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When you're in a new city -- or home again, home again in the one you grew up in but haven't been back to in several years -- you need to center yourself. To walk the city, to be where you are. And so it is, very late at night, that a woman in her mid-thirties walks through Philadelphia by herself. Who the fuck knows what neighborhood she's in? She hasn't been paying attention. She's wearing a knit beanie pulled down over her head, her frizzy hair sticking out from under it and falling over the collar of her brown leather jacket. The guttering street lights play over her, and her beat-up leather boots crunch, squish, crunch in the icy refrozen snow and squish in the bits where the ice on the sidewalk has melted and remelted it. One gloved hand curls around a vape pen, which she hits every so often, blowing a cloud of pungently-scented vapor out the corner of her mouth.
Cops don't bother her. They're not anywhere near here right now. She's just walking.
It's at this perfectly fine point in Yael's evening that a sensation returns that is annoyingly familiar, even powerfully nostalgic. For a fraction of a second a particular feeling returns, one that's considered to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most mages: the feeling of the very moment when they, themselves, signed their Watchtower and became Awakened.
It comes, and then it goes just as quickly.
Then it's followed by a massive surge of peripheral sight for both Time and Fate, and then there's another woman wearing sandals and hand woven clothing that is definitely neither typically seen on people wandering around in the modern world, nor appropriate for weather that is decidedly colder than some climates.
Said woman takes a few steps, slowly as the flare of magic around her subsides, and then slowly comes to a stop and looks around her with an expression of completely incomprehension. Oh yeah, and she's holding a flint knife in her hand, which is the kind of thing that draws attention. Even to people who can't immediately tell it's a soul stone.
So at first, to be totally honest, Yael kinda thinks that maybe she had something dropped in her drink earlier, and maybe when she left the bar, the cold air started making the acid hit slower, and that's why it's only kicking in now. That makes as much sense as what happens next, after all.
She turns around in place, shoving the vape pen back in her pocket, and when the woman pops out of fucking nowhere, Yael splutters, "Oh Jesus fucked a pony, what the shit?" and one of her gloved hands thunks its palm against her beanie-covered forehead. She takes a look left, then right, and mutters, "Cool, fucking great, of course that's where I needed to be right now, fuck my ass sideways and call me princess," before putting on a big, awkward smile and moving at that sort of very fast, very cautious walk that people use when they're trying to go as fast as possible and not also fall on their ass in the snow. "Uh, hey! How are ya, friend? Good to see you, I didn't think you'd, uh, leave the costume party like that... " not like there's anyone around to hear her rough-edged voice making up lies just in case someone is around.
The woman with the knife, who is turning in a slow, slow circle and honestly looking a bit like someone who has taken all the drugs Yael was just wondering about, stops when she hears someone addressing her and turns to look at the stranger. Her dark eyes are wide with something that looks more than a little bit like panic and utter incomprehension mixed together, and she seems to realize at that moment that she's holding a knife, which she brings up between them. Somehow, that realization also seems to fill her with new confidence, and the panic subsides as her eyes focus on Yael and narrow.
She says something in a language that might have a few familiar characteristics to Yael, some distant connections to Hebrew, but it's definitely not Hebrew, and none of the words are remotely familiar, just a few of the sounds. She gets through maybe a sentence before pausing and saying, "and how do I understand it?" in English. "How do I speak it?"
Which is when a car comes rolling by through the intersection at the end of the block, paying no attention to them, and the point of her flint dagger points in that direction, instead. "And what the fuck was that?" she asks.
She stares at the woman with the knife and doesn't get very much closer -- she's got about an arm's length of space between her outstretched hands, palms open and towards the woman who is incredibly underdressed for the weather -- just sort of stands there, leaned a little forward in that 'no one's going to hurt you, please put down the weapon' stance which is pretty universally understood. "Uhh... " At first Yael just shakes her head, and offers a simple Hebrew word, one that might be close to something Tsara knows, "Ma'im?" Water? Just looking for a common thread.
And before she can even pull up Universal Language, Tsara starts speaking English, and she tilts her head a little to the side. "Yeah, okay, this... this is top-5 weird," she mutters to herself, and then turns her head, looking towards the intersection. "That's... it's a car. It's a car. You know, uh, a, uh, a vehicle, wagon, moves people around? Are you okay? Did someone spike your drink?" Yeah, that's why she appeared out of nowhere.
Not a threat. Okay. Tsara slowly lowers the knife again, still clearly a bit perplexed about what's going on here. Who wouldn't be? "Top five?" she asks with an extreme case of incredulity. "Five?" she asks again. She blinks a couple of times, holds up one hand with her fingers spread out, and asks, "that's this amount, right?" She says a word in that not-Hebrew language again, one that sounds vaguely like at some point it could have evolved into khamesh. "No, this is at least top three, for me."
Then there's the idea that someone might have spiked her drink, and for some reason that seems to actually put her more at ease. "Oh that fucking bastard. I bet he did. That would explain a lot. That sheep fucker."
She tips her head left and right, gesturing around herself a little while still keeping both hands perfectly visible, and offers, "This is a very weird city, so, yeah, top five. Where in the top five, I don't know yet, the night is young." Yael straightens up a little bit. "Yeah, yeah, that's five." English, then Hebrew. She takes a very cautious step towards Tsara. "Listen, uh. Whoever the sheep-fucker is, it's really cold out, and you, you're not really dressed for the weather. Let's, like, call a ride, get somewhere warmer, get some food, and then figure out, like, where you belong, okay?"
"This is a city?" Tsara asks with another look around her. "He told me that he'd take me to Çatalhöyük some day, not that the day ever fucking came, did it? But this isn't at all like he described." She looks at Yael again, seems to make a decision, and then slides the flint blade into the leather belt cinching the waist of her tunic, which looks a bit like it might be linen? It's woven from bast fibers, and the quality of the work is fantastic. "Why is it so cold, anyway?" she says as the reality of the chill starts to set in, and she wraps her arms around herself the best she can. "My tits are going to freeze off."
"Yeah, this is Philadelphia. Which is... I don't even know where you're from, but -- yeah, this is winter here, sorry, it sucks, we're gonna... " She looks up and down the street. "You know, fuck this, it'll take forever to get an Uber." There's a side glance when she mentions her tits freezing off, and then a winning smile from Yael. "Now that would be a true loss to humanity, so we'd better make sure that doesn't happen, hunh? Let's, uh... if we can just... head a little bit this way?" There's a dumpster about half a block away which makes for both a good windblock and a pretty good place to stand behind and open a portal. "I can get us out of the cold."
A beat. "My name's Yael. Or Devorah bat Miriam, if we're in Temple, which we are not. So call me Yael." Another beat. "Come on, it's fucking freezing."
"Philadelphia?" Tsara asks with a thoughtful frown. "I've never heard of that one. Where is it? Are we in the mountains?" So much of what Yael says doesn't make any sense to her, like what's an Uber? Who even knows. But enough of it does, for some reason, that she follows along. She looks a bit suspiciously at Yael, like this might still be some kind of trick, but she's good enough at reading people that she doesn't actually think it is.
"Yael it is. I'm Tsara," she says.
"No, no, no. The mountains are... " Yael gestures vaguely northward. "About 60 miles that way? I don't know." She leads the way, and there's a shimmer of peripheral Mage Sight as she looks up and around, extending her sight and her senses so she can make sure there's nobody watching. "A ways off. This is just, uh, probably further north than you're used to being. And ... I'm guessing way, way further west." She rubs her hands over her face, shakes her head. "Tsara." Opening her mouth, she closes it again. No need to say 'hey do you know that your name also means "leprosy" in Hebrew these days' because... that's a far bigger conversation than she can have right now. All of the other conversations that have to come first are way more important. "Nice to meet ya." There. That'll do.
Her hands fold and unfold, fingers forming a mudra, and a portal opens. "Come on. Quick. I don't wanna keep this open long." She steps through first.
Her Awakening deciding to put knowledge of English into her head? Sure, why not. That might as well happen. But apparently the supernal didn't feel the need to do things like fill in context for words that she didn't know before. So miles? Miles means nothing to her. How far is that a mile? Who knows. Not Tsara!
"Nice to meet you, too. I..." The words cut off when the portal opens. "Yeah, definitely drugs. Or I'm dead. Is this the afterlife?" She doesn't actually sound like she's too worried by that idea, and just steps through the portal after Yael.
"You are not, fortunately or unfortunately, that's your call, dead. And! Good news, you are now more likely to stay that way." Yael steps off to one side in the dimly-lit room into which they have both stepped, and the portal closes behind them, leaving the salt and slush and cold behind. The portal has opened to just inside the doorway of a neat little suite-style hotel room. The lights are off, which means there are emergency lights across the room, giving the room a low little glow. "This is my hotel room. I don't, uh, really live anywhere right now, sort of between places, but, you know. There are places to sleep and there's food and water, et cetera."
One hand reaches out to flip the switch on the wall, illuminating the room with low, golden light. Yael doesn't -- apparently -- care for bright lights in her living area, so everything is on the 'evening' setting. There's a living room area directly ahead, a kitchenette off to the right. To the left, a half-open door leads to the suite's bedroom and en-suite bathroom, but the lights in that room are off.
Yael leans down to unzip the insides of her boots and step out of them, the better to leave the slush at the door. "You hungry?" she asks. A proper Jewish question, when one has guests.
Tsara had better be ready for her mind to absolutely blown on a routine basis, starting now. The warmth of the hotel room itself isn't that incomprehensible, since she's familiar with things like fire, but there are plenty of details about the room itself that are pretty marvelous. Like flipping a switch and the lights just turning on, for one thing. But also, by comparison, so much of the rooms contents are casual displays of enormous wealth to her eyes. She's pretty good at not showing in her expression how boggled her mind is, and the assumptions that all of it is causing her to have about Yael and her status, but pretty good doesn't mean she's perfect at it.
"Wow, okay," she says after looking around. "Your hotel room. What's 'hotel'? Apparently if I magically learn a language, I don't just know what every word means, even if I know what the word is. It's a little strange." She turns in a slow circle, looking at everything again, before stopping that rotation while facing in Yael's direction. "I am hungry, now that I think about it. I just wasn't thinking about it because..." her hand waves at everything.
"Who are you, anyway? I mean, I know you're Yael, you told me that. But to live somewhere like this, it seems like you must be someone important, and I'm sorry I'm not familiar with your name."
She laughs a little bit at that. "No, no, I... I... No, I am not important," and Yael shakes her head, shucking off her coat and hanging it up on a hook just inside the door. "I am just... some... lady. Granted, some lady who is also able to do magic, but, you know, I'm just -- I have a little money, but I am not important or rich." She gestures around the room with one hand. "Make yourself at home. Take your shoes off, grab a blanket, warm up."
"Okay, so, where are you from? And maybe... when are you from?" Yael laughs a little wryly at that, padding sock-footed into the kitchen to start rummaging around in the fridge. Yet another marvel: the refrigerator! She drags out cheese, dates, apples, and grapes, then grabs a cutting board and a knife and starts cutting things up. This, at least, should be vaguely familiar, right? Good thing the Acanthus just happened to feel like eating cheese and fruit like some sort of king from another time. "Oh, uh, a hotel is like... temporary lodgings. An inn, maybe? Someplace you stay when you're traveling or when something has happened to your house. I just moved back to Philly -- it's the short version of Philadelphia -- and, uh, I haven't really settled yet, you know?" As if she ever does.
Tsara has no coat to hang up, obviously, since that's part of why she was 'freezing her tits off' outside in the Philly winter. She does go over to the door to take her sandals off there, and then finds herself a blanket to wrap over her shoulders. When she rejoins Yael at the kitchenette she's running her fingers over the material of the blanket, silently marveling over the quality of the weave. And the materials. "Who made this?" she asks. "I might need to talk to them about what they'd want in exchange for one."
There are questions being asked of her too, though. "I'm from... kind of all over? My tribe moves around through the year, depending on what pastures are fresh when for the animals. I don't really know how to answer the question about when." She stops to search her brain for anything that might be a good basis for answering that and seems to come up temporarily blank, so she just shrugs, then gets distracted by the ridge. "You have a magic box for keeping things cold?" she asks, pauses, and then adds, "are you an Obrimos?"
"Uh. Oh, it belongs to the hotel. It's not mine. I guess they bought it, I don't know." She's sort of distracted by cutting up cheese, dates, slicing a couple of apples and cutting out the center of the fruit. "Hunh." That's in response to the 'where and when' thing.
"It's not magic, it's just a refrigerator. It -- " And now Yael stops. "Okay, either you are really making fun of me or something very fucking goofy is going on here. Look. I, uh. First of all, no, I am not an Obrimos, I'm an Acanthus, and I'm almost insulted, because I am the least Obrimos there is." She vaguely gestures with the knife in the air and then puts it down. "Okay, listen. I need to like. Look at you for a minute. Compare your temporal signature. Because I have -- questions -- and I need to figure a few things out so I can help you."
"Not magic..." Tsara looks at Yael like she's pretty sure Yael is the one messing with her. "Okay, okay, I didn't mean to insult you, just..." she gestures toward the box of cold. "They're the ones who usually do stuff like that, right? Moving energy around. Forces?" She shakes her head while shrugging her shoulders. "I only know what my husband has told me, which is... we've been married for twenty years now, there's been a lot of time for him to tell me a lot of things, even if sometimes getting straight answers out of him is like trying to get milk from a stone. He's a Mastigos," she says, like that's going to explain a lot. "And I'm a..." a moment of mental translation. "Sleepwalker?" she comes up with, like she's surprised she knows the word in that language.
And then a few things hits her. Reality catches up with her, and she leans against the counter to keep from falling over. "Oh fuck. I just..." she looks back toward where the portal was. "The Watchtower. Oh fuck. I'm an Acanthus!"
"Congratulations," says Yael in a very distracted fashion, reaching into her pocket for a silver coin -- an old-fashioned silver half-dollar, which she flips in her hand over and over again like a nervous tic. "I mean, genuinely, congratulations, but hold that thought."
There's a flare of Time Magic on Tsara's peripheral Mage Sight, and then a second one, and then Yael's eyes get really, really wide, and her knees go out from under her, and she's just sort of sitting on the floor. "... the fuck?"
Sensing the use of magic around her is still kind of new as an actual experience, but she has been told about it, and it only drives home for her the fact that she is a mage now herself. She's kind of absorbing all of that herself when Yael's own revelation drives her to her knees, and draws Tsara back to the present. "What?" she asks, having no idea what this particular reaction from Yael might be about. "I mean, that's how I've felt about nearly everything for the last however long since I got here, but this all seems like it's pretty familiar for you."
"No, uh," Yael says from the floor, sort of vaguely. "Listen, I... " she flips the silver coin in her left hand, tosses it to her right, and then walks it around her fingers lazily. She's thinking, clearly. "So I thought, maybe you had some sort of -- Time-based Awakening, you're an Acanthus, what you were speaking is a little bit like Hebrew, but not exactly, so I said, okay, what's your temporal signature, let's check that, right?" She slowly picks herself up from the floor, tucking her coin back into her hip pocket. "But of course, you match the here and now, right? Because whatever happened with your Awakening, it... brought you to here. So now here is your ... home portion of time, I guess, is the best way to say it."
"But your sandals... " She rests a hand on the counter, gesturing towards the door. "Your sandals are 8200 years old."
How can Tsara even react to a lot of this except for trying to cover up her near incomprehension of pretty much everything Yael is saying? So that's what she does: her best at pretending like she knows what Yael is talking about. Fortunately or unfortunately, her best at that is quite good. "Well," she says, "of course they are. They came from 8200 years ago." Never mind that she doesn't actually know what that means, exactly. She comes from a time period when people hadn't yet invented actual numerical signs, and pretty much never even had reason to count as high as 8200. "Is this kind of thing unusual? The only mage I've known previously was already Awakened when I met him."
Her hands are still shaking a little bit when she picks up the cutting board on which she's made an ad hoc charcuterie board and carries it over to the coffee table in the living room. "I've -- I've heard of one transportive Awakening, but that sent someone back in time about a week. Yes, this is... " Yael lets out a puff of breath. "Extremely unusual." She heads to the sink, next -- time for another minor marvel which she takes for granted, as she fills up a plastic pitcher with water and carries a pair of cups over to the table, too. "I'm sorry, did you not... did you not understand what I just said to you? You just got... slingshotted like... a hundred and thirty lifetimes into the future. And you're stuck here. This is home now."
She might have an amazing talent for hiding what she's feeling, but Tsara is also quite good at reading other people too, and she doesn't miss things like the shaking hands. Or the running water, which makes her stop leaning against a counter and comment, "holy shit!" A few steps take her over to where the faucet is just pouring out water like it's nothing. "Okay, this has to be magic," she says. "How does it... where is it coming from?"
The things that Yael is saying are being listened to and taken in, though. A lot of it just rolls off Tsara because it's just interesting information but nothing she needs to react to, as far as she's concerned. Until the end, where she stops marveling over the faucet and turns to look at Yael with a stunned look. She leans against the counter again, using one hand against it to keep from taking her own turn to fall on her ass. "Stuck here?" she asks. "What do you mean stuck here?"
"There are pipes," Yael begins, and waves a hand. "It's not magic. It's science." She rubs her hands over her face, and then puts her elbows on her knees.
"I mean... " And here she stops, and just looks at Tsara for a long time. "This is home now. I mean... that your husband is dead. And he's been dead for a long time. A long, long time. I mean that you can't go back. I'm sorry. No one can go back that far. Maybe an Archmaster, but... I never could." She drops her face into her hands, because that's a lot easier than looking at how someone reacts to news like that.
It's time for a face journey! Tsara is too stunned to school her expressions as well as she might in some other circumstances. Ones that don't involve her entire world being rocked to its core by implications she simply hadn't previously had the time or requisite frame of reference to understand. Despite her efforts, her hand slips off the counter and she collapses onto the floor in front of it. "But..." she says, even if she takes a bit more time to even find words to come after that. "I have to go back," she says, like that need on her part has any impact on the actual reality of the universe she's living in.
She just sits there with her head in her hands for a minute, not looking at Tsara. I was supposed to be done with this, she tells herself. She's told herself this many times. I'm all done with this. I'm done with having the Bad News conversations with new Lost. I'm done with being Responsible.
Well fucking guess what, bitch! Fate isn't done with you.
Picking her head up, she looks aside at Tsara, and then Yael ends up pushing herself off of the couch and crawling across to where Tsara is on the floor. Kneeling in front of her, she reaches to take both of the other Acanthus' hands. "I'm sorry. You can't. If I could, I would do it. But it's -- "
"I mean, an hour, maybe even part of a day? Sure. I can do that easy." A little bobbing of her head, and she amends, "I mean, relatively. For me. You know." Her awkward words trail off into silence. "I'm sorry."
Tsara allows her hands to be taken. She's still so entwined in trying to process all this information that even if she wanted to avoid that, she probably wouldn't have had the presence of mind to figure out how. There's a good thirty seconds of her just sitting there, not really looking at Yael, trying to figure out how best to react to all of this. What the right move is for her. What expectations there might be for the way someone will react to it all.
Whatever conclusions her mind finally arrives on, the way she reacts to them is to slowly get her expression under control again and bring her eyes back into focus on Yael. She sits up straighter, lifts her chin slightly, and says with a bold self-assurance that appears quite real, whether it is or not, "at least I'll be well rid of that asshole."
Yael's hands are warm, and her patience is great, even if her knee pops and cracks when she shifts position. When Tsara comes to her conclusion, she responds with a crooked smile. "I do not think that you could possibly be more rid of 'that asshole' if you tried." Her hands squeeze gently. "A hundred and thirty generations ago. Really. Like, you did it. Mazel tov." Another squeeze. "Come on. Let's get some food in you."
Tsara's short laugh is bitter and brittle, but it's a laugh. Kind of. "Good riddance to him," she says, before then taking in a deep breath and screaming at the top of her lungs, which the other residents of the hotel probably don't appreciate, but she doesn't even know they there. "HAVE FUN WITH YOUR PETTY TYRANNY ALL BY YOURSELF, ASSHOLE!"
Once that's out of her she sighs the rest of her breath out. "I just hope that my oldest makes sure the others grow up to hate the bastard as much as we do."
"Hey, hey, there are other people, like, on the other side of that wall." Another squeeze of her hands on Tsara's, and then she gets up from her crouch, which means she has to let go. "I'm not saying don't let your feelings out, just, you know, slightly more quietly." She flashes Tsara another one of those lopsided grins, and pushes her frizzy hair back over her shoulders. "Well, good news. You are here in the land of clean water on demand and hot baths whenever you want them, and he... is dead."
The fingerguns are a little awkward, given she just talked about her kids. "I'm sure your oldest did." Yael reaches a hand down to help her up. "I'm serious, though. Come drink some water, eat some food. It'll balance you out a little."
Tsara takes the offered hand and helps herself to her feet, never having the good graces to even look slightly guilty about the screaming in a hotel. "Did," she says after Yael does, and the fact all the people she knew are dead and not just still alive somewhere she can't get to starts really sinking in. It still doesn't get as much reaction from her as it seems like it might, or should. "Did," she says again. "I don't even know what to say about that. Just sitting down for a meal seems like a strange thing to do, but I'm so hungry. So I guess let's it."
"I can't help you fix any of the things that are really going to hit you in the back of the head later, or send you home, or... anything. But what I can do is give you some food." After helping her up, Yael just sort of vaguely shrugs, spreading her hands out to the side. "So that's what I'm going to do. You can eat, get cleaned up, I'll figure out how to get you some clean clothes, wash the ones you came here in, and you can get some sleep. And after that, we'll figure out what to do next."
"At some point it will probably start feeling like this is all real, and not just a really elaborate dream or more of the..." One of her hands waves through the air. "Whatever you would call the weird things that I saw seeing while I was Awakening. Is it normal to keep seeing weird things afterward? Maybe that's what this is." She doesn't sound like she believes it, though. "Things will start hitting me eventually, I'm sure. But for now, yes, eating. And then cleaning. How far is the nearest water from here? Or do you bathe with that?" she points at the faucet.
She settles down on the couch and tucks one of her feet underneath her butt. "Mystery Play," Yael supplies when Tsara waves her hand through the air. She reaches for cheese, takes a bit of it and one of the little slices of cocktail bread, then puts mustard on the bread and the cheese on top of it. "Oh. No, there's -- oh man. You're gonna love the shower." Yael grins broadly at that. "Food first." And hush, lesbian hindbrain. Shh. Don't be rude.
"Mystery Play," repeats Tsara as she comes over to join Yael for sitting down and eating food. She's probably just going to end up assuming this is the way everyone in this time sits down to eat normally, but one thing at a time! She does her best to copy the way that Yael is doing things, but takes carefully tentative bites of the food because she has no idea what things are going to taste like. She's going to make an experience of it. "Huh," she says. "This is good. What is it all? And... shower? Is it going to rain, or something?"
"This is cheese. Swiss cheese. That stuff there, the kinda crumbly stuff, that's goat cheese. Swiss is -- a kind of people, from Switzerland, but the cheese is made from cow's milk. The orange cheese is called cheddar, I dunno why they call it that. Mustard, the yellow-brown stuff, is made by grinding up mustard seeds, and then the fruits are dates, grapes, and apples." She points to each in turn. "And this stuff is pumpernickel bread. I don't know what they make it out of so it's the darker color, but I eat a lot of it, it's my favorite." She takes a slice of cheddar, stacks it up with a slice of apple, and eats it, then realizes she hasn't poured water, and pours a glass for each of them. It's cold and clear, tastes slightly sweet.
A soft laugh, there. "Kind of, yeah, but." Yael gestures towards the sink. "So, that comes from pipes, it's pumped up from a communal water supply. There's the same thing in the bathroom, except it goes to a thing that is just for washing yourself off with, and there's a heater that makes it so it can also be warm. It's... pretty great, honestly. We've only had stuff like that in a widespread system for like a hundred and fifty years, but there have been other ways of doing it for hundreds of years. Running water has been the biggest reducer of disease, honestly, and a lot of us take it for granted."
"I thought this tasted a bit like mustard seeds," Tsara says. "I've never had them prepared this way, though. I've had grapes and dates before, too. I've never heard of apples." She hasn't finished eating all of the bit of bread and cheese and mustard, but she reaches for some of the apple and takes a bite of that. Just a little nibble, finding out if she likes it. Which she does. "Those are good!" she says. The apple goes on the rest of the bread, and all of it into her mouth. "At least you have good food here," she says around her full mouth.
All the details about how the plumbing works and all go kind of over her head. She doesn't seem disinterested, or like she's not capable of learning this stuff, she just has no context, so the reality of a lot of it hasn't really dawned on her. It will probably be a lot more interesting once she actually sees some of the things. "Water helps with diseases?" she asks. "More than anything else? How so?" she asks like this topic interests her.
A soft laugh, there, at the bit about never having even heard of apples. "That's kind of funny in a way that it would take me a very long time to explain, but I will at some point." She makes another stack of food -- goat cheese and dates, this time, smushing some goat cheese into the center of the dried fruit -- and eats it. "We have an unspeakable amount of food, in so many varieties," Yael laughs. "This is the stuff that I figured would probably be like, best for your stomach. Closest to things you've already eaten."
She pauses, trying to think of how to explain it. "Most diseases are caused by bacteria or viruses. Living things too small to see with the naked eye. We have devices that let us see them now, or you can use Life magic to perceive them. The two things that reduced disease more than anything else are running water, so you can wash your hands and wash cuts and things so that they stay clean and don't get those tiny creatures into them, and antibiotics, medicines to take which kill the bacteria. There's also vaccines, which act like shields inside your body for certain diseases. It's all very complicated and I understand most of it because I'm pretty good with Life magic, not because I'm good with science. It's pretty basic education for people now, that, but... not everybody learns it." A sour half-smile there.
"Oh. Those!" Tsara says with a laugh. "Yes, yes, I understand why that would help. I've never been able to actually see or sense those... bacteria and viruses? But my husband knows Life. Knew Life. He told me that they existed. I did make sure to..." she shakes her head. "Never mind. The point is, I kind of thought he was full of shit, like he sometimes was about things. Interesting that was true." She stops in the midst of preparing another bite of food. "Will I be able to learn Life magic now?"
Yael nods along with the conversation as Tsara pieces things together from her own experiences. A raised eyebrow and a prompting little look aside when the newly-Awakened cuts off the sentence, but she doesn't push. What she says, she'll say in her own time, at her own pace. "Well, now you can figure out for yourself what is true and what isn't, and you're not dependent on him for seeing past the Lie." A little gesture of one hand. "You can learn any magic you goddamn want to."
Tsara seems to be one of those people who is very much in tune with others, since she picks up on the raised eyebrow and the look and shrugs. "I was just about to go off into the weeds about treating sicknesses," she says. "It wasn't important." She eats another bite of food and looks thoughtfully off across the room. First at nothing, and then at specific things, all so unfamiliar to her. "Can I learn to protect my thoughts, so that nobody can change them?" She asks, just so very casual. Who wouldn't wonder about that as one of the first things they want to do when they get access to magic? Nothing to see here.
"You know, I'm getting the feeling that it's very lucky for that dude that he has been dead for several millennia," Yael responds, making herself another date filled with goat cheese and then eating it, watching Tsara's face very closely. "Because the change in the balance of power in that particular equation would not have worked out well for him. And this, by the way, is why we are not meant to be alone, us Awakened. It becomes very easy to become a real fucking asshole."
"Who?" Tsara asks with absolute innocence. She doesn't even seem to be pretending like she doesn't know what Yael means, she just seems to have no idea. In all ways, that is, except the faint, wicked little smile she's wearing that suggests maybe Yael is more right than she knows about how lucky that dude really is. "Oh, do you mean my husband? No, certainly I couldn't have meant him. He's the savior of our tribe, and would never do wrong by any of us." She picks up the water to take a sip, and then ends up being surprised by the water. "It's so clean," she exclaims. "Do you just always have water this clean ready by..." she mimes the handle for the faucet in the kitchen, so apparently she picked up on how that worked.
She snorts, and that snort resolves into a little chuckle. "Oh, I'm sure. Like I said. We're not meant to be the only one of us around. It causes Fucking Problems." Yael lets out a breath at that last sentence. "Well. Mostly. It can depend on where you are. Like." A moment's pause. "People are shitty to other people, and even in this age of fucking miracles we have people who keep the better miracles for themselves. People who are poor or who don't look like the ruling class of people often have access to shittier water, or no running water at all. It's getting less and less prevalent but... "
Tsara has a little more of the food while Yael's talking, which she seems to be diving into like she doesn't know for sure whether there might be time ahead where there's not enough, and she'll regret having wasted anything now. She's a pretty skinny lady, though with more muscle on her than most modern women with her build. "I've seen how shitty people can be to each other," she agrees. "People killing each over everything, and nothing. Stealing, lying... I'm not surprised that hasn't changed."
"The best news in the world is that people are still people. The worst news in the world... " Yael waves a hand in the air as if gesturing to literally everything, "... people are still people." She pauses, adding, "Eat until you're not hungry. We can put anything we don't finish in the fridge and eat it later. I promise, there will always be food, here." There's something in the way she says it that says she has at some point been really hungry.
"I notice you didn't promise I'll always have access to it," Tsara says with a cautious tone, and a cautioning one. It's the tone of a woman used not being taken as seriously as she should be, and who has had to warn people too many times not to join the list of people who regretted it. "For now, though, you haven't given me any reason not to trust you. You seem to mean I'll have access to for a while, at least."
She looks out of the corner of her eyes. "From now on, I'm pretty sure you'll have access to it, but you definitely will not go hungry as long as I am around and capable of doing anything about it." And there is the wording of an Acanthus who has had to think about how to phrase things many and many a time. "It's kind of a thing. I don't let people go hungry."
"Thank you, then. I wouldn't let anyone go hungry if I had any say in it, either," Tsara says, and some of the set of her shoulder relaxes, as does her tone. "I'm looking forward to trying some of the other things this place has to eat, but I can't find any fault with the idea of starting me out with things that are more like what I've had at home." She reaches for another piece of the bread. "How do you get this so..." she makes a gesture, like something expanding, bouncily, and says a word in that language that sounds like it might be Hebrew's great, great, great grandparent.
"Oh, trust me, once I'm sure your stomach can handle all of the grease and salt, we're going on a whole tour of the food carts of Philly. There are a million things you've never tried, and I am absolutely here for that journey of discovery." A broad grin plays across her face. Her forehead wrinkles up a little bit. "Um. I don't know. Something to do with the leavening. My mom does a lot more baking of bread than I do, she makes the challah for Shabbat and all, when I go by."
And then she pauses. "Wait. you don't -- like, do you raise your bread? With yeast and all?"
"You know that was a whole bunch of words that mean basically nothing to me, right?" Tsara says as she finishes another mouthful of the food, then lays back with the glass of water in her hand and just stares at it as she rotates it slowly in her hands. "A lot like however you made this. Or whoever made it did so. It looks like it should just break in my hands, like a bubble." She looks up. "Yeast?" she asks.
"Yeast is a tiny little ... like, invisible to the naked eye kind of fungus... thing... that blows around on the wind. It's a specific, uh, kind of mold, I think. But, if you use it correctly, what it does, right, is it eats up the sugar in the flour of your bread, and you leave it to sit for just long enough, and... " Yael starts to laugh a little bit. "Okay, so what happens is, and I swear that I am not making fun of you with this. Is that the yeast eats the sugar, and after it eats the sugar, the, uh, byproduct of it eating the sugar is gas. And that gas, coming from the yeast, basically, uh, yeast farts, forms bubbles in the bread dough. And that is called leavening, or, uh, making your bread rise."
"Holy shit, if you don't know about yeast and rising bread, then... " Yael sits up a little, and then slowly leans back against the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling. "Boy. Passover is going to be a fucking trip this year."
Tsara eyes the bread a little suspiciously now. "You make it puff up like that by putting mold in and letting the mold fart in your bread?" she asks, having had no trouble putting those pieces all together. People from thousands of years ago weren't dumb, and she's definitely demonstrating that point. They just don't have as many millennia of people putting pieces together and figuring things out to build their self-importance off of. "I can't really argue with the results, it just sounds more than a little strange. It doesn't make the bread moldy, though?"
Then back to things she has no context for, and she just shakes her head. "I don't know what Passover is. Where do you go for that, and what does the trip have to do with rising bread?"
She rubs a hand over her face. "Yeah, like, you can buy the dried-out yeast, or you can culture it yourself." Yael isn't talking to Tsara like she's stupid or can't follow, this just isn't Yael's forte, teaching stuff about science. "No, no, because, like... when you bake the bread, it kills the yeast. In fact, if you let the bread get too hot while it's rising, or set up your yeast culture with water that's too hot, you'll kill the yeast, and the bread won't rise." A pause. "Hunh. I guess a bunch of that shit did stick in my head."
As if she doesn't already know that she doesn't forget fucking anything. "So, Passover... is. At some point between when you were born and now -- like, a few thousand years before now and a while after you -- the Jews -- the Hebrews, the Israelites, take your pick, we get stuck in Egypt -- in Mizrayim -- for a while as slaves. It's not a good time." The Jewish gift for understatement. "Forced labor, attempts at genocide. This happens to us quite a bit, actually, it's very annoying." Again with the understatement. "But then there's this kid who gets born and he and his brother and sister lead everybody out of Egypt, only we have to leave so fast, we don't have time to wait for the bread to rise. Or at least that's the story. So we eat only unleavened bread for eight days, and we call it Passover, because when HaShem did rotten things to the Egyptians so that Pharoah would let us leave, he passed us over. We sit down, we eat food, we tell the story, we drink a lot of wine. But if you're from before leavened bread, then, you know. By definition, this happened after you. But before the you now. After... you... before... now." A wave of her hand in the air. This kind of thing can give you a real headache.
Slow nods suggest Tsara understands what Yael is saying about all the bread baking stuff. "Yeah, that makes sense. Interesting. I wonder how someone first figured that out, if they can't see the yeast. Maybe by accident, if it's in the wind? Someone was making bread, and got called away, and the wind blew on it, and the bread puffed up, so they just started trying to get it to happen again?" She theorizes, but she has no way to know for sure, so she just shrugs and moves on.
"Yeah, as far as I know none of that stuff has happened yet. At least by my yet, from then. I know what you meant. It's hard to word it, but I understand what you're getting at with the time things. It still seems so weird. But I've never heard of any of the people you're talking about, or those places, or any of those stories." Funny enough, she has heard of places that are in Egypt, she just doesn't have any way of connecting the names of places she's heard of with the name "Egypt".
"That's pretty close to our best guess, yeah. Someone put some leftovers in a jar, and yeast, or someone got called away, and yeast. Like, you think about having kids underfoot, of course, and shit happens, life goes on all around you, the chickens get out, whatever." Yael explains, "I used to look after my great-aunt's farm. It's a long story." She says it like she spent weekends there occasionally, not like it took over her life for twenty years.
"I'm sure they all had different names, but yeah, basically. So. There's a lot of weird history-future-shit that I'm sure I'll be filling in. The basics, though, is: they tried to kill us, they failed, let's eat."
"Oh, yes, I'm very familiar with the way that life goes on, and shit happens. I like that phrase. Shit happens," Tsara says approvingly. "It's still so weird to just... know this language. So weird. All of this is so weird." She drinks more water, puts the glass down, and then rubs her eyes. "It's giving me a bit of a headache. But. Yes. They tried to kill us and failed? That's a familiar story. I think for most peoples that I've met. I can see why you would celebrate it with a feast."
She scratches her cheek. "Yeah, it's all pretty weird. And I guess I have to like, announce you to the Consilium and make sure no one fucks with you." Funny how talking about Passover makes Yael suddenly think 'hey, I have to protect this person who is probably proto-Jewish.' Funny about that. "Don't think about it too hard, we have plenty of time. The time thing, I mean. Anyway."
"So. You say 'for most peoples that you've met.' But, uh. The language that you keep switching into? It's kind of like... as far as I can tell... sort of a predecessor for what I speak. And... it hasn't really gotten easier for us. People will probably look at you and be like 'ah, yeah, she's Jewish.' So. Uh. Welcome? I guess?"
"What's the Consilium?" asks the ancient former-Sleepwalker, who has apparently never heard of such a thing. But, then, there are probably almost as many people in the Philly metro area as the entire world population at the time Tsara was born, so there are quite likely more mages in Philly than there were in the entire world in Tsara's time, spread out everywhere people were by then, and humanity had already spread to everywhere except some more remote islands. There wouldn't have been as much need for larger mage social structures. "And... I guess... thank you? I'm not sure how else to react to the idea that I'm likely to get mistaken as being part of a group of people I've never heard of."
"It's the name for the grouping of people like us, which was formed to keep us from going fucking batshit and using our magic in terrible ways, and also to protect us from the other Awakened which want to kill us, and additionally from regular human beings, who also want to kill us." She scratches her cheek. "Lots of wanting us dead going on from many angles here." Yael scratches her cheek. "What I'm saying is that you're likely to be mistaken for being mistaken for the group of people who most likely descended directly from you and yours."
"Is there anybody who isn't going to want to kill me in this time?" Tsara asks almost partly in jest. So far there's been a long list of people who are likely to want to! "It's starting to sound like I should be cautious any time I go outside. And maybe while I'm inside, too. You're not going to try to kill me, are you?" She suddenly flashes a wide grin. "I might be one of your ancestors. Maybe you should venerate me, instead."
She pauses, considering. "Actually, yea, there will be a lot of people." Here, Yael shrugs. She sits up again and reaches for a date, stuffing goat cheese into the center of it and then stuffing the bite into her mouth. "There are actually pretty cool people in this city. They have their issues, and you do have to be careful, Philly is pretty weird, but there are good people here." She's in the middle of putting together another date with goat cheese when Tsara grins at her and says that last bit, and there's a moment where -- if one watches carefully -- one can almost see Yael, behind her eyes, wrestling the lesbian gremlin that lives in her soul and telling it to sit down and shut the fuck up. It's right before she turns an awkward shade of red briefly, mutters, "Yeah, maybe," and shoves the date into her mouth.
Tsara is just going to have to wait and see when it comes to learning what people in Philly are like. And so many other things, really. She's in for a lot of surprises in the next long while. For now all she can do is shrug about the people thing, and then grin even wider, and much more mischievously, when Yael blushes. "I thought so," she says with a sudden laugh of delight. "Back when you mentioned that shower thing I thought I caught a hint of it. You're attracted to women, aren't you?" She just comes out and says it, like it's no big deal. "To me, aren't you?" she adds, her smile somehow getting even more impish.
There's no response to that, really, except, in the middle of stuffing more goat cheese into another date, for Yael to just sort of stare at Tsara like she's grown another head, and then to indicate by a surprisingly economical series of vague bits of hand waving, that this is not only true but so self-evidently true that the idea that this would not be true is, well. Just entirely unbelievable. Yes, the useless lesbian is attracted to the hot woman who literally just appeared out of the universe and basically fell in her lap. Also the sky is blue, water is wet, and the sun rises in the east.
Somehow Tsara seems to just understand all of that, but she does seem to be pretty perceptive when it comes to reading people. "Yeah, okay, fair. I would probably be attracted to me to, in these circumstances," she says with another laugh. "Is there someone out there who is going to end up being jealous and add themselves to the growing list of people who are out to kill me?" She looks around, like she's suddenly expecting someone to pop out at any moment now.
"In these circumstances? As opposed to?" That, at least, makes Yael laugh again. She brings a hand up and runs it through her shaggy red hair, pushing her curls back out of her face. Shaking her head, she reaches for another date, more cheese. Maybe if she just keeps putting food in her mouth, she won't be able to say anything stupid. "Nah. I've been kinda -- busy. Most of my life. And then I went through this whole 'I'm done with responsibility' thing and that meant not, like... owing anyone anything. So."
"I meant in your circumstances," Tsara corrects herself. "I mean, I guess that in most circumstances where I was someone other than me, meeting me? I probably would be attracted to myself. Unless I was a woman who wasn't attracted to other women." Then she thinks. "Or, just... anybody else who wasn't attracted to women, I guess? My real point is that I know that I'm good looking, that's not news to me. That has kind of been one of the blessings and the curses of my life, I suppose?"
Her smile turns a bit wry. "No responsibility. That must be nice. I would love to not have any responsibilities. Not to owe anybody anything. Which... I guess is probably the case now, isn't it? It's hard to owe anybody anything if nobody knows you exist."
As Tsara starts overcorrecting herself, and recorrecting herself, Yael's eyebrows rise, and the corner of her mouth twists up wryly. "The curse of being very good-looking. Well. I suppose we all have our burdens to carry," Yael offers, lifting her water glass up in salute. "Lucky for you, you carry it so well, hunh?"
Her smile fades a little bit at that last thing. "Yeah, well. That... is true, I suppose. I'm going to have to announce your Awakening to the Consilium, and people are going to want to poke and prod at you, because you, well. You're kind of a miracle."
Tsara laughs and says, "yeah, I suppose that's my burden to carry." Yes, she's well aware that she's good looking. Why should she pretend otherwise? "A miracle, though?" She scoffs a bit at that idea as she further relaxes into the cushions of the couch. "I'll let people poke and prod if they ask nicely enough, I suppose. I hope you don't mean, like... physically, though. And that you mean they'll ask a lot of questions, or something."
Another lopsided little smile, and then Yael winks at Tsara, apparently recovered enough to be able to sass again. "I mean, literally, yes. You have traveled further through time, via a transportive Awakening, than anyone else I've ever even heard of. You're here. You're not Abyss-tainted, you're not... hurt, you're not broken, you're Awake." She pauses, takes a swallow of her water, and sets the glass down on a coaster on the side table with a subtle click. "Look. All human beings are miracles. This is a fact. But you just went through something that is literally going to be unbelievable to people who deal with miracles every day."
"Well. Probably mostly not. But people are going to want to look at you with magic. To some extent to make sure you're okay, but also to like... try to figure out why you, and... why now, and why this, and why here. Just reading the notices in the Consilium? There's a lot going on right now."
"Great," Tsara says with grumbling irritation. "I'm going to end up with people coming from all over to gawk at me, aren't I? Like when a lamb is born with two heads, or something." She sighs. "I guess I should be used to it to some degree. My husband might have been the one with greater magic, but I was the one whose magic could be used in front of ordinary people without falling apart, so I was the one people most often came to if they wanted miracles." She flops her head to one side, making herself comfortable but peering at Yael. "Reading?" she asks. Because, yeah, that's another thing that hadn't been invented yet.
"Yeah, they're going to want to poke at you. But." Yael rubs a hand over her face. "Okay, so bear with me for a minute. Right now, you're recently-Awakened, so you're an Apprentice. Normally what happens is that you have a Master who is responsible for your education, until you know enough about how to be an Awakened that you're not going to fall face-first into breaking the laws and getting in trouble. But that also means no one is allowed to fuck with you without your teacher's say-so." Her tone says that she assumes that at least the master-apprentice relationship concept won't be too confusing to Tsara. "It means that like -- if I stand in for you at least until you find someone else, for example, or just ... get you sorted and on your feet -- then an offense against you is an offense against me."
"Uh. Yeah. We convey information by means of making marks on paper or on objects which translate to words. Putting down the marks is writing, looking at the marks and understanding what they mean is reading."
"Yeah, I get how that all works," Tsara says with a little wave of her hand. "Makes sense to me. What you're suggesting is that you should be my Master, at least for now?" she asks. "What's that going to entail for me? What kind of obligation would that put me under? I'm sure it's not something that people just do out of the goodness of their hearts, and that there's some expectation of reciprocation of some sort from the Apprentice, right?"
She wrinkles up her brow a bit. "Don't the marks rub off eventually, or something? I'm not sure I understand what the reasoning behind this process is."
A shrug from Yael. "I can't tell you what other people do, but all I want from you is for you to do your best not to get me into legal trouble. Don't pick fights, don't show off the shit you can do to people who aren't other ... supernatural people... just. Like. That's really all I want." She rubs a hand over her face. "To be clear, I don't actually want to have an apprentice, which has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with having thought I was out of the part of my life where I had to be responsible for other people. But like, I do want to protect you. And like, I have this whole... moral imperative thing. So. Here we are."
"Uh, I mean, eventually, sometimes, but we have things that were written down thousands and thousands of years ago which are still around." Yael laughs softly. "Well, the idea is that we are able to pass on information more easily. To talk and to discuss and to communicate things. Like, a lot of the stuff that I read and study was written two thousand years ago or more." She pushes herself up to her feet and goes to get a little scratch pad of the sort that hotels always have in the drawer by the phone, and a pen. "But also, sometimes, like, I just want to know what's in a bag of food, and I can read the ingredients and all." She comes to sit down next to Tsara, close but not too too close, uncaps the pen, and writes down 'Tsara' in plain block print. "So, uh, for example, this letter is the 'tuh' sound, and this thing that looks like a little snake is 'ssss', and then these letters, one of the sounds they make is 'a', and then this letter makes," and she half-growls, half jsut says 'rrrr'.
"So, in order... " she trails off, apparently expecting Tsara to follow along.
"Yeah, I get it, you don't want to be responsible for anyone. I don't want to be beholden to anyone. We've both had enough of those things to last us both a lifetime, it sounds like. I'm with you. So maybe we do this, but only to the minimum required level, and for the most part just get on with our lives?" Tsara suggests with a little smile. "I'll do my best not to get you into any trouble. Whatever that ends up meaning, I suppose."
And then they both get to be surprised by the fact that whatever process decided to put the concept of English into her head, it also decided that she should be able to read it, too. She looks at the writing and says, "yeah, it's my name." Like she has no idea how much work it usually is for people to learn how to read in the first place, even if most of the time these days they do it as kids and don't really end up thinking so much about the process. "It says Tsara," she says, her finger pointing to indicate the syllables.
A smile of relief slips across her face. "Exactly. I think that's a good idea. I don't want you to feel beholden to me." Don't make a dumb joke, Yael. It's doubly inappropriate while she's your apprentice. "Besides, it's inappropriate for me to flirt with an apprentice." That she says totally deadpan. There, she's communicated needful information and made a joke out of it.
Yael stares at Tsara for a moment, and then she asks, "Can you read this?" and writes Tsara in Hebrew script.
The joke just makes Tsara raise one eyebrow in a question that the expression says very loudly, even if she doesn't put it into words. Is that so? The eyebrow demands. Let's see how that works out for you if you're already having some trouble along those lines, the eyebrow says.
Then there's the Hebrew, and Tsara looks at, her brow pinches a bit as she thinks, and then she shakes her head. "No, that just looks like random lines to me, it doesn't mean anything."
Yael gives her a deadpan look and raises her eyebrow right back. Oh, great. Acanthus showdown. This is going to be a Thing, isn't it? But she just stares at Yael right back.
"Okay, so. This is Hebrew script. And that is what's called Latin lettering, it's what English -- the language we're speaking right now -- is written in. Hebrew is used for the language that evolved out of what you natively spoke. So. I don't know how, but you just... know how to read English, apparently, the way that you can just speak it. Because that -- " and she points to the Hebrew script -- "also says Tsara. And normally it takes a lot of learning and practice to learn to read, but uh, you just can."
She scribbles on the paper, I think that dates and goat cheese are delicious. Her handwriting is pretty clear, but a little wonky because she's writing on a little pad in one hand. "But to test that theory... " and she holds out the pad.
Once the eyebrow battle is concluded and they move on to more reading and writing stuff, Tsara turns her attention back to it with some curiosity. It's all new to her, and it's another one of those things that's so much bigger than she has context for that she can't be as excited by it as she should because she just don't understand all the ramifications.
That means it ends up being something to make jokes about, and to mess around about, because that's kind of the default way that she deals with everything, it seems. She looks at what Yael wrote and then gasps, like she's shocked by it. "Yael!" she exclaims, leaning back a little and looking utterly scandalized. "Why would you just come out and say something like that so bluntly? That's the kind of opinion that you should really keep to yourself. Or is that kind of thing just normal in your time?" If she really wanted to sell it maybe she could, but she's only taking that so far. "To do that kind of thing with dates and goat cheese!" She adds, just to make it clear she can actually read it, and is being silly about the whole thing instead. Acanthus!
She snorts. "All right, smartass," Yael answers, briefly flushing and then shaking her head. "Oh. I need you to pick -- at least temporarily -- a Shadow Name. I don't know if you're familiar with this, if your husband had one. You can change it later, but it would be inappropriate for me to refer to you by your given name when I'm like 'hey this is my apprentice'. A Shadow Name puts a little distance between you as a practictioner of magic and you as a mundane ... everyday... person. Mine is Alea, which is the knucklebone of an animal that dice were made of, and became the word for 'dice' in Latin, or a game with dice or a game of chance. So, like, hi, I'm an Acanthus, everything I do is by chance, yadda yadda."
Tsara laughs with enough delight that she actually claps her hands together and falls back into the couch cushions again. "You're so easy to get to blush," she says. Oh yeah, she's totally not going to abuse that knowledge, is she? Surely not. Another soft little chuckle comes out of her before she sits up a bit to consider the shadow name thing. Finally she just says, "Nitzia". She doesn't offer any kind of explanation for what it means or anything, and seems to have done so on purpose, if the impish little smile she's wearing is any indication. Not that someone couldn't probably use Universal Language or something to understand her meaning when she says it. "Do you do a lot of gambling?" she asks about Yael's own shadow name.
"Until I turn off my ability to blush if people push their luck," Yael drolls lazily, tipping her head to one side and sitting back a little from how close she'd been sitting to Tsara. That impish little smile has her not turning on Universal Language but taking her phone out of her pocket and googling it. "Flower bud?" she asks, as if confused why that causes that little smile. "Uh, sometimes. You have to be careful using magic in casinos. Some of them are owned by other supernaturals who do not like it so much when you walk away with all their money."
"You wouldn't do that," Tsara says with confidence. Not doubt that Yael can. Just confidence that she won't. "And... no. Not flower bud. I think your Hebrew language and mine are different." She scoots closer to try to see what Yael is looking at, though, because she has absolutely no familiarity with cell phones, and is curious why Yael thinks there are answers there. "What is that you're looking at?" she asks. Of course, whether Tsara is doing it on purpose or not, this kind of undoes the efforts to back up a little from how close Yael had been sitting. "And what's a casino?"
"I would if it ended up getting in the way of me looking after you, or if it might create the appearance of me being inappropriate with an apprentice," Yael answers, scratching her cheek absently. "Well, yeah, it is different, but the question is, how much." She turns her phone towards Yael. "It's my phone. Not magic, just science. I can communicate with a lot of people using the phone, or search for information. Looking at someone's phone screen without their permission is considered rude, but I don't mind."
"A casino is... a place people go specifically to gamble."
"Inappropriate?" Tsara asks, while reaching out toward the phone. Not to take it, just to touch it with one poking index finger and a curious expression. "How does that work? Can you show me?" Even when it's currently not doing anything, the thing is a pretty wildly unfamiliar object, and her fascination with it is probably pretty reasonable, even if she has no idea how it actually works, what it can do, and how much it's going to truly blow her mind.
She pauses, looking for a place to start her response. "It's inappropriate for me to be in a relationship with or be sexually involved with or whatever with an apprentice, as what's called a 'released', or 'adult', Awakened, especially with my own apprentice. It's... morally pretty similar to flirting with a child, because of the power difference between us. There's not so much strictness about the apprentice-Master relationship here, or as there used to be, but like, it's... just not a good thing." Yael moves on, holding out her phone. "The screen is touch-sensitive, so I can touch where these icons appear, and it reacts. And then, like... " She opens her phone's Firefox and types 'map of Philadelphia' and the maps come up. She taps on the address bar again and types 'history of the ancient levant', then clicks on the Wikipedia link at the top. So many words! So many maps!
"Oh. I think I understand? Even if I think the idea that I'm some kind of child is kind of insulting," Tsara says with a slight scowl. "I'm thirty-five after all. I know more than a little bit about magic already, and had some of my own for most of my life. I'm sure there are things I haven't learned and need to, but I think I'm more of an adolescent than a child." At least she doesn't seem genuinely insulted, just kind of. And there's something more interesting. "Wait. Back up. You can just... write in words and it gives you information? What kinds of things does it know?"
"You're thirty-five. I was thirty-three when I Awakened, and I'd been looking after my aunt's farm since I was fifteen. I'd known mages and changelings and all kinds of things, but it was an entirely new world with entirely new expectations. I get why you feel that way, but also, like... " She pauses. "Okay, another thing, here? You're not considered fully an adult until you're eighteen. So when I say child, like, I mean a minor. Someone who doesn't yet legally have the ability to make certain decisions for themselves. And yes, I was fifteen when I had responsibility dumped on me, but that also was wrong, it happened because of a really shitty situation. Regardless, though, the solution is just to like, make sure you get taught the things relatively quickly, and then you can become a full adult in the eyes of Awakened society. Until then, though, like, I don't want to hurt you, or ruin your reputation, or ruin mine. I've seen people who were followed around forever by the fact that they were in a relationship with their Master while an apprentice. I don't want that for either of us."
And then? Conversation shifts. "It knows what people have told it to know, so it's good to keep healthy skepticism and consider sources very heavily when you're looking things up,but like, with that in mind? There's... a lot of information out there. What do you want me to look up?"
"Eighteen?!" Tsara sounds kind of flabbergasted by the idea. "Why do people take so long to grow up these days? How does that work, anyway? That you just suddenly become an adult when you're eighteen, do you even control that? Some people mature ate different rates than other people." She laughs and rolls her eyes and says, "I know people who are much older than eighteen and never grew up." She waves a hand, deciding not to worry about the details for now. "Never mind. I'm already more than that, it doesn't matter right now."
She leans closer to watch what Yael is doing with the phone. "So some of the things people put in there are lies? Why do you give it to people you can't trust, and let them put those things in there? Anyway..." she thinks before suggesting, "ask it how old the oldest person who ever lived was."
"That's kind of a long answer you're asking for. Adolescence being part of childhood is sort of a new thing, within the last hundred and twenty years or so, and yeah, it's complicated. Some of us become liberated children legally before eighteen, some end up staying legally children after eighteen, but the point is, really, that I need to be careful and so do you, for both of our sake, at least as long as you're an apprentice." Yael doesn't try to scoot away from Tsara again, though, because she's being leaned into.
"Well, it's one of those things, right? When you start saying 'who deserves to have access,' the people who are in power don't always agree on 'who you can't trust.' For a long time, queer people were on that list, and for a lot of people, we still are. Anyone who doesn't look like the current ruling class ends up excluded. So it ends up being a lot of needing to use your own brain on who you can trust, because the alternative is that people like me, and, frankly, like you? We end up getting shut out of the conversation entirely."
She taps in 'oldest person who ever lived' and hits enter. Google returns 'Jeanne Calment,' who was 124 years and 164 days old when she died in France in 1997, followed by a Wikipedia page titled 'List of the verified oldest people,' and turns the screen towards Tsara. (edited)
"I understand," Tsara says, even if she rolls her eyes about it a little bit, and doesn't try to hide the eyeroll at all. "I think it's silly, but I can understand the idea that certain actions can have social implications that can hang around and haunt you for the rest of your life. I'll refrain from trying to seduce you. Not being seduced anyway is all on you, though. I'm not going out of my way to make myself unattractive. I have to draw the line somewhere."
She looks back down at the phone and points a finger at it. "You mean you have to let people use that thing? Is it not yours? Common property or something?" Because the idea that there are billions of them and they're all kind of connected is certainly not something that she's just going to know, right? But the oldest person being 124 years old? She looks kind of confused by it. "How many is that? I think I must be misunderstanding the way that you do numbers here." She holds her hands up and starts counting, which she does by using her thumb to tap the bones of each finger in turn, three per finger, for a count up to twelve on one hand. "That's twelve. How many twelves is..." she points at the phone. "That. One Two Four."
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