Rubbing Elbows

Shoshannah Mitchell
It's getting near dinner time, late enough that the pedestrian mall is mostly only busy around the restaurants and bar - which isn't to say it's empty by any stretch, but that it's not particularly crowded as the young Dreamspeaker wanders from shop window to shop window, pausing to look at whatever catches her fancy but not bothering to go into most places.  One particular window, though, a boutique that holds a mix of vintage and modern fashions and more, holds her attention longer than most.  Here, she pauses for quite some time as people veer around her (or approach her awkwardly, in some cases, certain she's someone else or knows so-and-so or . . . any number of things) in a way that speaks of unease or even fear.
As far as anyone can tell, she ignores all that quite well; perhaps she's used to it.  Or perhaps she's a good actress.
At any rate, this is where she's easiest found - not that it's ever difficult.  It is, in fact, rather impossible not to notice the girl who makes one feel like Death's cold finger is lingering at the nape of one's neck.
[Awareness, just cos!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

Hawksley Rothschild
Most of the people who shop in the Pavilions are not that different from Shoshannah, at least when it comes to age and taste.  Here are the chains, the tourist shops, the places to drop off a gaggle of teenagers while you get other things done.  No one dropped Shoshannah here so they could go Be An Adult, though.  She is not part of a gaggle of girls or boys her own age.  She is, like so many of the Awakened, inherently alone.  They may organize themselves into cabals and cliques and traditions and sects and councils, but the path to Ascension is a personal one.  Those that walk beside you for a time may very well veer off before you thought you would be asked to let them go.
So: she is alone.  And Hawksley is too, today -- and it is still day, the sun still beaming, not even near dimming yet.  They say Denver gets over three hundred days of sunshine a year, and it's usually true.  Even in the bitterest cold, the clouds scarcely bother trying to obscure the closest star's shining.  Maybe that's why he's here.
Who?
Oh him, obviously.  And he is very obvious to Shoshannah.  It's hot today, warm and dry as almost any July is in this city, and sunset has not come to steal that heat away.  But the girl who feels like gatekeeper to the underworld, who feels like Death herself without the poetry or kindness sometimes attributed to the spectre, almost seems like a cold spot.  She feels the sun break over her back, rippling up the nape of her neck, filtering under her haiur as though sunlight could have fingers to dreamily massage your scalp with.  It's elevating, as though the world itself is losing gravity, or maybe it's just her.  A wind that does not exist rushes over her face with tear-creating fervor as some part of her mind, some part of her soul, briefly knows what it is to fly.
Forever and forever and forever.  As though there is no touching the ground.  As though the ground is only a dream.
If she turns -- let's be honest, when she turns -- he stands out like a golden idol set on an altar in an otherwise dark, dingy room.  Nevermind that he's tall or well-formed or handsome or smiling or any of those things, in Shoshannah's particular awareness of the universe, the sun may as well shine for him and him alone.  And the sun does adore him, look how it kisses his skin and his hair, how it lights his eyes, how somehow everyone around him seems cast in shadow just because he had the audacity to walk by.
He isn't coming from work in some nearby office building or the finance district.  He's wearing jeans with the cuffs rolled up just a tad to bare his ankles, a pair of caramel-colored loafers worth a month's rent for some people, and an untucked white oxford that is surprisingly unwrinkled, the sleeves folded up his forearms, the buttons haphazardly done somewhere in the middle like he figured a few were plenty.  His watch cost several month's rent, and it glints when the light touches it.
If he has noticed her, he doesn't -- okay, no, he can't have noticed her.  He's walking right by her, and the only thing he does is sidestep her as though he were trying to avoid a pile of something unseemly without missing the groove of his own walk.
--
The last time she saw him, he was not Awakened.  He did not feel quite so much like the sun, or like flying close to it.  But he still had that look about him, was born with it: those avian eyes, that aquiline nose.  It's only intensified as he's gone from his late teens to his early twenties, but the difference there is not nearly so stark as the difference between ten and eighteen-almost-nineteen.
The benefit was charming.  He was home from boarding school and oh, he was the absolute life.  He danced with any partner: his mother, the once-rather-famed ballroom dancer, someone's elderly aunt, a couple of girls his own age who he was kind enough not to upstage, and, yes, if she didn't try to bite his hand and run away, he may have even danced with a creepy dark-haired girl as though his own brightness and happiness in privilege could make up for all the darkness in the world.
He danced well.  He was mannerly.  He looked very smart in his dark suit that night, but he had no facial hair and he still had not reached his current height.
--
The man passing Shoshannah, sidestepping her, glances back over his shoulder after a few steps, which slow.

Shoshannah Mitchell
what would an angel say, the devil wants to know . . .
It's amazing, how differently the sun can treat two people.  Where Shoshannah stands, it seems the sun should touch her as much as it does him, or at least as much as it does everyone else - and yet, somehow light around her deadens, chills, turns to shadow.  In her presence, even light comes to be ferried to its next destination.  Her skin is as pale as if she never steps outside, moon-touched and silver where Hawksley is a different sort of idol entirely.  He is as analogous to light and life as Shoshannah is to the underworld, and as unearthly - or perhaps extra-earthly? - in his own right.  He moves to pass around her, steps away, and she can't help but feel him in that way everyone feels her.  Her eyes close and Lilith's daughter tilts her head towards the light that actuallydoes touch her in a way she seldom feels touched.  In this one moment, she's unguarded though she doesn't realize it; when her face relaxes, she looks still more like the girl that she once was.
Not that she's changed much, mind.
--
When they first met, she was an ethereally beautiful child, a doll with porcelain fair skin and black hair, the contrast creating the sort of image that those more poetic than she are so often inspired by.  She was as ill-tempered as she is now and might have bitten - perhaps had already a time or two that night - if Hawksley had been anything other than he was.  She was not Awakened, but she was still Death's courier, a ferryman, a harbinger.  Even then, no one wanted to be near her; even then, she was at least as much a part of some other world as she was of the flesh.
She danced well enough, though, and spoke prettily in several languages even as she hid behind sullen glares and flayingly icy blue eyes, and worn the right clothes and shoes, and done her hair just so.  She was every inch (so many inches, too - then, she was by far the tallest of those under the age of thirteen or so) the daughter of the mother who didn't know what to do with her, couldn't stand to be around her.  She was very much her grandfather's granddaughter, even as he quietly prayed for the curse she represented to be lifted.  Perhaps most importantly, she was a descendant of her grandmother.  She was kind and gracious, even when her teeth proved themselves sharp.
Even when Hawksley was the only one who could stand to be near her for the length of a song.
--
He glances over his shoulder after a few slowing steps - her hair is lighter now, the one indication that she has seen the sun in all these years, and she's taller (still above average, but not as startlingly much so), and her face has slimmed as her body has taken some shape.  She's long and lean, now, so very slim and willowy-lithe where once she'd been all awkward limbs and straightness - and finds her looking back at him.  Those eyes are still icy, still cut to the [soul] bone.  That skin is still porcelain fair.  She still belongs at least as much to some other world at least as much as she does to this one.
".....hello."  It's rare that she speaks first, at least as much so now as it was then.  "I . . . do I know you?"

Hawksley Rothschild
Certainly, definitely, not of this earth but tied to it, loving of it, gentle toward it.  Of course the sun would need to love the earth, or the earth would be doomed.  The earth is lucky, then, that the sun and the sky are so enamored of its color and its shape.  And these thoughts likely come unbidden to her, all at once, because something about him does make words like golden god come to mind.  Something about him makes one think of how, without the blessing of certain beings who are only vaguely terrestrial, life would cease.  The fifth wind would stop making the world rotate.  The light would die, and so would the warmth, and then
it would be a being like Shoshannah who would rule.  And who wants that?
--
He looks at her.  Because she feels like the opposite of everything he is, and because she feels like the cold of the grave, and because -- contrary to appearances -- Hawksley has met her kind before.  Not her kind, but: he has seen his share of the interiors of forgotten tombs, has stood at the feet of his share of gods of death and known them by many names, and when he feels her strangeness it makes him want to recoil but the greatest lesson he ever learned was lean in.  So: he looks, and catches her looking unguarded, which almost makes her look normal, and certainly makes her look pretty -- for someone he's reasonably sure is not legal for him to breathe on -- and makes him think, too, that she couldn't be the source of that weird feeling.
But it is the feeling that makes him look back, and it's the feeling that makes him keep looking even after he's dismissed the idea that it's coming from her.  He slows his steps and then he stops them, and then he turns, and then he meets her stare with the sort of fearlessness that, in the really old stories, gets heroes killed and gods eviscerated so their blood can water crops or some other fool thing.  He's still sort of smiling.
"I don't know," he says, then rewinds a bit and takes a few steps forward before he asks: "Are you on anything right now?  By any chance something borrowed, something blue?"
What an absolutely bizarre question.

Shoshannah Mitchell
It would be bizarre, maybe, if Sid weren't one of the two people that Shoshannah finds herself (unwillingly) caring about.    It would be weird if Shoshannah hadn't been condemned in a Nephandic dreamscape not that long ago.  Now, though?  Well.  It's only weird in that it's actually directed at her.  It takes a moment while she glances behind her to make sure this good looking (golden god of a) man isn't talking to someone else.  The way she looks, it's quite possible that he's the first person to talk to her today.
"No, not even allergy meds.  But I heard about something going around the party scene - of which I'm not a part."  She speaks in the precise way that only those who learn English as a second (or third or fourth) language can, though it's not so obvious as it once was.  Her voice is deeper now, richer; then, she'd sounded almost as much like a doll as she'd looked (down to the very slight and very hated lisp that clung for far too long).  And, quite clearly, she takes this question in stride in a way that not many people would - even as she closes up as quickly as she'd opened, and with far more ease.  "What do you know about it?"

Hawksley Rothschild
Sid.  He's met Sid!  He doesn't know that Shoshannah has met Sid or he'd be asking her another bizarre question, which is whether or not they both know Sid from somewhere because seriously, it's driving him nuts trying to figure it out.  He wants to see her without her glasses, maybe that'd do it.  He's pretty sure he could figure it out.  Maybe she's like Clark Kent and when he takes the specs off he'll recognize her.
Like, he realizes, he is recognizing Shoshannah now.  Taller by half, older, with things like boobs and full lips and all that post-pubescent stuff.  But that feeling is sinking into him the longer he stands here, and the closer it gets to three minutes, to five, the more he remembers his hand on her side, her hand in his hand, her hand on his shoulder, and how it should have been awkward because she was so much smaller than he was but he has never been awkward while dancing and she was rather defiantly refusing to be awkward, period.
not even allergy meds makes a grin crack across his face, splitting to reveal his white, even teeth.  He does her the courtesy of not laughing, but he grins like that, particularly when she mentions hearing about something going around.
"I'll tell you later," he says, and he isn't lying.  Not that he could.  Well maybe he could, but he doesn't try.  It isn't worth it to try.  "I want to know why I recognize you."  He lifts one long-fingered hand that has never done a day's labor and puts his finger on his nose.  "Too young to have met you at university or any school functions before that."  His hand leaves his nose, swirls in the air, points at her.  "Upper East Side?  Hamptons?  Any friends up thataway?"

Shoshannah Mitchell
The snort is ironic and amused in that stand-offish sort of way that certain people get; in it there's something of 'you take me for the sort that has friends?' and 'you got me' and 'oh god, those people' though when she answers verbally it's with walls of civility firmly in place.  "Both, actually, but I haven't been to either in ages.  Those are my mother's people."  The 'kind of', as in 'that kind of people' is left implied - quite strongly, practically dripping from her words, but still only implied.  She's less kind and gracious now, it would seem, at least on the surface.  She certainly doesn't let her soft parts show, and is, in fact, rather defiant about that, too.  Defiance (and now anger and defensiveness) tends to be her natural state.
"The last time I was there for any amount of time," she offers, just a hint gentler - it's a rarity that people aren't driven off by now, and if they aren't it's usually because they're throwing that superstitious sort of warding sign that nearly everyone has (or things more solid, or at least more difficult to ignore and more hurtful), regardless of faith or upbringing.  "Was not quite ten years ago, with my mom.  Maybe you," not we, because if he's fairly certain she's not legal to be breathed on now, she certainly wasn't then, "ran in similar circles."
There's a pause then, and a slight frown.  "But you're closer to my age than hers, I think, so maybe your parents ran in her circles, if that's the case.  Anyway, we were at all the parties."  That mattered, anyway, if her mother was to be believed.
She doesn't look like her mother, or her father, so even if Hawksley remembered her, there'd be no drawing the connection - Shoshannah is very much her own person.  While DNA tests would show that she's the sum total of her parents and their predecesors, there's very little else that does.  (Her desire for and adoration of fine things and aesthetic beauty comes from her mother; her need for tidiness and a job well done comes from her father.  These things, though, aren't things that one can see until one has spent significantly more time with her than this.)
"I assume you must, since you brought it up.  Should we name drop to see where we match?"
It should be said, Shoshannah isn't as trusting as she seems.  And those eyes!  If anything, it's more uncomfortable to be in their focus now even if Hawksley is better at bearing it.

Hawksley Rothschild
Snotty disgruntled teenager is snotty disgruntled teenager and Hawksley ignores the scoff, the snort, the standoffishness the way he expertly ignores many other things that people feel.  And still he smiles, and he's amused and he's delighted because it is in him to constantly, always be a bit delighted with the universe and the earth and the silly creatures that walk upon it, himself included.  He can take the snotty disgruntled teenager bits in stride right along with the Feels Like Death bits, and he does.
"Ten years ago," he says, "I was in high school, and on holidays from said high school, my family was at all the parties as well.  The Livingstons?"

Shoshannah Mitchell
"Mmmm."  It's a noncommittal sound, as is the seesawing gesture she makes with her hand to go with it.  She knows them, then, or more likely knows of them.  "The Levines?"
Inherently disgruntled, but not with any purpose or drive in this conversation; he's familiar, and pleasant (so far) to talk to even while she waits for something ill to come of it.  She has her reasons for the way she is, as they all do.
"And ten years ago my mother was touring.  Both the Upper East Side and the Hamptons were stops on the way to drop me off with my father."  Clearly she's not close with either parent, though given the way she feels that can't be a surprise.  More surprising would be if she actually were close with someone.

Hawksley Rothschild
"On the upper east side?" he says, laughing.  "Half of every block is named Levine or something similar."
Hawksley turns, offering her his elbow, because he's a Flippin' Gentleman, and because she's tall enough that it's not too awkward to do so.  "Let's walk, standing in the middle of the sidewalk is irritating my feet."
Whether she agrees to take his arm or not, he starts walking.  Not quickly, not in any rush or hurry, but no longer standing still.  "Maybe we met at some party or other," he muses, then realizes he should also ask: "What is your name?"

Shoshannah Mitchell
"I guess you're right.  I think one of the Levines was getting married to a Hurst or something - it was a long time ago.  And I was little."  There's a shrug, and an offered elbow and the way she eyes it is startled and hungry at the same time - the reason for which is made clear when she touches him and the metaphorical death chill becomes that much more difficult to ignore.  To be touched by Shoshannah is to put one's life in her hands and have her keep a bit of it, or so it feels.  "An engagement party, I think.  And there was an amazing music room right off of the dance floor, full of things I knew how to play.  Everyone has a guitar, you know, but not just anyone has a mandolin or lute."
There's a pause then, brief, and a shrug.  "Shoshannah Mitchell.  My mom's last name is Caspit - you're more likely to know that than mine.  But . . . I think we danced.  You move like someone who danced with me once, anyway."  She hasn't had many partners to which she can compare him, to be honest.

Hawksley Rothschild
Oh, if he were a peacock he would fucking preen.  Tailfeathers spread open in an irisdescent rainbow, this one.  But he's human, or looks it, and he grins when she says he moves like someone who danced, and he doesn't really care that there are words after that.  "I dance rather well," he says shamelessly, then gives her a wink.  "I know your name, now.  Not the most common one even among all the Caspits and Livingstons and Levines and Hursts and so on and so forth."
Hawksley smiles.  "I do remember you, with the name and the creepy vibes."  There.  He just says it right out, like she knows, like she has to know, and if she doesn't well then she should.  "Now, who might we know in common here?  I've met a handful of the most interesting folks you could hope to meet.  There's a redhaired girl with glasses and a girl with a tattoo of a shark-scissor-thing and a priest and the coolest hippie guy with a shaved head I've ever met, and then there was this other girl -- gorgeous, very old-fashioned but you know those hairstyles are in or something, and she talks like a robot.  I've also met a roller derby team, a hipster band, and they said they'd introduce me to the Swedish women's handball team next time they're in town, and the conductor for Jazz in the Park, and there was a floor party at the Four Seasons where I met positively everyone for six floors in the lounge and I'm pretty sure I felt up three of them, but who's counting?"
He shrugs, and pats her hand.  Or her shoulder.  "I'm sure you know neat people, too."

Shoshannah Mitchell
Of course she knows - how could she not?  With the way she makes people twitchy, the way they shy away from her except when they don't, and oh the interesting conversations she has then.  Sometimes in the Chinese sense, sometimes not.
"I know Sid and Padre - I stayed at the rectory for awhile when I first got here.  I've met Sera, Jim and Patience a couple times each.  And other than that, I know a martial artist with a strong leaning towards the ecstatic, a landscaper-gardener who's beyond amazing at his job, and a DJ."  So in short, they have a lot of people in common here, and she knows a few others besides.  "I mean, aside from way too many hipster baristas and film school drop outs.  I only count them if they have a conversation with me."
The people that do are far less common than one might think, given that she has a draw almost as strong as the repulsion she exudes.  She's both poles of a magnet at once.  The next is amused, and lacks in the wry, dry delivery that so much of what she says holds.  "I haven't felt anyone up - or been felt up - or been invited to any parties, though.  Sounds like you had fun."

Hawksley Rothschild
So she feels like Hades to his Zeus, she knows Sid and 'Padre' and Sera and Jim and Patience, and Hawksley just nods.   "I thought as much," he offers mildly, then stops their forward progress quite suddenly, turning on a heel and offering her his hand, palm up.
"Hawksley Rothschild," he says, and then --
nothing more.  No naming of his Tradition or his Spheres or anything else.  Hawksley Rothschild.  Offering her his hand.

Shoshannah Mitchell
It should probably be said that Shoshannah is far from lacking in charm.  It's not as evident as her looks which, despite the feeling she gives off, are undeniably unearthly and rather stunning besides, but it's there.  She's also not lacking in upbringing and the manners it gives, as evidenced to her reaction to things like this - which is to say, taking the gallantly offered hand in an equally gallant fashion, and shaking in the way all the best-taught young ladies do.  It's not limp and cool and damp, though it seems like perhaps it should be, and for all that it feels like she could be ferrying Hawksley into the afterlife or the life after it, she's very much warm and alive and vital.  Her hands are strong and her fingers nimble in a way that people who play instruments often display, and her grip is firm but not hard even as her hand turns just slightly, as if he might pull it to his lips the better to brush them across her knuckles.
Oh, yes.  At some point or another, this girl was a daughter of society.
"It's a pleasure, Hawksley Rothschild."  It seems genuine enough, that offering from moon to sun, from Hades to Zeus.  And then -- not nothing, but a change of subject.  "If for some reason you need to reach me, Sid and Padre know how.  I don't have a mobile or anything, and I need to contact my ride back to the house," not home, but more than just squatting, "before it gets too late.  I don't like to be any more inconvenience than can't be helped."
And nothing else.  Just Shoshannah Mitchell, accepting his hand as any society girl might.

Hawksley Rothschild
That hand is goddamn gallant.  And he lifts hers, very barely and very graciously touching her knuckles to her lips but there's nothing lingering or even soft about it; it is about as intimate as ladies kissing the air beside one another's cheeks.  One does not kiss the hand of a young lady who you're not sure is legal.  One suggests the kiss on that hand, then gently releases it.
"Sidddd," he says thoughtfully.  "I got an interesting text from her the other day.  I think I'll ask her to coffee or something.  Pick her brain."  He blinks, then looks at her.  "Oh, would you like me to call someone for you?"
And perhaps she does.  And he does, because he can.  He does not hand her his phone, certainly not, but it's nice and it's new and that's not shocking at all.  He calls her ride and walks with her, then waits with her.  He talks enough to fill the silence between them.  He finds out what instruments she plays, and how old she actually is, which significantly calms him down for even hanging out around her.  He doesn't ask her where she lives.  He doesn't ask her anything very serious, at all.  After all: they only just met.