The Deacon's Hunger.
[Sabra Meier Levy] Tucked away on a sidestreet in Lakeview, close to the Mile - amidst a number of other, rather more eclectic, rather more affordable little stores and restaurants - including a bakery, and a cupcake shop, an art gallery named Gallery 441, and a popular local coffee house where the name Starbucks may not be uttered on pain of death, is a small storefront in a classic brick building with wide picture windows and traditional displays. A small sign juts out over the street, The World Tree printed around a picture of a huge oak, with nobby roots and a great, spreading canopy.
There is a breeze tonight, a faint one, bringing cool, damp air inland from the lake. The sign - wooden, it appears, handpainted, the bottom carved so that the lines of the sign follow the sweep of the roots - swings faintly in the breeze.
Although the brick is old, the lines of the commercial building are clean and modern, the picture windows tinted faintly, the displays earthy but tasteful. Bits of driftwood are wired together to suggest some nook in the arms of a spreading tree, the illusion continued against a neutral background, a rippling curtain of painted silk, some impression of a sky, a horizon line, leaves painted in the two-dimensional shadows by a fair hair. Except for the folk-art leaves, the backdrop is minimalist as the exterior architecture.
Tucked in and about the display are a variety of hand-made goods from around the world. Baskets from south Africa. Chased silverwork from the Hill Tribes of Vietnam. Pottery from Peru, batiked scarves from Indonesia, soaps and lotions from Haiti, the Domican Republic, Provence.
The sign is repeated, written into the windows in a dark vinyl script. Underneath The World Tree it says, "A Fair Trade Establishment."
Sunday night, the air feels like fall. The place is open late. Warm light shines from the interior, though most of the rest of the stores are closed. The afternoon was warm, but there's an autumnal bite to the air as the night descends. Still, a pair of teenagers, or perhaps twenty-somethings, exit the place, brown paper bags rustling against their thighs, the door swinging shut behind them.
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley remembers liking this little cluster of stores when she passed this way a few months ago. The Hermetic's wanderings take her all over the city, sometimes accompanied by Zane and sometimes not, and she's had a chance to sample a lot of stores at least once, a sort of exploratory tasting and rolling over the tongue (sometimes literally, depending on the nature of the shop). It makes city life interesting.
She also rather happens to like sugar. Thus: a cupcake.
Given that most of her stress as of late has been due to grief and being one of the most prominent people in a city plagued by Enlightened who have long since given up their souls to the infernal, Ashley has a few seconds' grim reflection on being true to feminine stereotype just before she bites in. In at least one regard. And then there's sugar, and endorphins, and she forgets about it.
She leans against the exterior of the cupcake shop, her narrow shoulders pressed against the brick, while she breaks off small bits of the cake and watches people pass by. At this point in her Awakened life, Ashley's resonance is beginning to precede her: even Sleepers notice it now. Not just the sharp ones, either. People glance her way without meaning to, because she just seems weird and they don't know why, there's no reason, and then they just as quickly look away.
At some point, The World Tree catches her eye because of its title. Given that the spreading boughs depicted are that of an oak, she and the shop's owner probably have a different world tree in mind: but no matter that. She's trying to ease her mind with wandering, and looking around in a new place will do that.
She licks a last bit of icing from the ball of her thumb and starts over and walks in. It's all out of her price range. It doesn't matter. It's interesting just to look at, to run her fingertips over when permitted.
Thus: a young woman who could be any grad student in jeans and a red buttondown (sleeves rolled up). Dark hair cut short, only just framing a face, highlighting a delicate jaw. Bright blue eyes that speak to a bittersweet Hunger. Small, mousey, babyfaced. Unimpressive.
[Sabra Meier Levy] There is, just inside the door, an umbrella stand that appears to be carved from a single knuckle of wood. The creamy light bands are interspersed with dramatic, eccentric rings dark enough to remind Ashley of some mahogany piece. The wood has been carved and smoothed and sanded until it has a silken hand to it, and shellacked so that it gleams. Inside the umbrella stand are three black umbrellas with old-fashioned curved handles and gathered silk in the tucked shape of roses, like a bouquet. She's seen one of those before.
Ashley has also seen the woman who is working in the back of the shop, shifting around the hand-worked pieces of jewelry too fine to hang from the walls or to be left out on the shelves. Her hands are pale, milk-white against the black velvet, and there's a certain presence to her - dwarfed by the feeling that lingers around Ashley, but there, nonetheless.
They are near opposites. Sabra is tall and striking, with that creamy white skin and coal-black hair, dark eyes and imperious black brows. She could never have been considered pretty, with that prominent nose, long face, and sharp brow, but there is something attractive and compelling about her looks. Tall where Ashley is slight, striking where the latter is mousey. And a good decade and a half Ashley's senior - the two have nothing obvious in common.
Except -
"Hello, love." Sabra's voice has a certain posh British chill to it, but there's a depth to it that warms it, some underlying tones of amber and verdigris, as if the woman has been sipping whiskey for fully one-third of her life. Her dark eyes spark on Ashley, and she straightens from where she had been hovering over the case, reaching to take and palm her iPhone from where it rested, casually on the glass counter, sliding it onto some workspace below the display. "Looking for something in particular, or just browsing?"
[Ashley McGowen] She senses Sabra's presence before she notices the umbrella stand and the umbrellas within. There's this feeling, a sort of soaring stillness, an existence. A something that Ashley can't remember how to hear. Ashley is weighing that touch of Will in silence when she notices the umbrellas, brushes her fingertips over the gathered silk.
Sabra's striking, and when Ashley looks up and around for the owner of that resonance, it doesn't take her long to spot the Cultist. To take in her appearance in a way that she hadn't on the park bench at night, distracted by the girl next to her and with tears hovering in the corner of her field of vision.
She's more collected today than she had been that night: the loss is two weeks less recent. Sleeplessness has pressed a bruised ring under each eye, but that isn't so unusual a thing, for grad students.
Ashley's hand falls away from the smooth fabric and back to her side as she turns toward Sabra, goes to step closer. "I was just curious," she says, and her voice is a pleasant soprano, has the softened Rs typical of the northeast: Massachusetts, most likely. It has an odd sort of flatness to it, sometimes, where someone would measure pitch. "So browsing, mostly."
She doesn't come too close. Doesn't want Sabra to feel threatened, maybe: her resonance, the strength and feel it gives off, produces that effect sometimes. "I didn't expect to run into you again."
[Sabra Meier Levy] "You are more than welcome to browse, love. Touch, sniff - " The hint of humor lingers as she follows the movement of the young girl's hand, falling away from the silk. "I'd encourage you to taste, but I assure you that silk tastes like any other fabric, likely with a hint of sawdust after being packed away for far too long, and it all goes downhill from there."
Dressed in black - some dress that leaves most of her long arms bare - with a scarf of crimson silk knotted around her neck, the hint of fringe feathered down from the edge of the scarf just so - Sabra seems just a hint overdressed for the establishment.
There's less of the clutter one might expect in an eclectic place like this, more of a gallery feel - still, one expects that owner of a place that specializes in hand-woven grass baskets and hemp blouses and necklaces made - varyingly - of trade beads or antique coins or worked silver - to look rather more like a hippie and rather less like someone's gracefully aging trophy wife.
"You're looking rather better than you did that night, love." The hint of compassion in her voice doesn't overwhelm her tone, but there's still something - living, aware, even maternal underneath, her memory of Ashley's distress, the gleam of tears, the promise of rain. There's still the clipped precision of her accent as a counterpoint.
"I hope you stayed dry."
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley is invited to investigate as much as she wants, and the Hermetic seems to take this information for what it's worth. She's very tactile: generally has to touch whatever has seized her curiosity for the moment, to map it out with her fingertips. Perhaps it's a result of her damaged senses. There's a bit of a smile that ghosts itself across her eyes, lies there like a veil when Sabra jokes about her tasting the silk.
The glance the Cultist gets in response suggests that Ashley is quite aware of the feel she gives off to others. Something wry, something knowing.
"I feel a little better," she says, and just stands there for a moment in front of Sabra, a bit lost for what she can say. Ashley has been in Chicago for a year and change, and up until two and a half weeks ago none of the people she knew could have claimed to see her cry. Very few could claim to have seen her display any kind of vulnerability at all. This, from a stranger, well. "The umbrella kept the rain off."
One of her hands has found its way into her pocket as she looks back at Sabra. Trying to find something to say, trying not to sound too abrupt. Magically powerful as the young woman might be, it doesn't take long to figure out that social graces aren't her strong point.
There's a brief glance to see whether there are other patrons about, how close they are. Finally she just says, quietly, "I'm Ashley. I manage the city's chantryhouse."
[Sabra Meier Levy] The hour’s late. There’s no one else in the store, and if Ashley glanced at the hours posted on the door beneath the YES. WE’RE OPEN sign, she’d have seen that the place should be closed by now. No matter. The hours are casual, and Sabra seems perfectly at ease given the hour.
She allows Ashley to investigate anything she wishes; doesn’t linger and doesn’tt hover. Now and then she offers some tidbit of information about whatever it is Ashley’s touching. “Raw silk sari ends, love. They shred then down into fiber and knit them back into those pieces. Not quite as soft as a well woven silk, but the colors - ”
- and so on. The finest pieces – the clothes, the rugs, the bags and of course the pottery and the jewelry set in the black velvet display case - are pricey, but there are always rather more affordable pieces tucked throughout the store. Little mobiles made out of origami stars from recycled newsprint, bracelets that were once plastic bottles, recycled by street urchins in Indonesia.
Ashley shoulders past them, one hand in her pocket, closer to the counter. Her reflection in the glass is like a ghost, overlaying fine metal work from around the world. Sabra stands behind it – already tall, made taller by the heels she wears, though there’s a casual grace to the stance, as she leans a hip against the counter behind the cases.
“Are you, then?” The question is a placeholder. Sabra’s dark eyes linger on Ashley, dip to the hand awkwardly in her front pocket.. It’s more thoughtful than a challenge, a touch of surprise perhaps. “I’m Sabra. I wasn’t - ” a pause, humming, thoughtful – “strictly aware that the city had one, though I suppose I’m not surprised, then, that we met as we did.”
Up close, Sabra’s mouth and eyes are bracketed by lines. Faint, but present. They deepen when she smiles, as she does now, this soft, bittersweet twist of a thing.
[Ashley McGowen] There's metalwork nearby, and while she'd come to stand near Sabra, where the woman is leaning on the counter, Ashley can't help but let her attention flit toward it. Her eyes go to it, but her right ear, at least, remains directed toward the other woman. She's listening.
The information Sabra offers about the pieces is taken in with what seems to be genuine interest. Now and again there's a curious glance in Sabra's direction: sharp points of blue, intent, betraying that hunger that drives her. She doesn't touch the metalwork, though; perhaps doesn't want to mar it with her fingerprints, with the touch of skin.
That bittersweet smile doesn't go unnoticed, though. Gets something of its kind returned: Ashley is more than familiar with the city's way of throwing people together. With how magi converge and find each other among Chicago's millions. It's just the way it works, magic. Fate.
"It's had a lot of problems. I try to keep the location of the place under wraps." It's also invite-only, but many chantry houses are these days. Have been since the Ascension War escalated, haven't gone back to the old ways even now that it's over.
A glance, again, toward the metalwork. Her attention hovers, strangely, at more formless pieces, more streamlined and simple where the average person's would be drawn to the intricate. "Do you own this place, or do you just work the counter?"
[Sabra Meier Levy] "Still can't keep out all the uninvited guests, I imagine," Sabra murmurs in response, pulling a languid hand back from the glass jewelry cases so that Ashley's view of the contents remains unimpeded. Her fingers are long and capable, the skin as white as the rest of her, and although her nails are cropped surprisingly short given the rest of her image, they are painted a fuck-me red to match the paint on her crimson mouth.
There's something - graceful about the touch of Sabra's attention, she's alive to Ashley's interests, where her eye grazes, the forms to which she is drawn - without interrupting or directing her gaze. We see the world, and it shapes us. There is a certain lingering scent of sandalwood in the shop, from the sandwood beads on the necklaces to the decorative bowls carved from it to the cones of incense and oil on the far wall - but up close, Sabra smells like Chanel No. 5.
- and rain.
A waterfall of bangles clink together as she drops her right hand, shifting her stance. "This place, it's mine I'm afraid. Bought out an old friend's interest a few months ago, did some renos and voila. Here I am. And here you are. Kismet."
The woman's dark eyes drop to the case. "That's a lovely piece," she says, indicating a broach shaped like an elongated drop of water, chased silver inlaid with simple rings of bronze. "The artist is Canadian. She rather likes natural forms. Finds the shapes in the metal, you know - handwork, all of it."
[Ashley McGowen] She doesn't seem the sort for elaborate jewelry: the only visible jewelry on her body are a pair of earrings and two rings on her left hand, stoneless metal bands. No bracelets, no necklace that can be immediately seen. Still, there's some appreciation there just for the form and shape, just for the craftsmanship of many of the things she's seeing.
She keeps Sabra to her right, no matter how the woman shifts around; it's subtle, the way she twists and adjusts her stance in order to keep her in view of her good eye. The left isn't milky or shot through, not obviously injured, but the observant usually notice this about Ashley after a while.
"No, it doesn't," she says, of the chantry house. Her lower lip is a bit thicker than her upper one; it gives her a perpetually pouting look, something somber and mournful. Her lips thin now, though, press together for a few seconds. "It was attacked a couple of weeks ago, actually."
It's not leading, the way she says this. But perhaps it is meant as a warning of sorts. The city's dangerous, there are things bold enough to attack a house held by an Adept.
A look down to the piece Sabra indicates. "It looks well done," she says, though she would be the first to admit that she wouldn't know the difference, not really. Though it occurs to her that perhaps Kage would like this place. "I've always been really curious about the crafting process in metalwork." Academic words, almost detached, but it's with an aesthetic eye that she takes everything in.
A beat, and then she looks up at Sabra with a wry expression. "I'm on a grad student's budget," she says, "so if you want to close up and get out of here, don't let me keep you. I just try to get to know new Willworkers." It is her job.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "By whom?" - there's a certain sharpness to the woman's tone; this sudden rising at odds with the steadiness of her resonance. Sabra is suddenly alert. The revelation that the chantry house was attacked is a sort of sparking counterpoint to her rather studied detachment, her nonchalance in these sorts of – things. The older woman closes her eyes briefly, finding her center, composing herself perhaps, then reopens them.
“Darling,” Ashley’s demures, offers something about a graduate student’s poverty. “it’s my shop. If the piece speaks to you, you should have it. I’m not looking to sell you something. Though I can’t give you any instructions on the craft, either love. I prefer to let other people make the lovely things, so that I can spend rather more time enjoying them.”
In a quick gesture, Sabra opens the back of the jewelry case, a subtle twist of her wrist to unlock it, then pulls out the metal piece that drew Ashley’s attention the longest.
“Touch it.” - she says, quietly, with a certain air of authority that must derive from age rather than skill. “Sometimes I think she manages to capture the movement of the plates of the earth in those works. If this is just a professional visit – a protocol – a job interview or, “ a half-smile, here, by way of apology for the terrible and terribly British pun she is about to utter, “ – a metaphysical, love, we might as well have a drink to go along with it, wouldn’t you agree?”
[Ashley McGowen] It is a worrisome thing to hear that a chantryhouse has been attacked: such a place is the stronghold of Awakened power in a city, and to attack it is a confident move. It's a move that says one isn't worried about the magi that will come to defend it, the Hermetic Adept who has wards in place. "Nephandi," she says, with a glance toward Sabra.
Just the thought of the Fallen is enough to chill magi who have spent their time at more peaceful chantries. It's enough to spark fear in Ashley, and it's hardly her first run-in with them. Her mouth thins, after a moment, presses her lips together until the blood blanches out of them. "They killed my cabalmate, there. We took them pretty seriously after that."
Daiyu was not just a cabalmate, and was not just a friend; there have been rumors, but they don't matter. It's still a loss no matter what she was, and it's one that's weighed heavily on the Hermetic. She's happy to accept the distraction of the broach, and reaches out to run her fingertips over the metal, over the way it's woven and interlocked. Her admiration is silent.
There's a glance up out of the corner of her right eye, a quick thing, toward Sabra, and then a smile at the joke, the pun. "I try to get to know people," she says - so not simply professional. Not really a distant person, the Hermetic, in the sense one expects from her Tradition. "I could have a drink. Not too familiar with what's in the area, though. Know a place?"
[Sabra Meier Levy] Ashley's glance finds the older woman's still, her dramatic features composed. There is a certain balance, there, a certain symmetry that mirrors the lobes of her brain - the white face bisected by the long bony nose, surrounded her inky hair, slashed with brows that are dark, heavy, expressive over still dark eyes.
Her brows are still now. There's the shadow of fear one might anticipate, just a sort of - rescission, really, this subtle retreat to a sort of stillness that echoes that of a forest pool. The dappled shadows and light, the sense of reflection, the surface tension.
There are Hallmark stores half-full of appropriate, tasteful things to tell someone in their grief. I'm sorry. Time heals. My sympathies. I'm praying for you. Sabra utters none of them. There is a sort of gravity to the way she watches the younger girl, alive now to the signs and sigils of grief, which are written into her skin like glyphs for those who know how to read them. The Adept, except that there's no magic to write away loss. What Sabra offers Ashley by way of sympathy and acknowledgment is just that - hint of privacy that cannot be entire, not with the woman's mahogany eyes on the plain girl's baby face.
"Doyle's Pub isn't far love," Sabra says at last, locking up the jewelry case without returning the broach to its little velvet nest. "There's a piano lounge on the way, too, if you're into jazz." Then she reaches out, folds Ashley's hand over the shape of the broach. Her elegant hands are surprisingly calloused - the fingertips, the palms - but otherwise cool to touch. "It's yours." The touch passes quickly. Sabra does not linger on the idea of the gift once she's offered it, and continues, in a brisk manner that brooks no compromise. "Come on, then, darling. I'll just lock up."
[Sabra Meier Levy] (ooh: There's not the shadow of fear one might anticipate. Ahem. Changes the meaning entirely!)
[Ashley McGowen] There are Hallmark card responses, there are things grief counselors are taught to say: there's any number of pat responses for a grieving person. Things that may or may not be really thought about or sincerely meant, things that are there and appropriate and inoffensive. Surprisingly, Ashley has had to hear few of them in the past few weeks. She's heard some awkward things and she's heard some kind things. Sabra's response, however, is by far of the preferred variety.
This isn't something she wants to dwell on, not for long and not with a new acquaintance. That look is accepted for what it is, and after a few seconds Ashley's blue eyes trail away.
"I...um, thanks," is the surprised response when Sabra closes her hand around the broach. It isn't something one wears with her current set of clothing, so it's tucked safely into a pocket, and she nods toward the older woman, undiminished elegance, when she says she needs to lock up.
"I've been to Doyle's," she says, and there's a wry touch to her tone there. She isn't sure whether Quentin will be happy to see her, but, well. "The beer was good. Let's go there." On jazz she offers no opinion. Just a flickering glance, a non-answer. Not much of a fan, perhaps; some aren't.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "Don't mention it, love." - Sabra returns, her tone as crisp as freshly ironed linen, as brisk as a well-brewed cup of tea. She pauses, then, allowing a hint of amusement to arch through her dark brows, just the touch of it, accompanied by a quirk of her red mouth, for Ashley's still non-response to the suggestion of some jazz lounge. "Just a tick, I'll get my wrap."
So saying, she turns, pushes back through the heavy curtains, disappears into the back storeroom. The curtain is still moving when she returns quite as she said, a spare moment or two later. This time, there's a soft crimson shawl wrapped around her shoulders, protection from the chill that seeps into the evening air, these fall nights, after the long warm days full of remembered sunshine. There are a series of thick, audible clicks as she reaches to turn off the shop lights, and the place goes dark, section by section. At last, just a few security lights remain on.
"Now then," at last, Sabra ducks out from behind the counter, sliding her iPhone into her beaded clutch. It is hardly the word's most practical bag. " - didn't take long at all." What is clear as she emerges from behind the counter is simply that she is tall, made taller by the strappy, three-and-a-half-inch heels she's wearing as everyday shoes. She's comfortable, perfectly balanced, moving with a crisp efficiency as she walks out with Ashley before finishing the ritual of locking up. There's no faltering, either, as she falls into step with much younger woman, walking the few blocks to the pub. Just a moment's considering, a glance out through the windows, at the sky, while those rose-framed umbrellas are close. Beyond the city's pollution, though, the sky is clear, and Sabra leaves the umbrellas behind with evident regret.
[Quentin Doyle] [actually, sorry ladies, I'm going to pop out before I get in. My attention is being taken up by children at home. But if anyone wants Doyle consider a message being passed on via bartender.]
to Ashley McGowen, Sabra Meier Levy
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley is patient while Sabra goes to get her wrap, to let the lights of the shop flicker out and die. It's getting cool outside, and the skies above them are beginning to fade, but she doesn't have a jacket with her. Just the buttondown, but she seems comfortable enough in that.
There's a glance over her shoulder toward Sabra when she notices the Cultist's eyes linger on the umbrellas before they step outside. "You could always bring one anyway," she says, though there's no promise of rain today. "Some people could pull off an open umbrella on a clear day." Sabra is one of them. It's bad luck; maybe the Hermetic just isn't (that variety of) superstitious.
Regardless of whatever Sabra chooses to do, Ashley falls in beside her. They cut an odd pair walking down the sidewalk, Sabra tall and dark and graceful; Ashley is nearly a foot shorter than she is when she's in her heels, and if she is eye catching it's the way a stray cat, long and lean and scarred, can be eye catching, a sort of how the hell is it still alive, how is it thriving the way it is, it looks so damned hungry. Ashley remembers directions well, even if she's only been to the place once, and doesn't require much cue from Sabra while they walk. Keeps her on her right.
There's a glance toward this woman once, this woman who reminds her of Pymander somehow (that which abides is unchangeable, that which is unchangeable is eternal). "Do you know Quentin well?"
[Ashley McGowen] ((Alas! Hopefully I can catch you some other time. Feel free to drop him back in later if you get some free time.))
to Quentin Doyle, Sabra Meier Levy
[Sabra Meier Levy] "In something like an umbrella," Sabra confides as they walk, "I prefer my fashion to be functional. Anyway," she tips a look up at the sky, this sort of speculative glance, alive to the possibilities of stars that might be tucked away somewhere beyond the edges of the atmosphere, out in the cold vaccuum of space. " - that much closer to the roof of the world, this way."
The are such a strange pair. Ashley is not quite young enough to be Sabra's daughter, but something about her presentation - the round face, the pouting curve of her mouth, that sense of seeking, tinged with loss though it well might be - has Sabra guessing she's younger, much younger. A lover of classic children's books might look at the pair of them and have fleeting impresson of hungry little Madeline and the nun, tall and willowy and receding into the background of the composition. It all depends on perspective.
"Gods, no." - she replies, when asked when she knows him well. Then, a winging glance, a moment of confidence, perhaps - " - in the right light, the man reminds me of someone I used to know, mind. The bartender Andy's lovely, though. Humors me in my rather exacting standards for mixed drinks. Is he one of yours, then? Part of your - " an airy wave of her hand. " - social club?"
[Ashley McGowen] It was months ago, now, that Ashley was last at Doyle's. She'd still been the deacon then; it was before there'd been that political mire, that mess that had set her at odds with Israel and Solomon for a while. She hasn't heard much from the sorcerer since she tried to convince him of what he was, of who he is. It's not as easy with those still yet Sleeping. They had no reality-shattering break, no grand revelation. All they can do, in the Hermetic's mind, is imitate.
They're still quite useful.
"No," she says, with a trace of amusement at Sabra's question. "He's not one of mine. I don't think he really understands yet. I tried to explain to him, but I think he thinks I'm delusional." She isn't sure whether Emily had any luck; Ashley doesn't have Emily's gentleness, or Emily's charm, or Emily's way with men (though the Singer-to-be would deny all three, assuredly.)
It's in that moment that she realizes that she's never given Sabra the benefit of proper introduction. "I'm an Adept," she adds, "bani Hermes." Delivered without the pomp and circumstance of many of her Tradition, or without any apparent pride at her title. That wouldn't have been the case, once. Chicago's a city that humbles.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "Or perhaps he has a different way of understanding. Some other language for what he is, and why, and how - " there's a musing tone that rather lingers under the surface of her reply, entirely speculative as they walk. " - and that's why your explanations went a bit awry with the man. Best, sometimes, to allow people to be who they are. Find their own way to whatever truths they require from the world."
And even deeper, the lingering edge of a smile that started life as a sigh. That sort of thing - breathless, lingering, alive - which folds into laughter, then - or rather this amusement that sweetens her tone, a fine swirl of honey, viscous and rich. Just so: "You are, are you?" the response to Ashley's humbled introduction could be full of a certain elegant cheek. Sabra gives Ashley this sidelong look, which is not quite sly, and the edg of a dry sort of smile. "If you pull out a magic wand or start speaking in tongues, love, I'm going to disavow all knowledge and walk the other way.
"For my part - " a glance as they cut across the street, some SUV's headlights casting them in such brief, stark relief. "I'm a Cultist. Breaking all the stereotypes." Sabra laughs, then, this brief noise in the back of her throat, wry and knowing.
[Ashley McGowen] Other people have their languages for what they are and what they do. Ashley has heard all sorts of explanations. Her father and Daiyu didn't even refer to what they did as magic; they just bent reality, they just did it because they were disciplined and because Chai allowed them to. The Order of Hermes is very clear on some points. "I'm sure he does," Ashley says, which is the same thing as saying but they're wrong. "It's just difficult to keep him informed if he doesn't get the rest of us. Ignorant people become a problem."
The administrative dean would think so, of course. Any chantry head would; this is her job. The cost of ignorance is something Ashley has observed several times now, to her sorrow. To the sorrow of others.
Sabra's commentary on her Tradition earns her a smirk, something that broadens into something pointed, darkly amused, when she offers her own Tradition. Really, the expression is just there to cover up her surprise. "Good," she says, of stereotypes. "They're well-earned in my experience. The last Cultist I spoke to at length got offended when I wouldn't smoke her pot and asked if I'd ever bathed in the morning dew."
Her hands find their way into the pockets of her jeans, where they ball up, where one closes around the broach as though to keep it there. "I've been pleased with a good handful of the people I've met here. Nobody keeps to the hard party line. There's a lot of mingling." They have to, in a place like this. She wouldn't have been pleased about that once, either.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "And have you - " Sabra deadpans back at Ashley, without so much as a glance. Just her voice, the precise enunciation, clipped enough to please any Hermetic. Ideal for incantatories, every damned consonant receives its due. Just her voice, the sharp retort of her heels against the pavement. "bathed in the morning dew?"
In profile, Sabra's features are dominated by her long nose, the line of her jaw receding, a glimmer of metal winking here and there, earrings nipped through her earlobes, peeking through her dark, rather coarse hair, frizzy from the hint of humdity in the air.
"Sounds rather tedious, mind. All that work for a few droplets of moisture poured from a buttercup or a blush rose."
[Ashley McGowen] And has she. There's a wry twist of the Hermetic's mouth as Sabra asks this question, as she makes light of the words her Tradition mate asked Ashley months ago. If anything, this puts Ashley a bit at ease: they aren't all like this, they don't all ask her absolutely ridiculous questions. "I think in her case, it involved less taking moisture from flowers and more rolling around naked on the lawn," Ashley says.
There's a glance out of the corner of her eye at the older woman's sharp profile, the stark features that'll strike you like a crow's wing fluttering against a backdrop of snow. "In which case I'm pretty sure my neighbors would call the police." Though in Ashley's case it's more likely she'd simply melt away out of embarrassment.
The smirk hasn't quite died away yet; perhaps she's just recalling the conversation, recalling her own incredulity. Ashley doesn't think highly of Cultists: the truth is that in another life she might have made a good one. Different, but a good one. Self-awareness is hard sometimes.
"I've heard tell that not everybody in the Cult sees it as a constant party. Must be hard, not thinking much of your Tradition mates."
[Sabra Meier Levy] Ashley's remark about the police has Sabra laughing, quietly. The amusement wreathes itself across her face, like curling up from a distant chimney, wrapping itself into the sky.
"Assuredly, love, if you intend to roll around naked on the lawn, you should get yourself a privacy fence - " there is a certain droll tone to her voice, this humor dry as any good chardonnay. " - or move to Spain, near one of those lovely beaches, so that handcuffs are only involved by request rather than necessity." - but the vague retort is lightly spoken.
The remark about her tradition, the others who follow it, draws a sharper look, lively, that traces over Ashley's features, the slow-fading smirk that shapes the young Adept's mouth. That sense of - "I don't judge them, love." This is still and quiet, and offered more seriously, more thoughtfully, than most things Sabra offers. There's a quiet sort of awareness in her eyes, wry. For Sabra judges everyone, as much as no one. She means something different by it, though. "It isn't that I dismiss pleasure. Or parties. Or that I - "
No, she's not going to become wholly confessional. Still, walking with a stranger on a brisk fall night, the earth turning away from the sun -
"When you become mired in it, when you become dependent on it, when you seek - oblivion rather than clarity, you aren't pushing yourself anymore, and when you stop looking, well, it's hard to see another godsdamned thing."
- there is a certain conviction underlying the words.
It is born of experience, the sort she's unlikely to share.
"Each of us, though - " a sideglance, a lift of her chin. The pub isn't far. Truthfully, Sabra is looking forward to a drink. " - find our own way."
[Ashley McGowen] There's a flicker of amusement at Sabra's reference to beaches in Spain, to handcuffs, something wry and just a little tinged with self-consciousness. It isn't offended, isn't retreating: the Hermetic really just is as shy and bookish as she seems, at times. "I think I'll stick to bathing indoors," she says.
It's rare that Ashley hears this kind of conviction from an initiate, truth be told. She's young, and she is particularly young for an Adept: she rose quickly, and there are not many Adepts in the world. Not thousands. But an understanding of reality and what shapes it, the understanding of what it means to become infinite, is not a thing dependent on age. Experience, certainly. Ashley has sacrificed a lot to get where she is.
Maybe there is something to be said for the wisdom age grants, though. Because here: Sabra seems very sure of what she's saying, sure of the insights Time has granted, and this puts them on a sort of equal footing regardless of magical muscle.
She nods, when Sabra says that each person finds their own way; it's just a matter of semantics, sometimes. "Let them stay where they are if they won't fight. Conflict forces you to adapt and strengthens your Will," Ashley says, which is perhaps her way of agreeing. "Some people get mired in methods of avoiding it."
The pub is nearing, and when Ashley reaches it she holds the door open and gestures Sabra inside. She, too, is rather looking forward to a drink - but she usually does. It's a rather comfortable habit.
[Sabra Meier Levy] With most, there is a moment of awkwardness at any threshold. Americans are always holding open doors for each other, then getting caught half-way between them, starting and stopping with a nod and a grin and - just perhaps - a you first no you sort of exchange.
There's none of that here. Ashley opens the door, and Sabra dips her head and walks through. The bar is dark and warm tonight, all that polished wood. Happy hour is over, the lawyers and professionals and salesmen have gone home to their wives to lie about their mistresses, to their mistresses to lie about their wives, and the late night crowd isn't quite out, not yet.
They have their pick of tables and booths, and Sabra circles easily through the bar with a confidence born of physical grace, choosing a warm booth with a tabletop that has been deliberately distressed to appear well-worn, away from the others. A modicum of privacy, and all that.
It is only when they have their drinks sorted out - a "proper" martini is Sabra's demand of the bartender tonight. She gives him no further direction and waits, instead, to see what he does with her order, laughs at the last when she tastes it, lifting the fine-stemmed martini glass in a distant sort of toast to the 'tender when she catches his eye before returning her direct attention to Ashley.
"Is that what it is for you, love? Conflict, with others. Some sort of Darwinian struggle, some sort of bullfight, locking horns and all that?"
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley seems comfortable with letting Sabra pick out a table. She's only been to Doyle's once before, and remained at the crowded bar until she went out back with Quentin; after nearly standing on tiptoe to see over the top of the bar and standing among people a foot taller than she is, a booth seems almost novel.
When she sits, she rests a hand on the table first, leads with her fingertips, guides herself toward the seat with a practiced sort of ease. One accomplishes this, learns to compensate when they've been without depth perception for ten years. There are speakers on the wall, and Ashley seats herself as far away from them as possible: in most restaurants and bars there's only so much that the noise can be stifled, only so far she can get away from it, but she does what she can. She positions her deaf ear towards it.
Ashley's request as far as drinks go is for the house stout, and there's a tired sort of tolerance with which she hands over her ID when it's asked for, when it's scrutinized. She takes a long sip from it when it arrives and evidently does not need time to get used to its bitterness.
"More or less," Ashley says. "The idea that we're honed through conflict is big in my House." A beat. "I'm in a PhD program at Northwestern for sociology, actually. I'm doing my thesis on it. Probably my dissertation too once I've found where I want to focus. And I've sort of diverted lately into studying with the Verbena too, so...it's very much a part of how I see things."
[Sabra Meier Levy] "How apropos," Sabra murmurs, when Ashley remarks on her major, her choice of dissertation. There's a still sort of smile on the older woman's mouth, which is both mild and wry. Her red mouth moves around the words, shaping them with this sort of very precise pleasure. One has the sense that she likes, sometimes, to hear the ring of her own voice in the air. To feel herself in her surroundings.
"I'm sure you'll wrestle yourself onto the page quite well," the wry air lingers, though there is something direct enough about both her gaze over the edge of the martini glass and her voice that keeps the remark from being patronizing. " - though it's not precisely what does it for me, darling. I must have chosen my words rather poorly, I don't think others of my ilk get lost because they're avoiding conflict - just that - "
There is, a supple gleam in her dark eyes. " - sometimes, it is easy to get lost. And sometimes, you have to get lost to find your way through. We're rather different, all told. And studying with the Verbena. Have they got you sacrificing goats yet?"
[Ashley McGowen] "I think they get lost because they're avoiding conflict," Ashley says, with a wry smile of her own as she clarifies, "and I was leaving room for you to argue with me." There's that readiness there, prepared to be debated with, prepared to be disagreed with. And truth be told, had Sabra been patronizing that too would have been dealt with the same heat, the same hunger: it's a cutthroat House, the one she's from. It isn't kind to the passive, to those not willing to compete.
Though, truth be told, there's a way in which she's weighing Sabra. A sense that she's not saying everything, that there are riddles here the way Kage riddles. It's on an instinctive level, the way Ashley understands these things; this is what guides her interactions with people. Analysis is for books, is for her studies.
She grins when she's asked about the Verbena, and there's a surprising brightness to it, something that livens her eyes. "No. No smearing my body with mud and dancing naked for the full moon either, as it would turn out. I know some unorthodox Verbena, though." One might imagine a Hermetic would not consider studying with them otherwise.
"I've done very little so far. Some discussion." The decision to do it, to finally begin the process of learning, was fairly recent after all.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "That's a rather broad judgment, love, of all those nameless strangers," Sabra returns, quietly. Shedoes, though, lift her martini glass in salute when Ashley indicates that she was leaving room for argument. This little touche gesture that resolves itself as she brings the glass to her mouth, leaving a smeared imprint of red lipstick against the edge, where the strong spirits cling to the glass.
And she's inhaling as she does so, deeply, the sparking scent of the mix of alcohol in drink. " - and I'm grateful for the room to argue, though I'm rather more concerned with challenging myself than I am with challenging you - particularly on so broad a point that still somehow seems too - " a hint, lingering, - "confessional, perhaps.
"Man versus self, love, rather than man versus man. It's just a different in point of view." Sabra does not nurse her drink, though. She finishes it, lifts an airy hand to the bartender to order another. "Tree climbing, then - if it isn't mud-dancing or goat-sacrificing, I cannot think what else you mean to learn from them. Though I will confess, I've spent very little time with any of them, or your tradition for that matter. So my ideas about their practices are likely rather limited."
[Ashley McGowen] Sabra says it's a rather broad judgment, to which Ashley's response is a shrug. Something at once dismissive and conceding, before she lifts her glass and sips at the beer around the thick layer of foam at the top. She is not wearing lipstick, or makeup of any kind - nothing is left behind on the glass. "I try to evaluate people on an individual basis," she says, "but I've seen...nothing so far to challenge that assumption. Until speaking with you."
There's still room for it to go awry. First impressions, after all, aren't always accurate gauges of a person's Will, a person's character and beliefs.
"I think, besides, that challenging yourself is just as important as challenging others, and challenging others can lead into challenging yourself. If my arguments don't hold up against someone else, it probably means they should be re-evaluated." Whether this is confessional doesn't seem to trouble Ashley; whatever else she is, she's honest.
"As for the Verbena, I'm hoping to study the Ars Vitae with them." In the Hermetic's mind it's a far more practical study than knife fighting or tree climbing or dancing: this is why one seeks out another Tradition. "The rest, I'm still learning and thinking about."
[Sabra Meier Levy] "Pleasure is matched with pain, love. Happiness with anger. Love with grief. Joy with sorrow - it's easy, I think, to lose yourself in the rather more pleasant half. To find people who are harrowed with loss, and drag them into fulness, to live inside that half-world, and this is what you have seen of the nameless other with whom I share, at least, some passing connection.
"But if you are never denied, if you never deny yourself, what can you really feel, beyond some hollow echo. I'm sure that some of us get lost because it is easier than being found. Because there is something we cannot face, and so we retreat into the pleasures our mentors and friends promised.
"Mostly, though - I think they've just forgotten the full spectrum of experience - that we are meant to feel, not just to feel good."
Her tone is almost entirely different, there - the breeziness absent, just this precise, contracted core, this steadiness that remains in the center. There's a certain rawness in the end, this - underlying conviction that pulls her mouth across her starkly drawn features, an echo of both awareness and old loss in her eyes that she chases with a certain wry twist of her mouth, that easy, superficial elegance as she picks up her fresh martini and turns the glass to watch the alcohol cling to the glass.
"Ars Vitae? Darling, I can guess what that means, but really it sound like some sort of exotic liquor. You know, [i]I am just back from Denmark, would you like some Aquavita? No, no. I'll have the Ars Vitae."
[Ashley McGowen] This: while it's interesting, while Ashley listens to the words Sabra says and pulls them in to digest them, they aren't really words she's heard someone else speak before. It's not a perspective she's been offered to consider, at least so far as magic goes, and it is not quite relatable from either of the perspectives she herself holds: blood and sacrifice, knowledge and the drive to perfection.
That doesn't mean there isn't something in her that's stirred by the words, but if there is, it's something Ashley herself has half-forgotten. It's something she doesn't think about on any kind of conscious level, just lives it, does it, and is therefore not quite prepared to formulate a response to.
She still tries. It just takes her a moment to sip from her glass of stout, look into it, glance down and notice that the head is fizzing away and leaving cream colored trails of foam on the inside of the glass. "I'd say from the perspective of an artist," she says, after a moment, because that is a perspective she has and can apply, "that you're right. I guess I don't get how it...works with magic. How just feeling is supposed to be enlightened. Everybody does it."
Another wry smile touches the corner of her lips when Sabra teases her about the Ars Vitae; the kind of expression that suggests that she is, indeed, familiar with other Traditions' amusement about the Latin titles. "Life magic," she says. "In Hermetic theory, each branch of magic is an art, a discipline - like the study of philosophy or a language. So we title them that way. I've been told that Verbena can do amazing things to mead, though. Too bad I don't like it much."
[Sabra Meier Levy] "Everybody does it, love." Sabra returns, quietly, this small, winging smile on her red mouth, her voice quiet, her dark eyes intent. " - isn't that the point?"
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley's eyes are unfocused, are focused elsewhere: down at the glass while she thinks, as though she could look through it, as though the answer were somewhere within or past it. And perhaps she is looking into some Elsewhere; there are magi who can do such things easily.
"The point is to step farther and be more," she says. "And be limitless. Which isn't really something you can accomplish if all you're trying to do is something anyone can do, or does do. It doesn't require anything from you. Or any effort."
When her gaze sharpens again, it's to look back up and meet Sabra's; she's untroubled by the intensity of the Cultist's dark eyes, by the conviction there. Ashley doesn't have conviction so much as passion: they're different, and they carry people in different ways, but that deep-seated understanding is similar, and she doesn't shy from it.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "And it's best, then - to keep the infinite to yourself, is it? To claim the horizon as your own, then. The exclusive province of the masters, denied to all the rest, preserved from the masses by the complexities art and work." This is needling, the faint twist of her mouth upward at the right corner.
"Everyone does it; everyone can do it. All the possibilities of the world are right inside you. No incantations necessary. None of those godsdamned devices, just your body and your mind and your skin and your senses and your memory. With the right nudge; with the right push, with the right touch, everyone open up the edges of their reality. Though really, love - when was the last time you remembered the texture of the glass against your fingers. Closed your eyes and paid attention to the connection between your hand and the glass. The way the head dries on your finger, pulls at our skin.
"Most of us ignore anything but the most superficial sensations of pleasure or pain until we are confronted by great joy or great sorrow - and then the world changes. Briefly, and all-consumingly, until we are back to drifting about, touching things without connection, except for the fleeting.
"You want to be limitless, love, and - " this shifting expression across her mouth, self-aware, wry, " - as far a I can tell, we already are. It's just matter of being. And being connected. It's about sensation that pushes you to the edge of who you are and what you can be so you find yourself back in the skin. With your pores just a little more open to the world. If that makes - " another pause, " - any sense to you."
And then, a subtle shift of expression, the older women's attention drifting now. "How did it happen for you? How did you awaken?"
There is a breeze tonight, a faint one, bringing cool, damp air inland from the lake. The sign - wooden, it appears, handpainted, the bottom carved so that the lines of the sign follow the sweep of the roots - swings faintly in the breeze.
Although the brick is old, the lines of the commercial building are clean and modern, the picture windows tinted faintly, the displays earthy but tasteful. Bits of driftwood are wired together to suggest some nook in the arms of a spreading tree, the illusion continued against a neutral background, a rippling curtain of painted silk, some impression of a sky, a horizon line, leaves painted in the two-dimensional shadows by a fair hair. Except for the folk-art leaves, the backdrop is minimalist as the exterior architecture.
Tucked in and about the display are a variety of hand-made goods from around the world. Baskets from south Africa. Chased silverwork from the Hill Tribes of Vietnam. Pottery from Peru, batiked scarves from Indonesia, soaps and lotions from Haiti, the Domican Republic, Provence.
The sign is repeated, written into the windows in a dark vinyl script. Underneath The World Tree it says, "A Fair Trade Establishment."
Sunday night, the air feels like fall. The place is open late. Warm light shines from the interior, though most of the rest of the stores are closed. The afternoon was warm, but there's an autumnal bite to the air as the night descends. Still, a pair of teenagers, or perhaps twenty-somethings, exit the place, brown paper bags rustling against their thighs, the door swinging shut behind them.
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley remembers liking this little cluster of stores when she passed this way a few months ago. The Hermetic's wanderings take her all over the city, sometimes accompanied by Zane and sometimes not, and she's had a chance to sample a lot of stores at least once, a sort of exploratory tasting and rolling over the tongue (sometimes literally, depending on the nature of the shop). It makes city life interesting.
She also rather happens to like sugar. Thus: a cupcake.
Given that most of her stress as of late has been due to grief and being one of the most prominent people in a city plagued by Enlightened who have long since given up their souls to the infernal, Ashley has a few seconds' grim reflection on being true to feminine stereotype just before she bites in. In at least one regard. And then there's sugar, and endorphins, and she forgets about it.
She leans against the exterior of the cupcake shop, her narrow shoulders pressed against the brick, while she breaks off small bits of the cake and watches people pass by. At this point in her Awakened life, Ashley's resonance is beginning to precede her: even Sleepers notice it now. Not just the sharp ones, either. People glance her way without meaning to, because she just seems weird and they don't know why, there's no reason, and then they just as quickly look away.
At some point, The World Tree catches her eye because of its title. Given that the spreading boughs depicted are that of an oak, she and the shop's owner probably have a different world tree in mind: but no matter that. She's trying to ease her mind with wandering, and looking around in a new place will do that.
She licks a last bit of icing from the ball of her thumb and starts over and walks in. It's all out of her price range. It doesn't matter. It's interesting just to look at, to run her fingertips over when permitted.
Thus: a young woman who could be any grad student in jeans and a red buttondown (sleeves rolled up). Dark hair cut short, only just framing a face, highlighting a delicate jaw. Bright blue eyes that speak to a bittersweet Hunger. Small, mousey, babyfaced. Unimpressive.
[Sabra Meier Levy] There is, just inside the door, an umbrella stand that appears to be carved from a single knuckle of wood. The creamy light bands are interspersed with dramatic, eccentric rings dark enough to remind Ashley of some mahogany piece. The wood has been carved and smoothed and sanded until it has a silken hand to it, and shellacked so that it gleams. Inside the umbrella stand are three black umbrellas with old-fashioned curved handles and gathered silk in the tucked shape of roses, like a bouquet. She's seen one of those before.
Ashley has also seen the woman who is working in the back of the shop, shifting around the hand-worked pieces of jewelry too fine to hang from the walls or to be left out on the shelves. Her hands are pale, milk-white against the black velvet, and there's a certain presence to her - dwarfed by the feeling that lingers around Ashley, but there, nonetheless.
They are near opposites. Sabra is tall and striking, with that creamy white skin and coal-black hair, dark eyes and imperious black brows. She could never have been considered pretty, with that prominent nose, long face, and sharp brow, but there is something attractive and compelling about her looks. Tall where Ashley is slight, striking where the latter is mousey. And a good decade and a half Ashley's senior - the two have nothing obvious in common.
Except -
"Hello, love." Sabra's voice has a certain posh British chill to it, but there's a depth to it that warms it, some underlying tones of amber and verdigris, as if the woman has been sipping whiskey for fully one-third of her life. Her dark eyes spark on Ashley, and she straightens from where she had been hovering over the case, reaching to take and palm her iPhone from where it rested, casually on the glass counter, sliding it onto some workspace below the display. "Looking for something in particular, or just browsing?"
[Ashley McGowen] She senses Sabra's presence before she notices the umbrella stand and the umbrellas within. There's this feeling, a sort of soaring stillness, an existence. A something that Ashley can't remember how to hear. Ashley is weighing that touch of Will in silence when she notices the umbrellas, brushes her fingertips over the gathered silk.
Sabra's striking, and when Ashley looks up and around for the owner of that resonance, it doesn't take her long to spot the Cultist. To take in her appearance in a way that she hadn't on the park bench at night, distracted by the girl next to her and with tears hovering in the corner of her field of vision.
She's more collected today than she had been that night: the loss is two weeks less recent. Sleeplessness has pressed a bruised ring under each eye, but that isn't so unusual a thing, for grad students.
Ashley's hand falls away from the smooth fabric and back to her side as she turns toward Sabra, goes to step closer. "I was just curious," she says, and her voice is a pleasant soprano, has the softened Rs typical of the northeast: Massachusetts, most likely. It has an odd sort of flatness to it, sometimes, where someone would measure pitch. "So browsing, mostly."
She doesn't come too close. Doesn't want Sabra to feel threatened, maybe: her resonance, the strength and feel it gives off, produces that effect sometimes. "I didn't expect to run into you again."
[Sabra Meier Levy] "You are more than welcome to browse, love. Touch, sniff - " The hint of humor lingers as she follows the movement of the young girl's hand, falling away from the silk. "I'd encourage you to taste, but I assure you that silk tastes like any other fabric, likely with a hint of sawdust after being packed away for far too long, and it all goes downhill from there."
Dressed in black - some dress that leaves most of her long arms bare - with a scarf of crimson silk knotted around her neck, the hint of fringe feathered down from the edge of the scarf just so - Sabra seems just a hint overdressed for the establishment.
There's less of the clutter one might expect in an eclectic place like this, more of a gallery feel - still, one expects that owner of a place that specializes in hand-woven grass baskets and hemp blouses and necklaces made - varyingly - of trade beads or antique coins or worked silver - to look rather more like a hippie and rather less like someone's gracefully aging trophy wife.
"You're looking rather better than you did that night, love." The hint of compassion in her voice doesn't overwhelm her tone, but there's still something - living, aware, even maternal underneath, her memory of Ashley's distress, the gleam of tears, the promise of rain. There's still the clipped precision of her accent as a counterpoint.
"I hope you stayed dry."
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley is invited to investigate as much as she wants, and the Hermetic seems to take this information for what it's worth. She's very tactile: generally has to touch whatever has seized her curiosity for the moment, to map it out with her fingertips. Perhaps it's a result of her damaged senses. There's a bit of a smile that ghosts itself across her eyes, lies there like a veil when Sabra jokes about her tasting the silk.
The glance the Cultist gets in response suggests that Ashley is quite aware of the feel she gives off to others. Something wry, something knowing.
"I feel a little better," she says, and just stands there for a moment in front of Sabra, a bit lost for what she can say. Ashley has been in Chicago for a year and change, and up until two and a half weeks ago none of the people she knew could have claimed to see her cry. Very few could claim to have seen her display any kind of vulnerability at all. This, from a stranger, well. "The umbrella kept the rain off."
One of her hands has found its way into her pocket as she looks back at Sabra. Trying to find something to say, trying not to sound too abrupt. Magically powerful as the young woman might be, it doesn't take long to figure out that social graces aren't her strong point.
There's a brief glance to see whether there are other patrons about, how close they are. Finally she just says, quietly, "I'm Ashley. I manage the city's chantryhouse."
[Sabra Meier Levy] The hour’s late. There’s no one else in the store, and if Ashley glanced at the hours posted on the door beneath the YES. WE’RE OPEN sign, she’d have seen that the place should be closed by now. No matter. The hours are casual, and Sabra seems perfectly at ease given the hour.
She allows Ashley to investigate anything she wishes; doesn’t linger and doesn’tt hover. Now and then she offers some tidbit of information about whatever it is Ashley’s touching. “Raw silk sari ends, love. They shred then down into fiber and knit them back into those pieces. Not quite as soft as a well woven silk, but the colors - ”
- and so on. The finest pieces – the clothes, the rugs, the bags and of course the pottery and the jewelry set in the black velvet display case - are pricey, but there are always rather more affordable pieces tucked throughout the store. Little mobiles made out of origami stars from recycled newsprint, bracelets that were once plastic bottles, recycled by street urchins in Indonesia.
Ashley shoulders past them, one hand in her pocket, closer to the counter. Her reflection in the glass is like a ghost, overlaying fine metal work from around the world. Sabra stands behind it – already tall, made taller by the heels she wears, though there’s a casual grace to the stance, as she leans a hip against the counter behind the cases.
“Are you, then?” The question is a placeholder. Sabra’s dark eyes linger on Ashley, dip to the hand awkwardly in her front pocket.. It’s more thoughtful than a challenge, a touch of surprise perhaps. “I’m Sabra. I wasn’t - ” a pause, humming, thoughtful – “strictly aware that the city had one, though I suppose I’m not surprised, then, that we met as we did.”
Up close, Sabra’s mouth and eyes are bracketed by lines. Faint, but present. They deepen when she smiles, as she does now, this soft, bittersweet twist of a thing.
[Ashley McGowen] There's metalwork nearby, and while she'd come to stand near Sabra, where the woman is leaning on the counter, Ashley can't help but let her attention flit toward it. Her eyes go to it, but her right ear, at least, remains directed toward the other woman. She's listening.
The information Sabra offers about the pieces is taken in with what seems to be genuine interest. Now and again there's a curious glance in Sabra's direction: sharp points of blue, intent, betraying that hunger that drives her. She doesn't touch the metalwork, though; perhaps doesn't want to mar it with her fingerprints, with the touch of skin.
That bittersweet smile doesn't go unnoticed, though. Gets something of its kind returned: Ashley is more than familiar with the city's way of throwing people together. With how magi converge and find each other among Chicago's millions. It's just the way it works, magic. Fate.
"It's had a lot of problems. I try to keep the location of the place under wraps." It's also invite-only, but many chantry houses are these days. Have been since the Ascension War escalated, haven't gone back to the old ways even now that it's over.
A glance, again, toward the metalwork. Her attention hovers, strangely, at more formless pieces, more streamlined and simple where the average person's would be drawn to the intricate. "Do you own this place, or do you just work the counter?"
[Sabra Meier Levy] "Still can't keep out all the uninvited guests, I imagine," Sabra murmurs in response, pulling a languid hand back from the glass jewelry cases so that Ashley's view of the contents remains unimpeded. Her fingers are long and capable, the skin as white as the rest of her, and although her nails are cropped surprisingly short given the rest of her image, they are painted a fuck-me red to match the paint on her crimson mouth.
There's something - graceful about the touch of Sabra's attention, she's alive to Ashley's interests, where her eye grazes, the forms to which she is drawn - without interrupting or directing her gaze. We see the world, and it shapes us. There is a certain lingering scent of sandalwood in the shop, from the sandwood beads on the necklaces to the decorative bowls carved from it to the cones of incense and oil on the far wall - but up close, Sabra smells like Chanel No. 5.
- and rain.
A waterfall of bangles clink together as she drops her right hand, shifting her stance. "This place, it's mine I'm afraid. Bought out an old friend's interest a few months ago, did some renos and voila. Here I am. And here you are. Kismet."
The woman's dark eyes drop to the case. "That's a lovely piece," she says, indicating a broach shaped like an elongated drop of water, chased silver inlaid with simple rings of bronze. "The artist is Canadian. She rather likes natural forms. Finds the shapes in the metal, you know - handwork, all of it."
[Ashley McGowen] She doesn't seem the sort for elaborate jewelry: the only visible jewelry on her body are a pair of earrings and two rings on her left hand, stoneless metal bands. No bracelets, no necklace that can be immediately seen. Still, there's some appreciation there just for the form and shape, just for the craftsmanship of many of the things she's seeing.
She keeps Sabra to her right, no matter how the woman shifts around; it's subtle, the way she twists and adjusts her stance in order to keep her in view of her good eye. The left isn't milky or shot through, not obviously injured, but the observant usually notice this about Ashley after a while.
"No, it doesn't," she says, of the chantry house. Her lower lip is a bit thicker than her upper one; it gives her a perpetually pouting look, something somber and mournful. Her lips thin now, though, press together for a few seconds. "It was attacked a couple of weeks ago, actually."
It's not leading, the way she says this. But perhaps it is meant as a warning of sorts. The city's dangerous, there are things bold enough to attack a house held by an Adept.
A look down to the piece Sabra indicates. "It looks well done," she says, though she would be the first to admit that she wouldn't know the difference, not really. Though it occurs to her that perhaps Kage would like this place. "I've always been really curious about the crafting process in metalwork." Academic words, almost detached, but it's with an aesthetic eye that she takes everything in.
A beat, and then she looks up at Sabra with a wry expression. "I'm on a grad student's budget," she says, "so if you want to close up and get out of here, don't let me keep you. I just try to get to know new Willworkers." It is her job.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "By whom?" - there's a certain sharpness to the woman's tone; this sudden rising at odds with the steadiness of her resonance. Sabra is suddenly alert. The revelation that the chantry house was attacked is a sort of sparking counterpoint to her rather studied detachment, her nonchalance in these sorts of – things. The older woman closes her eyes briefly, finding her center, composing herself perhaps, then reopens them.
“Darling,” Ashley’s demures, offers something about a graduate student’s poverty. “it’s my shop. If the piece speaks to you, you should have it. I’m not looking to sell you something. Though I can’t give you any instructions on the craft, either love. I prefer to let other people make the lovely things, so that I can spend rather more time enjoying them.”
In a quick gesture, Sabra opens the back of the jewelry case, a subtle twist of her wrist to unlock it, then pulls out the metal piece that drew Ashley’s attention the longest.
“Touch it.” - she says, quietly, with a certain air of authority that must derive from age rather than skill. “Sometimes I think she manages to capture the movement of the plates of the earth in those works. If this is just a professional visit – a protocol – a job interview or, “ a half-smile, here, by way of apology for the terrible and terribly British pun she is about to utter, “ – a metaphysical, love, we might as well have a drink to go along with it, wouldn’t you agree?”
[Ashley McGowen] It is a worrisome thing to hear that a chantryhouse has been attacked: such a place is the stronghold of Awakened power in a city, and to attack it is a confident move. It's a move that says one isn't worried about the magi that will come to defend it, the Hermetic Adept who has wards in place. "Nephandi," she says, with a glance toward Sabra.
Just the thought of the Fallen is enough to chill magi who have spent their time at more peaceful chantries. It's enough to spark fear in Ashley, and it's hardly her first run-in with them. Her mouth thins, after a moment, presses her lips together until the blood blanches out of them. "They killed my cabalmate, there. We took them pretty seriously after that."
Daiyu was not just a cabalmate, and was not just a friend; there have been rumors, but they don't matter. It's still a loss no matter what she was, and it's one that's weighed heavily on the Hermetic. She's happy to accept the distraction of the broach, and reaches out to run her fingertips over the metal, over the way it's woven and interlocked. Her admiration is silent.
There's a glance up out of the corner of her right eye, a quick thing, toward Sabra, and then a smile at the joke, the pun. "I try to get to know people," she says - so not simply professional. Not really a distant person, the Hermetic, in the sense one expects from her Tradition. "I could have a drink. Not too familiar with what's in the area, though. Know a place?"
[Sabra Meier Levy] Ashley's glance finds the older woman's still, her dramatic features composed. There is a certain balance, there, a certain symmetry that mirrors the lobes of her brain - the white face bisected by the long bony nose, surrounded her inky hair, slashed with brows that are dark, heavy, expressive over still dark eyes.
Her brows are still now. There's the shadow of fear one might anticipate, just a sort of - rescission, really, this subtle retreat to a sort of stillness that echoes that of a forest pool. The dappled shadows and light, the sense of reflection, the surface tension.
There are Hallmark stores half-full of appropriate, tasteful things to tell someone in their grief. I'm sorry. Time heals. My sympathies. I'm praying for you. Sabra utters none of them. There is a sort of gravity to the way she watches the younger girl, alive now to the signs and sigils of grief, which are written into her skin like glyphs for those who know how to read them. The Adept, except that there's no magic to write away loss. What Sabra offers Ashley by way of sympathy and acknowledgment is just that - hint of privacy that cannot be entire, not with the woman's mahogany eyes on the plain girl's baby face.
"Doyle's Pub isn't far love," Sabra says at last, locking up the jewelry case without returning the broach to its little velvet nest. "There's a piano lounge on the way, too, if you're into jazz." Then she reaches out, folds Ashley's hand over the shape of the broach. Her elegant hands are surprisingly calloused - the fingertips, the palms - but otherwise cool to touch. "It's yours." The touch passes quickly. Sabra does not linger on the idea of the gift once she's offered it, and continues, in a brisk manner that brooks no compromise. "Come on, then, darling. I'll just lock up."
[Sabra Meier Levy] (ooh: There's not the shadow of fear one might anticipate. Ahem. Changes the meaning entirely!)
[Ashley McGowen] There are Hallmark card responses, there are things grief counselors are taught to say: there's any number of pat responses for a grieving person. Things that may or may not be really thought about or sincerely meant, things that are there and appropriate and inoffensive. Surprisingly, Ashley has had to hear few of them in the past few weeks. She's heard some awkward things and she's heard some kind things. Sabra's response, however, is by far of the preferred variety.
This isn't something she wants to dwell on, not for long and not with a new acquaintance. That look is accepted for what it is, and after a few seconds Ashley's blue eyes trail away.
"I...um, thanks," is the surprised response when Sabra closes her hand around the broach. It isn't something one wears with her current set of clothing, so it's tucked safely into a pocket, and she nods toward the older woman, undiminished elegance, when she says she needs to lock up.
"I've been to Doyle's," she says, and there's a wry touch to her tone there. She isn't sure whether Quentin will be happy to see her, but, well. "The beer was good. Let's go there." On jazz she offers no opinion. Just a flickering glance, a non-answer. Not much of a fan, perhaps; some aren't.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "Don't mention it, love." - Sabra returns, her tone as crisp as freshly ironed linen, as brisk as a well-brewed cup of tea. She pauses, then, allowing a hint of amusement to arch through her dark brows, just the touch of it, accompanied by a quirk of her red mouth, for Ashley's still non-response to the suggestion of some jazz lounge. "Just a tick, I'll get my wrap."
So saying, she turns, pushes back through the heavy curtains, disappears into the back storeroom. The curtain is still moving when she returns quite as she said, a spare moment or two later. This time, there's a soft crimson shawl wrapped around her shoulders, protection from the chill that seeps into the evening air, these fall nights, after the long warm days full of remembered sunshine. There are a series of thick, audible clicks as she reaches to turn off the shop lights, and the place goes dark, section by section. At last, just a few security lights remain on.
"Now then," at last, Sabra ducks out from behind the counter, sliding her iPhone into her beaded clutch. It is hardly the word's most practical bag. " - didn't take long at all." What is clear as she emerges from behind the counter is simply that she is tall, made taller by the strappy, three-and-a-half-inch heels she's wearing as everyday shoes. She's comfortable, perfectly balanced, moving with a crisp efficiency as she walks out with Ashley before finishing the ritual of locking up. There's no faltering, either, as she falls into step with much younger woman, walking the few blocks to the pub. Just a moment's considering, a glance out through the windows, at the sky, while those rose-framed umbrellas are close. Beyond the city's pollution, though, the sky is clear, and Sabra leaves the umbrellas behind with evident regret.
[Quentin Doyle] [actually, sorry ladies, I'm going to pop out before I get in. My attention is being taken up by children at home. But if anyone wants Doyle consider a message being passed on via bartender.]
to Ashley McGowen, Sabra Meier Levy
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley is patient while Sabra goes to get her wrap, to let the lights of the shop flicker out and die. It's getting cool outside, and the skies above them are beginning to fade, but she doesn't have a jacket with her. Just the buttondown, but she seems comfortable enough in that.
There's a glance over her shoulder toward Sabra when she notices the Cultist's eyes linger on the umbrellas before they step outside. "You could always bring one anyway," she says, though there's no promise of rain today. "Some people could pull off an open umbrella on a clear day." Sabra is one of them. It's bad luck; maybe the Hermetic just isn't (that variety of) superstitious.
Regardless of whatever Sabra chooses to do, Ashley falls in beside her. They cut an odd pair walking down the sidewalk, Sabra tall and dark and graceful; Ashley is nearly a foot shorter than she is when she's in her heels, and if she is eye catching it's the way a stray cat, long and lean and scarred, can be eye catching, a sort of how the hell is it still alive, how is it thriving the way it is, it looks so damned hungry. Ashley remembers directions well, even if she's only been to the place once, and doesn't require much cue from Sabra while they walk. Keeps her on her right.
There's a glance toward this woman once, this woman who reminds her of Pymander somehow (that which abides is unchangeable, that which is unchangeable is eternal). "Do you know Quentin well?"
[Ashley McGowen] ((Alas! Hopefully I can catch you some other time. Feel free to drop him back in later if you get some free time.))
to Quentin Doyle, Sabra Meier Levy
[Sabra Meier Levy] "In something like an umbrella," Sabra confides as they walk, "I prefer my fashion to be functional. Anyway," she tips a look up at the sky, this sort of speculative glance, alive to the possibilities of stars that might be tucked away somewhere beyond the edges of the atmosphere, out in the cold vaccuum of space. " - that much closer to the roof of the world, this way."
The are such a strange pair. Ashley is not quite young enough to be Sabra's daughter, but something about her presentation - the round face, the pouting curve of her mouth, that sense of seeking, tinged with loss though it well might be - has Sabra guessing she's younger, much younger. A lover of classic children's books might look at the pair of them and have fleeting impresson of hungry little Madeline and the nun, tall and willowy and receding into the background of the composition. It all depends on perspective.
"Gods, no." - she replies, when asked when she knows him well. Then, a winging glance, a moment of confidence, perhaps - " - in the right light, the man reminds me of someone I used to know, mind. The bartender Andy's lovely, though. Humors me in my rather exacting standards for mixed drinks. Is he one of yours, then? Part of your - " an airy wave of her hand. " - social club?"
[Ashley McGowen] It was months ago, now, that Ashley was last at Doyle's. She'd still been the deacon then; it was before there'd been that political mire, that mess that had set her at odds with Israel and Solomon for a while. She hasn't heard much from the sorcerer since she tried to convince him of what he was, of who he is. It's not as easy with those still yet Sleeping. They had no reality-shattering break, no grand revelation. All they can do, in the Hermetic's mind, is imitate.
They're still quite useful.
"No," she says, with a trace of amusement at Sabra's question. "He's not one of mine. I don't think he really understands yet. I tried to explain to him, but I think he thinks I'm delusional." She isn't sure whether Emily had any luck; Ashley doesn't have Emily's gentleness, or Emily's charm, or Emily's way with men (though the Singer-to-be would deny all three, assuredly.)
It's in that moment that she realizes that she's never given Sabra the benefit of proper introduction. "I'm an Adept," she adds, "bani Hermes." Delivered without the pomp and circumstance of many of her Tradition, or without any apparent pride at her title. That wouldn't have been the case, once. Chicago's a city that humbles.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "Or perhaps he has a different way of understanding. Some other language for what he is, and why, and how - " there's a musing tone that rather lingers under the surface of her reply, entirely speculative as they walk. " - and that's why your explanations went a bit awry with the man. Best, sometimes, to allow people to be who they are. Find their own way to whatever truths they require from the world."
And even deeper, the lingering edge of a smile that started life as a sigh. That sort of thing - breathless, lingering, alive - which folds into laughter, then - or rather this amusement that sweetens her tone, a fine swirl of honey, viscous and rich. Just so: "You are, are you?" the response to Ashley's humbled introduction could be full of a certain elegant cheek. Sabra gives Ashley this sidelong look, which is not quite sly, and the edg of a dry sort of smile. "If you pull out a magic wand or start speaking in tongues, love, I'm going to disavow all knowledge and walk the other way.
"For my part - " a glance as they cut across the street, some SUV's headlights casting them in such brief, stark relief. "I'm a Cultist. Breaking all the stereotypes." Sabra laughs, then, this brief noise in the back of her throat, wry and knowing.
[Ashley McGowen] Other people have their languages for what they are and what they do. Ashley has heard all sorts of explanations. Her father and Daiyu didn't even refer to what they did as magic; they just bent reality, they just did it because they were disciplined and because Chai allowed them to. The Order of Hermes is very clear on some points. "I'm sure he does," Ashley says, which is the same thing as saying but they're wrong. "It's just difficult to keep him informed if he doesn't get the rest of us. Ignorant people become a problem."
The administrative dean would think so, of course. Any chantry head would; this is her job. The cost of ignorance is something Ashley has observed several times now, to her sorrow. To the sorrow of others.
Sabra's commentary on her Tradition earns her a smirk, something that broadens into something pointed, darkly amused, when she offers her own Tradition. Really, the expression is just there to cover up her surprise. "Good," she says, of stereotypes. "They're well-earned in my experience. The last Cultist I spoke to at length got offended when I wouldn't smoke her pot and asked if I'd ever bathed in the morning dew."
Her hands find their way into the pockets of her jeans, where they ball up, where one closes around the broach as though to keep it there. "I've been pleased with a good handful of the people I've met here. Nobody keeps to the hard party line. There's a lot of mingling." They have to, in a place like this. She wouldn't have been pleased about that once, either.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "And have you - " Sabra deadpans back at Ashley, without so much as a glance. Just her voice, the precise enunciation, clipped enough to please any Hermetic. Ideal for incantatories, every damned consonant receives its due. Just her voice, the sharp retort of her heels against the pavement. "bathed in the morning dew?"
In profile, Sabra's features are dominated by her long nose, the line of her jaw receding, a glimmer of metal winking here and there, earrings nipped through her earlobes, peeking through her dark, rather coarse hair, frizzy from the hint of humdity in the air.
"Sounds rather tedious, mind. All that work for a few droplets of moisture poured from a buttercup or a blush rose."
[Ashley McGowen] And has she. There's a wry twist of the Hermetic's mouth as Sabra asks this question, as she makes light of the words her Tradition mate asked Ashley months ago. If anything, this puts Ashley a bit at ease: they aren't all like this, they don't all ask her absolutely ridiculous questions. "I think in her case, it involved less taking moisture from flowers and more rolling around naked on the lawn," Ashley says.
There's a glance out of the corner of her eye at the older woman's sharp profile, the stark features that'll strike you like a crow's wing fluttering against a backdrop of snow. "In which case I'm pretty sure my neighbors would call the police." Though in Ashley's case it's more likely she'd simply melt away out of embarrassment.
The smirk hasn't quite died away yet; perhaps she's just recalling the conversation, recalling her own incredulity. Ashley doesn't think highly of Cultists: the truth is that in another life she might have made a good one. Different, but a good one. Self-awareness is hard sometimes.
"I've heard tell that not everybody in the Cult sees it as a constant party. Must be hard, not thinking much of your Tradition mates."
[Sabra Meier Levy] Ashley's remark about the police has Sabra laughing, quietly. The amusement wreathes itself across her face, like curling up from a distant chimney, wrapping itself into the sky.
"Assuredly, love, if you intend to roll around naked on the lawn, you should get yourself a privacy fence - " there is a certain droll tone to her voice, this humor dry as any good chardonnay. " - or move to Spain, near one of those lovely beaches, so that handcuffs are only involved by request rather than necessity." - but the vague retort is lightly spoken.
The remark about her tradition, the others who follow it, draws a sharper look, lively, that traces over Ashley's features, the slow-fading smirk that shapes the young Adept's mouth. That sense of - "I don't judge them, love." This is still and quiet, and offered more seriously, more thoughtfully, than most things Sabra offers. There's a quiet sort of awareness in her eyes, wry. For Sabra judges everyone, as much as no one. She means something different by it, though. "It isn't that I dismiss pleasure. Or parties. Or that I - "
No, she's not going to become wholly confessional. Still, walking with a stranger on a brisk fall night, the earth turning away from the sun -
"When you become mired in it, when you become dependent on it, when you seek - oblivion rather than clarity, you aren't pushing yourself anymore, and when you stop looking, well, it's hard to see another godsdamned thing."
- there is a certain conviction underlying the words.
It is born of experience, the sort she's unlikely to share.
"Each of us, though - " a sideglance, a lift of her chin. The pub isn't far. Truthfully, Sabra is looking forward to a drink. " - find our own way."
[Ashley McGowen] There's a flicker of amusement at Sabra's reference to beaches in Spain, to handcuffs, something wry and just a little tinged with self-consciousness. It isn't offended, isn't retreating: the Hermetic really just is as shy and bookish as she seems, at times. "I think I'll stick to bathing indoors," she says.
It's rare that Ashley hears this kind of conviction from an initiate, truth be told. She's young, and she is particularly young for an Adept: she rose quickly, and there are not many Adepts in the world. Not thousands. But an understanding of reality and what shapes it, the understanding of what it means to become infinite, is not a thing dependent on age. Experience, certainly. Ashley has sacrificed a lot to get where she is.
Maybe there is something to be said for the wisdom age grants, though. Because here: Sabra seems very sure of what she's saying, sure of the insights Time has granted, and this puts them on a sort of equal footing regardless of magical muscle.
She nods, when Sabra says that each person finds their own way; it's just a matter of semantics, sometimes. "Let them stay where they are if they won't fight. Conflict forces you to adapt and strengthens your Will," Ashley says, which is perhaps her way of agreeing. "Some people get mired in methods of avoiding it."
The pub is nearing, and when Ashley reaches it she holds the door open and gestures Sabra inside. She, too, is rather looking forward to a drink - but she usually does. It's a rather comfortable habit.
[Sabra Meier Levy] With most, there is a moment of awkwardness at any threshold. Americans are always holding open doors for each other, then getting caught half-way between them, starting and stopping with a nod and a grin and - just perhaps - a you first no you sort of exchange.
There's none of that here. Ashley opens the door, and Sabra dips her head and walks through. The bar is dark and warm tonight, all that polished wood. Happy hour is over, the lawyers and professionals and salesmen have gone home to their wives to lie about their mistresses, to their mistresses to lie about their wives, and the late night crowd isn't quite out, not yet.
They have their pick of tables and booths, and Sabra circles easily through the bar with a confidence born of physical grace, choosing a warm booth with a tabletop that has been deliberately distressed to appear well-worn, away from the others. A modicum of privacy, and all that.
It is only when they have their drinks sorted out - a "proper" martini is Sabra's demand of the bartender tonight. She gives him no further direction and waits, instead, to see what he does with her order, laughs at the last when she tastes it, lifting the fine-stemmed martini glass in a distant sort of toast to the 'tender when she catches his eye before returning her direct attention to Ashley.
"Is that what it is for you, love? Conflict, with others. Some sort of Darwinian struggle, some sort of bullfight, locking horns and all that?"
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley seems comfortable with letting Sabra pick out a table. She's only been to Doyle's once before, and remained at the crowded bar until she went out back with Quentin; after nearly standing on tiptoe to see over the top of the bar and standing among people a foot taller than she is, a booth seems almost novel.
When she sits, she rests a hand on the table first, leads with her fingertips, guides herself toward the seat with a practiced sort of ease. One accomplishes this, learns to compensate when they've been without depth perception for ten years. There are speakers on the wall, and Ashley seats herself as far away from them as possible: in most restaurants and bars there's only so much that the noise can be stifled, only so far she can get away from it, but she does what she can. She positions her deaf ear towards it.
Ashley's request as far as drinks go is for the house stout, and there's a tired sort of tolerance with which she hands over her ID when it's asked for, when it's scrutinized. She takes a long sip from it when it arrives and evidently does not need time to get used to its bitterness.
"More or less," Ashley says. "The idea that we're honed through conflict is big in my House." A beat. "I'm in a PhD program at Northwestern for sociology, actually. I'm doing my thesis on it. Probably my dissertation too once I've found where I want to focus. And I've sort of diverted lately into studying with the Verbena too, so...it's very much a part of how I see things."
[Sabra Meier Levy] "How apropos," Sabra murmurs, when Ashley remarks on her major, her choice of dissertation. There's a still sort of smile on the older woman's mouth, which is both mild and wry. Her red mouth moves around the words, shaping them with this sort of very precise pleasure. One has the sense that she likes, sometimes, to hear the ring of her own voice in the air. To feel herself in her surroundings.
"I'm sure you'll wrestle yourself onto the page quite well," the wry air lingers, though there is something direct enough about both her gaze over the edge of the martini glass and her voice that keeps the remark from being patronizing. " - though it's not precisely what does it for me, darling. I must have chosen my words rather poorly, I don't think others of my ilk get lost because they're avoiding conflict - just that - "
There is, a supple gleam in her dark eyes. " - sometimes, it is easy to get lost. And sometimes, you have to get lost to find your way through. We're rather different, all told. And studying with the Verbena. Have they got you sacrificing goats yet?"
[Ashley McGowen] "I think they get lost because they're avoiding conflict," Ashley says, with a wry smile of her own as she clarifies, "and I was leaving room for you to argue with me." There's that readiness there, prepared to be debated with, prepared to be disagreed with. And truth be told, had Sabra been patronizing that too would have been dealt with the same heat, the same hunger: it's a cutthroat House, the one she's from. It isn't kind to the passive, to those not willing to compete.
Though, truth be told, there's a way in which she's weighing Sabra. A sense that she's not saying everything, that there are riddles here the way Kage riddles. It's on an instinctive level, the way Ashley understands these things; this is what guides her interactions with people. Analysis is for books, is for her studies.
She grins when she's asked about the Verbena, and there's a surprising brightness to it, something that livens her eyes. "No. No smearing my body with mud and dancing naked for the full moon either, as it would turn out. I know some unorthodox Verbena, though." One might imagine a Hermetic would not consider studying with them otherwise.
"I've done very little so far. Some discussion." The decision to do it, to finally begin the process of learning, was fairly recent after all.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "That's a rather broad judgment, love, of all those nameless strangers," Sabra returns, quietly. Shedoes, though, lift her martini glass in salute when Ashley indicates that she was leaving room for argument. This little touche gesture that resolves itself as she brings the glass to her mouth, leaving a smeared imprint of red lipstick against the edge, where the strong spirits cling to the glass.
And she's inhaling as she does so, deeply, the sparking scent of the mix of alcohol in drink. " - and I'm grateful for the room to argue, though I'm rather more concerned with challenging myself than I am with challenging you - particularly on so broad a point that still somehow seems too - " a hint, lingering, - "confessional, perhaps.
"Man versus self, love, rather than man versus man. It's just a different in point of view." Sabra does not nurse her drink, though. She finishes it, lifts an airy hand to the bartender to order another. "Tree climbing, then - if it isn't mud-dancing or goat-sacrificing, I cannot think what else you mean to learn from them. Though I will confess, I've spent very little time with any of them, or your tradition for that matter. So my ideas about their practices are likely rather limited."
[Ashley McGowen] Sabra says it's a rather broad judgment, to which Ashley's response is a shrug. Something at once dismissive and conceding, before she lifts her glass and sips at the beer around the thick layer of foam at the top. She is not wearing lipstick, or makeup of any kind - nothing is left behind on the glass. "I try to evaluate people on an individual basis," she says, "but I've seen...nothing so far to challenge that assumption. Until speaking with you."
There's still room for it to go awry. First impressions, after all, aren't always accurate gauges of a person's Will, a person's character and beliefs.
"I think, besides, that challenging yourself is just as important as challenging others, and challenging others can lead into challenging yourself. If my arguments don't hold up against someone else, it probably means they should be re-evaluated." Whether this is confessional doesn't seem to trouble Ashley; whatever else she is, she's honest.
"As for the Verbena, I'm hoping to study the Ars Vitae with them." In the Hermetic's mind it's a far more practical study than knife fighting or tree climbing or dancing: this is why one seeks out another Tradition. "The rest, I'm still learning and thinking about."
[Sabra Meier Levy] "Pleasure is matched with pain, love. Happiness with anger. Love with grief. Joy with sorrow - it's easy, I think, to lose yourself in the rather more pleasant half. To find people who are harrowed with loss, and drag them into fulness, to live inside that half-world, and this is what you have seen of the nameless other with whom I share, at least, some passing connection.
"But if you are never denied, if you never deny yourself, what can you really feel, beyond some hollow echo. I'm sure that some of us get lost because it is easier than being found. Because there is something we cannot face, and so we retreat into the pleasures our mentors and friends promised.
"Mostly, though - I think they've just forgotten the full spectrum of experience - that we are meant to feel, not just to feel good."
Her tone is almost entirely different, there - the breeziness absent, just this precise, contracted core, this steadiness that remains in the center. There's a certain rawness in the end, this - underlying conviction that pulls her mouth across her starkly drawn features, an echo of both awareness and old loss in her eyes that she chases with a certain wry twist of her mouth, that easy, superficial elegance as she picks up her fresh martini and turns the glass to watch the alcohol cling to the glass.
"Ars Vitae? Darling, I can guess what that means, but really it sound like some sort of exotic liquor. You know, [i]I am just back from Denmark, would you like some Aquavita? No, no. I'll have the Ars Vitae."
[Ashley McGowen] This: while it's interesting, while Ashley listens to the words Sabra says and pulls them in to digest them, they aren't really words she's heard someone else speak before. It's not a perspective she's been offered to consider, at least so far as magic goes, and it is not quite relatable from either of the perspectives she herself holds: blood and sacrifice, knowledge and the drive to perfection.
That doesn't mean there isn't something in her that's stirred by the words, but if there is, it's something Ashley herself has half-forgotten. It's something she doesn't think about on any kind of conscious level, just lives it, does it, and is therefore not quite prepared to formulate a response to.
She still tries. It just takes her a moment to sip from her glass of stout, look into it, glance down and notice that the head is fizzing away and leaving cream colored trails of foam on the inside of the glass. "I'd say from the perspective of an artist," she says, after a moment, because that is a perspective she has and can apply, "that you're right. I guess I don't get how it...works with magic. How just feeling is supposed to be enlightened. Everybody does it."
Another wry smile touches the corner of her lips when Sabra teases her about the Ars Vitae; the kind of expression that suggests that she is, indeed, familiar with other Traditions' amusement about the Latin titles. "Life magic," she says. "In Hermetic theory, each branch of magic is an art, a discipline - like the study of philosophy or a language. So we title them that way. I've been told that Verbena can do amazing things to mead, though. Too bad I don't like it much."
[Sabra Meier Levy] "Everybody does it, love." Sabra returns, quietly, this small, winging smile on her red mouth, her voice quiet, her dark eyes intent. " - isn't that the point?"
[Ashley McGowen] Ashley's eyes are unfocused, are focused elsewhere: down at the glass while she thinks, as though she could look through it, as though the answer were somewhere within or past it. And perhaps she is looking into some Elsewhere; there are magi who can do such things easily.
"The point is to step farther and be more," she says. "And be limitless. Which isn't really something you can accomplish if all you're trying to do is something anyone can do, or does do. It doesn't require anything from you. Or any effort."
When her gaze sharpens again, it's to look back up and meet Sabra's; she's untroubled by the intensity of the Cultist's dark eyes, by the conviction there. Ashley doesn't have conviction so much as passion: they're different, and they carry people in different ways, but that deep-seated understanding is similar, and she doesn't shy from it.
[Sabra Meier Levy] "And it's best, then - to keep the infinite to yourself, is it? To claim the horizon as your own, then. The exclusive province of the masters, denied to all the rest, preserved from the masses by the complexities art and work." This is needling, the faint twist of her mouth upward at the right corner.
"Everyone does it; everyone can do it. All the possibilities of the world are right inside you. No incantations necessary. None of those godsdamned devices, just your body and your mind and your skin and your senses and your memory. With the right nudge; with the right push, with the right touch, everyone open up the edges of their reality. Though really, love - when was the last time you remembered the texture of the glass against your fingers. Closed your eyes and paid attention to the connection between your hand and the glass. The way the head dries on your finger, pulls at our skin.
"Most of us ignore anything but the most superficial sensations of pleasure or pain until we are confronted by great joy or great sorrow - and then the world changes. Briefly, and all-consumingly, until we are back to drifting about, touching things without connection, except for the fleeting.
"You want to be limitless, love, and - " this shifting expression across her mouth, self-aware, wry, " - as far a I can tell, we already are. It's just matter of being. And being connected. It's about sensation that pushes you to the edge of who you are and what you can be so you find yourself back in the skin. With your pores just a little more open to the world. If that makes - " another pause, " - any sense to you."
And then, a subtle shift of expression, the older women's attention drifting now. "How did it happen for you? How did you awaken?"