Sometimes I feel like somebody's watchin' me

Shoshannah Mitchell
It's been a long time for Shoshannah to be this quiet.  There've been no outbursts of temper (which is odd enough on its own), no days of incessant questions, no odd moments of PAY ATTENTION TO ME mixed with LEAVE ME ALONE.  This version of the girl Pan's opened his home at the rectory to is disconcerting in her compliance.  This isn't to say that she's ever been anything but an exemplary worker when put to a task, but there's always something overt that makes the way she's impossible to not notice a little more bearable.
Because when she's quiet like this, it's like Death's sneaking up on one, as opposed to blaring trumpets in announcement of its presence.
There's been no attempt on her part to discuss the afternoon spent with Leah, and the fact that she promptly shuts down any overtures - not hostilely, but definitively - may or may not give hints as to the whys and wherefores of her behavior to one as accustomed to dealing with troubled teens as Padre Echeverría is.  Regardless, she's either done with her current chore or taking a break from it, sitting on the stoop and watching as the bustling neighborhood goes by (much of it crossing to the other side of the street or otherwise avoiding her sphere of influence) around her.  Dress is simple, neat, clean, and pretty for what it is - a long skirt that likely twirls when she does, a coordinating t-shirt with a contrasting tank over it, arm warmers that cover from the palm of her hand to mid forearm.  In other words, it's just another day.

Pan Echeverría
He has made no such attempt to discuss the afternoon spent with Leah. Other than asking her if she was alright when they got back in the truck, the priest had had nothing to say about it.
Since then he has been scarce about the church and most of her tasks have come from Rosa if any have come in at all. He has left no notes for her in the morning and has not come looking for her. When he comes home at night she can hear a brief clomping of heels on the hardwood in the front entryway and then nothing. For the past week Shoshannah has had quite a bit of downtime. It's almost a typical summer break for a girl her age.
Pan comes out of the church this morning and puts on his sunglasses and makes it about ten yards before a pair of older women on their way in stop him and engage him in exuberant conversation for maybe three minutes. Even from the distance she's at Shoshannah can read genuine interest in his posture. He is not bothered by being waylaid and he doesn't look away from them until they bid him a good day and continue inside.
He ambles across the street to the rectory like he's got all day.
"Why the long face?" he asks when he's within earshot.

Sid Rhodes
Life in the unemployment lane tends to be pretty easy, or at least it should be.  Sid was told on that first day home, after the warehouse, after everything, that she should enjoy this time off.  Think of it like a vacation, her roommate keeps telling her whenever it starts to become obvious she's fretting about her half of the rent or the utilities or the groceries or whatever.
She can't, though.  Can't relax, can't sit still.  The mystery of the cameras has yet to be solved, not that she can do that.  All she can do is look for more of them, and try not to congregate with the others or otherwise draw attention to herself.  She's done her level best to avoid the other Magi she's met so far, not that it's done her any good.  New ones keep cropping up out of thin air.  It's almost like some mysterious NPC keeps trying to tell her It's dangerous to go alone, take this!  Only instead of a sword or some other object, it's people.  People to watch out for and to watch out for her in turn.
Already she's swept her neighborhood.  Now it's time to try the delicate (and impossible) dance of scanning areas she knows or thinks she knows are frequented by people she sort of almost maybe kind of wants to think of a little friend-ish.  Vaguely she recalls that one man, the padre from the bar and from the coffee shop, saying he could be found at a church in this area.  Good Samaritan?  Good...Good Shepherd, that's right.  On Florida, which wasn't terribly helpful, at least not for someone who doesn't have easy access to Google Maps.  Maybe she'll be able to do this without getting spotted by one of the others.  That's what she hopes, anyway, but what are Sid's hopes but temporary, flimsy things to be dashed against the rocks?
It's likely she's sensed before she's seen; she's been Working lately, stretching out her awareness of the waves that travel over the air.  She's seen eventually, walking along the sidewalk as she does, bag bouncing against her hip, her hands shoved into the pockets of jeans that have seen better days.  She's taken to wearing a hat these days, a drab olive green one of the cabbie variety.  It's not the best of disguises, but all she really hopes to do, that one hope above all others, is to not be recognized by watchers from above.
Up ahead of her, sitting on a stoop and watching for people just like Sid, people walking along seemingly minding their own business, is that girl.  Shoshannah, the Dreamspeaker with the angry presence.  Suddenly hesitant, Sid's steps slow, but don't stop.

Sid Rhodes
[woo it stopped refreshing, imagine there's some mention of seeing Pan around, too, I bet he's hard to miss]

Shoshannah Mitchell
There's a shrug, absent, as she squishes an ant that's found its way onto her arm; normally she'd let it be, but having something to focus on (to distract her from loud thoughts) is often a good thing.  "Just sitting around," is all she says, though that isn't really an answer.  She's always moody, Shoshannah is, but usually it's a quick flare of anger that dissipates quickly into the general sullenness that seems to be her default state of being.  This, though, is different.
And there's Sid, so Shoshannah's fingers, though they don't move from where they rest on knees that are pulled to Shoshannah's chest, wiggle in the Orphan's direction when she's most likely to see the not-quite-tentative greeting.
"......................I like you better than I do Rosa."  Obviously she knows he's busy and certainly doesn't fault him for it; this isn't a request for anything, just a grudging statement of fact.  It's also the closest she's come to admitting to liking anyone in a long time, though she doesn't share that part.

Pan Echeverría
Though she makes no sound and even slows her pace, Sid does not escape notice. It isn't the wiggling of the Dreamspeaker's fingers that catches his attention but the tendrils of the Orphan's magick. He snorts at the admission and then turns to see where exactly Sid is standing.
The neighborhood around the church is filled with older cars and fenced-in yards. The church itself is a single-story building flanked by a nursery school. A sign out front proclaims it to be La Iglesia del Buen Pastor. Aside from the sign and the cross beside it, the building looks more like a recreation center than a religious edifice. Small children shriek and laugh on the playground behind it and a young woman calls to one of them in Spanish. A dog barks on another block and someone is blaring reggaeton in their car as they wait at the curb.
Once the priest catches sight of her he takes a hand off his hip to wave. Whether she comes closer or lingers back a moment he looks back to Shoshannah.
"What's the matter," he asks, "you and Rosa fighting?"

Sid Rhodes
Truth is, Sid's not too sure she should approach.  It's not Pan, it's not even the two of them together, having a conversation that she might accidentally intrude upon.
It's Shoshannah.  They've only met a few times, and those times have been what they've been, but it's hard for her to get a read on the girl.  She's stood up for Sid, told people leave her alone, even made sure a bartender got her a soda.  And she tried, in her own way, to make sure that Sid wasn't being bothered by a strange man on a bench.  But she's always got that fuck-off attitude.  She's not sure if Shoshannah will say hello or flip her the bird and tell her to go away.
Neither and both would be surprising.
She gets a wave, though, if a small one.  A wiggle of fingers in Sid's direction.  Sid looks like she might panic and flee at that, but then, what else is new.  Her head snaps in the direction of the waiting car.  It's not even close, but still, she takes a step to the side, increasing the distance between her and it.
When she looks back her chin is down, and while she gives them brief looks, her eyes move to the sides, her head turning just slightly as she scans the area constantly..  It's the padre who waves to her this time.  That's two, perhaps she should go over and say hello, at least.
Coming a little closer to the duo, her hands still stuffed protectively in her pockets, she waits a beat to make sure she's not interrupting and then says, "Ah, hi.  How...are you?"  This to both of them but mostly to Shoshannah, who may or may not be fighting with someone named Rosa.

Shoshannah Mitchell
There's scoffing at the question, and a dismissive shake of her head.  "She only talks to me to tell me what to do, or when she needs something."  Which, to be fair, is more than most people do - still, for Shoshannah it might actually be easier if the older womanwere fighting.  (In truth, no one fights Shoshannah, or has in as long as she can remember.  People tend to give her what she wants and then get the fuck away as quickly as is humanly possible.  And the spirits that whisper to her always?  Well, they don't count (or count more - it's hard to tell).
Sid looks like a frightened deer when she's waved at, and the younger girl isn't as good at handling that as she usually [pretends] is.  It brings a stiffness to her posture, and yes - there it is, that fuck-off attitude.  The Dreamspeaker is very little if not a fighter, a survivor.  She is, in fact, the personification of a Christina Aguilera song.  Or Kelly Clarkson.  Or both.
"I'm alright," comes directed at Sid, in answer.  The truth of this is difficult to discern, given that Shoshannah always seems at least mildly pissed off, but there it is.  "You okay?  I haven't seen you around here before."  Not that this is an indicator of anything much; she keeps busy when at all possible, and tends to stay where it's harder to notice how much people don't want to be around her, unless the spirit of adventuresome wandering takes her (as it does fairly often).

Sid Rhodes
[wait, are you mad?? awareness-as-empathy on Shoshannah]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 2

Pan Echeverría
The stoop upon which Shoshannah is perched is attached to a two-story house across the street from the church. Built in the Spanish colonial style, nothing marks it as a rectory aside from its proximity and the fact that the priest is standing in front of it, and even those aren't huge tells because the church doesn't look like a church and the priest is wearing black jeans and cowboy boots and aviator shades, chewing gum.
Something about Shoshannah's question strikes him as funny but he manages not to laugh.
"You keep this up, Jorge's gonna be out of a job."
He thinks he's being funny. Jorge is the security guard who shows up for the evening services to make sure nobody gets jumped going back to their car after sundown. Funny or not, it's an aside. He turns to Sid to await her answer, like the only reason she would be in this neighborhood is if she needed help.

Sid Rhodes
Shoshannah sits there looking angry, wears that attitude like a suit of armor.  That armor could me made out of tissue paper for all the good it does her against the paranoid (are you mad?  is it me?) Orphan.  Perhaps it would surprise the girl to know just how flimsy her walls appear to the older, maybe wiser, maybe more experienced woman.
Well, that woman was a teenaged girl herself once.  And current appearances aside, it's entirely possible the shy, timid, terrified-of-everything wallflower wasn't much different than Shoshannah.
Whatever she sees when she looks at the young woman, she keeps it to herself.  Out here by this house, in front of her caretaker or whatever Pan is to her, it's not the place to crack open a teenager's mind and start poking at the feelings inside.  Some of Sid's own uncertainty sort of almost starts to leak away from her, though, when she looks down at Shoshannah.  A look of quiet understanding starts to take the place of that usual timidity.
But then Shoshannah asks her if she's okay, and that understanding gets snapped away in an eyeblink.  Sid doesn't look like she's ready to bolt for the mountains, but she does look flustered because she...honestly?  She has no idea how to answer that.
"Uh," she says, because she's waiting for an answer.  Then Pan's looking at her, too, all expectantly, and it's almost too many pairs of eyes for her to handle on her all at once.  "Ye- well, no, but.  It's not a, it's not a big deal.  Me, I mean.  My stuff," she stammers as she tries to make it clear.  No, she's not okay, but no, that part's not a big deal.  "I was...I'm looking for things."

Shoshannah Mitchell
Pan is Pan . . . or Padre as Shoshannah calls him most often, despite her lack of belief in anything remotely resembling the Catholic faith (I used to be Jewish . . .) or Christianity as a whole.  Not a caretaker though he takes care of her, not father, not . . . well, it's rare for Shoshannah to apply definition to much of anything, and it's quite possible that she couldn't to this even if she were inclined to do so.  She's never had a living, breathing friend, after all.
That Sid is looking for things raises a curious eyebrow on Shoshannah's pretty (as the devil) face and sets the girl's feet tapping; she's a wanderer, a nomad, and has kept well to her promise to sleep at the rectory but has, since the days of not being kept busy around the neighborhood began, pushed the boundaries of the little world she's found herself in wider.  She's seen more of the city and some of its closer suburbs, has hit some of the obvious tourist spots and enjoyed some lesser known gems.  This?  Maybe if she can help it'll distract her from what's bugging her.
"What're you looking for?"

Pan Echeverría
When Sid starts to stammer--when she starts to speak--Pan takes his gaze away and plants it on the sidewalk between their feet. Nothing interesting lies there. The concrete is new and white and no grass has pushed its way up through the seams, nothing organic has smashed beneath a tread yet.
He listens but he doesn't look directly at her and he lets Shoshannah fire the questions for now. It's an admirable yet inadequate imitation of a tree. Trees don't usually scare the shit out of people.

Sid Rhodes
There was a time when Sid could handle being the center of attention, but that was a lifetime ago.  Nowadays she does best one on one.  Talking to two others is hard, three is borderline impossible.  More than that?  Forget it, Sid may as well be a fly on the wall.  That she could squeak a word out to anyone in that Hole in the Wall when the magi congregated by the bar is a damn miracle.
That said, it's not fear that makes her stammer, it's a deep seated discomfort with being asked about herself.  This other thing, though, it's not so difficult.  And the fact that it's, you know, somewhat important to everyone's safety (maybe, she might never know for sure) makes it even easier to talk about.
"Cameras," she says.  "There was a, um, there was this warehouse.  Downtown?"  The word ends on a query aimed at the man staring at the pavement.  Sera seemed to know him at the bar, so maybe he already knows about that.  "It had these cameras up, watching it.  They can't...I can't see them I can only feel them.  The electromagnetic waves."  Finally a hand leaves a pocket to sort of weakly gesture in the air around her before returning to its denim hiding place.  "I want to make sure they're not around...people."  She shrugs her shoulder, the gesture awkward because she herself is awkward.  Talking, it's not really Sid's thing.
People, though, with emphasis.  She doesn't mean the sleepers.  She means them.

Shoshannah Mitchell
"Cameras?"  This gets a second eyebrow joining the first - cloaked cameras, no less.  She may not have the same ingrained fear, anger or hatred towards the Technocracy that so many Awakened do, but there are certain things that will raise even her hackles a bit.  Cloaked cameras, it would appear, are among them.  "And you only found them near that warehouse downtown?"
It's a matter of concern to her as well; no one likes being spied on.

Sid Rhodes
Cameras?  Sid gives a little nod of her head.
And you only found them near that warehouse downtown?  Lips pursed, she gives a little shake of her head.  If it weren't for the hat disguising her brow they could see the shadow that darkens her forehead.  It's there in her eyes, though: worry, of a less generic and all encompassing sort than usual.
"Mostly they're in busy places," she says (which is all the info I have on their location until Howl gets a chance to update me, hence the vagueness).  "I'm not sure if they're connected, but I've been making a list."

Pan Echeverría
At the emphasis on people Pan reaches up and takes his sunglasses off his face. Clears his throat to indicate he's going to speak at some point but lets Shoshannah finish. He folds one earpiece and tucks the other into the V of his work shirt. In the daylight his eyes are green. This doesn't mean anything.
"Annie was afraid they would be stepping up their surveillance with everything going on." They, practically capitalized by his tone. The Techs. "They're probably looking for the rest of the Fallen, but--"
The War ended a long time ago. Shoshannah wasn't even a blip on their radar then and even now so many younger Awakened don't consider them to be any more of a threat than the average Sleeper considers the military or the local police. They may be right but tolerance tends to precede proliferation.
"You're just making a list, yeah? Not touching them or nothing?"

Sid Rhodes
[green eyes mean everything, haven't you seen Big Trouble in Little China??]

Shoshannah Mitchell
"I might be able to help look.  Not the same way, but . . ." there's a shrug that says much and little.  They each have their own talents, and even people who share Traditions, factions or sects don't necessarily see things the same way.
Shoshannah's eyes, unprotected, are a crystalline, clear blue of the sort that cuts and freezes through no effort of her own; with focused attention they become uncomfortable, piercing, even when it's not her intent. Now, unfortunately, the brunt of that focused attention lies on Sid . . . but then, the Orphan has an understanding that Shoshannah doesn't know she holds.  (Or maybe she's in denial.  She's given no indication that the initial look was noticed, let alone interpreted properly, so who knows?)
"Depending on how they work, I might also be able to tamper with them.  Without touching them," is an afterthought, reassurance.  She wasn't even a blip on the radar for the War (in fact, she wasn't even born yet), but she knows enough to not want the police or military or whatever the Techs are equivalent to in her mind examining her too closely.

Pan Echeverría
[... I actually haven't. *holds still for smiting*]

Sid Rhodes
Pan moves, and Sid angles her head just a touch, the better to view the both of them at once.  They he says, and she frowns.  Though neither terribly young nor terribly old by anyone's standards, the Orphan would be counted among the younger magi, the ones who Awakened after the War ended.  She may only know a scratch of the surface of their world, but she knows who he's talking about.  As she'd told Sera, she tries to stay out of the way.
Of everyone, but that hasn't been going so well for her in this last month, with Awakened crawling out of the woodwork, gathering.  It's dangerous, but what can she do?  She all but promised someone she'd watch their back, might as well keep everyone else in the loop.
She starts to nod when Pan asks about her list, but redirects the motion to a firm shake immediately when he makes sure she's not touching them.  Sid may be inquisitive (beneath all that paranoia and timidity), but she's not crazy.  She makes sure she's safe, or as safe as she can possibly be without locking herself into a windowless room.
Her eyes widen when Shoshannah offers up some assistance with Sid's search.  How to respond to that.  Shoshannah is not a child (well she is, but she also isn't) to be coddled and told to go to bed at curfew and stay out from underfoot.  But she looked out for Sid, and Sid looks out for her, that's how it works now.  She's not about to say Yes, kid, let's wander the streets of Denver, we'll be the Awakened Neighborhood Watch, and Army of Two.
"Ah," she says, looking from Shoshannah to Pan, not entirely sure which of the two has the final say in that.  Pan, obviously, looks out for the Dreamspeaker, too.

Pan Echeverría
The priest looks between the Dreamspeaker and the Orphan. They're both grown women, well within their rights as adults to exercise their own autonomy, and he barely even knows how to use a cellphone. He still wears a pager. It's like he doesn't know what decade they're in.
They're both grown women, and Shoshannah has a complex enough as it is. As he looks at her he can practically hear her arguing her own case. If they're spying on the Fallen then they could be spying on us two what are we supposed to do just ignore it god Padre you never let me do anything.
Something causes him to sigh. Pan glances skyward, silently appealing to the One for guidance, then says, "If I walk away now, I don't gotta lie if someone asks if I stood here while you two were talking about tampering with Tech cameras later."
Whereupon he steps back and waits for the reggaeton-blaring car to rattle down the street before crossing it himself.

Shoshannah Mitchell
"Well, I'm not going to mess with them if I can't without leaving a calling card."  The duh and I'm not stupid are strongly implied, though even with that it's reasonably clear to Sid that Shoshannah holds the priest in higher esteem than she does most people she's interacted with here.  On the girl's side, at least, there's a bond there; maybe it's that he's a father figure, or that he's taken her in, or even just that he can tolerate her proximity with apparent, relative ease.
He plays his part well.  So does she.
"Anyway, at least I can help you look.  We can split up if you want, with me covering some places and you others, or we can go together.  I don't care."  She does, but she's known for a long time to leave options open.  There's a reason that Padre's tolerance struck such a cord with her that she follows his rules, after all.

Pan Echeverría
Once the car has blasted off through the intersection the street is clear and he addresses the Dreamspeaker half over his shoulder as he completes the short journey back to the church.
"Okay," he says in the tone of a man who isn't listening. "Bye bye!"
The man can't lie to save his life. It isn't plausible deniability in the event of their capture he's looking for, or the desire to remain clear of the Technocracy, or having better things to do with his time than get involved. He's looking to avoid a battle of wits and reason with a teenager. Maybe he wants to let her do something that she took upon herself without micromanaging or telling her she's too young, she's too weak, she doesn't know what she's doing, la la la.
We'll have to find out later. His player has to bail.
[Thanks for the scene guys but I'm being dragged to a preview garage sale at a church? I don't know what that is? I'll catch y'all later!]

Sid Rhodes
"Ah, no," she starts, startled by the notion she would do anything that might endanger her or, well, any of them.  But there's Shoshannah, bantering back at the man as only a willful teen can.  Sid watches the man go, not stopping him.  Sid is not a stopper of people when those people want to make themselves scarce, or even when they don't and do anyway.
Which leaves her alone with Shoshannah now.  Alone with the younger girl she very imperceptibly relaxes.  It's the sort of thing that can be felt rather than seen.  The Dreamspeaker may unnerve and unsettle most, but for a woman who walks through life two hundred percent unnerved and unsettled all of the time, well.  It's hard for her to be more unnerved than she is at her baseline, which she's not even at in this moment.
It's immediately apparent that the idea of them splitting up to this search is so far from on the table it's in someone else's house.  Sid looks at Shoshannah, and even with a hat and her glasses to obscure her face, the girl can practically feel the furrowing of her brow.
"No.  No splitting up."  Never mind that she's been doing this search on her own for weeks already.  Maybe she noticed that about the girl, that she does care whether they go as a team or part ways to cover more ground.  Maybe she just wants to make this girl she understands in a way others might not is protected.
[thanks for the play, Jamie!  have fun looking at things that might not be for sale yet?]

Pan Echeverría
["You should get out more," they said. "It'll be fun," they said. Grump.]

Shoshannah Mitchell
"Whatever," Shoshannah says with a shrug, and stands to let her skirt fall around her ankles, to reach up and stretch (this bares a pale sliver of thin belly for an instant, and it causes quite the distraction for the few people brave enough to look her way - of either gender - because the girl really is as attractive as sin though she doesn't act as if she knows it) before bouncing down off the stoop with an unexpected lightness.  "Should I get my bike?"
Which is to say, she's inviting herself along now, for whatever, however long.  It's difficult to tell with Shoshannah.

Sid Rhodes
Sid does not cause that kind of distraction in anyone.  For one thing she's not that pretty, not next to a girl like Shoshannah.  She also doesn't try.  In fact she tries very hard to be the opposite.  She tries to go unnoticed.  But there's only so much baggy, threadbare clothing, a hat, and a slouch can hide.
Her frown this time is thoughtful, not terrified.  She's relaxing, bit by bit.  That Whatever barely even registered on her spectrum of expression - because she knows better now.
"Yyyyyes," she drawls as she makes up her mind at last.  Sid doesn't have one, and her truck is parked a block over, but it might be a good idea for Shoshannah to have a getaway vehicle.  A bike would be better than nothing.

Shoshannah Mitchell
Shoshannah isn't pretty, per se; the word is to fragile, to earth-bound.  Shoshannah doesn't look like she's of this plane(t), this life, at all.  It's an alien, frightening sort of beauty that she holds, and it mixes with the rest of her aura to concoct something terrifying, indeed.  But there's not long to contemplate this while she wanders off to get her bike and return with it, to walk it alongside Sid.
"Like I said, I can't see what you can - but if you point me in the right direction, I can check for lots of other things.  And maybe some of my friends can do things for us."  With the right tribute, of course - for a price.  Nothing comes for free.  "We can canvas this neighborhood, at least.  Sound good?"
And for awhile, at least, Shoshannah has (relatively) easy companionship that isn't Padre.  It's a far better day than she expected.

Shoshannah Mitchell
[That's a wrap!]

Please to be calling it ... research / Commonality

Entropy
[Annie's library roll]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) ( botch x 1 )

Pan
[int + library]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 8, 10) ( fail )

Pan
[THIS PLACE IS CURSED]

Pan
[+1 diff]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Spirit
[int + library]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )

Entropy
It'd been two days now since Leah Walker had been ensconced within the warded hotel room.  On Pan's first watch, the girl had been so exhausted that she'd passed out about fifteen minutes after their arrival and slept for nearly the entire span.  He was lucky, that first night.  For once, she didn't dream.  She slept like the dead, still and silent, all the while exuding that sense of dark and inexorable decay.  And it was almost fitting.  With Leah Walker, Pan had found himself in the presence of someone who exuded death even more acutely than Shoshannah did.
So naturally he thought to bring the Dreamspeaker along on the following watch.  Who knew, maybe they'd even get along.
It was after the time spent in the library, though.  After an entire day down in that huge, crisply-lit windowless room hunting through rows upon rows of old tomes.  (The previous owners, it would seem, had not been much for digital archives.  But then a Singer, a Dreamspeaker and a Verbena ought to be used to that.)  And on the way out to Pan's truck, Annie darted out the chantry's front door with a grim and determined look on her face.  "I'm coming with you," she said, in a manner that left little room for negotiation.
Once in the car, she pulled two small leather pouches out of her jacket and handed one each to her companions.  If they opened them, they'd be met with the sight and smell of herbs and some kind of root  which had been mashed together into a dried, unappetizing lump.  "Save those.  In case you get hurt and need to heal."
It was a sign of how seriously she took their current circumstances.
After a long drive, they parked at the motel and entered the room where Leah had been stashed away.  Jim and Serafine were likely glad for the reprieve, at that point.  Once they'd left, the three of them (Pan, Shoshannah and Annie) were alone in the room with the girl.
Leah in one of the chairs by the window, looking down onto the street in rather a similar manner that the Cultist Consor Jake had done only a few days earlier.  When the three Traditionalists entered, she turned her head to watch them with a shy and wary expression.  Annie said nothing for the time being.  She simply stared the girl down with matching stormy grey eyes.  The disciple didn't seem as though she was about to do something dramatic, but she was hardly at ease.
After all, she was looking at the girl who had killed her brother.

Pan
If he dozed off during his first watch he does not remember doing it. If he dozed off no one would blame him. He awakened before dawn Monday morning to the news that a drunk had fallen asleep in the auditorium and spent Monday night into Tuesday morning chasing this child around the suburbs.
The suburbs, for Christ's sake.
Two days past and he looks no worse for wear. Has not shaved his face because he has convinced the young man working as the church's deacon that he has urgent business to attend to and could he please mind the congregation for a while.  It gave him a sense of purpose and it left Pan free to take Shoshannah out to the Chantry once Jim and Sera were settled.
Nothing comforting in the stacks but the first flimsy threads of a miracle. Miracles are dangerous things. Father Echeverría believes in miracles but if the cast about him as they drive back to the city is any indication he doesn't believe they can save this girl through any other means than gilgul.
His eyes ask if she's sure but he doesn't vocally ask. They've known each other a matter of weeks and Pan already knows better than to try to argue with Annie. He thanks her for the root and puts it in the breast pocket of his work shirt in case things go sideways and drives them back to Denver.
Back at the hotel they pass off guard duty and Pan is the first one in the room. His eyes find the girl and his frame blocks the door until he's decided it's safe for the Verbena and the Dreamspeaker to enter.
"Leah," he says as he closes the door behind them. "How are you doing?"

Spirit
"Hey."  Though she came in with the two older mages (and filled them in on what she'd read on the way in an uncharacteristically optimistic way), Shoshannah all but ignores them now; she's close to Leah's age, and it's true that she exudes Death nearly as much as this girl does.  Or rather, Leah exudes Death and Shoshannah is Death's herald, perhaps.  "I've got drinks, and snacks."
Never mind that the older mages haven't been starving the newly Awakened young lady.  There's a certain fellowship in sharing a meal (though the term is obviously loose as Shoshannah upends her bag over a table or something to reveal a couple bottles of water, a couple pops, and miscellaneous junk food), and maybe it will help.
Or not, who knows?
"I'm Shoshannah."  Her accent is everywhere and nowhere, but mostly something blandly, flatly American and something foreign and exotic that gives truth to her somewhat foreign appearance.  Her eyes are as piercing as ever, of course, and she can't help the aura she bleeds, but she's somehow softer with this girl than she is with most people despite what she's read and heard, despite what she's done.  Perhaps it's a perceived kinship despite the paradigmatic divide - not that they've talked about it before.

Entropy
Pan asked how the girl was doing, and Leah looked away and shrugged in the manner of depressed teenagers who didn't see the point in lying about how they felt - or in working up the energy to try and explain it.  Likely the priest had seen precisely this sort of disconnected response before from neighborhood kids or members of his parish.  The gist was something along the lines of: Pretty shitty, actually.  But what do you want me to say?
At least she was alive.  At least she was there.  That any part of her was still human at all was something of a miracle in and of itself.
Annie didn't introduce herself.  She uncoiled her rigid frame and sat down on the edge of the bed, watching Leah like a hawk.  And for a long moment Leah watched her right back.
Then Shoshannah entered with the bag of snacks, and this seemed to pull the girl out of her defensive posture.  She looked at Shoshannah as if she couldn't quite trust what she was seeing (too ordinary to be real in this new and frightening world she'd found herself in.)  Finally she pushed the loose tendrils of her dark hair behind her ears and nodded a shy greeting.  "Thanks."  And because she was sixteen and perpetually hungry and hadn't been eating well for weeks (though Jim and Serafine had made sure she had plenty of food these last couple nights,) she reached out and grabbed a bag of tortilla chips and popped one into her mouth.

Pan
Shoshannah was not there when Pan argued with Jim and Sera about not having one person here by himself. Leah was unconscious. They haven't seen the priest grow incensed yet but he can. He does. His job is to guide and comfort the people who believe in God and the power of organized religion but he has to reach out to people who don't believe in that shit when they come in the door the first time. And he's not a technically gifted speaker but the man can convince folks of just about anything. The people in his community want to be around him and follow him. They trust him without thinking about it.
Leah isn't part of his flock. He hasn't given the girl any indication he thinks of her as a wolf but Jim and Sera know better. If anyone's to be left alone with her it's either him or Jim or Annie. None of the younger Mages.
They've already lost six.
He takes the shrug as the answer that it is and sits down on the edge of the bed next to Annie to let Shoshannah talk to her.

Spirit
"Mind if I sit by you?"  This is asked as Shoshannah takes a bag of chips of her own, a pop, and a candy bar - the bottle's opened, sipped from and not-quite-tentatively offered to the younger girl, an eyebrow raised.  (In truth, Shoshannah can't remember the last time anyone shared with her this way, if it ever happened.   She's going based on her education-by-observation-and-Hollywood.)  As she sits in the second chair by the window (whether or not Leah's accepted the offer of a shared beverage), Shoshannah indicates that Pan and Annie can help themselves to whatever's left of the teenage heaven buffet.
It should be said, perhaps, that Shoshannah's wearing worn, torn-at-the-knees jeans and a fitted t-shirt with a faded concert logo of a popular band of the sort that can only be gotten at the show.  Her pierced ears are filled with the same small studs she always wears, and there's a plethora of beaded, woven and knotted necklaces around her neck, all varying lengths.  Her wrists, as ever, are covered despite her short sleeves.
Legs tuck up under her and she watches Leah for a moment, uncertain; it's been a long time since she tried to reach out to someone, really.  Padre is different, he's the one who reached out to her.  That she's a bit tense and more than a bit nervous is apparent.
"I was about your age.  It was . . . hard.  Just a couple years ago."  No one in Denver, including Pan who likely has the most pieces of her puzzle, knows much about Shoshannah.  It's obvious that she's well traveled and as well educated as it's possible for an eighteen year old to be, that she's fiercely independent and self-sufficient, that she has an unexplained fondness and affinity for nice, pretty things, but that's about it.  "But it gets easier if you have help.  Well, if the help's any good.  Padre is."

Entropy
Shoshannah offered to share her drink, but this Leah wouldn't do (either because the intimacy was awkward or because she didn't trust them yet.)  The girl gave a small shake of her head and ate another chip, sucking the powdered cheese off her fingers when she was done.  She looked so much like a child in that moment that it was difficult to remember what she was - what she was capable of doing.
Annie didn't need help remembering though.  She looked like she couldn't quite believe they were even doing this.  (And yet, she made no motion to attack the girl or even to interrupt the conversation, which was probably the best reaction they could hope for given the circumstances.)
Shoshannah related a bit of her own history in an attempt to connect with Leah.  The girl glanced apprehensively at Pan and Annie where they sat watching.  It was a long moment before she responded, but then she looked at Shoshannah and said, "What happened?  I mean... was it... did you hurt someone?  Is that... what we do?"

Pan
With his feet flat on the floor and his hands knit between his knees, eyes cast down at the carpet instead of on the girls, all in black and free of adornments beyond a humble watch on his left wrist and a wooden rosary hanging from a hip pocket, the man looks like he's at prayer. Silently asking for guidance or a sign to not just kill the girl right now before she gets any stronger.
He doesn't look up when Shoshannah says the helps he gives is good and he doesn't look up when Leah asks if Shoshannah hurt someone when she Awakened. When she uses the word 'we.'
Annie is the only one who's close enough to see him flinch at the question. He starts to wring one hand with the other.

Spirit
".................only myself."
The voice is small and though it's certainly not a pretense of any sort, Shoshannah seems more vulnerable than anyone in the room has seen her before.  She does a good job of rolling with the hard, prickly, creepy feeling she provides against her will and using it to create a wall.  Telling truths like this . . . well, even Pan hasn't gotten this far.  There's movement as Shoshannah sets her chips (only opened, none eaten yet) and pop aside so she can bare one wrist, the one less likely to be seen by the 'grown-ups'.  (This reveals a scar, white and raised, that runs about four inches long down the main artery in her wrist, and the stitch scars along it.)  "I've . . . been kind of weird my whole life.  People like us sometimes think . . . well.  I guess you probably know what they sometimes think of someone like me.  But hurting myself spurred my Awakening, not the other way around."
Her wrist is covered again as soon as Leah's gotten a look, and the chips and pop taken up again; it's a good distraction, nibbling on something as she watches the other girl.  After a moment, she adds, "I've heard lots of stories - it's kind of what I do - about different kinds of Awakenings and things that happen. Sometimes it hurts someone, sometimes not.  The consistent thing, though, is that what happens after is up to the person who's Awakened."

Entropy
She didn't seem shocked when Shoshannah indicated the scar on her wrist.  If anything, her demeanor relaxed a little.  And she gave a quiet nod, like she understood.  Because only two nights ago it had been Leah who'd stood at the precipice of the abyss and then... stepped back.  And that hadn't been the first time.
She was wearing a simple grey t-shirt and a pair of jeans that someone had brought for her.  There was nothing to cover the thin white ridge of scar-tissue that lay at the underside of her own wrist, so all she had to do was turn her hand palm-up to show Shoshannah that they had this thing in common.  "I tried once.  But I was too scared to finish."
There was something disturbing and very sad about the weary disappointment in her voice.  (Like she wished she had finished.)
After a beat of silence, Annie finally spoke up.  "It's not an easy life for any of us.  And it'll be hard as fuck for you.  Too hard, more than likely.  Sooner or later your nature will catch up to you.  You try to fight it, it'll either kill you or kill everything around you.  Maybe both."
The girl gave Annie a steady look.  She didn't try to disagree with, despite all the reassurances that Jim, Serafine and Shoshannah had given her.  Maybe she wanted to believe - wanted to live.  But she'd already been fighting for weeks and it hadn't gotten her anyplace better than where she'd started.  "So what am I supposed to do?"
Annie clenched her jaw.  "I don't know."  After a long moment, she asked.  "Why'd you try to kill yourself?"
Ever the tactful creature, she was.
Leah's eyes went dark.  Not literally - not like some demonic creature in a television show.  But her pupils dilated and her expression grew distant and unstable.  Somewhere else.  Somewhere not in the here-and-now.
And then a sprawling spiderweb of decay crawled across the curtain behind her, until the ruined mess fell the ground in a rain of dust.
When Leah came back to herself, she folded up into the chair and put her head in her hands.  "...I'm sorry."

Pan
"It's not your fault, child," he says.
It has a tone of absolution to it but he'd sat and watched the interplay between the Verbena and the Fallen girl with eyes that didn't tell of what went on behind them and when he finally looks up it's accepting but not resigned. His shoulders have not yet stooped but he has shadows beneath his eyes and on his jaws. He hasn't shaved in several days. He hasn't gone before his congregation in several days.
When he clears his throat the sound booms a bit big as he is and silent as he's been. The mattress springs whine when he gets to his feet and he puts his thumbs into his belt loops. Eyes the two teenagers and the spread of junk food around them and grits his teeth once.
Then he looks to Annie.
"Can I talk to you outside for a second?" he asks and there is no compulsion or edge to the request but it's also more of a courtesy.

Spirit
Annie gets a nearly murderous glare, and by the time Padre asks her for a word she may or may not be distinctly less comfortable (not that she ever was) than she had been moments ago.  The Dreamspeaker's displeasure has a way of making itself known, after all, even without her putting overly much effort into it.  It's nothing like what Leah does, mind, or what happens to her, or however one looks at it?  But perhaps it's more unsettling for the fact that it's directed, controlled, reigned in.
"I did finish.  But it didn't stick."  There's a shrug, then, and whatever Shoshannah feels about this isn't as obvious as her vulnerability with the original admission had been.  "Voices tell me there's stuff for me to do, but that doesn't make it any easier.  I'm not crazy," comes with a frown, defensive.  "And I read about someone, before we came.  I don't know how true it is, but the story said that he . . . decided to take control of who and what he was.  That wasn't easy either, but if the story's true, it can be done.  Do you want to try, or are you too tired?"
So asks the girl who's been Awakened for a couple years, since she was Leah's age.
So asks the girl who's had struggles of her own, some not so different.
So asks the girl who decided to survive.

Entropy
Annie's interruption hadn't exactly helped matters, but then maybe that's not what she'd had in mind.  Not to torture the girl, surely.  There hadn't been any edge of malice to her voice, for all that the Verbena couldn't have been having an easy time of things.  No, she didn't give any more indication of blame to the girl than the priest had.  But it was clear that she didn't buy into what Shoshannah and the Cultists had been telling the girl.  Healing is never as simple as the hopeful make it sound.
When Shoshannah afforded her that glare, she met the girl's gaze with silent (unbreakable) conviction.  There was a thread of wild grief flickering just at the surface - almost daring the Initiate to make good on her threat just so the Disciple would have an excuse to do something.
But in the end, wiser wills prevailed, and Pan cleared his throat and asked Annie to speak with him outside.  The Verbena glanced once more at Leah's ashen face before giving a tight nod and getting to her feet.  "Yeah."
When the two of them had left, Leah looked across at Shoshannah.  She didn't say anything, but there was an edge of exhausted gratitude in her gaze.
And maybe Annie was right.  Maybe everything Shoshannah had just told her was nothing more than a useless dream.  But for now it was enough that Shoshannah was there, bearing her small gifts, with no anger or expectation.  It was enough to keep the teenager going for a few more hours.  So she reached out and took the open bottle of soda that she'd been offered earlier and took a drink.

Convergence

Fr. Echeverría
Rosa walks with Pan as far as the sidewalk after the end of the day's second Mass, squinting into the afternoon sun and tucking her arms around her ribcage. Normally she would accept his invitation to come inside for tea but she knows that girl who cleaned out the basement in record time, who Padre Echeverría has had sorting through sheet music for the last two days, is staying upstairs. Someone is mowing their lawn in the distance and the nursery school kids shriek and laugh behind them. The priest wears his sunglasses and towers over his secretary.
"I know," anyone within earshot can hear him say.
His earshot is closer than Rosa's.
"No me digas 'I know,'" she says. "Le prometí a Ruth que yo--"
Whatever he says to her next is said low and with his hand on her shoulder. She does not shrug him off but she does roll her eyes and scoff before reminding him the deacon is out of town and he has to be back for Mass tonight. They hug but as she walks back inside the secretary looks no less perturbed.
Pan waits on the sidewalk while a small caravan of cars slides down the residential street and then crosses to the lot where the rectory house stands.

Shoshannah
'That girl' is indeed staying upstairs, and as Rosa avoids her so she tends to avoid Rosa; it's not really much more comfortable for Shoshannah to be around most people (people who point and ward, who cross streets to get away from her, who strike up awkward and often inappropriate conversations at inopportune times) than it is for them to be around her.  No one enjoys being looked at like a bad seed, one imagines, regardless of how indifferent the behavior.
It's not until Rosa heads back to the church and Pan crosses the street that Shoshannah steps outside.
"Hey.  My paper cuts have paper cuts, so I'm taking a break.  Can we get some ice cream?"  She is a teenager, after all, and however much having sudden parental rules from someone who isn't her parent may chafe sometimes, there's also . . . well.  She doesn't think to hard about why she reacts to Pan the way she does, and she certainly doesn't talk about it.

Annie
The milling pedestrians along Federal's sidewalks didn't notice the nondescript woman walking in their midst.  She was a non-presence, a thing they reacted to without thought - moving around her like she was a non-sentient obstacle.  And when she'd passed, they forgot that she was ever there.  So no one would look up or make note of her when she crossed the street toward the church, her features partly hidden (and strangely blurred) by the grey hood she had pulled up over her head.
She was following a trail, this one.  A trail that whispered of ghosts and the afterlife.  That prickling shiver of someone walking over your grave.
Up ahead, her targets contemplated moving to acquire some ice cream, so she paused about 15 yards away, watching them from beneath the overhang of a nearby shop.  She wasn't sneaking up on them, per se, but nor was she making her presence obvious.  Instead she waited to see what they would do.

Fr. Echeverría
[aware!!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 2

Shoshannah
[aware!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Fr. Echeverría
The question doesn't strike him as all that strange. By now she knows he spends at least one afternoon a week checking in on the boys' after-school group. Some of the questions he gets from those boys are enough to make more modest men blush but Pan, if modest, is not easily embarrassed.
Before he answers he checks his wristwatch and confirms the time. Then he adjusts his sunglasses and says, "If you don't mind walking. I know a place."
And then he looks away and up the street. Sees a young woman who hasn't come around before but the fact that he even notices her, let alone frowns at the recognition of that imprint of her magic around her, may come as a bit of a shock to her.
Given her energy he ought to return the favor, watch without engaging, but he doesn't.
"Hello!" he calls, raising his voice for the first time that Shoshannah can recall, though it is only for the sake of convincing it to travel the distance. Lifts his arm to wave in case it wouldn't have registered otherwise. "How are you?"

Shoshannah
"I don't mind walking."
And she doesn't, that much is clear by her musculature, the way she holds herself.  She's been walking and riding her bike across the south west US and northern Mexico for years now, after all.  But then there's Padre calling out and waving to someone that Shoshannah's eyes want to simply skate across without stopping, without registering.  It's weird, the feeling that the universe (or whatever) wants something erased - for the barest of moments, it might even be jealousy inducing.
Shoshannah's brow furrows as she looks towards where Padre's waved - it takes effort to bring people into focus sometimes, this she knows for a lot of different reasons.
"Someone else coming too?"  No indication of how she feels about this, of course!  Even if she had any business feeling anything, Padre is who he is, just as Shoshannah is who she is.
[effort, yes.  Aware again, why not?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Annie
[Shoshannah will feel something - just barely there at the edges of her sense.  Obscured, but powerful for all that it was cloaked.  Another willworker whose energy was Wild and Unbreakable]

Annie
If she'd really wanted to hide, they would not have noticed her on the street like this.  The fact that she was simply leaning against a building up the block, without the use of any cloaking effects beyond that which was inborn to her, said something about how much of an effort she cared to make in this instance.  A casual spy, perhaps.  Curious?  Another new mage in town?  Or did she have business with the priest and his young companion?
They would soon find out.
Pan raised a hand and called out to her, and the woman pushed the hood back from her head, revealing features and a physical presence that suddenly sprang into sharp focus.  She looked about 30.  Average height.  With strawberry blond hair and tanned skin (not the kind you got from a tanning bed, but the kind that was achieved through long hours spent in the sun,) that was dotted here and there with a light scattering of freckles.  She smiled a little - a cold expression on her hardened features - and strode toward them with a purposeful stride.
"You two should be more careful.  I can feel that girl all the way down the street.  Tracked her here yesterday from City Park like I was followin' a damn neon sign.  Guess it's convenient for me though.  Figured it'd take longer to track down the locals."  She offered a gruff nod to the two of them and held out a hand.  Her fingers were strong and calloused from use.  "Annie Pierce."

Fr. Echeverría
"Francisco Echeverría. Nice to meet you."
He takes her hand in his and shakes it firm but warm, like this isn't the first time they're meeting. Doesn't say anything about the girl or her aura or how easy it is to track her. That would be like having a conversation about changing the color of the girl's eyes.
If Shoshannah starts to say anything argumentative or bristling she'll find the large priest's hand on her shoulder, silent admonition or support or something.
"This is Shoshannah. Why are you tracking down the locals?"

Shoshannah
"Who the fu . . ."
Obviously, yes, there's argumentative bristling; this is Shoshannah, who exudes ill-temper as surely as she does the feeling of death, of the underworld.  But there's Padre's hand on her shoulder and, though she doesn't precisely settle or calm or any such thing, Shoshannah does quiet.  To make a rather unflattering comparison, the appearance might be akin to watching a trainer with a particularly strong willed puppy.
And, of course, it is a curious thing - why this woman is tracking locals is.  "I'm not from around here," the girl says sullenly, and it's clear from her everywhere-and-nowhere accent that this is the truth; she's not a local, yet, despite living here.

Annie
"Oh settle down, kid.  I'm not here to hurt you, and I got no time for bravado."  Annie shifted her focus from Shoshannah to Pan.
"We can't talk here.  Feel like taking a ride?  I got something I think you're gonna want to see."  She shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and angled her head back the direction she'd come, to indicate she wanted them to follow her.  "There's two of you and one of me.  You can probably take me if I try something fishy."

Fr. Echeverría
"I got no time for fishy," he says in an approximation of a joke.
When he lets go of Shoshannah's shoulder that is all he does. Doesn't shove her or squeeze her, just takes his hand back and hooks the thumb into the hip pocket of his pants. He's wearing khakis and a short-sleeved white work shirt, the same black cowboy boots he always wears when he isn't in his vestments, a pager hooked to his belt. Doesn't have the same incognito look that Annie has but he's taken to the mile-up sunlight just as quickly.
The priest cants his head to see around the newcomer, back from whence she'd come, before straightening again and starting to walk.

Shoshannah
It's amusing, perhaps, that Israeli native Shoshannah, who's lived all over the world in all varying degrees of sun exposure is the palest of the bunch despite living outside for the bulk of the last two years.  Regardless, even if Shoshannah were the sort to shy away from interesting things, she's definitely not the sort to let friends (or whatever she's calling Padre these days) walk into them without her.  (Besides, for all that he takes care of himself - more or less - and is in pretty good shape, Padre's getting to the almost-old seeming end of things to the teenager.  Who knows if or when he might need her help?)
"Would hardly be fair," is all she says in answer to either of them, and whether she means the attempt of something untoward or the two of them responding to it in tandem is left unsaid.  Needless to say, she's falling into step with Padre.

Annie
Given the events that had occurred in the city of late, it was perhaps a bit surprising that the pair of magi decided to trust a complete stranger to lead them off to an unknown location.  Annie actually gave a thoughtful hmm at their reply, as though she'd expected more resistance, but she wasn't about to delay their departure any longer than necessary, so once the two of them indicated that they were willing to follow, she turned and lead them down the street, keeping a brisk pace as she moved.  She was the shortest of the three, so likely Pan and Shoshannah would have little trouble keeping up.
"I asked around about you," she offered to Pan over her shoulder.  "Neighbors seem to think you're a pretty solid guy."  She glanced at Shoshannah again briefly, but didn't say anything, as though to imply that anything she may have heard about the girl probably wasn't worth repeating.  (Then again, that would hardly be new for the Dreamspeaker.)
"Personally, I don't buy public reps.  But it's all I've got to go on right now."
It wasn't long before they arrived at her truck, a beat-up black Ford F250 that looked about 5 years old.  When they got there, she pulled out her keys and unlocked the passenger-side door.  "One of you will have to squeeze in the middle.  Hope you're not claustrophobic.  It's about a 30-minute drive."
[Dear Lord, what is going on with my brain today?  Edit: Erase everything right before "It's about a 30 minute drive."  Because F250's have a BACK SEAT.]

Fr. Echeverría
As they walk down the street a lone figure appears in and then steps away from the open front doorway of the church. If Pan glances over at her he does so out of the corner of his eye. He faces forward even as Annie relays the opinion of the neighbors. He doesn't have anything to say about that, but he does make a hmm noise of a different tone than Annie's. Acceptance without further contemplation.
She doesn't buy public reps but she'll take it.
"If it's any consolation, that's more than we've got."
They go on to the beat-up truck with its gorgeous backseat and he pauses with the passenger door agape, his hand wrapped around the frame tighter than it had held the younger Willworker's shoulder. Small semantic difference between a ride and a thirty-minute drive.
"Where are we going, Annie?"

Shoshannah
Oh, let's not be confused - this is not about trust (this is obvious, actually, in the teenager's bearing and gait, in her expression, in everything about her), but instead about wandering feet, and making sure someone who's been kind to Shoshannah has, at the very least, someone at his back if he needs it.  Shoshannah trusts very few, in truth, and it's quite foreign to her how quickly Pan has managed to add himself to that number.
"Neighbors are right," She answers the first, though again there's no specification about which clause she's affirming.  They could be right about the priest, the girl, both.
Then, there's the mention of 30-minute drive, and Shoshannah hesitates as well.  Small difference in semantics, indeed.  "Yeah, a little quid pro quo would be nice.  What's up?"

Annie
Annie rolled her jaw and pressed the tip of her tongue to one of her back molars, glancing toward the sky as though to search out an answer for the pair's question.  Finally she said, "Someone I used to know left something behind.  Something valuable.  Something I don't want the wrong people to find.  So I'm giving it to the right ones, so that doesn't happen."  She stared them both down with a steady gaze.  "That's all I'm gonna say in public.  You want the rest, I'll tell you on the way there."

Fr. Echeverría
The neighbors who were willing to speak to a strange white woman about the priest would have had nothing but tales of chivalry for her. Beyond times that he baptized or wed their children would be times he broke up late-night fights before the cops could show up or got a relative into drug rehabilitation. How he brings food over when someone is ill or floats loans or helps with minor household repairs without expecting or following up on repayment, that he knows how to change oil filters or replace dead batteries.
That he listens to woes and takes confessions and it never gets back to anyone else in the community.
He gives off light the way the sun does. That is its sole function but it also pulls other bodies to it, gives them stability and structure. He doesn't conduct himself as though he is aware of just how much other people think of him.
Before he makes his decision he takes off his sunglasses and hooks them to the V of his work shirt. Checks his pager once to make sure it's on, then steps back to give Shoshannah space to climb into the backseat.
"Alright," he says, then hauls himself into the cab. It rocks a bit beneath his weight and the slamming of the door.

Shoshannah
[Per+Sub, +1 for unskilled]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Annie
[It would appear that she is being completely straight with them.]

Shoshannah
"Whatever," Shoshannah says with a shrug and climbs into the back seat so Pan can get into the front; the answer and action likely would have been the same regardless of the answer, though the moment of quiet (intense, piercing, flaying) attention on this Annie might have gone differently.  Maybe.  Who knows, with Shoshannah?
And then they're in, and it's rather disconcerting to go against everything she's lived by for the past goodness knows how long, but at least there's a known quantity with her.  Safety in numbers and all that.

Annie
The two of them climbed into the truck, and Annie made her way around and jumped into the driver's seat, shutting the door behind her.  The engine gave a muted growl when she turned the key in the ignition, and soon they were driving away from Federal, heading Westward.  Annie didn't speak for a few minutes, instead focusing on navigating the Denver traffic.  Occasionally she'd glance up through the window toward some invisible point of interest, as though she could see something hiding amid the tall buildings that wasn't immediately visible.
"Mirrorshades stepped up their security since the last time I was here," she commented offhand, as though talking about the weather.
When they reached the outskirts of the city proper, she continued West for a bout five minutes, then took a turn South down a small country road.  "Don't know how much you know about what happened here a month ago.  If this is news to you, then you're in for one fuckin' ugly surprise, and I'm sorry for that.  A girl Woke Up about a month ago.  She's got some dark magic inside her.  Killed my brother's cabal, along with a bunch of the mirrorshades.  Now she's running around loose, and if the Nephandi aren't here already they sure as shit will be soon.  And who the hell knows what the technocrats are up to.  Far as I can tell, they should be storming the city by now, but they're just up in their towers sitting pretty."
She shook her head and made a little click with her jaw.  "Something's going on with them.  Don't know what.  Not sure I want to know."
They made another turn, heading down a new road, and passed a sign that indicated they were heading toward the town of Morrison.
"Our parents left us the house.  Me and my brother.  But I haven't had shit to do with the place in years.  It's yours if you want it.  I don't."  But she was still being vague, so finally she just came out and said it.  "There's a node there.  Someone needs to protect it."

Fr. Echeverría
Up until she takes the turn outside the city to bring them south now, the priest keeps his gaze cast out the window. He doesn't offer driving advice. Sits silent and watchful and then they're heading out past the suburbs. Pan shifts in his seat and watches her as she tells the story.
If he did or did not know this he keeps his silence. Like as not he agrees with Annie on not knowing and not being sure he wants to know. The church has been around for some time but the priest has not. Some of his silence comes from contemplation.
"If you could pull over for a moment," he says. Gestures out the window to the shoulder. Whether or not she chooses to comply: "Were the Soulless aware of your brother's cabal?"
Translation: Were they under surveillance before they died?
Further translation: How stupid am I for getting into a truck with you?

Shoshannah
"Are you . . ."  There are multiple ways she could finish that sentence and all would be apt from Shoshannah's point of view.  And then, perhaps at around the time Pan's asking if the local Technocrats were aware of the dead guy's cabal, she's questioning again, "So we have no idea what we're going into, and it's with a stranger."
This isn't as bothersome as one might think, or for the reasons one might think; clearly, the Dreamspeaker has a thing for adventure, or she wouldn't have gone on the way she has for so long, but instead sought to assimilate herself into some city or another.

Annie
Pan asked her to pull over, and to Annie's credit - she did.  She left the truck's engine idling while Pan and Shoshannah asked their questions, her eyes focused on the mostly-empty road ahead.  She didn't answer right away.  For a moment her eyes (normally bright and sharp with intention) grew unfocused.
She'd spoken about her brother's death a moment ago as if it were yet another piece of news.  Not something she was personally attached to.  But maybe that was just the only way she knew how to talk about it.  People dealt with grief in different ways.
"I don't know," she said finally.  "We didn't talk much.  But the truck's cloaked from cameras, if that's what you're worried about.  And I doubt they found the chantry.  If they had, they'd have had to dismantle the defenses."  She met Pan's eyes, then Shoshannah's.  "You guys want out?  Tell me now and I'll take you back."

Fr. Echeverría
She spoke of the death of her brother's cabal, and the fact that their parents left the place to them, and that she does not want to have anything to do with it.
To say that he worries for their safety is inaccurate. Nothing about his demeanor or his aura speaks of fear or uncertainty. This is the path he's on at this moment. If he had a gun to his head, he probably would not flinch away from it. God has made martyrs out of men more weakly chained to principle than he.
That question nearly disarms her but he does not take advantage of her lack of focus. Pan sits beside her in the cab and lowers his eyes to give her time to collect herself and looks back up when she speaks again.
"I'm sorry," he says. "About your brother."
No bullshit about him being in a better place, that at least he died in service to Someone or Something. Just a show of humanity before they continue on the business of tying up a stranger's loose ends.
He doesn't stop her from driving on again.

Shoshannah
Shoshannah isn't particularly empathetic - at least not about this.  Sure, she understands that Annie's brother died and it's a reason for difficulty and upset, but obviously they weren't close.  Besides, dying isn't a guaranteed end, this she knows.  Not much more than that is in her grasp, yet, but!  It's something.
"I hope he had a good ferryman," is all she says, and in tone and intent it's more comforting than one might expect.  How Annie takes it is up to her, but she's not given long to decide.  "Let's go then, yeah?  See what there is to see."

Annie
Annie didn't respond to Shoshannah's offer of comfort (such as it was.)  In all likelihood, whatever the unfamiliar Disciple believed about death, it wasn't the same as what Shoshannah believed.  There were enough disparate views and ideologies among the Awakened that within any given group one would be lucky to find even two who shared the same precise paradigm.
To Pan, she just nodded curtly.
And then they were on the road again.  Annie didn't speak much after that, so it would be up to Pan and Shoshannah to entertain themselves, if such was needed.  About fifteen minutes later (the entire trip ended up taking close to 40, with the paranoid detours Annie had taken in the beginning to get them out of the city,) they took a turn down a small road that took them past a couple of sprawling ranch properties.
Then she pulled to a stop in front of an empty field and got out of the car.  She didn't invite the others to join her, but wouldn't stop them if they did.
"Fiat justitia, ruat caelum."  (Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.)
Nothing happened, but Annie didn't seem especially concerned.  She got back into the car and turned as though to drive into the grass.
And then suddenly, it wasn't grass, but a long, winding driveway.  And up ahead at the end of the field lay a large, beautifully crafted house backed by a sprawling outcropping of trees (ponderosa pine and quaking aspen) that ascending up onto the hill behind it.
With their senses as well-tuned as they had been, Pan and Shoshannah would feel the residual resonance of the effects guarding the place.  A medley of different personalities working as one: sheltering, wary, evanescent, harmonizing ... and others.  But they were weak.  Faded.  Without the owners there to maintain the effects, they would soon melt back into the tapestry.
In front of the house, Annie pulled the truck to a stop and killed the ignition.  "Here we are," she said.  Her voice sounded a little bitter, as though it hurt her to look at the place, despite its picturesque beauty.

Fr. Echeverría
"Your part's done, then?" he asks--
(This is an old and somewhat cruel trick that counselors pull. Sarcasm has no place in the milieu and yet they do it anyway because it forces reevaluation if it garners something beyond immediate opposition.
One of the capes a priest wears is that of a counselor. This particular priest also has calloused hands and faint scars on the insides of his elbows and just spent 40 minutes in a moving vehicle with a girl who makes his skin crawl and a young woman who tracked them down just to push a building into their orbit.)
--and he asks it so lightly he sounds like he's just carrying on a normal conversation instead of dealing with a woman in the midst of complicated mourning.
"Just going to sign the deed over and go back home?"

Shoshannah
".....I think my dad's house had the same architect."
This, of course, probably doesn't seem like much of thing to Annie - it's a huh, and? kind of thing.  Padre, however, has heard almost nothing about Shoshannah's past (still hasn't seen what she keeps hidden with her 'arm socks', despite the assurance that it would shock no one) and they've been cohabitating for weeks now.  It can't be much of a surprise, though, really; for all that she hasn't really complained about the work she's been given or the place she finds herself living, it's pretty obvious that the girl has a taste for the finer things in life, that she likes her surroundings to be as pretty as possible. As soon as she can, the teenager is spilling out of the cab of the truck to explore the front yard, to peek in windows where she can, though she doesn't go far enough to miss anything her two companions say.

Annie
"Oh, you misunderstood me.  I'm not giving you the deed.  Don't even know if I can trust you yet."  She looked at Pan while she considered his question.  Neither of them seemed in any particular rush to get out of the truck.  "And no.  I'm not going back home yet.  I should.  I got my own place and my own people I need to look out for.  But I'm not gonna leave you to clean up this mess by yourselves."  She sighed and scrubbed over her face with her hand, as though suddenly hit by a bout of exhaustion.
"Let's just see how things go, okay?"
I think my dad's house had the same architect.
Shoshannah jumped out of the truck like a child at an amusement park, and for the first time since meeting them, Annie's expression softened with a note of hesitant surprise, as though it hadn't occurred to her that someone might derive that kind of reaction from the place.  After a beat, she exhaled a muted laugh.  "Glad someone can get some enjoyment from the place, at least.  It deserves that."
She opened the driver side door and hopped out into the grass.  "You comin', Pancho?"
Once everyone had exited the truck, Annie led them up the stone steps to the main door, which she unlocked with a key.  It swung open, and she flipped a light switch, bathing the space with warm light.  Inside, the house was just as big and well-maintained as it looked on the outside, with a tall, open ceiling and exposed beams. The door opened into a foyer area, and to the left was a spacious kitchen.  To the right, stairs led down into the massive living room, and then up to where the bedrooms were located.  The library was down another flight of stairs into a furnished and climate-controlled basement, and another door led out from the kitchen into a wide, picturesque lawn.
If Shoshannah or Pan happened to look out that way, they would see a pool of steaming water (a hot spring) lined with stones.  A large garden.  A couple of statues.  And further back, the trees.
But it was the spring that they'd feel, even at a distance.  Warm and rejuvenating, like the water of life.  A gleaming wellspring of Quintessence.
The Node.

Fr. Echeverría
With the answer comes an apologetic breed of smile, diluted by the time it reaches his eyes. Hard to find the right foot to get off on when the person leading the dance starts it off with fleeting steps but he doesn't try to quality what he'd said and he doesn't actually apologize to the other Disciple again.
He watches Shoshannah as she bounds out of the truck to approach the house like something that she'd thought she'd lost but he doesn't exit the vehicle himself until Annie asks if he's coming. Calls him by a nickname hardly anyone uses anymore. Everyone who calls him Padre just leaves it at that and everyone who calls him Father Echeverría is too afraid of him to shorten it to anything more familiar.
Someone once told him Pancho sounds like a bad guy.
"Sure," he says now, and steps down out of the truck.
And he takes in the outside of the place without passing judgment and he walks through the first floor of the house to find the way that takes them from the front to the back of the lot. Steps out of the kitchen and back into the afternoon like something is calling to him. Even an unbeliever would be able to feel the Quintessence in this place. Pan belongs to a Tradition that has built an entire paradigm around it.
He stands before the spring and takes a deep breath.

Shoshannah
[testing, testing, is anyone there? IE: spirit scan]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (7, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Annie
Shoshannah uses her second sight to look into the landscape's mirror image on the other side of the gauntlet.  Here the node is literally gleaming, its waters sparkling with life and energy.  The chantry house and the surrounding trees have a stronger presence here than most, their spirits strengthened and awakened by the presence of the node and the Awakened wills who'd lived there.
And lying beneath the trees, just up the slope from the well of quintessence, is a being she had not been able to see with her living sight: a massive white bear spirit, awake and watchful as it regarded the house's new occupants from a distance.

Shoshannah
Shoshannah is a sullen, ill-tempered young lady ninety-eight percent of the time, at least; she snaps and growls and figuratively bites if people come to close.  She's closed off, defensive to a fault.  In fact, her arrival here and reaction to the house is the most open anyone in Denver has seen her.  These things are part of her, as Padre has come to know,  but never have the felt so tangible, palpable, as they do now.  The good Father has never witnessed his foundling performing magic and now?
Well, it's a tempestuous thing to be caught up in any mage's passion[play].  Shoshannah is a Dreamspeaker born of blood and death, a ferryman in the making.  Her resonance isn't particularly strong, yet, but it's deeply unsettling.
Perhaps they see the flash of her coin when she withdraws it to nick the fleshy bit of her palm at the base of her left thumb.  Perhaps they see her squeeze until a few droplets of blood well up.  Perhaps they see her dab said droplets with the index finger to gather just the smallest bit of this blood freshly drawn, and then the inner corners of her eyes to clear the haze.
Both of them, though, see when she walks towards the [bear] trees - slowly, carefully, with apparent purpose.  This is, quite likely, the calmest and most at home in her skin Pan has ever seen her, and then the eerie young woman is talking to things that (as far as she knows) only she can see.  She takes her time and once the coin is back in her pocket her hands are kept open and in sight.  There's a certain deference (near worship, and from the child who avoids so much as setting foot into the church's sanctuary!) in her bearing now, something that should seem alien to a girl normally so full of prickly pride, but fits her well.
"Hello.  You're beautiful," comes breathed, barely more than a whisper when she stops out of easy range of angry claws, should the spirit she sees wish to charge - which means that her 'whisper' is actually probably loud enough to carry back to the adults.  "Do you guard this place?"

(Player note: Continued in forums)

Errands

Sid Rhodes
[let's get the ol' awareness roll out of the way]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 2

Jim Thompson
[ Ooh, yeah, my turn! ]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 4, 6) ( fail )

Sid Rhodes
It's early yet for people to be out loitering about.  The I-25 corridor is still crushed with the morning rush hour traffic as the worker bees head in for the Monday morning grind.  Some people get to go in a little later than most, though.
That's why the crowd at Kaladi is only just starting to thin out.  Despite the location of a Starbucks right across the street, Kaladi does pretty well for itself, serving DU's college goers and educators, and more than a few of the townies as well.  The inside is clean if small, with seats crammed together along a table attached to their large window front, and a smattering of tables and booths besides.  The baristas are gruff but quick, taking and filling orders at an impossibe speed.
It's still a little too crowded for one individual, however.  On a bench just outside the front door she sits, shoulders hunched, long red hair hanging like a thick wavy curtain to either side of her face, obscuring her appearance.  There's a notebook open on her lap, filled with neatly written notes and diagrams.  Maybe she's a student at the university, though there's no book bag near her, just an old messenger bag next to her on the bench, jammed into her hip.  She's dressed in old faded things - her once black tee is now dark grey, the knees of her jeans look ready to split, the heels already shredded, and her black sneakers are scuffed as hell.  If she's a student at the univesity, she's barely making the cost of living.
Though she seems wholly engrossed in her notebook, tapping a black pen against her chin, she's very aware of the people on the street.  One group of twenty-somethings happens to pass a little too close.  Automatically, she slides her feet under the bench, making sure that she's well out of the way of contact.

Jim Thompson
Jim is following behind the gaggle of young scholars. Or more aptly, Jim is trailing in their wake, lost in the materials clutched in his hands.
A bulletin of the University's curriculum is open across his forearms, pages folded back and dogeared as he rifles through them. He's stooped over, shuffling through pamphlets and fliers with his other hand, bookmarking pages, eyes squinting as the sun shines down on the amassed literature. Distracted. Unhinged. Trying to piece the puzzle's bits together, but forgetting the edge and colors of one just as he notices the next.
Stiil, something shimmers beneath his being. An agency, far from passive, when it comes to reality, his mind seeming to leak out his very ears and eyes, the windows to an addled soul, and managing to play with the world. Twist it like the tumbling glass of a kaleidoscope. This parlay of confusion and creation is governed by an unyielding mindfulness that is startling, because despite it all, he does not seem to flinch at the avalanche of sensations and possibilities.
Instead, he basks in them. Again,mindful of the moment, which is probably why he stops following the shadows of the students that had lead him from the registrar's office, through one campus, down one street, and now in front of the coffee shop.
He halts. His nose twitches at first, not noticing any of the customers, but instead closing his eyes and taking a deep breath of the aroma of fresh brewed beans and steamed milk that wafts from the open-closed-open-closed front door as patrons shuffle in and out.
His chest deflates as he turns toward Kaladi. He shuts the coursebook, its menu of knowledge again hidden away, one hunger forgotten in exchange for thirst.

Sid Rhodes
Sid becomes aware of it before the students are completely upon her, before she slides her feet out of their way.  The man trailing in their wake is distracted, addled, too focused on the papers in his arms to notice the tingle of a desperate euphoria in the air around the woman on the bench.
She notices him, though.  As soon as she feels it she stills, waiting, the calm before a storm of panic.  Maybe he won't notice her, maybe he'll keep going, maybe maybe maybe
He stops, practically in front of her but more in front of the door, and Sid?  She doesn't move, at least not in any exaggerated way.  Her shoulders tighten, though, and her body angles away as though he - still several feet away - is encroaching on a physical personal bubble and is now gently pushing her back.  Chin tucked, reddish brows tightened above large-ish dark-rimmed glasses - the kind he's likely seen on dozens of faces already today, if he's been paying attention, the hipster sytle is alive and well in Denver - she watches him with large dark eyes.  Tense.  Nervous.  Wary.

Jim Thompson
It's hard to notice someone trying to fold herself away into herself and out of the world around her. Especially when one is so distracted by that...
Fucking...
Smell...
That divine aroma.
And without much of a line standing between him and the closest barista. Jim visibly smiles to himself, the first of many little and pleasing things laid out before him as paths to be taken. Discovery. Acquisition. Consumption. The jolt of a bean, plant fermented and roasted and ground, unparched into another thing altogether, coursing through his own Pattern.
Jim is dressed plainly. A simple collared shirt, sleeves loosely rolled up to his elbows, and a brown leather jacket draped over the same crooked arm he now stashes the folded bulletin under. His pants are crisp Levi's jeans, raw denim in a deep blue that just break over plain Clark desert boots. And assembly of staples. He looks like he cares just enough about the way he dressed to be put together. To fit into this situation or that one. To drift through life without the hassle of wondering if he's prepared for it.
Except for those sunglasses hanging from the second button of his shirt. They're the sunglasses of a hustler. Gold detailing on name brand Ray-Bans. Sleek. Classic  design. A dash of flare to his otherwise uneventful wardrobe. He slips them on, strangely enough, as he walks out of the sunshine and into the coffee shop to make his order.
He emerges a minute or two later a few dollars poorer, but also richer one iced red eye, spiked strongly with the coffee house's espresso.

Sid Rhodes
He does pass by, and Sid relaxes, if only a little.  She watches him go from the corner of her eye, the mouse trying to determine at a glance the level of this particular threat.  He looks like he belongs in this area, like he's a little upscale but not trying too hard.  Putting on Ray-Bans to go inside...that's a little strange, but then it's been her experience that the awakened are eccentric, some more than others.
There's a blast of warm coffee smell as he opens the door, and then he's inside.  Sid is all alone, almost.  There are still people walking along the broad sidewalk, still cars zipping along the road.  The world spins madly on.
One hand holding her notebook in place, the other moving to grip the back of the bench, she turns to watch the man.  She watches him until it looks like he's about to turn and notice her watching him.  Twisting back around quickly, she sits perfectly still, heart hammering in her chest.  When he steps outside she's (almost) exactly where she was when he went in.  Reaching up, she tucks her hair behind her ear.
[dex+stealth:  I am totally not watching you, +1 diff for lack of actual stealth skillz]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )

Jim Thompson
[ Perception + Alertness. Hey, you checkin' me out? ]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 1 )

Shoshannah Mitchell
[awareness, just cos]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Shoshannah Mitchell
"I'm getting coffee."  Only a certain breed of teenager can make three words sound this way - dripping with attitude, sullen, screaming both LEAVE ME ALONE and PAY ATTENTION TO ME at the same time - and Shoshannah is well in control of this particular ability, this tone.  Why she's in such a mood is only known to the Priest beside her, driving the truck.  "Screw Starbucks.  There."
There's quiet, and for a moment it seems like she might leave it at that (and anyone with sense would consider the good priest well within his rights to say 'fuck no', all things considered), but then there's a smaller, quieter voice, one that isn't nearly so familiar.  "Please."  She's trying, after all, and not just in the ways that may gray Pan's hair if he doesn't rip it out from having to deal with her first.
One can assume that, perhaps, it's the please that does it - but regardless, the truck is pulling into a spot and the (out of this world) pretty [beautiful, really, in a frightening way] young woman is climbing out, heading into the store, with a, "You want something?" tossed over her shoulder as if she isn't pissed off, as if she hasn't been throwing fits since Saturday night.

Jim Thompson
Despite his erratic and short-lived attention span, or perhaps because of it, Jim does notice eyes glancing his way. Looking him over. He glances toward Sid, not hiding the fact he's cognizant of her attention as he posts up a few steps from the entrance to the cafe.
As he's looking at her, Jim's head cranes forward and he wraps his lips around the straw protruding from the clear plastic cup that holds his drink. It's an awkward gesture, lips pursed. He stops checking her out when he takes the sip, his instant reaction to the cool and flavorful blast over his palette a contented smile. Lowering the drink a moment later so that his fingers are clawing around the top of the cup, it dangles forgotten at his side.
She might hope that's all he'll do, recognize her and regard her, then move along through the world with his coffee. Pretty lady forgotten. But, and sadly, some hopes don't get to blossom.
"Beautiful day for people watching, isn't it?" He says it to himself, aloud, with a bit of calm and collected umph to his voice. And it might be another of those idiosyncratic things that people with his kind of resonance - magickal balances warring happily in his very Pattern - do. Until he looks at Sid, one eyebrow raised like he expects an answer to his question.
His question is interrupted by a youthful voice - youthful in its demands, its entitlement, its own umph - and the arrival of the truck that serves to deliver it. "It certainly is," answering himself, instead. Watching the girl go after what she wants.

Pan Echeverría
Which is how the aging red truck comes to occupy a space near the independent coffeehouse. Its brakes whine about the weather as it slows and stops, and the engine grumbles as it's asked to idle, but until the passenger door opens and a skinny sullen teenager makes her escape nothing about the vehicle presents anything worthy of attention to the world. There are probably thousands of similar trucks in the area. It wears a Colorado license plate but no bumper stickers, nothing but a trailer hitch to suggest it's used for anything other than lugging people around.
The driver stays put while the girl makes her way inside. Only moves when she tosses the question behind her, to turn his head and say "No, thank you," like she hasn't been throwing fits since Saturday night.
He waits until she's gone inside to kill the engine and step out of the cab, black cowboy boots hitting the pavement without much noise. He doesn't follow her in. The door claps shut and he reaches into the pocket of his work shirt.
[what the heck, awareness roll time]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Jim Thompson
[ Joining the club. Awareness. ]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

Sid Rhodes
He notices her noticing him.  Sid sits there momentarily frozen, shoulders tense, hair tucked behind her ear revealing half of her fair face.  He checks her out and she can practically feel his eyes roam over her.  The sensation makes her skin crawl, makes her curl a little further into herself, angling her body slightly away.
He speaks aloud into the air, to himself and to whomever happens to be nearby.  That person happens to be Sid, seated all alone on a bench just in front of the coffee house.  She's clearly uncomfortable, but when has anyone seen her otherwise?  When he turns to look at her directly, expectation of some form of social engagement clear upon his face, Sid startles.  She slaps her notebook closed, pinning it to the tops of her thighs with one hand while the other clutches the pouch of her bag.  Then she rises.
And as she rises, a truck pulls into one of the spaces along the road.  One might think the appearance of the surly teen would be a relief to Sid, but all it does is give her pause.
"Ah-uh," she stammers, her attention flicking back to and staying on the stranger.  Her eyes squeeze shut and she gives a quick jerk of her head to the side.  "I guess," she concedes quietly.

Shoshannah Mitchell
Inside, it's not the counter that Shoshannah heads for, not immediately, or even the door.  Instead, she stops just outside the door, her head turning towards a familiar (in that it's been around a couple times now, not that they're friends) presence nearby.  Pale blue eyes freeze people in their spots for a moment and, as is usually the case when the Dreamspeaker comes into a scene, ripples of discomfort (and people) spread outward.  Some suddenly remember a class, an appointment, an overdue library book, some (those stronger few) just decide that maybe that spot, there, as far from her as possible is more comfortable.
She pretends to ignore this, and is very good at it - it's one of the few deceptions she's [almost] mastered, pretending that people's need to be away from her doesn't hurt.
The strange man with unfamiliar gets a passing (flaying to the bone, the soul) glance before Shoshannah's gaze falls on Sid, just as intense despite a rare attempt to cloak it a bit.  Maybe there's a connection, or maybe Shoshannah has decided, in this moment, that taking her sweet ass time is the best way to irritate Pan as much as she herself has been irritated.
"Hey, Sid.  Everything alright?"
She doesn't move closer, or do anything to cause any more discomfort than she does naturally - unless one considers the atypical consideration such a thing.

Jim Thompson
"A guess is better than nothing," and he genuinely sounds pleased with the answer she gives, even nodding as he speaks. Like a beggar happy for any coin, regardless of its monetary value.
Soshannah, and all that hangs around her person and being, pushing away and parting humanity, interjects herself into the interaction. In doing so the teenager gives Sid a name and asks Sid a question.
Jim's eyebrow isn't raised so high anymore, but he does turn toward Sid when she's asked, and therefore again seems curious for an answer. Is everything alright? He seems to hope so, to those able to understand body language and the intricacies of the human face.

Pan Echeverría
Lingering by the truck though he is, the priest isn't invisible. His height eclipses that of the truck if only by a few inches. He takes a small metal Zippo from his pocket and lights a cigarette with it. Stands and watches a moment while he takes a drag. He can't hear the question or the response and he doesn't move to come any closer.
Those whose senses are open to the things beyond can feel and almost hear the light come from him, a bright loud thing like the clouds opening up after folks have grown used to the rain.
It may be some consolation to Shoshannah to know he's still there, or it may rekindle the aggravation that drove her out the cab in the first place. He stays where he is for now either way.

Sid Rhodes
The Dreamspeaker stops, and suddenly there's a cold spot in the middle of the warm early summer morning.  It spreads out, leeching the heat right out of the sunlight flooding the pavement, bringing with it a sense of darkness, of cold dead things from beyond the beyond.  The stronger-willed endure, the weaker decide to cross the street to Starbucks today, instead.  Sid is neither of these types of people.  She endures because her wariness is already ratched up to eleven.  A little cold and clammy atmosphere can't do much to top it.
Pan has been noticed, of course, there's no ignoring his illuminating presence, spreading out from him like a revelation.  Of what, Sid doesn't know, but with the stranger nearer, his attention square and intent upon her, she has no more room for acknowledging the presence of a man who is only slightly less of a stranger.
"Nnh," is the response, which is neither negative nor positive, but merely a sound of deep discomfort.  One shoulder lifts a little higher than the other, and she takes a step to the side, moving away.  "Stop...stop staring at me."

Shoshannah Mitchell
"..........right."  There's no anger or upset in the word itself, though the already tall (nearer to six feet than five, well above average) young woman stands a little straighter, even as her eyes skate away to land on a wall, a window, a particularly interesting crack in the sidewalk, anything.  (It's unlikely that she'll admit aloud anytime soon how much it means to her that no matter what she's said or done the past few days, Padre has been there for her, has never backed away even when her temper and eerieness were at their worst.  "Just . . . thought I'd check.  Coffee."
It's been this way everywhere she's been in her life - and, considering that she's only nearing nineteen, that's a terrible lot of places - for the first few weeks, maybe month or two, Shoshannah attempts to forge not friendships, but casual, relatively comfortable acquaintanceship with at least a person or two.   It's usually a relief for all involved when she stops; the effort exhausts her and by the time she gives up, she's as flayed as she tends to make others feel.  "If you want something, let me know."
Dark, curlywavy hair loosely ponytailed swishes behind her as she turns, giving Jim (a stranger, though now the fact that he hasn't backed off, and is the unfamiliar presence she'd felt, settles in) another glance that may well scan as 'be nice and don't fuck with her or else' with reasonable accuracy as she goes.  It won't take her long to return with whatever she orders, but it gives the other three a break, a few moments to catch breath, to catch up if they'd like.

Jim Thompson
Jim's hands come up to his sunglasses, grabbing them by the frames and taking them off. He complies with Sid's request as he reveals his eyes, though, breaking his gaze from her to instead looking down at the Ray Bans. Bony and knob-knuckled fingers carefully fold them and again hang them from the V of his shirt's unbuttoned collar. When he's finished tending to them, he thoughtfully looks down at the condensation forming on the disposable cup of iced coffee before taking a sip.
He's still looking down at the cup when Soshannah shoots daggers his way, so it's hard for him to catch or meet the look, but he can certainly feel what radiates off of her brush against him. It gives him a moment's pause. He shuts his eyes, waits for it to pass (for her to leave), then opens them again. When he does he resumes looking at the droplets of water on the cup.
He looks at everything like it means something. Or more aptly like he's mining for some truth. It's a decidedly intense facet of his personality. Contemplative. Mindful. Very much a part of the moment, though seemingly perceiving it in a way that is different - not better, but unigue - in comparison to others.
He can feel the cacophony of resonances as they wash over him, discordant, yes, and a growing in their multitude. Some clash outright with his own, others weave in and out of harmony. With so little going on around him - a man lighting a cigarette, the swish of cars passing, the door opening and closing - it's evident he's sensing and feeling something. Basking in it. He closes his eyes again.
Another sip. A breath. An exhalation.
"It's good to have friends," to the cup, but not really. A moment later he looks at the bench where Sid had been sitting. His nose twitches, nostrils flaring, as a wisp of the holy man's smoke drifts by. "I'm Jim." Another sip, and, pleased with it, he smiles and again the cup is lowered to rest by his hip.

Pan Echeverría
He smokes fast and pockets what he doesn't finish, pinching off the ember and dropping the butt not on the ground but in the first trash receptacle he finds on his way from the parking space to the front door. As he comes closer details avail themselves to the two seated, one of whom met him briefly in a dim yet overstimulating bar, the other never having laid eyes on him before.
All in black again despite the heat, blazer abandoned to reveal a short-sleeved button-down shirt, 6'2" at least and built solid like a guy who spent the first half of his life performing manual labor and hasn't gone completely soft yet. He has dark hair, swarthy skin, green eyes. Lifts a hand to wave to Sid on his way in.
"Morning," he says, though he doesn't stop to chat. Gives Jim the old once-over before he hauls open the door.
A moment later he joins Shoshannah in line, clearing his throat to announce his presence but otherwise silent.

Sid Rhodes
Sid gives a slight shake of her head to Shoshannah's offer of getting something, so the girl slips inside, giving them respite from her presence.  But Sid does not relax.  She does not take a breather.  Jim's sunglasses come off, revealing eyes that are looking decidedly away from her, and only then does her shoulder come down.  She angles her head in his direction, still keeping her chin tucked, still not looking up at him directly.  Still wary and cautious, despite the name given in greeting.
Friends, he says, and she winces as though the word stings.
"Sid," she says, that part's easy, and not just because Shoshannah already named her in front of this man.  It's a name, one syllable, three letters, nothing more.  She catches the movement of Pan as he heads toward the door.  Her face still aimed vaguely in Jim's direction, her eyes track the older man's progress.  She answers his Morning with the barest of nods before her gaze snaps back to the newcomer.
"I should," she says, lifting her hand to point with her thumb back and over her shoulder, back in a way that won't take her past him.  Whether that's where she actually needs to go is anyone's guess.  Sliding her foot behind her, she eases her weight back onto it, quite reluctant to turn her back on the man.

Shoshannah Mitchell
To Shoshannah's defense, there'd been no special animosity in the look she'd given Jim; she doesn't know him, but she's met Sid a couple times.  She has no idea what's made the girl so uncomfortable but hasn't yet reached the 'that's just Sid' stage of knowing what's going on, so she offers a protective (or defensive, depending on how one chooses to look at it) shield.  Or has, the last two times they've seen each other.  The Dreamspeaker knows she can take what people throw at her, both literally and figuratively, so she draws the fire whenever she thinks it may be wanted, or needed.
Inside, the line thins with remarkable quickness upon Shoshannah's entry; it's not enough to make her thankful for the disturbing aura she holds, but it does make it a little more convenient.  Sometimes.  It's to the girl's credit that only once (that anyone here knows of) has she taken advantage of the fear she instills in people, and that had been for something more entertaining than coffee.  She waits her turn in what little line there is, orders herself a small coffee (black, no room for cream) before acknowledging Padre's presence beside her.  "Sure you don't want anything?"  It's the least venomous anything she's said to him since Saturday has been (though, to be fair, a good portion of the time they'd had together Sunday had been silent treatment).  And, as pride and self-sufficiency dictate, she already has money in hand in the form of a dirty, crumpled mess of singles and fives.

Jim Thompson
"Good morning," is Jim's polite response to the man in black, whether the salutation was meant for him, Sid, or both of them.
"If you must," an inflection that questions the way she'd posed her rationale for a hasty retreat from his presence. Should? His head cants to the side, should she look up to notice.
Well, if you must. It says. But if you mustn't? It also hints. Well, then... Don't. A careful suggestion in the tone.
Because I wish you wouldn't. A hopeful and discreet challenge.
As he says it, he looks closer to her. Not at her. Toward his own feet, then toward her own, like she's trying to find what the very withdrawn and introverted woman is looking at on the ground in the space between them. What she's so scared of. Curiosity.
The bench isn't taken, and he watches that same stretch of ground as he takes a seat on it where she had been watching him from moments before. He adjusts the papers folded and stacked beneath his arm and places them on his lap, his jacket folded over them, looking up at as he awaits her decision, or the return of the two from the Big Red Truck.
Whichever comes next.

Sid Rhodes
[empathy-awareness!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 1 ) Re-rolls: 1

Pan Echeverría
They haven't seen much of each other since Saturday night when he all but kicked her out of the bar. Other than meeting her outside the church and showing her the mess in the basement that would serve as her project this week, she did not see him again until nightfall yesterday.
If she's done any snooping around the place she would find that the church holds Mass three times a day every day except for Saturday, when they have an evening vigil an hour earlier, and confession is offered twice a day every day except for Sunday, when it's only available during the evening service. To say he's busy is an understatement.
She asks if he's sure he doesn't want anything. For a moment he's silent, thinking, and then he gives the employee behind the register a smile like he's trying to apologize for the fact that the teenager is scaring the shit out of everyone in the place.
And then he orders a cup of decaf. Does not let Shoshannah pay for it, even if the only reason he pulls that off is because the register person would rather take cash from the tall dark warm-looking guy than the shiver-inducing girl stood in his shadow. He has a longer reach besides.

Sid Rhodes
She isn't exactly watching the ground, not really.  Sid's head is angled just so in order to make better use of her peripheral.  She may not look at Jim directly, but she is watchful of him, wary, even as she is wary of another group of young people headed down the street, of the new car that's pulled up along the curb, of the handful of people who rush out of the coffee house, escaping the terrible presence of the youngest patron.
Watching her surroundings as she does, she still hears a bit of that inflection.  Those questions, that little touch of imploring that the man does.  That's not what keeps her rooted in place, however.
What keeps her in place is that when he moves to close the distance, he doesn't close it completely but stops part way.  He settles himself on the bench instead of approaching her.  He skirts her like she's a stray animal, lost to the streets for so long she's forgotten how to be around people.  Frowning and far, far from trusting he has no ulterior motives, no unpleasant plans up his sleeve for her despite his seemingly genial nature, Sid lifts her chin a little, focuses a little more of her attention on him instead of her surroundings.
She is hesitant, but she does not bolt.  Her arm moves as though she might reach up and fuss with her hair, but there's a notebook in it still, and a bag still clutched in the other.  Awkwardly, Sid lowers her arm back to her side, her mouth pressed into a firm line.  From this angle he can see her figure a little better.  Tallish, just a little under the height of the scary girl who went inside, and with an obvious curves despite somewhat baggy clothing.  Her age is a bit difficult to pinpoint; out of the mid-twenties, maybe very early thirties.
"What do you...what do you want?" she asks, and she can't quite keep the suspicion from her voice.

Shoshannah Mitchell
Oh, Shoshannah knows priests are busy; growing up Jewish in the family she had may not have given her much experience with Catholicism (or Christianity in general, beyond where it intersects with Judaism , but had introduced her to many holy men of the church (and synagogue) at varying levels.  It may only have been morning and late evening, but the time had been filled with . . . well, a sullen, angry teenager who was full of either icy silence or sharp, venomous jabs by turns.
It had also been full of a basement getting progressively neater, more in hand, more quickly than expected.  For whatever reason, the girl had taken to the job better than anyone could have expected.
".....I can take care of myself, you know," she says after he's paid for their coffee; even as dripping with irritation as it is, the, "Thanks, though," is more deeply genuine than most things she says, as much so as the 'please' she'd added as an afterthought before they'd stopped.  Sure, it bugs her a bit that he hadn't let her pay; whether she thinks she owes him or just wants to assert her independence doesn't really matter.
She adds nothing to her coffee, drinks it straight and bitter, dark as sin.  "You want to go back out?"

Jim Thompson
"To be around... That," honesty, if she's still paying attention to it, in his wording. He might have said it in a nicer way if he were being less than genuine.
And he begins to understand why, now, almost as the words leave his scruff and dirty-blonde-moustachioed lips. His brow relaxes at the brush of epiphany, then flexes like he's trying to grasp it, but then he seems to force it away again. Relaxes. Realizing like a feather drifting on the wind, to swat at it with grabbing hands might cause it to flit away. Cause her to threaten to run off again, like when he'd focused his gaze on her.
It was a feeling of the periphery. Another dragon to chase, if smaller, possibly no less dangerous. He skirts it, like he does her.
"Elation." He can feel it drifting from her, and when she finally directs words at him it's like it has been injected directly into his veins. "You," correcting his earlier 'that'. The euphoria that permeates her own Pattern.
He's sitting, and has yet to stand straight in her presence, but in comparison to the priest that had walked by Jim is decidedly more slight, more insignificant, more average, if not any shorter if he cared enough to right his posture. In his late 20s and marked by hard living around the eyes and in the luster of his complexion.

Pan Echeverría
He thanks the kid behind the counter and puts the paper change from the transaction into whatever tip jar presents itself before moving down the line. Doesn't have anything to say about whether or not he knows Shoshannah can take care of herself. He doesn't doctor up his drink either, but he does wander around the place a bit. This is his first time in here and it isn't a Starbucks.
For a moment he appears more interested in the decor than anything she might have to say. Or maybe he's giving silent thanks to the poor bastards who picked the beans to make the coffee he's about to drink. He does that just about every time he ingests something, she's starting to learn, even lectured her about the cost of gasoline being more than some glowing red numbers on a sign through the passenger window when he stopped to fill up the tank this morning. That was at the start of their little errand. They hadn't made it to the lumberyard before she decided she needed to get out the truck right-the-hell-now.
Thanks, though.
The humanness in her voice brings him back from whatever lofty ancient place his brain goes to when he's not paying attention to his surroundings.
"Well," he says, "thanks for hauling all that junk out of the basement."
It's a parry, like he thinks he's being funny. Don't do anything that might make the teenager think you're being nice to her, oh no, that would be the actual worst.
Do you want to go back out?
"Whenever you're ready."

Sid Rhodes
[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Sid Rhodes
A look of utter confusion claims her face, stealing away its simple, unadorned (except for the glasses) beauty.  What? that look asks, and then morphs into something else as comprehension dawns.
And then he clarifies himself.  You, he says.  Sid's eyes widen slightly and her chest constricts.  The hands that hold her things clutch them a little tighter.  Not enough for the knuckles to turn white, signaling extreme panic, but the shift is noticeable.
Still, she holds her ground.  Something keeps her held in place.  Perhaps its him, his too-close Pattern addling her own, swirling through the desperation and the euphoria, the elation as he called it, and mixing it all up.
Slowly she takes a deep breath, willing her muscles to loosen and relax, for her heartbeat to slow just a little.
"Why?"

Shoshannah Mitchell
I lived in Israel and Texas, had been her scathing retort when he'd begun the lecture about what the price of gasoline and, by extent, oil meant.  If you think I don't know what those dollars and cents mean, you're sadly mistaken.  Of course, just living in either of those places doesn't guarantee the knowledge she'd professed, and it's easy to take anything people under a certain age say with little more than a grain of salt.
Now, though, they're in a different place and for all that Shoshannah's temper is a living, often nearly violent thing, it's at a low ebb right now (and seems to flare and bank with amazing quickness).  Any aggravation she's suffering over the indignity of her assigned job, a curfew, being shooed from someplace interesting, is set aside in favor of the novelty of someone who will has stayed beside her thus far, from when she'd met him to the present.  It makes it easier to ignore things like Rosa crossing herself when she thinks Shoshannah isn't paying attention.
"It's a bit easier outside," she says so quietly he might not catch it, and then turns her head away to examine something innocuous as if it's the most interesting thing she's ever seen before turning back with a real answer.  "Whatever.  We've got stuff to get done, yeah?"  Of course they do.  No point in lingering.

Pan Echeverría
And he doesn't catch it. He sees Shoshannah's lips move and then he sees her glance away and speak up louder and more dismissive than before, that moment of reprieve from sulking over. Pan manages not to laugh but he ends up coughing into the back of his wrist for a few seconds as punishment.
"Thanks for reminding me," he says, light, as close to sarcastic as he ever gets, and pulls his truck keys out of the pocket of his jeans.

Jim Thompson
A need - an imperative - had cut through her. But she remains.
His voice is quiet, but it's not soft. He speaks clearly. Loud enough for her to hear him. But it's not assertive.
"I enjoy it. And maybe if I am around you long enough you will want to be around me. And then I'll be able to enjoy it indefinitely," her 'Why?' answered, Jim settles into the bench. He's actually yet to look at her again. Especially not in that expectant manner he'd regarded her with twice before. Respecting her wishes thus far.
"Do you go to school around here?" His hand pulls the thick book of classes, major requirements and enrollment information, laced with pamphlets and pages with notes taken on them, from underneath the jacket. "I'm thinking about taking some classes."
He sips his coffee idly, taking a moment to glance over his own shoulder, not hiding his curiosity and giving it a target other than Sid, due to her shyness. The glance is into the coffee shop, though its large pane glass window, and at Pan and Shoshannah where they are inside. Wondering if they'll return.

Shoshannah Mitchell
Jim can see Pan and Shoshannah fairly clearly, moving closer to the door they'd entered; of course they'll return.  It's difficult to imagine anyone tolerating the girl's presence for long at all, let alone in such close quarters as provided by the confines of the coffee shop.  The roll of her eyes at Pan's forray into near-sarcasm is nearly palpable even when they're separated from each other.
"Go ahead, I'll be right out," she says with a nod towards the restroom.

(Shit, lost track of time, have to go for dance!  Back when it's done.