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.
No comments:
Post a Comment