Holiday Gathering at the Chantry [attn: everyone]

[Howl]

[OOC: Annie put up a Chantry notice about a week ago inviting everyone to a holiday gathering on the evening of Dec 21st. Anyone who wishes to attend may do so. If you want to have a character join in but haven't had a chance to introduce them to the Chantry yet, just talk to me or one of the other players and we can probably arrange a reason for another PC to bring them along. Participation in this thread can be as short or long as you want it to be. If you want to just drop them in for a quick summary post, awesome. If you want to interact with other characters, also awesome. If you want to use this event as an excuse to sneak off somewhere on the property and do a live scene with someone, you are totally welcome to do that.

The basket below the tree is filled with healing charms. Anyone who wants to take one should make it clear in their post that they've done so. Then I can add it to your equipment list.  ]

--------------------------

The weather is still warm enough that the sprawling Chantry property is currently absent the one thing that would make this a proper holiday feast - snow. That said, the house itself more than makes up for it. Heading up the winding drive, visitors will be able to see the glow of warm light welcoming them from a distance. The outside of the house has been decorated with neat strings of twinkling white fairy lights, and the door is hung with an elaborate wreath made of fir, holly, pine cones and woven witches' cords in red, black, green and gold. The house is open, allowing for guests to let themselves in, but those who prefer to use the doorbell will be welcomed in by one of the Chantry's full time residents.

Inside, the foyer is hung with ribbon and pine boughs and bunches of dried herbs. The house smells like evergreen and apple and spices. There are hooks on the wall for guests to hang their coats.

To the left of the foyer, the dining room is lit by a hanging chandelier and a scattered assortment of both small and large candles. A fire is crackling warmly in the hearth. The long dining table is draped with a gold cloth and laid out with an impressive array of food. There's a turkey, a pork roast, a couple of savory pies (one of which is both vegan and gluten free,) squash soup, fresh-baked rolls with herbed butter, fried honeycakes, a large bowl of salad, two pumpkin pies (again, one of which is vegan and gluten-free,) cranberry-apple pie and something like ten different types of seasonal cookies (a number of which are made to suit different dietary requirements.) There's also an assortment of bottled wines to choose from, as well as two pots of mulled beverages steaming gently on the stove in the kitchen, one of which contains cider and the other wine. The smell coming from this area is rich with fruit and mulling spices.

To the right of the foyer and down the stairs, the lights in the living room have been dimmed to a soft glow. Another, larger fire is lit in the main hearth, and flickering candles decorate many of the available surfaces. The walls are decorated with more ribbons and witches' cords, evergreen and holly. The spruce tree that Kalen brought in earlier still has the white lights and ribbon that he strung through it, along with an assortment of small, intricately hand-carved wooden decorations that Annie added herself. The tree has been set up in the corner of the living room where the smaller sofa and flat-screen usually reside. The sofa and the carpet have been dragged back a few feet, and the TV stand has been relocated somewhere out of sight. Underneath the tree, there is a basket containing 12 sealed vials of water, each decorated with a small silk ribbon in red, green, white or gold. The vials hum with the Node's Rejuvenating resonance. The note on the basket says:

To keep you safe during the winter. Take one if you need it.

Stockings have been hung over the hearth with the names of various people printed onto them. These are Kalen's doing, and contain a small clove-stuffed orange, a small gold coin, and a handful of chocolate truffles and peppermints.

Music is playing over the expensive sound system. At present, it's a selection of Metis fiddle songs, lively and percussive, though the sound will change as the night progresses. The center floor space has been left open to allow for dancing.

[Jacqui]

She hasn't, in all truth, been back in Denver overly long but it doesn't prevent Kiara from surfacing from her post-travel weariness long enough to make an appearance at the Chantry come the 21st.

She comes bearing a bottle of wine (an impressively aged Merlot), wrapped in a white hooded coat with faux-fur trimmings around the sleeves and collar and possessing the faint tracings of a tan from time in the Hawaiian sun. When she hangs her coat on a peg by the door, her outfit for the evening's festivities is revealed to be a flowing white dress, long sleeved for the season and inlaid with gold thread so that it glimmers becomingly in the firelight as Kiara mingles throughout the evening.

She admires the spread laid out, makes a point to find each of the Chantry's permanent residents to offer quiet embraces and tidings for Yule and spends several minutes speaking in low, somber tones with Sasha. The Verbana stands by the tree and the fireside at a later point with a glass in her hand, studying the basket of vials with contemplation - anyone could have been mistaken to assume the pagan was responsible for each, given the way they hummed with her shared resonance.

She doesn't take one, Kiara, rather watches them for a time and allows the others to take one if they so wish. The brunette remains there long into the night, though at some point, she'll be discovered curled on the sofa before the fire, the flames painting her skin into shades of soft, orange-gold, her arm draped low over the floor beside a glass of wine.

[mnemosyne]

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:
  
and also her bustier:
 )

[vesta]

Like Serafine, Alexander doesn’t hang any great significance to the holiday.  He has no ties to the Christian view that it’s the anniversary of the birth of any great Lord or Saviour.  He doesn’t feel the turn of eternal cycles, their solstices and equinoxes, their links to older gods and goddesses.  Add to that the effects of his line of work on the belief in Season’s Greetings and, well… 
 
It’s a reason to meet the others, catch up and be sociable.  Now that he no longer has the spectre of the Union hanging over him – or, at least, the spectre that he’d perceived through the actions and omissions of other Awakened – he feels comfortable returning here.  As much as he’d been comfortable coming here, anyway.  This might still be the sanctuary it always had been, but it was someone’s home now too.  But there was an invite, and he’d come.  He brings along a couple of bottles of ice wine and a large Stollen, left in the kitchen for anyone who chooses to partake.
 
Alexander passes the line of stockings, peering inside at the small collection of goodies that had been placed inside the stocking with his name on.  Some of the others get a hand run across the names: Alyssa, Sid, Lucy, Delilah.  As each his touched, he wonders where they are and what they’re doing.  He hopes that they’re well.  He stops by the tree, kneeling to pick up one of the vials of water.  He runs his hands over it, reading the message, feeling the resonance. 
 
He looks up and notices Kiara’s watchful gaze, standing and turning towards her.  Alexander closes the few steps between them, offering a smile as he continues to turn the vial over in his hands.  “Hey.  Your work?”  He holds up the vial, clarifying what he means when he asks.  [And cue retro scene, if/when we can get it planned?]
 
Later, Alexander grabs a couple of glasses of the ice wine and spends some time chatting with Sasha.

[Howl]

People arrive as the evening goes on. Sasha greets the guests with warm smiles and gentle hellos while Annie fusses with the food. They've both dressed for the occasion, with Sasha in a sleek red cocktail dress and Annie in a flowing green creation embroidered with a glittering leaf design across the midsection. The chantry's long-time owner and recently returned resident looks softer tonight than many are used to seeing her - though the telltale evidence of manual labor still marks her scraped and calloused hands. Both of the women look lovely. Annie makes a point to steal away from her kitchen duties to greet Kiara and offer her a tight embrace. There aren't many of their ilk in Denver any longer. Perhaps seeing Kiara reminds her of a different time.

Later, Kiara pulls Sasha aside to talk, but whatever it is they discuss, they keep the details to themselves.

Leah doesn't make an appearance until about fifteen minutes after Sera arrives. When she comes trotting down the stairs, she makes her way into the kitchen to steal a spice cookie from one of the plates, munching on it distractedly. She's dressed in a pair of tight-fitting black jeans, red heels and a gold satin halter top. The makeup around her eyes is smokey and dramatic. Her hair is pinned back in one section but otherwise left to flow in soft, dark waves around her face and shoulders. With the addition of the heels, she is the tallest woman in the room. It makes it difficult not to notice how much she's changed since the time she spent with Sera and Jim and Sid in that cabin in the woods.

She almost twists her ankle on the way to the living room to give Sera a hug. (It's the heels. She's not entirely used to them.) Kiara gets a slightly more reserved (more complicated, though no less genuine) greeting.

Early in the evening, Henry arrives with Red trotting in at his side. He is, as always, bright and warm and charming and he greets the women as though they were all dear, old friends. Annie is reserved when she welcomes him in, but whatever anger she may have had toward him seems to have settled. Only Leah seems disinclined to speak with him, and offers him a lingering, quiet gaze before drifting out of the room. The old Hermetic helps himself to two plates of food and a mug of cider before settling into one of the rocking chairs by the living room fire. He sets one of the plates on the floor for the fox to devour and spends most of the rest of the evening animatedly telling stories to anyone who will listen and bickering affectionately with Red before he drifts off into a long nap.

Two other people arrive as the night winds on. One of them is a tall, sharp-featured man in his early forties. He seems less comfortable there than the others, a bit stiff and formal. He's dressed in a very nice suit and introduces himself as Richard Oenomaus of House Quaesitor. Henry welcomes him with a hearty smile and a warm hug that Richard returns with markedly less enthusiasm. They are, as it turns out, father and son - though they could not be more different in demeanor. Annie greets Richard quietly, and there's a moment of aloof tension between them before Richard glances back at the door.

"If you'd rather I go..."

Then Annie sighs and gives a soft shake of her head. "No. Stay." She reaches out to rest a hand on his shoulder for a moment and some of the tension dissipates.

He doesn't talk much, Richard. Mostly he spends the evening either with Sasha or his father or alone with his thoughts, gazing out the windows at the dark lawn.

The last guest to arrive is a young man, about Leah's age, with dark hair and tanned skin wearing a biker jacket. He's dressed less formally than many of the others, and when he notices this he laughs self-consciously and apologizes, though Sasha (who opens the door for him) gives a dismissive wave of her hand and welcomes him inside. "You must be Atreyu."

A moment later Leah appears in the foyer. The smile she offers him is reserved but meaningful. "You came."

"Of course." Atreyu looks around as he hangs up his jacket. Beneath it he has on a band t-shirt and a pair of jeans. "This house is amazing," he adds with honest appreciation.

"Thank you." This from Annie, who appears to size up the new arrival with an assessing gaze. "Food's in the dining room. Help yourself to whatever you like."

From that point on, Leah and Atreyu barely leave each other's side. Whatever the nature of their relationship, the chemistry between them is both palpable and obvious.

At some point after she's had a couple of drinks, Leah pulls Atreyu into the living room, slips off her heels (which are clearly starting to annoy her) and goes to change the music playing over the sound system. "Ian sent me a playlist for Christmas. I'm kind of in love with it."

After that, the music changes to a more modern selection. The playlist in question moves through multiple genres, with most of the songs coming from more obscure bands. A number of them have a good beat to dance to, which Leah and Atreyu take full advantage of, spinning around together like playful children on the open floor. At one point the tracks shift to Sarah Blasko's cover of Don't Dream it's Over and Atreyu's movement comes to a sudden, unnerved halt.

"What's wrong?" Leah asks, breathing hard. The candle lights in the room make her eyes glisten.

"Nothing, I've just... I've heard this song before." He's quiet for a moment, gazing into the distance. "In another life." He glances around the room, a sad expression coming over his eyes. "It makes me think of someone who isn't here."

Leah is quiet a moment. Then she reaches out to take his hand. "Yeah." Like she understands, because she does. They all do. She pulls Atreyu against her. The contact is hesitant and difficult (contact with men has always been difficult for her) but once they're there like that - once she has him in her arms - she relaxes into it. He buries his face against her hair and they dance like that: the Phoenix and the Ouroboros.

Later they disappear into the woods. Annie tries to follow them, but Sasha stops her.

As the evening winds down and Richard leaves to drive Henry home, the remaining two Trinity members find themselves dancing together by the fire. It's a sweet moment, and a rare picture of vulnerability for Annie as she all-but collapses into her lover's arms.

Eventually the candles burn down and the remaining food gets stored away. Whoever remains, passed out on sofas or guest beds, is left to sleep as long as they like. When Kiara wakes up, she'll find a soft-woven blanket draped over her.

-------------------------------

[-ix-]

It is Christmas.  (More Yule, perhaps than Christmas.)

Kalen is late with presents, because he has distractions.  He will track people down with presents later.  He shows up to the party late, with wine (as though he does not know how many bottles of wine are there already).

What time he spends inside is mostly, after a brief round of hellos, spent being mostly silent and that mostly near Alexander or Kiara.  Even with them, he is quiet.  Soon enough though, he slips back outside, not into the woods but out by the Node where it is slightly less freezing.  With a bottle of wine.  The only person who might be deliberately invited is Alexander, who gets a look and a faint smile as Kalen slips out the door.  Now and again he will come in for more wine and listen to a story of Henry's, but he spends most of the night rather gently apart from everything.  There is nothing cold about his distance tonight.  He's just lost in a lot of thoughts he has no desire to actually voice.

It is more Yule than Christmas.  And so he stays until sunrise.  That is what you do on the longest night of the year.  You wait for the light.  You go somewhere sacred and you wait for the light.  It seems more appropriate than he can ever remember this year.

He leaves the Chantry almost as soon as the sun has risen.

He leaves Denver only hours after that for something more like Christmas than Yule.

[FadedNoel]

It isn't Grace's idea of the best Holiday party ever, but at least it's not really Christmas. More getting back to the old roots, from before the mid-winter feast was corrupted by Capitalists promoting the consumption of all. She doesn't bring a bottle, because she's been drinking too much lately anyway. Won't partake of the 'refreshments' tonight, because she has to be back on the roads again later, and the roads are terrible.

Instead, she brings her laptop and a bag of magnetized LED lights that are obviously home-made. They light up in different colors when you pull a little paper separator out, and stick to things (and each other) like Christmas lights without the wire. Everybody's stocking gets a small handful. For those she doesn't recognize, for whom there might not be a stocking, she will walk up and hand them off personally, until the bag is empty. For Kalen, she just walks up and starts trying to adhere lights to his coat buttons and watch or whatever might be metallic that he's wearing.

The laptop is for sharing the gift of Ginger for those who might not have it, and who are residents of Denver. Richard and Atreyu won't get an invitation, for as much as Atreyu's presence might enthrall her. They just seem like the kind of people for whom, once their business has concluded, will be gone. But the ones who actually live at the Chantry have gone way too long without at least being asked.

She'll also stay as far away from Alexander as she can, with the only indication that she's aware of him at all being the dropping of a handful of lights into his stocking.

The healing charms are neat, and also so very useful. She'll take a couple, with the intent of giving them to those who don't already have healing charms, are not here, and who will likely need them the most (Samir and Elijah, you're getting presents).

[mnemosyne]

"Here the phonograph, you see, is a thin disc or diaphragm of iron, beneath which is this fine steel point, which moves up and down by the vibrations of the disc.   Beneath this is the revolving cylinder, on which is this spiral groove.  On the axis of the cylinder is a screw, the distance between the threads being the same as the distance between the grooves on the cylinder.  The cylinder is covered with a sheet of tin foil--you will see it operate by and by--and when the cylinder is revolved the steel point presses the tin-foil into the spiral groove.  If now the diaphragm be made to vibrate by the voice the steel point makes a series of indentations in the tin-foil grooves, corresponding to the sounds uttered.  On going over again the same groove with the steel point, by setting the cylinder again at the starting point, that is, by going over the same ground, the indentations in the tin-foil cause the membrane again to vibrate precisely as at first, thus reproducing the sound originally made.  The same sound wave you first made is returned to you in whatever shape you made it.   Your words, for example, are preserved in the tin-foil, and will come back upon the application of the instrument years after you are dead in exactly the same voice you spoke them in."

"How many times?"

"As long as the tin-foil lasts.  This tongueless, toothless instrument, without larynx or pharynx, dumb, voiceless matter, nevertheless mimics your tones, speaks with your voice, utters your words, and centuries after you have crumbled into dust will repeat again and again, to a generation that could never know you, every idle thought, every fond fancy, every vain word that you choose to whisper against this thin iron diaphragm." 

-  from an interview with Thomas Edison, circa 1878. 

Dan is reading that to Sera from his phone, the whole thing, the bits about grooves and measurements, needles against tin.  Imprints and exprints.  He wants her to hear the words, tongueless, toothless instrument and all the rest, and has to explain to her the whole of the context.  She doesn't really know who Thomas Edison is: just, see, she likes his bulbs.  

Dan rolls his eyes.

Hahahahaha.  That was a joke, Dan, mostly.

"Oh."  When he explains it, the supple edge of her half-smile, half-smirk rising, breaching, settling back into the gleaming waters from which it rose.  She chides him for playing with his phone at a party.  He rolls his eyes.  Later, he will explain to her about Ice Wine.  Has to check his phone to confirm the details: the grapes on the vine to freeze, then picked within the first few hours.  The sharp brightness inherent in the stuff: sweet and acid, winter come right round again.   

Sera hugs Leah of course when the girl comes tottering down the stairs.  Takes in the get-up and has with it this moment of being Fucking Old because: doesn't she remember a different sort of girl.  Weren't we all different sorts of girls.  That moment lasts as long as it takes Leah to understand that the metal from which Sera's bustier was forged is Really Metal (it is: caging, right, the way these things always have been) and consequently not the Easiest Thing to Hug.  Flash of her teeth: laughter bright and sure beneath her skin, liquid.  Leah is having some trouble with those heels so Sera murmurs some secrets to her about being upright on them.  

Where to put your weight, yeah?  Stop tottering forward onto the balls of your feet.  Strike first with the heels.  Stand solidly, the way you do with everything else.  Practice and the world's your goddamned oyster, but that's true of everything, isn't it?

No it isn't.   Sera practiced being invisible-to-normal-people for a month and the world wasn't her goddamned oyster.  It was something else entirely.  

--

Hi Alexander, How are you? How about a hug?  This is not when he arrives, but later when Dan has explained icewine to her and she has had a glass or two to supplement the glass or three or seventeen of whatever she had before the icewine.   "Haven't seen you in forever."  Which is true.  She smells like cloves and alcohol and other things that are not illegal here, in this day and age, in this place and time.  But still: cop.  Doesn't seem to phase her.  Tells him she likes the icewine.   Mind, Dan has made her a cocktail with it, like a martini.  Vodka and icewine in a sugar-rimmed martini glass, but she keeps imagining the shivering, frozen grapes bursting on her tongue.  

Kalen: also a hug, warm, and a haven't scene you in forever which is also true and something about something from the first time she ever met him makes her think he would like that stuff Dan was reading-to-her-off-his-phone that Edison said so she gets Dan and drags him over and tells him to: recite.  He smirks, laughs.  Oh, I have your permission to read from the phone at a party now, do I?  But, he loves the whole thing, all of it.  The toothless, tongueless instrument that is not voiceless.  The precision of the tin grooves: the rhythmic necessity of them.  He leans back against the kitchen counter and reads them again.

--

Sera takes a selfie and texts it to someone who does not live here anymore.  Sugar-rimmed martini glass in hand.  ICEWIND!  it says.  Ah, well.  Later, there will be another one.  It will appear like magick in another time zone, another coast, some other world.  Later, with LED lights on the leafs of metal covering her boobs.  

--

Henry?  Does she remember him?  Er - kind of?  Not enough to hug or anything except after a certain hour she has been imbibing and is inclined to hug everyone and OUCH, the hardware, Sera.  But the talking fox, right?  Fuck.  

She tells Red a story about Jean-Paul Sartre.  He had a bad trip once and spent the rest of his life being followed around by a talking lobster.  She wants to give him a folded-up note after the story:  T ___  F ___, but he's a fox.  How would he write back?

Magic, maybe.  Later she tells Kiara the story about the story: and also what she thought about the story.  The idea about the note-writing and lobsters and the strange and terrible things that get appended to you and follow you around it gets VERY COMPLICATED, this story-within-a-story stuff, so Sera says.  And she tries to get back to the beginning several times but everything is curled strangely inside her mind and instead:  Hi Kiara.  That is a gorgeous dress.

What you can take from this is: she is glowing.  There's a light inside of her that leaks out everywhere.  A frame, a filament: burning. 

Like the inside of an Edison bulb.


--

Hi Grace.  You arrive in time for a hug and a scrog, or something.  A hair-ruffle at the very least.  Those lights are bloody amazing.  Sera's boobs are metallic and she loves them, thank you very much.  Does she notice Grace-avoiding-Alexander?  Mmm.  Depends how obvious it is.  Whether they are like magnets, all repel-and-attract, or more subtle, shifting, all drifting currents, eddies and backwaters, undertows.   Probably she doesn't notice.  Which is strange because sometimes she sees so much, almost everything, the world and its bones and its strange sinews and secrets, the language of it wrapped up in her body, sharp and intimate as muscle-and-bone.  But you know, not always.  Sometimes she lives inside of it, too.  Sometimes she keeps the tenderest parts of herself entirely to herself.  

--


Richard Oenomaus of House Quaesitor spends his time at a party staring broodily out of the window.  Maybe it isn't broodily but for fuck's sake when you spend your time at a party staring out the window it is like going to a bar and drinking only water and hanging out in the creepy little corridor leading to the bathrooms and not talking to anyone.  Bad analogy but, still.  Creepy.  

She feels like needling him, so she asks him to dance.  

By then, she may or may not have LED lights all over her boobs.  Maintain your stupid fucking broody dignity now, guy-who-isn't-very-nice-to-his-weird-awesome-dad.

[Howl]

This is how Richard Oenomaus responds when Sera asks him to dance:

At first, there is surprise. It's reserved, because he's a reserved person, but the evidence is there - a blink, a pause. He can navigate the hell out of a courtroom but being asked to dance by a striking woman was never a thing he's managed to not be surprised by.

Then there is a smile. It isn't the first time he's smiled that night - Sasha managed to get one out of him earlier when she whispered some dry joke in his ear, and every now and then he'll look at the assembled group and give this sort of fond-sad-distant smile, like he's remembering things or maybe like he's missing someone. But it is a rare enough expression on him as to be notable. There's sadness in this smile too. It's the sort of smile people give when they're flattered but they're going to decline anyway.

And sure enough: "I'm afraid dancing isn't really my thing. You should ask my father. I suspect he'd be delighted."

----------

As for Grace's offer, Annie, Sasha and Leah will gratefully take her up on it, though Annie will briefly regard the software with a furrowed expression of pensive suspicion. Henry, if included in the invitation, will kindly wave the suggestion away. "Oh my dear, I lose my phones so often. I fear that would be a disaster waiting to happen."

[-ix-]

For the time Kalen spends inside, he is at least reasonably present.  It may be a little more difficult to read in the way he will let silence settle over him, the way he will just watch over the gathering more than stepping into it.  Mostly he is silent near his friends and sometimes he is silent alone and occasionally he will go to be silent near Richard's window.  Richard gets more space, yes.  And Kalen is perhaps more aware of being near him, a little sharper and a little less careless about the way he leans into the wall.  But Kalen, more than some at this party, knows what Richard is; and, for all that that knowledge makes him wary, it is also, in part, that knowledge that brings him back now and again.  It is not easy, friendship with Judges.  But he does not imagine that it is easy being isolated by what you are, either.

It is easier to read interest and presence in the way that he playfully (but carefully and deliberately ineffectively) bats at Grace while she affixes LED magnets to his coat buttons, the ease with which Serafine is allowed into his space, the way the slope of his shoulders shifts into something more relaxed and open as Dan reads to him about Edison.  (And Kalen adores being read to.  Adores the steady sound of voices really, Henry's stories are similarly well-received.)