Ring Ring!

[Emily Littleton] It was late into the afternoon on Thursday when Emily found a quiet place and pulled out her mobile. She dialed the number from the man in park, feeling it was somehow important to reach out and touch him. Especially as she couldn't remember his name. Curious. Curiouser. Her own number showed on his caller ID -- Chicago prefix. If he'd programmed in her number, it might say Emily. Or Emily Littleton. She couldn't remember if she'd given him her full name or not.

[Wharil Choc]The phone rings once. Twice. The phone begins to ring a third time, and just at the first sound of the digital tone the line opens up.

Somewhere on the other line, another phone rings. Not a cell phone but the distinct double ring of one of those desk-top office types. The ones that people tended to ignore because picking it up wasn't their job. Someone was doing that to this phone. Someone was chattering to someone else. Someone just barely managed to say 'Just let me get this' before that same someone said 'Hello?' The voice was clearer this time, obviously speaking to the caller. To Emily.

The other background sounds drifted away steadily, before they were suddenly cut off b the sound of a door bouncing shut.


[Emily Littleton] "Ah, hello. This is Emily Littleton," she said, and in this moment the strongest influence to her muddled accent is somewhat European. Her Ts are neatly clipped, and her vowels a little broader. She is not from around here, but Wharil knew that. She is also not sure how to ask for the man she is calling by name. It is awkward.

There is only low white noise from her side of the connection. No office sounds. No way to place where she may be. It could be the hum of a server cluster, or the refridgerator, that breaks the abject silence around her.

[Wharil Choc] "Hello Emily." He comes right back. "My name is Wharil. Wharil Choc." And just as before he says it with a flourish of something that isn't English. Isn't anythin european either. It sounds like nature talking. Like the sound of birds and breaking branches. Like rocks tumbling down a hillside. Who-ah-reel comes out in a smooth arrangement of tongue, teeth, and lips. Choc is as abrupt as a falling rock.

"You...probably don't remember me all that clearly. We met in the park. And a couple times before that, but you're even less likely to remember those times. Anyway, I guess you're calling because you wanted to know more?"

[Emily Littleton] No, admittedly, she does not remember him clearly. He shimmers at the edge of thought like a mirage, and the more surely she grasps for the thoughts surrounding him the more certainly they slide away. Emily is not used to facing such fickle remembrances. It is a little unsettling.

"That is quite right," she answered simply, trying not to let the nascent confusion bleed into her tone. She is calm now, calmer than she has felt in many weeks. It is easier to have these conversations now that she has rested. "If the offer still stands, that is."

There is a lilt to the last line, a tone that carries it upward in an audible smile. Warmth.

[Wharil Choc] "Of course it does. Like I told you, you're already in the club. No point restricting membership now."

There's the sound of footfalls in a hollow hallway. Another door opens. Wind and rushes into the receiver, along with the city traffic in the distance.

"So tell me, Emily Littleton. How did this all start for you? At what point did you realize things were...more than what you'd thought they were?"


[Emily Littleton] "Oh..." Emily offered a small, meaningful sigh up at that question. Wharil was, after all, the first person to ask after the how's and why's of her Awakening. It was not something she had any practice explaining, to date, and that made her mouth set in a pensive moue and her eyes darken thoughtfully.

"A little over a month ago," she started, measuring the words carefully as she offered them up. "I was working on an engineering project here on campus, trying to sort out what was wrong with our design." Emily carefully stayed away from jargon that might clutter up the description. "It was late. Three, maybe four in the morning. Late enough that I'd decided to just work all night rather than trying to catch a cat nap."

She paused here, waited, then continued on. "It took me awhile before I realized that I wasn't just thinking things through, tracing the circuits in my mind's eye. I could almost see the electricity running through the circuits and gates..." It sounded mad. Emily had sounded mad when she tried to explain it to her graduate students as well. "I just knew where the weak spots were, the places that restricted or impeded incorrectly. Knew with that certainty science rarely has. As if I'd been especially Englightened." She did not yet know it was a bad word, when capitalized like this.

[Wharil Choc] "Huh." he says simply, apparently as a precursor to an uncomfortably long silence. It did sound mad. It would sound mad to anyone. Anyone that hadn't gone through something similar, that is.

"So you're an engineer. What exactly were you designing anyway?"

[Emily Littleton] "We were working on a prototype system. It's difficult to explain, exactly, with any concision. Essentially we're trying to miniaturize some chipsets, and quantify the physical effects of running exceedingly tiny things at extremely high frequencies." She paused a little, mentally translating from geek-to-human as she spoke. "Very odd things happen to electronics at that scale."

It didn't sound particularly magical. Just very techincal.

[Wharil Choc] "Uhh-huh." came the reply over the line. As was probably expected, it sounded like the expression one made when they understood less than half of what was previously said. More worrying is the quiet that follows. A pondering of way from somewhere classified best as 'completely lost'. This was the guy who was supposed to teach her?

"Uhm...I'll admit right off the bat that...that sounds sort of...out of my league. I'm not a very good technical person. Much less technological."

[Emily Littleton] Emily chuckled. It was a warm sound, resonant and commiseratory. There was no derision or condescension to it. "Oh, that's quite alright. It isn't everyone's cup of tea." The warmth extended to her words, as well. Wharil was surely not the first person who had offered up glazed eyes to the subject of Emily's studies.

"And if it is any consolation... I am not purely a technocrat." She had not yet learned that the capitalized version of that word was naughty. Emily used it in the most mundane of ways. "I also enjoy cooking, very good tea, and read philosphy books on long plane flights. I promise not to bore you over much with circuit boards or physics equations."

[Wharil Choc] "Not a...oh. I see what you mean." Nervousness and sudden comfort in such few words. He clears his throat but moves on. "Philosophy. That's good. It'll serve you well. Like I said, I don't know if I can keep up with you technologically, but there are others in my tradition who can. We call them Locksmiths. Or Lucksmiths. But their real name is Lakshmists.

"Do you know who Lakshmi is?"

[Emily Littleton] "I'm afraid not," Emily said plainly, but there was an undercurrent in her tone that implied that deficit would not remain for long. She was, after all, a University student. She was technologicaly adept. Sooner or later she'd be near enough a computer terminal to type in the word Lakshmi and read anything and everything that came back.

[Wharil Choc] "You ever go into a hindu-run mini-mart or something and see a picture on a wall? Lady with four arms, usually in pink or blue, holding flowers? That's Lackshmi. She's in charge of trade and fortune and luck, among other things. Unseen or unpredictable patterns that affect peoples lives. The members of my Tradition that follow her have begun looking for those unseen patterns in places other than trade. They've learned to find it in science and technology. And they've learned to us that to shape their world.

"That's...what this is, by the way. What you've awakened to is the innate ability within yourself to change the world. And all you need to do it is a bit of understanding, and your own will. We call it Siddhi. Most people call it Magic."

[Emily Littleton] Emily was quiet for awhile, considering. Her side of the line went almost completely quiet, except for that low background basso thrum. Then she made a small, thoughtful sound, indistinct, and replied.

"I would say that your Lady has had quiet a hand in my life of late," she said, the words brimming with unsaid implications. "At least since I awakened, as you put it. Probably a fair bit before as well."

If one was to believe in Fate, then Emily had a lot of potential data to back up that proof. The same people wandering in and out of her life, time and again, who had never been there before Waking Up. The very nature of her Awakening itself could be taken to fit a search-for-pattern and things unseen theme.

"How do you know?" she asked, after another pause. "Which Tradition you belong to?"

[Wharil Choc] He laughs at that. Not cruelly or teasing. Just a soft amused huff. And then, ever the gentleman, he apologizes for doing so.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have laughed at that. It is afteral a valid question. Its just...its like asking how you know what religion you're born into or what Extra curricular club you were born to take. We're all just people, Emily. No matter what anyone else might tell you, we're just people. What we believe in, however, and how that influences us...that's what's different. And yet...the same. That's what the Traditions are. A group of people believe in A, so they go into club A. You've just awakened, so you've still got to make that decision.

"Mind you, some of us are lucky enough to fall in by accident. There are sort of Family Traditions that people just happen to be born into. And then there's little accidents. That's how I wound up with the Euthanatos. Wrong place. Wrong time. All the right circumstances. But somewhere along the line it all just...made sense. So I stuck with it. That might have been my choice. That might have been fate. What better company to learn the difference with than the scholars of Fate and Fortune?"

[Emily Littleton] Emily made a small, pensive sound, but pulled it back quickly. Before arguing. She had called him for help, after all, and questioning him straight out of the gate might not have been welcome. Dozens of questions rested on the tip of her tongue, but she had to choose carefully what she said next.

"I... can appreciate that." Not understand, or adopt, but appreciate. "I suppose I've not had the luxury of just knowing anything that soundly. For me it's more... a group of people believe in A, so I'll study A, see how it works for them, take it apart and put it back together in an A that works for me. But bits of B, C, D, et cetera, will creep in over the years. A isn't enough, however perfectly valid it is on its own, if there are twenty-five other letters to explore."

She shrugged, but he couldn't hear that across the line. All that came across was her attempt at explaining the insatiable curiosity that drove her studies, her intellect. Emily needed to know. She could stay up all night reading the deepest secrets about something she would use, maybe, once in her life. But leaving stones unturned? No!

"Do people ever, ah, rotate through? Like graduate students picking their field of study? Could I ... intern.. with groups until I found one that fit?"

[Wharil Choc] "Hmm. That's a good way of putting it. In fact, with things the way they are right now, that's likely what you'll be doing anyway. I'd love a chance to talk more about the Philosophy of Fate with you, among other things. If your the kind that wants to quantify magic into something...I dunno. More technical? Then i've got a friend you can talk to about that. And, because our lives before awakening is what leads us to the awakening itself, I've got a friend you can talk shop with when it comes to Science. Her name's Henri Beane"

Henri Beane? That name sounded vaguely familiar didn't it? Perhaps Emily had read it in some science journal somwhere? Yes, that was very likely it. It was obvious now. Henrietta Beane. A child prodigy from New Zealand and the youngest person ever to earn a masters degree in Physics. The fourteen-year-old kid genius had disappeared from the public eye 3 years ago. And now her named popped up in Chicago, from the mouth of a man talking to her about magic.

[Emily Littleton] "Henrietta Beane?" Emily asked, the way others might ask if Wharil had just mentioned a rock star casually by name. Then again, given recent developments in Emily's personal life, having those kinds of connections in Chicago probably wasn't too terribly unusual. Rather than turning into a gushing fan-girl, Emily left it at that. Beane was brilliant. Emily could admire that.

"To be entirely honest, Wharil," she said candidly, pronouncing his name exactly as he had, without any American-ness to her accent. "I don't know that I want to run these two parts of my life together that closely. What I do already borders on technomancy, in an unAwakened sense, and I'm wary of narrowing my interests too much, becoming pigeon-holed into one mindset, one way of looking at things. The mind suffocates without new ideas, new challenges."

She had given it plenty of thought. Which was odd, considering that Wharil was the first (as far as he knew) to give her this particular pep talk.

"But I would like to talk to you about Fate, and I would like to learn about the other wonders I have passed by, unseeing, for all of these years."

[Wharil Choc] "That...is a very reasonable and well thought out decision. I'll tell you now though, there's really no hope bouncing around, or remaining outside of the traditions for too long. Things get...a bit more complicated. Those wonders turn into horrors sometimes. And you'll need the support to sort it out.

"I'm not trying to scare you, though. Just...being honest. It happens. You need to know."

[Emily Littleton] There was a little pause. If Wharil had been sitting with Emily, rather than on the other end of the phone line, he would see her reach up and pinch the bridge of her nose. He would hear her exhale carefully, softly, as she dropped that hand down to toy with the locket she always wore. But he was not present, and she had the presence of mind to move the phone away when she sighed, so all he had was another stretch of quiet.

"This, I have heard before," she said, again plainly. "But there are others, who have not yet chosen or may not choose. Are there not?"

Others... like the red-haired woman who kept Court with Emily in the clearing with the Fallen Kings. Like Enid, perhaps, who did not seem to have fallen in with a family of her own. Like Emily, who was not even sure what the teams were yet.

[Wharil Choc] "Never for very long." He answers candidly, unphased by her logic. And then, it seems, its time to move on.

"So, I'm guessing you've still got that business card I gave you? The Bed and Breakfast there isn't really a Bed and Breakfast. It's a chantry. A sort of club house for the awakened. And they've got a pretty decent library there. Can we schedule to meet there some time? There's some people i'd like you to meet, and a couple books I think you should look over."

[Emily Littleton] "I would quite like that," she replied, and the warmth had wormed its way back into her tone. "I should finish my exams by the end of the week, and I'll have some time before classes start up again. Though I'll be out of town for New Year's."

Emily doesn't say where. But it isn't hard to work her schedule around Wharil's, or even to play things by ear with the young Orphan. She's quite accomodating, and eager to learn more about this magical society. To find her family, of sorts, and start fitting in again.

[Wharil Choc] "Lets make it mid January then? Don't figure the word'll end before then." This last bit he says with a cautious bit of a chuckle.

"Until then...stay safe, Emily."

[Emily Littleton] "You, too, Wharil." She smiled, and he could hear it in her voice. "And thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I'll see you then."