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ephemera.
#1
Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge. - Lord Byron

2012.
New York.


Two women were standing outside an old mansion. Heavy iron-wrought gates still guarded it against trespassers but nature had made a mockery of the DO NOT ENTER sign, warping and twisting it as weeds and a tangled rope of vines wound around the bars until all that remained was DO N T. A slightly more succinct request (or perhaps the plea of the building itself as leaves scattered in the wind, scraping across the winding drive and a shutter creaked in drooping resignation against a second floor window.

The glass had been broken at some point; punctured by something that left a fine, spidering webwork of tiny cracks and jagged glass teeth; the darkness within the house like a gaping, hungry maw. The entire building looked withered; hunched and ignored on a lonely hill; the neighboring houses built away from it less out of deliberation and more natural design. Time had forgotten this place and the two women were notable for being among the first in a long time to stop by its gates and look within, beyond the gnarled, stunted trees in the front yard and the scabby, dry lawn.

"What happened to it?"

One of the women asked of the other. They were standing close, hands linked and although none but a neighborhood cat observed them as it sat at the edge of its property cleaning its paw, they were taking a risk, observing the property not merely as the residents of the street tended to (with idle lamentations on the eyesore and a lack of interest in tearing it down) but magically. A thick, coiling energy winding around them like a cloak, emanating from the shorter of the pair.

"Death." The other replied easily enough. Where her companion was younger, dark of hair and eye, she was fair, her long hair tinged with grey and white. Her eyes a piercing blue, lined at the edges with age but alert and fixed. "Betrayal. Murder. The stain of those who used it translates. What you see is the house but colored by spiritual truth. An echo. An abstract."

The brunette turned her attention back to the mansion and couldn't suppress the shudder that ran down her spine. The mansion was old and dilapidated to the naked eye but beneath, peeled away, it was grotesque.

It reared out of the ground, the edges protruding at angles; shadows not contained to their roosts as they were on their side but winding and undulating around the windows; the outside not the faded cream and blue it seemed but splattered with gore and rust; blood stained the windows and the lawn was no longer merely dried out but scoured with deep gashes; smoke issuing from each like they fed straight to some fiery inferno beneath.

Dante's vision of Hell must look something like this,
the younger concluded as she tore her eyes away from the sight, visibly shaken.

"Is it always like that, on the other side?"

The older female's expression shifted to something almost tender as she turned to observe her companion and stroked two fingers over a smooth cheek. "Alice down the rabbit-hole. What is reality and how can you define it? We paint our own version, my little wolf. Much truer in the beyond. Come away now, Kiara."

She let go of the younger woman's hand as she drifted from the gates, leaving her apprentice to look over the mansion as it was on their side; still and silent.

Present Day.
Chantry property.
Morrison.


Fall was beginning to color the property around the ranch Annie Pierce and her cabal called home. The leaves ripening to deep oranges and reds; the long grasses in the pasture and fields turning fairer shades of honey-gold. The flowers were well into their bloom, some already losing their petals in the lead up to the changing season.

Mabon would be upon them soon.

The figure that moved around the spring at the Chantry was no stranger to it, the property or such acts of seeming ritual, she placed sturdy glass candles at intervals, crossing around the edges of a small delegated space that had been carefully marked out over the ground in salt. A bundle of dried herbs were taken within it and the brunette known as Kiara Woolfe settled carefully in the center-most point of her circle.

She was dressed in a flowing purple gown; laced tight around her waist and covered with intricate needlework depicting flowers in various states of bloom, from bud to decay.

There was something vaguely ceremonial to it. The back housed a hood and as the pagan carefully lit the tip of her herbs and began to smudge the edges of her space; the wind picked up and scattered granules of the salt. "I knew you'd be here," she replied with a kind of quiet pleasure and as the breeze fluttered the edges of her hood and hair; the Verbena resumed her ritual, adding with gentle insistence.

"I know. But I have to try."

There was a whisper that shook through the treetops. "I need to see."

-

Wind howled as she stepped into the space between worlds.

An endless, screaming mass of rage and incoherent fury whirling around the barrier like a tornado, wrapping around and tearing at the very seams of Kiara.

There was such exquisite, incomprehensible beauty and terror to it and she sees it for a split second only before she's pushed through; the dragging pressure of the Avatar Storm fretfully clinging until it cannot hold her any longer and she steps beyond it.

-

Wonderland.

-

2012.
Callahan Residence.


"Do people ever just not come back? I mean, do they just keep going. Forever?"

Aisling's hair was darker again; her eyes, when they flicked to her, seemed darker too but Kiara had never been able to figure out what was her Mentor's glamour and what was the natural color her eyes were. She continued to shuffle her deck of cards and then finally laid out one with a quiet noise.

"Some wander and never return. Some get lost. Some stay too long in the spirit wilds and become - " She cast a sudden, keener stare her apprentice's way. Almost as if she were looking beyond her. It was a common trend of hers and it never quite ceased to unsettle Kiara. " - the spirit world is not a toy, Kiara. Don't treat it lightly."

"I can't even see it on my own, Aisling."

The Seer turned a card over. The Page of Swords. "Yet. Give it time." Kiara's look was pointed as she dropped back down onto the sofa. "Easy for you to say."

Aisling turned over her final card and tapped it. Figures fell from a building being engulfed in flame.

The Tower.

-

She reappeared as the sun was banking; casting the sky into rich purples and pinks and blues. One moment there was nothing but the circle cast by the brunette before she'd crossed over and the next - Kiara Woolfe appeared, standing right where she'd vanished hours earlier with a look of pleasure that translated, a second later, to sudden confusion.

She took a step, disorientated and promptly crumpled to the ground; a faint luminescence seeming to emanate from beneath her skin. The last thing she hears is a voice calling her name and the sound of footsteps.

It sounded like Annie Pierce.

-

She woke up in a bed and not the unforgiving ground.

There's a window open and the sound of a lawnmower whirring penetrated along with the rich odor of petrol and cut grass. When the Verbena's eyes open, they take a moment to refocus and she sets a hand, gingerly, over them before drawing it back and holding it up.

Her skin looked faintly luminous.

It's a carefully navigated path she takes into the bathroom, her body felt tender, as if she'd somehow run a marathon in her sleep and she stood, hands braced on the sink; staring at her reflection. She hadn't imagined it. Her skin was barely tinged with a supple glow; it flickered and pulsed and faded and then returned, giving her an ethereal, otherworldly aura.

-

The text that goes out from the Verbena on Tuesday evening is vague at best: Staying at the Chantry for a few days if anyone needs to reach me. - Kiara.

-

The Technical Stuff

Kiara

[Okay so, crossing the Gauntlet.

Spirit 3, base diff of 7 since I'm assuming Vulgar. -1 Near Node, -1 Focus, -1 Taking her time, +1 First Time really casting this + WP. Thinking she needs at least 4 Suxx.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 7, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Kiara

[And, damage from Avatar Storm vs Arete Rating (3) + Paradox (0), Does Bashing.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5) ( botch x 1 )

Kiara

[Paradox]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Kiara

[Soaking]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4) ( fail )

Kiara

[And later on, crossing back! Same details.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Kiara

[Extending]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Kiara

[Oops, almost forgot. Crossing back. Avatar Storm~]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kiara

[I assume I can try and soak this.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

the devil

Looking at things! Witnessed!

Kiara

Thank you! <3

[Jacqui's Edit: I realized after rolling my dice and getting Heather to witness them that I technically did two Vulgar effects (though honestly, I'm not sure I needed to roll it twice but since I committed~ I'm going to add an extra dice roll for the second effect's paradox since that initial roll should have been 6 dice = 2 Vulgar effects

Kiara

[Oop, forgot to do this before for second trip.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kiara

[Soak.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

So Kiara earned herself a pretty 3 suxx of paradox. Atta girl. Defy reality.]
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