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At the Chantry [attn: Grace, Shoshannah, Sera, Hawksley, Sid]
#31
The way Sera described it, the party would be more of an initiation rite than anything else. A way to mark a transition, like puberty almost. Ceremonies like that were intended to drag the liminal being (in the halfway, fuzzy, almost-there state) into a new life. Was it tribal politics, human nature, or both that people felt such ceremonies necessary? Thoughts buzzed around as she listened and read book titles.

She paused at a tome whose spine read 'Dissertations on Enochian Vowel Forms' with a quizzical expression. Was there a card catalogue or something? Oh, paper! What she wouldn't do for a search engine for this.

When Sera started getting serious again, the creepiness edging into her voice, the shifting of attention stopped. Techs, then, were like the police. Avoid. The name, at first, had frightened her a bit -- she was a tech (technician). Her whole life revolved around tech. And she was new and didn't know the specifics.

The liminal state is a dangerous place. She didn't know what to do, she didn't know what was expected, and wasn't that why she was here? Visiting the library was a kind of ceremony then, passing a locked threshold, being granted new words.

There wasn't any drinking or music right now, but it was as good as a party, to her mind.

And then, much like a party, people just started showing up, or showing themselves. Sid appeared out of nowhere from within the stacks, to whom Grace gave a grin and wave.

And Hawksley, shirtfull, but no less distracting, asking her when she'd like to have that party. "Oh, well, it's.." She almost said, 'your party' but no, it really wasn't. "I'll leave that up to you, I guess."

Her head cocked at his 'Also', the mental machine chewing on that one. Just as soon as he'd said it, he accosted Sid with her name and threatened her with a hug, and Grace laughed. "Don't believe it, Sid."
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#32
Hawksley gives a sharp whistle that shatters the subdued quiet of the library. Where she was peering out from behind the shelves, Sid startles, but she doesn't shrink back or try to hide. She's done with hiding, at least from these people.

And then she's there, stepping out and making her presence known as if they couldn't feel her already. She lets them know that she doesn't know much of anything about techs except to stay out of their way.

Hawksley greets her brightly and she looks at him uncertainly, though the corners of her mouth threaten to curve upward as she looks at him. How could anyone be wary of Hawksley for very long? He looks at the world with the wonder of a child. Being near him feels how Lois Lane must have felt flying with Superman - except without the romantic connotations.

He says he put his shirt on so he's safe, and that look of amused uncertainty shifts to pure confusion. She looks from him to Sera, her lips parting to ask for clarification (are his hugs somehow contaminated unless he wears a shirt?) when Grace laughs and tells her not to believe it.

Sid looks back up at Hawksley, eyes lifting first, then her head. She smiles, a small, slight curving of her mouth. "I believe him." Bare feet moving whisper quiet across the plush carpet, she goes to accept that hug, possible cooties be damned.
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#33
Here's the thing, Sid pops out of the woodwork and Sera's dark eyes are on the Orphan as she appears from behind one of the stacks. Reality cops Sid repeats and Sera gives her this little shrug by way of acknowledgment and awareness, see. It's sort of a yeah and also something like maybe y'all should talk to someone with a wee bit more authority about this sort of thing all wrapped up together. Because the larger the audience is for her bullshit on these topics of intellectual interest, the more immediate and prickling is her awareness of how fucking little she really knows.

Then That's Hawksley and she's doing that thing with her arms and he's smirking at her and kissing her on the crown of her head with his hand on her back and calling her you mad thing and, "Oh," she's saying, rather under her breath, a bit stiff beneath his hand but also rolling her eyes and muttering, " - I knew that." With a certain vehemence that says she knew no such thing.

"He's right too," to Grace more than Sid and rather quietly at that, then, with this upward lilt of her chin towards Hawksley as he goes to hug Sid. "Pretty much everything we do's in defiance of them, and their world view. Down to our fucking existence and every breath of magic in our blood and bones. Every vision, every breath, every time we open ourselves up to the pattern or spike in to the - what the fuck is it you see? was it data or something? is a great big fuck you to them.

"I mean, there was this whole war and shit," this to Grace and Sid both, with another little curl of her shoulders by way of a seriously, don't listen to me disclaimer. "Uh, you should ask someone else if you wanna know more? 'Cos I know fuck-all about it."

Then, a little comma between her brows, " - wait, when's your birthday?" to the Hermetic, as he and Sid share a (dangerous?) hug. (Sera's only response to Sid's confused glance, if she caught it, was a mild smirk and an encouraging upward lilt of her straight dark brows. "I didn't know it was your birthday. How old are you going to be?"
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
Reply
#34
Hawksley. Is. Aghast. At Grace. "How dare you, madam!" is his response when she tells Sid not to believe that he's safe, and yet:

there's some truth to that. His intensity, his presence, the sheer power one can feel flickering at his fingertips and behind his eyes, the lust for that power, the lust for the sun and moon and physical touch and the books -- god! -- the books, the knowledge, the newness and the freedom of Grace, the gut-wrenching-spine-bending existence of Sera, the gasp that is Sid.

Yes, Sid, the wonder, the eyes of a child, the eyes of a god infatuated with all that dwells in its sight.

No, but: Grace is right. None of that is safe.

--

"We'll do it after," he decides, easily, without waffling or shifting or pressing for preference, as his arms are folding like wings around Sid as though they hug like this all the time. He puts his chin atop her head. He squeezes, crinkling up his face, making a noise that speaks of comfort and satisfaction and the sheer effort of the squeeze. Even after that pressure abates he holds onto her, swinging her slightly, to the beat of: "You're. So. Warm."

Mercifully, he releases her after that, inhaling deeply and giving a quick -- of course I'm right -- rejoinder to the conversation Sera is having with Grace. He drifts towards a stack, glancing back when Sera mentions the war, and chimes in: "I've got some histories at home. You could probably find some here. Some of them are... old. There's newer information, some of that is on some magic-locked net or something, I don't know, I hear rumors."

His voice is getting more distant as he's fading through the shelves, calling back: "August 8th, but we'll party on the weekend. And! A quarter of a century, so I expect all my gifts to be solid silver. JUST KIDDING. Grace! Come here! I found a programming manual from the seventies, but -- hot damn. This ain't your daddy's ...I don't fucking know, insert-programming-jargon-here." There's a beat, and a flip of pages. "Ooh! Margin scribbles!"

Hawksley has never sounded more gleeful.
my whole life is thunder.
Reply
#35
Sera explained more about the 'Techs' but each explanation formed new questions in Grace's mind, and Sera wasn't the one to answer them. Her gaze wandered the stacks, then. "Maybe these books hold some answers then, you think?"

She lost herself in the reading of titles, some in languages she didn't know, none of which sounded promising, until her yelled name caught her attention.

The book Hawksley found was old, no, ancient in programming terms. Grace was a little crestfallen at the mention it was from the 70's. Why keep it, save for nostalgia? He was right, the newer stuff wouldn't be in dead-tree format. But his enthusiasm was infectious, and the thought of notes in the margins was quite intriguing.

She stopped pawing her way through the section she was at, and bounded over to the way back, to peer at the found programming manual from behind.

And her eyes went wide.

Of course, a manual like this would be mostly math. It would be made to last, in a language that never ages. She was expecting COBOL, and was getting so much more.

Hell, the diagrams of data entropy that Hawksley was just thumbing past like they were nothing...

"Hey, wait, hold on, go back, you're hogging it!"
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#36
Hawksley, as though he's out to prove that he can't be trusted, just says "Ack!" (yes, aloud) and hops the book a few inches from his hands to Grace's. She'd better catch it.

Okay, frankly, if she doesn't, Hawksley will. But he grins either way, abandoning the manual to Grace. He peers over her shoulder a bit, but frankly: this isn't his jam. It's hers. He knows it's hers. He knows none of them are going to be able to teach her like this, and because of that: he envies her. Oh, how he envies her.

With a pat on her back, he smiles again, warmer, almost fond, and heads back to Sera and Sid. Or starts to. And then he finds that Dissertations on Enochian Vowel Forms and makes a Murr? sound behind his tongue, halting his steps and reaching for the spine.
my whole life is thunder.
Reply
#37
Sid knows that Hawksley, all of them aren't safe. Any one of them can turn in an instant. They could hurt her. And by opening up to them and trusting them she risks bitter betrayal, which would hurt all the more.

And yet when Hawksley folds his arms around her, Sid's arms wrap around his lean torso and she leans against him. A warmth like pure sunshine envelopes her. When he squeezes her he can feel her hands tighten against his back an instant before she relaxes, but she doesn't jerk or twist away from him. He rocks, says that she's. so. warm, and she laughs somewhere near his collar and says, "You're one to talk."

Then he's releasing her to go chasing after something else and Sid turns her face away in hopes that no one will notice it is a little redder than it was.

"Ah," she says in response to Sera's lack of knowledge. "Maybe, maybe Pan might know more. Or Jim. Did I give you Jim's number?" she asks Grace, who may or may not be hunting after Hawksley by then, leaving Sid alone (relatively speaking) with Sera. Sid closes the gap to the Cultist (or she closes the gap to Sid, or they close the gap to each other) and offers her a hug as well. And though she's concerned for the sharpness of Sera's figure beneath her arms Sid only says, "I'm going to," while twisting and pointing with her thumb abck over her shoulder. "I want to finsh this chapter before I go home."

She goes back to her couch or loveseat or whatever, stopping to give Grace Jim's number should she need it, but otherwise she prepares to lose herself again to her tome.
Reply
#38
Sera returns Sid's hug but see: her own is lightly offered, is a stand-in hug, an analogue for a hug rather than a genuine embrace. The Cultist has reached the point of her fast where (oh, inhale the scent of Sid's red hair, loose around her shoulders) she has to hold herself a little physically apart from those to whom she is closest. This day or the next or the one after:

the rite.

And then, oh Denver, be afraid.

But see: the loose curve of Serafíne's skinny arms around Sid and then Sid retreats to finish her chapter before she heads home and Sera waves a little farewell and thinks that book looks boring and the books see that Hawksley and Grace are showing such interested in look boring-er and boring-est.

And see, when there is a break in all of this mutual adoration of Books the Cultist Couldn't Give a Damn About she interrupts it to offer Grace two more volumes for her perusal. Yes, they're in the chantry library, but yes, they are also available on amazon.com and in the odd (Very Odd) actual physical Sleeper-accessible bookstore. Doesn't matter.

They are both by the French surrealist author Rene Daumal.

The first: A Night of Serious Drinking.

The second: Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing.

"When you get done with programming and shit, try these. You know?" A little grin, this shake of her blond head. Then, all quiet see? "Don't get stuck."

Which is a great thing for Ms. Your Books Are So Boring to say, but there's a wry twist to her mouth that suggests that she is perfectly, sublimely conscious of her own hypocrisy.
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
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#39
Grace did catch that book, and afterwards, jabbed Hawksley in the side with her elbow (for when she does reach out and touch someone, it usually comes with some level of violence) but her gleeful demeanor showed it hadn't been meant to hurt.

And for once, Grace attained focus. She flipped back to the data entropy diagram, which seemed to be making a point about entropy maximums and boundary conditions, and what they looked like. The side-note in this page's margin seemed to be a generalized algorithm to process that in the field. She touched the pen marks with numbed fingers, seeking a connection to the one who wrote that. What she wouldn't give to sit down and have a long chat...

It was a bit beyond her, but she didn't much care. The pictures were beautiful, at any rate.

Then Sera invaded her consciousness, to whom Grace gave the strange, dawning comprehension look of 'oh, yes, I am actually in a library with other people'. "Oh, ah, A Night of Serious Drinking," she mumbled. "The only night of serious drinking I have ever engaged in was my 21st birthday, and it was a bit regrettable, I'm afraid." She gave the Cultist a smile, and then, "But I'll try to keep an open mind."

Over the course of the evening, to at least be able to say she kept that promise, she would peer into those other works, and she would find the one to be more than a story about drinking, and the other to be much more than a story about mountain climbing. They were way more metaphorical than the concrete programming manual, but no less truthful in what they had to say (although a great deal of any of the books she read that night went a little beyond her ken).

In the end, she would likely have to be told to go home, or told to sleep. But for now, she went and curled up on one of the couches, taking her shoes off so she could properly contort herself into comfortable reading position, taking a break from people and talking -- recharging in her own fashion.
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#40
[I would call that a lovely wrap! Thank you Howl, CC, Noel and Liz for letting me crash, and thank you Howl, CC, Noel, Liz and Niko for the RP! Big Grin]
my whole life is thunder.
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