in the morning, Hawksley is unconscious. There is a mostly-empty glass with an entirely-melted ice cube in it on the windowsill next to the still-pretty-full bottle of scotch. Yes, somehow, it seems that there should be a rising sun seen in the corner of that window, illuminating the amber liquid, but everything outside is dark and the only light hitting Hawksley's face is whatever the moon manages to get through the branches and light pollution and shades and shadows.

Sometime while Sera is texting Sid, Hawksley half-wakes. He sees her moving around, her face partly illuminated by the gleam of her phone, and without opening his eyes all the way or moving his head or speaking, he watches her for a few seconds before he decides to let sleep drag him back under for another nine minutes. Because his mind is closer to the surface than it was before, he wakes easily to the hand on his shoulder, blinking and breathing in, his chest expanding, his face turning up to look at her.

She tucks back his hair, which is entirely unnecessary, since his hair is too short to stay and just slips back from the curve like a child jumping off the bottom of the slide to yell <i>again, again!</i>. All the same, the gesture breaks his heart with tenderness, and both the intensity and the insubstantiality of that emotion play clearly and quickly through his eyes. His heart cannot stay broken for more than a moment.

And she leans in, and he rolls his brow and her brow together gently, while she whispers to him that sleeping in the armchair can't be comfortable.

"You don't know my life," he mutters sleepily, fondly, self-amused. His mouth has lolled into a half-grin, but he takes her hand and lifts himself from the chair, leaving phone and keys and wallet in the seat, hoping all the clothes he took off that chair don't crawl back up and cover it once more and bury his belongings forever. Or devour them.

This is the sort of thing he thinks about at two-thirty in the morning, half-awake, as he's letting himself drop to sit on the edge of Sera's bed, taking off his shoes and taking off his t-shirt and he didn't wear a belt so he doesn't take one off but he does drop his shorts and since he's a guest and someone taught him at least some modicum of manners, he keeps his boxers on even though this is decidedly not how he normally sleeps.

If he knew Sera wanted to find him, Justin, or Pan, or whoever him is in her thoughts, he would do it for her. Or tell her there are other ways, or something. He'd help. But he doesn't know a thing about reading thoughts, and as he's reclining back in that enormous bed like he's been here before, like he owns the place, like he belongs here, Sera tells him that the latest texts were with Sid, and Sid is coming over.

He huffs a soft little laugh and rolls onto his side, facing the middle of the bed, his back to the window the garden the scotch the moonlight. "Good thing you have a big bed," he murmurs, getting comfortable, folding one arm under a pillow under his head and one arm around Sera until her back or her side or, hell, her front is against his chest, which is perhaps the first nope sorry going to hold you now hope that's cool gesture he's made, and it is as slow and steady and free of panic as his arrival in Garfield Park.

In the quiet that falls between them he lowers his voice. He whispers, finally:

"What happened?"

And finally, Sera tells him.

[CourtCat]

It bears saying, perhaps, that Shoshannah is not rude. She's creepy, and frightening, and eerie, and short tempered, and a lot of things, but rude is not one of them. When Lena tries to tell her things, she listens as well as an eighteen-year-old whose not.my.dad.not.my.anything

-- maybe she would explode if someone tickled her --

is in critical condition in a hospital can. She's quiet, and still, and says thank you for telling me in a whispersoftphonographscratch voice that's still too loud for her in this place, at this time. So whenever the thing happens with Ana, Shoshannah has at least an idea of what's going on. It helps, maybe, or not - she's uneasy here, vaguely nauseous with so many spirits halfway and hovering, clinging, cryingcryingcrying for attention, for someone to tell them where to go and

she
doesn't
understand

like she once did and looks like she might throw up, or faint, or both, and that's aside from the worry about the man she's called Padre almost exclusively since she met him. So she settles herself the best way she knows how (because no way in hell is she leaving this place without seeing Padre, without whispering into his ear as she had

nonono, don't think about that

her grandmother's all those years ago) - which may sound ridiculous to those who think that eighteen is equivalent to eight and she couldn't possibly know much, but it was half her life ago and that's enough to merit being thought of as all those years - without telling him . . . something. She doesn't know what, and part of the panicked (metallic) feeling at the back of her throat and nape of her neck is the sheer foreign nature of it all. It's been since her grandmother that she had to deal with anything like this - with caring about someone, with sitting at the hospital waiting for news - that, in this case, she won't even get until Rafael, a guy she's never met, is here and only then if he decides to share it with her.

It all makes Shoshannah's eyes itch.

It's abrupt, random, and probably right before Lena gives up on Shoshannah saying anything more than whatever she's mumbling as she counts the stitches in her arm warmers that Shoshannah finally says. "I need a phone. Will you go get me one? I'll give you the cash I've got." Which isn't much, granted, but is plenty for a $10 tracfone and a $15 minutes card or something. It should give her texting and calling capability, anyway, so she's not the last to know next time something happens to someone she . . .

. . . we'll leave it at 'cares about'.

[mnemosyne]

And finally, Sera tells him.

Curled up in the bed, his arm around her. Her spine against his chest, which feels strange, rather off because Pan is out there somewhere, in surgery, under the glare of too-bright lights, his body opened up down to the glistening viscera and Sera does not know the specifics but she knows some of them, and hates them, and cannot quite contain in her mind and body how she can be in a still house in a big, soft bed, clean, right? and mostly-sober, in a way that makes her think that she should take something, though to be fair she doesn't know what - while the world is bending itself open around someone she -

Oh, she breathes, steadily in the silence. Her hair spread over the pillow smelling of strawberries because Dan used the wrong shampoo, the weird one she bought for a lark at Goodwill a few weeks ago with Sid.

--

She had a dream last night, she tells him, quiet. Just like that, head moving minutely against the pillow as she speaks. The specifics are opaque, cryptic, they always are but she remembers moths, filling the air. Gray-winged in the moonlight, swarming from the dark march of trees. She remembers this sense of grievance in the air. Not grievance, that word is too small for it. It was deeper and older and hotter. Call it rage, call it wrath, pregnant yes but old enough that it had long-since curdled and gone still and ugly and sour. There was a broken tree, just a stump, and a figure covered in owl feathers.

And blood. Blood raining down from a roiling sky.

You can understand why she shivers there.

--

So she went to see Pan; to tell him what she'd dreamt. What she'd seen, and then there was the park and the park was deserted and there was Lena - strange you know? - and

blood

on the sidewalk, smeared and dark. The blaze of the setting sun on the lake. Wind in the trees. This choking sense of rage. No magic, none that she could taste in the air around them, and then, this sudden cloud of mouths, hundreds of them, a livid, living flock so dense that Sera thought she was going to inhale one, get it stuck in her throat, fluttering and futile. From the underbrush, there were these noises they were tearing-at-flesh noises they were crunch-and-crack noises and hey, Sera would've fucking left, would've run if that were an option. Sera wasn't armed. Sera doesn't wander around with a gun a sword a cudgel hidden somewhere on her person. Where would she hide a weapon? In her bustier?

This is a quiet story though; she tells it with a wrung-out sort of calm: the dogs, not-living but still-moving. The attack; she can hardly remember how many. Fucking Pan stepping in front of her. Just the way time stops and stutterstarts again; peels back into slices. Opens up and narrows all at once. Pancho beside her bright as a solar flare, as the aftermath of a bomb blast, she tells him. And Sera, god knows how she ripped the magic out of herself again and again to send one after another of the things fleeing in fear. But she did. And the story turns round. Back to the point where they're gone, there's blood everywhere, Pancho's weaving but not - not -

- and then something just hit him, and he fell, and she couldn't catch him, he's so fucking big. He's too heavy, and all she could do was cushion the fall of his body with her own.

Sera breathes out a little shudder when she's done with the telling-of-what-happened. From a distance, from a certain distance, in the still and quiet dark, the blood scrubbed away, the muzzy, throbbing distance of her headache from all that crying receding into something else, the vaguest sort of ache, it hardly seems real.

--

It is past two-thirty in the morning and Sid's coming over but the house is quiet and the street is quiet and the city is quiet and Sera finishes her story and isn't going back to sleep, see, and figures she'll hear: the truck or footsteps on the steps up to the front porch or the bell.

Or maybe she figures that Sid will know or understand that the door to this house is hardly-ever locked if the inhabitants are home.

[errin]

There may come a day when Sid can quickly transport herself from here to there with a thought and a chance of universe-backlash, but that day is not today. Today is not really today, but night, and when she gets that last text from Sera there is no one around to see the way her mouth curves into a smile. She throws back the covers and rises and gets ready to grab her shoes, but no wait. Sid sleeps in an old t-shirt and an old pair of boxers. One of these she will not be wearing at Sera's house.

So she changes, quickly, into a pair of comfortable pajama pants that are a bit too warm for summer nights, but ah, oh well. A book bag is grabbed from the closet, and into that bag she tosses a clean set of clothes, because maybe eight o'clock will roll around and she'll decide to go to work, after all. She trusts that Sera will have shampoo and such, but grabs a few of her own toiletries from her bathroom before she finally closes and locks her basement bedroom door and heads out into the night.

It's a mostly straight shot from Sid's home to Sera's. Fifteen minutes in traffic, but there is no traffic this time of night. Still, what with gathering things for the briefest of possible sleepovers, it's closer to two forty-five when Sid's truck rumbles along the street where Sera lives. Parking isn't easy in this neighborhood at this time of night on a school/work night, but Sid manages to find a place to park her old truck.

Sera just might be able to hear Sid's footsteps on the path leading up to the house, she's not trying hard to be quiet. She might be able to hear when they stop at the door, not because Sid isn't sure if it's locked or if she should just walk in. She's been here a few times (Sera gave her a skateboard last time, which is currently resting one end on the floor of her truck's cab with the board resting against the seat, that day was almost literally Christmas in July for Sid), she knows she doesn't need to ring the bell and risk waking everyone up, she knows that she's expected by at least one inhabitant. But once inside, then what? She's only been in the kitchen and the back garden. She doesn't know where Sera is.

Slowly, quietly, she lets herself in and peers around inside. Then she steps inside, and if for some reason Sera or Hawksley or whomever isn't right there to greet her at two-fifty-something in the morning, Sid closes her eyes. She takes a breath. And she reaches out, and she senses....them. Sera and Hawksley. She follows the invisible trail that only she and people like her can sense and trail, until she comes to a door.

She knocks first, even if that door is open, or even merely ajar, but particularly if it's closed. Softly, and with the knuckle of her right hand, twice.

============
niko @ 5:51PM
[Sid: Percept+aware, probably paranoid at 2:50am]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1 VALID

Kenna @ 5:52PM
Witnessed!

[Samael]

If there's one thing you can say about Lena, it's that she cares. She may keep herself a bit...shall we say, distant at times. It's not for her protection as much as it is other people's.

(This is not to say that it's not for her protection too, because it is. She finds it hard to get close to people, because of two--no, three--important people in her past. But it's mostly for others; that's what she tells herself.)

Anyway, we're getting off-track here. The point is, while she doesn't get exceptionally close to people, she cares. She cares a lot more than she should sometimes. And that's why she will be staying at the hospital, and coming back when she's not working or sleeping (the latter something she doesn't do much), for several days until the good Father wakes up or until someone tells her she should or needs to go. And she doesn't even know Pan well, but that's not the point. Anyway, we're not there yet; we're still in the waiting room with Lena and Soshanna and some awkward attempts at conversation.

That conversation abruptly turns to Shoshanna asking for a phone. Lena smiles a little bit, warm and reassuring, and nods. "Of course. Anything you need."

She puts a hand up when the girl offers her money, and shakes her head. "Keep it. You're going to need it for something more. I've got you covered here." If she persists though, Lena will take the money. Either way, she comes back with a decent prepaid burner phone and a $25 card to last her a good long while.

[kai]

While Sera talks, Hawksley listens. His breathing is steady and his heartbeat is steady and he closes his eyes and every word she says is infused with the scent of strawberries, which is unfamiliar but not unpleasant and super girly he thinks, but that is strange and surreal and oddly macabre set against the things she's telling him. Of moths and vengeance, blood and broken antiquity. This is the first time Sera has told him of a dream she's had like this -- he doesn't know about the one where he and Sid sit on a cliffside eating mushy peas, flinging them into the sea, and he would have laughed at that one but he doesn't laugh at this one.

She shivers, and his arms tighten a fraction, a response to the shiver though one might not strictly call it a squeeze. It's good to know she would have just left, that she's compassionate and she's not a shrinking violet but she's not a fucking moron and she doesn't have something to prove and she doesn't let a Sense of Duty interfere with the Instinct to Survive or any of that. It's just a shame she didn't get a chance to do the smart thing, the sane thing, and run.

Her description of what Papa Pan was doing is instantly recognizable in Hawksley's mind, and he has Thoughts that spin out from that awareness but he doesn't voice them, it's really neither here nor there right this second. He learned painfully, some time ago, that there is a time and place for his particular brand of innocent-ruthless, brutal pragmaticism and that time and place usually does not intersect with the times and places for other people's faith, other people's belief, other people's fucking magic or fucking emotions.

Like many lessons, he learned that one well, just too late.

--

So: Hawksley keeps his damn mouth shut and he listens and he focuses on what she's saying and not on his own thoughts that spin out into curious directions or on the fact that she is very small and very worn out and ack. He puts his face along the curve of her skull as she tells him what she did, brilliant really, when you think she doesn't know magics that directly wound she doesn't carry a .45 in her handbag she doesn't have a whole lot of physical power to thump something on the head and cave in its brain but oh, by god, you are still a weapon, shining and bright and clever and he wants to tell her that, too, but he might later. Just not right now, not when she keeps shivering like that and even her voice sounds hollowed out.

And: Hawksley kisses her scalp through her hair, eyes closed, breathing in her scent beneath the scent of strawberries now that the scent of fearful sweat and other people's blood and her own blood is all, all gone.

He slides his arm from where it holds her to her hand, palm to palm, fingers laid together. He can't think of any other touch between two people that feels quite so solid, quite so steady, as this one. So that is what he does.

--

Downstairs, Sid lets herself in and then lets her mind open, and she would know he's there even if she didn't see his Porsche parked outside. Upstairs and around the bend of the stairwell and in Sera's room, she feels as though the roof must have been torn off and the wind and birds and everything are flying, flying through the air up there, dipping and diving and lifting again. It is easy to breathe like that, feeling like one is not falling, is incapable of falling, and everything bloody and painful and carnal on this earth can be risen above and forgotten

or at least escaped.

He hears a soft knock, some time later. In that meantime, there is just Hawksley holding, Hawksley's hand with Sera's hand, and he is tired and it is the middle of the night and what exactly the fuck is he supposed to say that might be useful or helpful or comforting right now so he's not saying a damn thing. And in that mood, where Getting Up From Sera is not an option and speaking seems sacrilege, Hawksley just wants to lift his hand, snap a gesture into the air, and adjust the pressure of air on one side of the door to nudge it open.

Instead he sighs softly, exhaling into Sera's hair, and whispers to her -- as it is not his damn room to invite anyone into anyway -- "Sid."

[mnemosyne]

What light there is in the room comes in from behind them. Through the windows, which have curtains perhaps, or blinds that are rarely drawn. The windows are old enough that they make the pale and uncertain ambient light all the more watery where it cuts into the room. But mostly: it is night, and it is dark, and the shadows are deep and quiet.

Sera's eyes are closed and her breathing is steady enough when the quiet knock comes on the door to her bedroom. They are holding hands and his arm is across her ribs and she's tucked against him, just so. Silence follows her telling-of-what-happened because what else there is to say he says quite wordlessly. With hand against her hand and his breath in her hair, its steady rhythm. With his face against the back of her skull and the way his hold on her tightens when she shivers.

Sera must have heard Sid on the stairs - several of which creak as one might expect in old houses - or even, felt her earlier, downstairs, on the porch, on the street, but it felt removed the way everything outside of the immediate bubble of her senses feels removed and she thought she should stir, slip down the stairs to greet her late-night-guest but could not quite summon the will to rise and forgot one and the other between the porch and the knock on the door.

Hawksley whispers, Sid and does not stir. It rouses Sera, who is not asleep but is drifting and while Getting Up From Sera is not an option for Hawksley Sera - roused by the knock, brought back to the here-and-now by his whisper, lifts their joined hands and plants a kiss on the back of his knuckles and then crawls out from beneath his arm and out of the bed, slipping across the intervening on bare feet to answer the door.

Which swings open to show Sid Sera and a rather large, moonlit bedroom beyond. Sera, her face in shadow, wearing a white tee and dark boxers and feeling, yes - worn out but still. Sera opens her arms to Sid, hugs her with a quiet hey that is tired and quiet and maybe a bit wry and more than a bit sad and but - so very welcoming. And perhaps Sera starts crying again, just a bit, when she wraps her arms around Sid.

You would think, by now, that there were no tears left in her to be cried.

You would think that, and you would be wrong.

Beyond her then, a impression of the room. Wide windows overlooking the garden. The bed against the wall, beneath the windows, is large and was unmade before she crawled into it and is still unmade and is now inhabited. A chair-shaped-armchair that has not yet been retaken by the mound of clean clothes Hawksley dislodged from it, though is perhaps under siege. A dark closet, with an open door and shoes-and-things spilling out at its base like a lake of leather and stilettos and littered with strange little bits of gleam.

There is a vanity with a three-way mirror littered with Stuff and there may be a guitar or three and there is art on the walls here too but it is too dark for any of it to be more than a dark shadow against the wall and even the neon sculpture is turned off.