Lesson Interrupted

[Wharil Choc]
It was called The Cloud Gate, and for obvious reason. As Emily approached the huge, reflective art piece, she might have fallen into the same disorienting spell that most people did. There in the distance stood a huge drop of mercury reflecting, from even such a great distance, the world around her. The sky, the ground, and the profile of the city in between them.

On clear days this wasn't a problem. On clear warm days the bean-shaped metal mirror called like a lighthouse, blazing brightly so that there was no doubt as to what was over there. On clouded days like this one, however, it stood a little too clearly, and the world danced in that spot, only getting worse the closer you got, as if you were walking into the sky itself. Only the people around gave it context and realism, and even they were made surreal.

A towering father walks with several tiny children.

A jogger, immune to the cold, wavers and jitters as she passes by.

And a certain ruddy skinned man stands underneath as if waiting for someone, his black wool coat lending a single dark reflection to the underside of the bean. A single black cloud in the inverted sky.

((http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c1/Cloud_Gate_%28The_Bean%29_from_east%27.jpg/800px-Cloud_Gate_%28The_Bean%29_from_east%27.jpg))

[Emily Littleton]
It is a cold day, but they are all cold days deep in the cradle of Winter. She has learned, adapted somewhat to this sort of cold. Emily has learned to wear a heavy coat, to wind a cheerful scary (whimsy [laughter]) around her neck, to keep her hands carefully shrouded in her pockets, to turn her face away from the wind. She has acclimated, somewhat, and in her gait as she approaches there is less of a sense of Otherness. She does not yet stick out against the backdrop as anything more than another pedestrian, one with a sense of purpose to her stride and a quiet surety of where her feet are taking her.

The world bends, bows, wraps itself intriguingly around the modern art installment: an unsubtle metaphor for the worlds we bend around ourselves. She approaches without disorientation or hesitation. Emily grows from a shadow the size of an ant to a warped, lithe, over-thinly-stretched whisper that reaches up for the clouded skies. She is tall already, and the convex mirror only makes her seem taller yet. Cartoonishly so. Ascendant (reaching for the stars [sky]).

The Orphan wears her messenger bag across her body. Its strap cuts a dark-on-dark line from shoulder to opposing hip. Under one arm, she has nonchalantly tucked the red notebook Wharil gave her, with the Cubs logo facing her body (obscured). She is a student with a notebook, a thing that gives no one pause or cause for second thoughts.

Emily approaches, but does not call out to him immediately. The task, after all, was subtlety (grace) and unseeming identity with the world around her (peace).

[Wharil Choc]
There were people around too, people that would notice a thing to stand out. Chicagoans, from first glance. If she weren't careful. If she weren't casual and graceful, there would be no where to hide. Not here in this crazy fun-house art installation.

And so she hides right there, in front of everyone. Wharil smiles brightly at the ease she seemed to have with it, and nods approvingly. Though, he doesn't mention precisely what he was approving of. He eyes the bright red book, and reaches a hand out for it.

"Hey. Glad you could make it. How've you been?"

[Ashley McGowen]
to Emily Littleton, Wharil Choc
((Do you guys mind a joiner, or did you want a private scene?))

[Emily Littleton]
They are two people, two unseeming people who must know each other well. Given their ages and the notebook, it is easy to assume them into co-eds, classmates, University students trading notes before the semester truly began. Emily offers the notebook, and then playfully retracts it. Hesitates a moment before fully handing it over. It is, to an outside observer, a frivolous thing to do.

There is nothing to see here, no great secrets to over hear. No deep truths to uncover.

It is what he's asked of her. And her eyes, a deep blue here in the mid-afternoon light, are touched with laughter and something lighter than when last they'd met. She is hale, whole, as close to grounded as they seem to get.

"I've been better," she says. Better, each day. Each day that nothing horrible happens and no bodies lie strewn at her feet. "A little time off does wonders. And you?" she asked, her expression trending momentarily toward concern. "You seem better."

Seem, because things were rarely that simple anymore. Seem, because she couldn't (yet) read his pattern as clearly as she could read his expression. Not yet, but perhaps soon.

[Wharil Choc]
"That your perception or your awareness talking?" He says with a smile. Wharil grins playfully at the brief hesitation, then takes the notebook in hand, noting the cover first, then opening up to the first two pages, reading quickly as he spoke.

"I'm good. Almost a hundred percent . No...No, I'm pretty much back in full fighting shape. The rest is all psychological."

And indeed, he does look well. Compared to the last time they met. Compared to the last time they spoke even. He's bright, both in body and in spirits. Smiling with his full red face, and his dark, bright eyes.

"What do you think of the Cloud Gate? Nice isn't it?"

[Ashley McGowen]
The morning proceeded thusly: Ashley was possessed with an intense desire to find out exactly what this gadget of Henri Bean's did. The one she brought home on the sled and intended to keep until she could track the girl down again, after the news about Dylan had time to sink in. The Armadillo - "Dilly," Henri called it - was a fascinating bit of Etherite work, with a real AI.

One moment she experimentally asked it to clean a corner of the carpet, interested in seeing how the thing operated. The next moment she was standing half-naked in her living room and the thing seemed to be earnestly trying to eat her pants and the power cable of her laptop, as well as the copy of the book on Enochian runes that it had pulled off of the coffee table.

Disaster. The little menace to all that is holy is locked in her closet now.

Having had about as much excitement as she can handle for the morning, this afternoon has seen her out and around the Mile and the park. She's cutting through on her way home, with a small brown bag of groceries balanced against her hip. Walking slowly, since it isn't that cold for January in Chicago. People watching.

[Charlie McGee]
Charlie stretched a little...finally in weather that was not totally freezing. His streamlined figure was obscured by a large Chicago Bulls parka, hood flipped up to cover his piercings so he didn't have to deal with the metal freezing the ear flesh it was attached to. Shades covered his eyes, his tongue occassionally licking his lips but edging around the lip piercing...he had already had one incident of almost getting his tongue stuck on the metal. That had not been pleasant....granted that was when the Chicago winter had been at its worst and he had been working outside for an hour to get a new window placed.

Charlie was out and about, most of the families trying to do things with schools rather then the youth center for MLK Day. For Charlie, it just meant a day to himself to do his own thing rather then chill around the rec center. Deciding to use a day of honoring a hero, he had decided to try and honor the Brotherhood by meditation. That had lasted only a little while. Charlie couldn't sit still that long...he was a flowing lake, calm at the center but constantly pulsing outwards in a small wave upon the shore. He was moving.

So today, he was going to the Park...he had thought about doing one of his routines but decided he didn't need any spare cash for repairs at the moment and honestly, today felt like it would be kind of...wrong to do it. Instead, it was just a walk....then his eyes flicked over....staring at Emily for a moment. And the other man. He remembered seeming him before..once. Shrugging, he made his way over...the girl interested him.

[Emily Littleton]
"It's beautiful," Emily replies, easily, as he pores over her recent notes. She looks up to the top edge of the Cloud Gate, where the world bends quickly in upon itself, and smiles. "I can almost see my house from here."

She sounds like a tourist, and for a moment it is nebulous and unclear what House Emily might mean. If the world bent sufficiently, she might (in theory [in practice]) be able to find the one place she truly called Home reflected in its infinite, polished mirror. But the curve of the Earth and the boundary of the sky would not allow for that without a little magic. And a little magic was why they were there in the first place.

"It was my perception speaking," she replied, without deception or undue levity. "Would awareness tell me that, that you were well beyond pretending? That seems a matter for other senses, or sciences if one is so inclined."

"I am glad to hear you are well," she adds, with an edge of solemnity in those upturned, endless eyes. The ghost of a well-meant smile turned up the corners of her mouth, and then she looked back to him without explaining.

[Wharil Choc]
"We are...a culmination of influences, external and internal. If you follow Enid's take on what you two have been doing, that is if you believe its all just energy, then some of our energy mixes with everything else's, and vice versa. Maybe...I was somewhere and it made me unwell. You could tell that. Theoretically. Or maybe I just felt like--"

They were not alone. Indeed, the Cloud Gate, and the park, were public places. Not being alone was sort of the idea. Blending in to the crowd. But every so often someone in the crowd exhibited the ability to see more than the average sleeper could. Obviously this was one of them.

The presence of the other man approaching thm is felt, and Wharil raises his head just enough to see him. Something familiar, which was neither good nor bad at this point.

"Hello." He says, more to alert Emily of his approach than anything else. For a few moments longer Wharil's eyes take him in, especially his face.

And then he's flipping through a bright red notebook with the Chicago Cubs emblem on the front.

[Ashley McGowen]
She's coming up on passing the Cloud Gate, and Ashley's gaze turns up to the thing, traveling along its length and watching the way the light bends around it. Wondering for a brief few seconds what it might look like if given definition, distance, depth. Perception is an odd thing indeed, depending on the person you ask.

She shifts the bag on her hip, pauses in front of it for a moment, and looks upward. Trying to remember how things -used- to look, figure out how they might look again if it were corrected, if that little law of biology is pushed past and broken. Experimenting, contemplative.

And catching, in those few idle moments, a few voices that sound rather familiar.

[Emily Littleton]
They are just starting to get toward the (heart) meat of the matter when Wharil looks up, past her, and says Hello in a way that is at once a greeting and again a warning. Emily shifts, in one fluid sidestep, to bring herself to the side of the conversation such that she can look out at whatever is approaching. Face it. Bravely?

No, this is not a day of anxieties and fearfulness for her, so she is smiling when she looks to Charlie and offers a "Good afternoon," of her own. They do not recognize one another, so it is polite and only warm enough to not seem urbane.

[Charlie McGee]
"...you're talking about chi, right?"

Charlie said, not seeming to mind he interrupted...the eyes pausing on them both as he cocked his head. His hands stayed inside the coat, keeping his fingers nice and cozy as he gazed at them through the shades, refracting their images across the black polished lenses.

"And hi. Sorry...go on...I wasn't trying to really interrupt."

[Emily Littleton]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
(( @Charlie... Who are you? -- Per + Aware, dif 6 ))

[Wharil Choc]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
"Chi?" He says in a way that seems slightly intrigued. Wharil's eyes dip, falling first to the young man's shoes, then traveling up slowly to take in his dress and appearance.

And then...his eyes aren't on him at all, but looking up as if out to space. He is in fact looking at Charlie's reflection, hidden in some interminable curve of the Cloud Gate. And feeling outward for the rest of him.

[Perc+Awareness]

[Emily Littleton]
"You practice Qi-gong?" Emily asks, inserted the foreign word into her sentence effortlessly, without thought. There's a look of interest, but not surprise, on her features as she takes him in. From the shades, to the obscured piercings to the shoes. Emily looks through him as much as she looks at him, but it's all with a sense of quiet calm and polite interest. She is not piercing or intense. Not here, not now.

The air about them roils, eddies and flows back in on its own whorls. Emily takes a small step away, just shifting her position in the group. She looks around the gathering, trying to place something beyond them three.

Thin, agile fingers reach up to tug a thin silver chain that has been, until now, fully obscured by the scarf twined about her neck. A small silver oval is freed from her jacket, and in the moment before she wraps those delicate fingers around it, the bauble calls out strongly: Home, home, home. It is counterpoint to Charlie's thrum, not quite in time with his rhythm. The discrepancy beats at their senses, then fades.

She spies Ashley in the distance, and her shoulders relax a little. Tension that neither of the two men near her likely noticed gave way, released.

[Ashley McGowen]
Faint, and they're talking about...something she's either not hearing properly or something in a foreign language. Wharil's is the voice that she places immediately though; she's seen the man often enough to recognize its sound, at this point. She might as well go and say hi.

Ashley, small enough to do so comfortably, ducks beneath the middle of the Cloud Gate. In a few short steps she's on the other side, popping up next to the small group. Probably behind one of them, the one that is standing the closest to the sculpture.

"Evening," she says, to give herself away before she ends up startling one or all of the group. And then turns her ears to whatever they were talking about.

[Charlie McGee]
"Yeah...y'know...the energy that flows into everything, living and non-living...when you interact with someone or something...its a union of those two energies meeting...forming a new pattern...a new color...sensation...action."

He glanced over at Emily and gave a shrug.

"I guess so...I mean...I don't know all the terms to be honest...just what my sifu have taught me when I was learning under them. I just know how some of it works....not the technicalities and its still...something sorta beyond me."

[Emily Littleton]
Emily's smile broadened as Charlie talked. Fondly. It was like hearing a subtle echo of (home) far away places and ideologies. She didn't practice, herself, but there was something familiar and comfortable in what he was talking about. She nodded a bit, looked down at the concrete between their feet for a moment, and then back up and around the gathering.

"Hey, Ashley," she said, looking to the friend-of-a-friend for whom she had a growing respect. The look was a little wary, or perhaps it was just that they kept running into each other just before things went boom (or turned to chocolate).

"I didn't have a chance to study when I was in China," she admits to Charlie, so that there wouldn't be any expectations that she knew more than she did. "But have wanted to. I think it's a beautiful study." The way she said it was somehow resonant.

Emily's fingers released her locket, leaving it shiny and unobfuscated.

[Wharil Choc]
"You're....one of the Wa--"

Wharil caught himself there. Visibly so. His lips formed a sudden line as he swallowed the words before he could speak them, and his eyes came back to settle on Charlie.

"I mean...My name's Will."

And here, he turns to Emily, handing her back her notebook with a smile. She may want to write this down.

"This is Emily."

And yet another had joined their number. Wharil's smile grew even brighter as the Hermetic joined them.

"Ah. Hey Ashley."

[Ashley McGowen]
Wharil's smile is returned in a quick flash of teeth that borders on being bright. The Hermetic looks, if not back to normal, at least better - or at the very least she appears to have gotten adequate sleep last night and looks like she's eaten sometime in the past twenty four hours. She moves in to join the little group, standing with Wharil to her left and the other two in view of her right eye.

"Hey, Charlie, Emily," she says, with a nod toward the other two. They're talking about China, about Zen energies. Ashley's heard this from Charlie before, argued with him about it; the two really are on opposite ends of the Awakened spectrum in many ways.

As yet, though, she doesn't have anything to interject, so she just listens, adjusting the grocery bag on her hip.

[Charlie McGee]
"I'm Charlie."

He nods to Wharil, his eyes flitting back to Emily and he gave a shrug.

"I never went to China...hell, never studied under anyone from China. My first teacher I think was Vietnamese and my other sensei was in San Francisco...he was Japanese though. But we sorta blend terms from time to time or can't make any new ones I guess. Traditions get muddled now and then as well as catch-phrases to envelop something. I just call it what they called it...well..no...my sensei specifically called it ki. But you get the idea."

He glanced to Ashley and gave a nod up in greeting, flashing a smile before he looked to the new faces.

[Emily Littleton]
"Sorry about the other night," she said to Ashley, without really elaborating on what she apologizing for. The other two could wonder, ask, or simply assume it away if they wanted to.

Emily glanced at the notebook Wharil handed her, and then tucked it under her arm again. If he'd expected her to scribble anything down just now he might be disappointed. She was far more interested in the conversation at hand than being anyone's scribe. And they were keeping it a casual exchange, a handing off of notes or study guides or something, between two similarly-minded folk.

Perhaps the true challenge here was to not draw the interest of the other Awakeneds. Though the four of them hardly looked like normal bedfellows now, huddled near the great arched mirror to the skies.

"Yeah, I think I do..." this much was for Charlie. And Emily mirrored his shrug. She was curious about him, but kept it a little beneath the surface. "And it's nice to meet you," she added a bit belatedly, but warmly.

[Ashley McGowen]
"That's all right, you didn't miss much," she tells Emily, and then a grimace flits across the Hermetic's face. "I had to tell Henri about Dylan. I thought she was going to club my face off with that spanner she carries in her belt, she kept waving it in my face."

She ought to look for Henri, really. She'd expected the girl to come back for her stuff by now, which was the entire point of holding the Dill-o-vac hostage, but she hasn't. She raises a hand to the back of her neck, frowning and trying to focus on the more pleasant train of conversation.

[Emily Littleton]
Dylan.

At that name, the Orphan's shoulders tensed a little. The corners of her mouth and eyes grew taut. It was a subtle thing, but all too apparent to anyone who could read her (or others) well.

"Ah... How is..." She stopped. Emily wasn't quite sure how to ask what she wanted to know. "Is he better?" she asked, instead of the more appropriate, less socially acceptable query.

[Wharil Choc]
"WOAH!" He exclaims suddenly, a vast diparture from his previously calm, pleased with the world demeanor.

"You told Henri? She couldn't have taken that well. What did you tell her exactly?"

[Charlie McGee]
Charlie arched a pierced brow but just sat back...most of their faces were clear as day to him...the Akashic was a gifted empath. So he just stayed quiet...interrupting wouldn't be prudent.

[Emily Littleton]
So, no. He clearly wasn't better.

"I'm assuming the directed course of action is still duck-and-run if I see him?" she asked, matter of factly. A little too coldly. Emily pulled her hands out of her pockets and wrapped them around the strap of her messenger bag. She shifted her weight from foot to foot until she settled again.

Uneasy.

[Ashley McGowen]
"He's not better," she tells Emily, following the statement with a slight shake of the head and an expression that indicates that he probably won't be, either.

At Wharil's exclamation she turns her head to look up at him, frowning. "I told her what happened, and she started telling me that you guys must have been lying to me. Then she called -me- a liar and tried to run off to go and look for him. I tried to stop her, but she got away from me. I'd sort of expected her to come to her senses and come looking for her stuff, since I have it, but she hasn't, so I'll probably...well, I want to try and hunt her down before she gets herself killed chasing the Marauder."

[Wharil Choc]
"Shit. Dylan was her best friend. I gotta...I gotta go. I gotta look into this."

He shifts uncomfortably for a moment, looking at the three of them.

"Alright. Charlie. It was really nice meeting you. I wish we could continue this conversation but...duty calls." The man gets a curt smile that doesn't quite meet his eyes, and brief nod of the head.

"Emily. Amazing work. You've got a real good grasp on the surface of things. Keep it up. I'll be in touch soon.

"Ashley...Ash. Oh hell. Those guys? From the house? I've got some information you might want to hear. I'll give you a call soon.

And he seems to address the group in general as he waves a hand over his shoulder while stepping away.

"Be safe. All of you."