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Peacekeeper is lounging in the central gathering hall of the lodge, seated on one of the expansive comfy chairs near the hearth. There's no fire at present, though the logs are stacked for such an eventuality. It can still get chilly at night, after all. She's plucking an elaborate melody out on her guitar, eyes closed, head rocking this way and that to the music she's probably extemporizing. The lodge is pretty sparsely occupied at present. It's a nice day, so people are out enjoying it.
Jane made her way to the gathering hall, hearing the sound of the music getting louder with each step until she saw Peacekeeper there. She offered a smile and a wave and settled in to listen to what she had to play with cybernetically enhanced ears.
She draws out the music in layers from the guitar, creating the illusion of voices over voices: there's never a moment where silence breaks the song entirely. One melody line crosses over the other, always either notes in unison or on the octaves, as if mimicking groups of singers picking up the melody from one another so that one group may breathe while the other sings. The song has no harmony line or chords, just microtones -- an unusual sound for someone used to listening to the customary Western tuning, and at first it may sound like her guitar is slightly out of tune, like she's picking the notes between the keys on the keyboard, but the longer Jane listens, the more she can hear exactly how deliberate that is. The 'voices' of the guitar twine with each other, calling and responding but also somehow in unison, until they weave into each other and fade.
Only then does Peacekeeper open her eyes. She doesn't seem surprised to see Jane there, and tips her head in the other woman's direction. "It's a bad omen to interrupt a mōteatea. Your instincts are good." A pause. "What can I do for you, Jane?" Of course she knows who Jane is.
Jane was able to take it all in, though not truly appreciate it as much as a more musical mind might, but simply enjoyed it as something different and beautiful. She smiled a little more broadly with Peacekeeper's compliment. "It just seemed like good manners. But uhh, for what you can do for me. I don't know, really, just to meet you? It can be a bit hard for me to think to ask for something specific, I'm more used to making do with what I'm given."
"And it is. But also, a good omen." A wink, and she sets her guitar aside, absently scratching at the tattoo on her chin as she rises. Peacekeeper dusts off her hands and steps over to the fireplace, apparently having decided that starting the fire sounds good. She hefts a few of the split logs, stacking them neatly in a small square, like a kid building a hollow Jenga tower. "It's good to meet you, then," she answers, reaching into a brass bucket next to the fireplace for kindling and filling the space inside the logs with a handful of sticks varying in side from tiny twigs to about the thickness of Jane's thumb. "Tell me what you've experienced since you came to us."
"I've seen a lot of things I didn't think were possible, honestly. I never would've guessed I'd see someone come up with a copy of the serum I use, but it was kind of preceded by their blinking out of physical reality beforehand." She chuckled and shook her head, "I've heard about there being a lot of stuff that's real that I didn't think was real. I mostly roll with it because..." She gestures at herself from head to toe, "...considering my situation, and how much I'd already been lied to, I'm not surprised to find out I'm mistaken about a lot of things." (edited)
There's a basket of yesterday's newspapers next to the fireplace, too, and Peacekeeper plucks up the sports section, with a huge cover story overanalyzing the Eagles game from last Sunday -- why they only beat the Colts by one point, what can be expected from the rest of the season -- and separates the sheets, crumpling them loosely before tucking them in around the kindling. "More things in heaven and Earth than dreamt of in your prior philosophy," she agrees, and then snaps her fingers. It's probably mostly for effect, that gesture, allowing Jane to tie her movements to the merry little flame which licks at the paper's edge. "I could have used a match, but admittedly, that would have been less fun." She crouches on the hearth now, resting her butt comfortably on her heels. "Hmm." A little noise of agreement. "How do you feel about rolling with it?"
Jane smirks moves in closer to the fire when she lights the flame. "It's sort of how I'm used to dealing with things; when I would imitate people, sometimes they would bring up things that I wouldn't or couldn't know about. I had to get very good at acting like I knew what was going on while remembering to tuck away a note to look into it down the road." She looks into the fire for a moment, watching it grow, taking in a deep breath, "More of those instincts, don't let other people know you don't know something they think you should know. It's on a different scale now, though. It's not bluffing my way through a conversation about a chemical compound, it's nodding while someone mentions vampires or makes fire happen out of nowhere." (edited)
She looks aside at Jane and offers her a wry smile. "I didn't think too much about it," she answers, and there's something like apology in the undertones of her voice. "That's a useful skill, though it sounds like it's probably exhausting." Peacekeeper sits back, folds her legs criss-cross in front of herself, and rests her hands on her knees. "If you could ask questions and feel certain you wouldn't be thought less of or judged, what would you ask?"
"Honestly?" She looked to Peacekeeper and thought it over for a moment, then nodded. "What does it mean to be 'Awakened', really? To use magic? It's such a basic question, but I can tell I've only picked up the shadow of the answer by context clues and the way people talk around it all. I don't know the limits of what can be done, on what spectra they can be done." (edited)
"In part," Peacekeeper answers her, "this is because we don't actually know, exactly." She scratches her chin again, a thoughtful gesture. "It's a little bit like... mmm. We're all trying to figure out what we're seeing from the shadows they cast. The difference between you and me is that I have both eyes open, and you have one eye open. We're still both just... looking at shadows." There's a pause there. "The rough outline of it, though, is that some of us are ... called. Our souls get pulled toward one of the five Watchtowers."
She pauses here, again. "Have you ever had a dream that felt so real that you could feel the emotions of it in your gut long after you woke up? Or had a fight with someone in a dream and when you woke up, you were still angry with them, even if you didn't know why?"
"Oh yeah, I had a dream that a friend of mine stole something of mine, and kept looking over my shoulder with him for a while." Jane nodded in agreement.
A sympathetic nod. "Awakening feels like that, kind of. At least, it did for me. A dream more real than life." She reaches for the kindling bucket, grabs a stick out, and holds it in the crackling fire for a second or three. Once the stick has well and truly caught, she watches it burn for a moment and then shakes out the flame, turning the stick's point down and sketching on the hearth with it. Multiple circles, and then a black space, scrubbed in with charcoal, and an empty space beyond. "In reality, what happened was that my soul briefly crossed out of the realm of itself, passed through the soul of humanity, crossed the soul of the cosmos itself, and then stretched across the Abyss to touch the Supernal Realms. I signed my name to one of the five Watchtowers. I accepted the responsibility and joy of Awakening." In that empty space, she draws a symbol which looks a little like a squared-off U with one side of the bottom higher than the other, and then perpendicular to that, something like a capital L which looks like it should pass through the center of the U, but doesn't.
"We know some of the things required for an Awakening, but we don't know why not everyone who has those things Awakens. We have guesses. Some people are working on the why." A rueful shrug.
Listening carefully, Jane tried her best to understand what she could of the explanation, and watched her draw the symbol. Peacekeeper had her total attention, and at the end, she had to take some time to think it over just a bit more before speaking. She cleared her throat and said, "So, there's no way to know for sure if I could or couldn't?"
A little shake of her head. "No. We do know that the Tree has had something to do with the Awakening of at least two of us, but we don't know whether it responds to the Awakening, causes it... " She sets down the stick, and her attention to Jane is sympathetic. It is a lot to take in. She pauses here, considering for a moment. "Have you ever watched Star Trek?" she asks. It's a bit of a subject switch.
The mention of the Tree being involved in Awakening gets a curious look from her. "Not the original one." Jane, as always, rolls with it as the subject changes. "Watched Deep Space Nine, and a little bit of Next Generation and Voyager."
"Then you know the concept of the Prime Directive?" Peacekeeper prompts. "And why I do not want to tell you too much about what we think might cause Awakening." Her eyes glitter subtly. "You deserve a chance, and one which hasn't been obstructed by my hubris in thinking I could help you along."
"Suffice to say that once we get back, we retain a sliver of that connection to the Supernal. The realms beyond the Lie. And reaching that is what allows me to light a fire by snapping my fingers."
"I think I get a bit of what you mean," She moves her hands in a circular motion as she tries to make her own analogy, "Kind of like very briefly gaining physical access to a data center, you couldn't stay inside there but you have a kind of back door access that lets you tap in and do a few things from home?" (edited)
Her eyebrows rise, and Peacekeeper smiles, a genuine gesture. "That is an extremely apt metaphor," she agrees. She sits in front of the fireplace, having apparently just started a fire which is starting to truly take hold in the log cabin style fire she built, talking with Jane. There's a burnt stick sitting next to her, and she's drawn a little diagram which has three arcs on one side, and a black space scribbled in across the middle, and then on the far side, an open space with the glyph for Mastigos scratched on the flagstones. "Yes. That's quite clever." A small smile. "I've heard you are quite the masterwork, Jane." She absently scratches her chin again; it seems a sort of placeholder gesture for her. "Was it you who saw a man in a trenchcoat and a humanoid too symmetrical to be human when she woke up?"
Jane lets the satisfaction of getting it right slip through just a bit, but does her best to hide it regardless. "Yes, it was during one of my upgrades, I think, while I was recovering. Saw the symbol for cinnabar on some of the boxes of supplies they had around, too." She nodded. (edited)
Her eyes glitter in amusement, but she doesn't really make a big deal out of things, because Jane was trying to hide her response. "Mmm." That soft noise of understanding. "Did anyone tell you that we know who that is?" Her head tips to the side. "You have had a lot of information lately. Perhaps they did not."
Without any real warning there's a little bit of mind-bending spatial distortion, almost like a line appears in the air and slowly gains dimensions, turning from line to plane, then plane to actual 3d object. That object, which seems to kind of unfold itself into reality, is mostly humanoid figure with two pairs of wings, one of which is held as if ready to launch it into the air and the other of which is pulled up and around to cover all but the front-most of its faces. Yes, faces. The one that's currently visible in full is that of a lion, and only glimpses of the profiles of the others are visible.
It takes a couple of steps toward Jane and Peacekeeper on hooves made of brass before speaking in a voice that somehow manages to sound BOOMING and from everywhere, even though it's not actually more than a conversational level. And cheerful. "BE NOT AFRAID," the cherub says. Followed with a very modern upnod with its leonine chin and, "KIA ORA, PEACEKEEPER."
Peacekeeper raises one hand and literally smacks her palm against her face. "Kia ora, Parhelion."
As she was about to answer, the-- let's call it an incursion-- occurs. This event strains Jane's capacity for maintaining a straight face and rolling with it, and she has to look to Peacekeeper for a brief moment as this all unfolds to be sure it's not something about which to be concerned. She is, fortunately, an impressively composed person. With a cool tone and expression, she greets Parhelion. "Hello."
Mei, fortunately, is as empathetic a person as Jane is a composed one, and she picks up on the strain to Jane's ability to roll with it almost immediately. Maybe it's unfortunate she can't pick up on it before it happens, but she does pick up on it quickly, at least.
The seven foot tall form pauses, holds up a finger in a "one moment" gesture, and then lifts it up and conjures a rather elaborate robe-ish garment out of thin air. With a flourish, the angelic figure tosses the garment around itself and shifts its form, shrinking down to a skinny asian woman a half a foot shorter than Jane. There are a few glimpses of bare skin in the process, as the clothing is settled around a form that's actually around the correct size to fit it while the process of changing is going on, but Mei doesn't seem the slightest bit concerned about it, and is clearly doing her best to minimize it. Someone just needs to learn some more Matter so the clothes can come with her.
"Sorry about that," Mei says. "I... was in the middle of something." (edited)
Peacekeeper shakes her head in vague amusement. "We all have our work." She gestures between Jane and Mei. "Mei Lee, have you met Jane Murphy?" She reaches for the fireplace poker and gently pokes at the fire, stirring the embers a little and encouraging the fire to catch on a corner of a log that hadn't caught yet.
"My imagination boggles at what you were possibly in the middle of," Jane said with a jokingly nervous laugh. (edited)
Mei rubs her hand down the front of her conjured clothing, which looks like it's made of expensive silk. The wiping doesn't leave any trails of blood, or anything else for that matter, but she clearly has at least a subconscious notion that her hand might be dirty, and then she offers it to Jane as she takes a step toward her. "We haven't met, but I'm glad to do so now," she says warmly. "Feel free to call me Mei." There's a definite casual swagger to the Obrimos, who seems completely at ease and confident in herself, but she's also clearly paying close attention to Jane and not just focused on herself and her own weird drama. "Boggle no longer," she says with a grin. "It turned out to be an extremely boring case of things not being at all what they seemed. I thought there might be a minor Abyssal intrusion to deal with, but it was just a cat. Nothing to worry about, unless you're a songbird or a rodent or something."
She seems to be serious.
One of Peacekeeper's eyebrows rises up just a little bit, wryly watching Mei and Jane interact. She interjects softly by picking up the stick by the fire and tapping at the scribbled-in space. "The Abyss is not simply a void. It is an active thing, full of a thousand universes which were never born. It is a malignant nothing, and it wants to break into our reality, and consume it." She says this all matter-of-factly. "So... sometimes. We have to fight that."
"Nice to meet you, Mei." Jane shakes her hand. She looks to Peacekeeper when she interjects and nods, "Ahhh, that does fill in a few gaps. How does someone fight that, though?" She looks between the two of them, not sure which would answer first.
Mei has been known to pick up on a clue or two in her time, and she glances at Peacekeeper then back at Jane, where a small series of micro expressions crosses her face. Brows lift a millimeter or so, then pull slightly in, then return to normal as her lips raise just slightly at their corners. "I should probably make it clear that we in this case is a very general one, and not we as in the three of us, or even the two of us, in specific." She tilts her head slightly in Peacekeeper's direction when she says 'two'. "Which isn't a suggestion that I think you aren't capable of doing so, you look like someone who can hold her own in a fight, I just want to make it clear that this isn't a constant, everyday thing with creatures from the abyss interrupting bath time or anything. Unless you really go looking for that kind of trouble."
She glances at Peacekeeper and then back at Jane, then goes over to take a seat as the conversation continues. "The answer to 'how' depends somewhat on what you're trying to get rid of. A lot like the question of how you fight things from our reality. The how of fighting a person, or a tiger, or an M1 Abrams, not really the same, right?"
"No, that is a very unusual day, when you fight the Abyss clothed in convenient blobs of bubbles so the censors do not get cross," Peacekeeper deadpans. She picks up the poker and absently stirs the fire again, the flames licking upward sharply, sparks spiraling up into the chimney. The Elder doesn't interrupt -- this is Mei's raison d'etre, after all. There's a subtle smile on her face, though, as she watches the Obrimos talk.
"Well, that's good to know, it's not a constant thing. I do like to have a life," Jane smirked and nodded. "I see what you mean, yeah. It varies between situations. I can hold my own in a fight pretty well, but I'm always a medic at heart. I would rather be helping people stay alive than fighting people."
"Ahhh," Mei says, and her expression brightens with delight. "Fantastic! You carry yourself like someone who spent some time in the military, and someone who saw some combat situations at that, so I figured you weren't a stranger to a fight, but yes, I agree. Helping people stay alive is way preferred to fighting, which I always view as a last resort. Though if it's not your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it." She winks at Peacekeeper.
The Elder seems content, at this point, to simply listen, allowing Mei to take the lead on the conversation. Her gaze slides between Obrimos and Sleepwalker and back again, that subtle smile still on her face.
Jane nodded to Mei, "Yeah, I was in the Army and did some pretty dangerous work. Definitely a last resort in my style of doing things. I felt better if I could do my job without anyone getting hurt, but it got rarer and rarer by the end. And that's why I had to leave." She looked between them, "Glad to be with better people now."
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