Logs:Gloaming in The Seychelles

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Cast

Vasha, Fox and Tanya

Setting

The Free Council Assembly Hall and also The Seychelles

Log

It's after hours, and the environmentally friendly energy saving facilities are keeping the lights low unless Vasha deigns to move around too awful much. He can make himself invisible to a lot of things, but not so much machines. Not yet, anyway. So there he sits, unusually solid and real and perceptible in the middle of an empty room designed for a great many people, being witnessed only by passive monitoring systems that would be just as happy if he weren't there at all. Which is a pretty Guardian way to spend an evening as a Free Councilor.

He's not shaved in days. He doesn't wear a suit and tie, not even a dress shirt. Just a dingy olive green t-shirt with the symbol of the Ukrainian Defense Forces on the breast. Bearing a name she's probably not familiar with in a language she's likewise probably just going to have to guess at. There's a hoodie, it's gray. Gray track slacks. Dingy running shoes. American Gopnik, maybe. Remy Malek does Russian. It, too, is quite The Look. A more honest impression of a war immigrant and ideological vagabond than whatever masques he bothered showing during prior encounters.

He's toying with his old shitty smart phone. It would take some keen peripheral sight indeed to detect someone with his training working techne under prime cloaking using a mixture of old Guardian yantras and newer Free Council psychosocial yantras vis-a-vis the techne. It's subtle upon subtle upon subtle. The world might not even be aware it's being fooled. (edited)

Tanya pushes her way into the room in similarly casual attire. Not that she dresses up much anyway, but earlier attempts at more explicitly femme and frilly dresses have settled back into androgynous comfort. Her smooth legs are bared from thigh to ankle, converse worn without socks, and black shorts are paired with long black and red striped sleeves under a black graphic tee, featuring a nearly inscrutable album cover in an unreadable typeface that may or may not be english. "There you are," she says, looking around at the echo of her own voice through the room. While her entrance is dramatic, and her stride full of confidence, the cracks show when she strikes up the conversation. "How are you, uh...what... what's up?"

"Here I am," he agrees, as though that fact were not entirely pleasing to him. People like him aren't used to being anywhere. The poking on his phone ends with him turning the phone towards her in explanation. "Ethos told me that once I figured out how to use the Assembly's security system against itself without Oontz-Oontz or learning Forces, I'd have techne figured out, too. And I think I'm getting it finally."

The screen on his phone shows them both from an odd dutch angle, which a tick of his head indicates one of the security cameras on the walls from whose perspective the shot seems to appear. "It was either one of those 'so simple it took me forever to get it' situations, or I am going to get laughed at by a college student tomorrow."

He lets that stand in for how he's doing. And possibly also what's up. He stuffs the phone into his pocket and pats one of the weird orange plastic bowl chairs that has no business being as comfortable as it is. "Grab a soda or something. Get yourself comfortable."

She leans on the chair offered, studying him through thickly lined eyes, nodding in approval at the work. "It's definitely more simple than you think. So much security is just hoping people overlook your vulnerabilities and are so impressed by your other features they simply don't challenge you," she muses, with a pause. "Not unlike the personality of a college student. I wouldn't worry about their laughter," she offers with a smile. "And before I get too comfy, it sounds like you'd rather be somewhere else yourself. How does a change of scenery sound?"

"I could do with a drink," he concedes, "and a smoke," he adds, "or both, frankly. But I have a flask and my smoking tin, so I suppose that could be anywhere." He knows enough about Space to know to get up and out of his chair before anything starts moving about relativistically.

"It's that the reality of the security doesn't matter, it's the idea of the security that matters to reality. And to the magic. I could use my computer as a scrying window and use their cameras as the viewpoints and everyone-- reality included --would accept that what I am doing is technological spying, but I am not. I'm not using Forces. I'm not even really using the computer. I'm using the idea in the minds of the sleepers as the yantra and nothing more. When I described it as an improvement upon Guardian praxis, Ethos didn't like that at all." Which seems to amuse him somewhat. "Anyway. Go ahead. Show off."

Tanya isn't accomplished enough with her magic yet to be subtle at all. The shape of the spell is taking form in her mind, obvious to those with supernal senses. "I was going to ask if you had any requests, but I'll use my standby," she purrs out. Lifting a small glass vial up into view, appearing to contain ordinary sand, she shakes it slightly as the spell completes, and...nothing seems to have changed, under normal scrutiny. Until she reaches her hand out towards Vasha. A gentle touch on his arm slides the Assembly Hall away entirely, leaving them on the sandy shore of a tropical beach. It's bright and sunny with a faint breeze, an untamed thicket of palms and ferns stretches behind them, and the waves lap at a glass-free shore. Nearby, a crab the size of a small dog sits on a rock, feeling the air with tiny mouthparts.

"Do mind your cigarettes, of course," Tanya says, sliding a small vape pen out of her pocket to take a hit, the scent clearly not tobacco.

His training kicks in pretty immediately. Figuring out rough time of day relative to where they were, trying to suss out how far east or west they may have gone, then trying to figure out which hemisphere they're even on. He could cheat and use magic, of course. But that's what his training is all about. Not doing that. It seems he comes up with a reasonable guess as to where they might be, and so he relaxes a bit and flips open his tin to pluck out one of his cigarillos. More cigar than cigarette, these. He lights up without haste, using a match struck with his thumbnail. Once lit, he smokes it and watches the ocean with interest.

"I have deduced this is not the Black Sea." He points to the crab and explains, "He does not think in Ukrainian."

She actually laughs, a naturally high pitched little giggle, looking over to the large crab that doesn't seem to react to their presence at all. "I would be surprised. No, this is not the Black Sea. Do you want me to tell you where it is, or are you trying to guess?" The sea breeze and gentle waves work their own soothing magic, salt scent hanging upon the air. "I can at least tell you that it's uninhabited. We are the only humans on this island right now, unless someone else has snuck out here somehow too. Seers following my obvious trail, or perhaps just some random Archmages, just here to have sex in the woods by sheer coincidence." (edited)

"I could probably figure it out if I wanted to. Get a good fix on my longitude and lattitude within a reasonable margin of error which should at least get me an archipellago if not the island itself." He steps forward to press one of his combat boots into the lee of the surf, lifting it to watch the water wash the evidence of his passing away. He does this a few times, almost like it's a rite of some kind. Then he steps back from the water and looks up the beach to the forests.

"My training isn't much good in a place like this. Not much force to magnify. I doubt the crab has highly developed social politics, either." He eyes the crab and squints, then shakes his head in the negative. "Social democrat. Thought so." He begins tromping up the sand towards the foliage. Get out of view. Get to where you can see and not be seen. Old habits and all that. Or maybe he just wants to see a jungle island's jungle for once.

He pauses at the edge of the forest canopy proper and leans back to look up. "I'm trying to resist my programming. So I'll let you surprise me. Where are we?" (edited)

Tanya stretches her arms wide out with a big grin. "We're at the beach!" she declares. "But we're also in the Assembly Hall, or at least, it's right next to us. It's not colocated with a very large piece of the beach, so don't wander too far into the untamed jungle," she remarks playfully, though she does follow him towards the underbrush. There doesn't seem to be room for anything larger than perhaps a small pig to scoot through the dense foliage anyways, thrumming here and there with insects and small birds.

"Specifically, we are on a small unpopulated island in the Seychelles. It is probably a nature reserve, legally, so we're being quite naughty already. But it's the first truly remote place I managed to reach when I first started practicing. I went through a lot of trouble to get this little glass vial of sand, even though I probably could have gotten enough sympathy through a five second internet search for some satellite photos." (edited)

"Picking something near the equator was clever, it had me guessing. Seychelles. Good choice." It's as though he's filing that away for future 'cooling off' should such become necessary again. He looks back her way and grins just a touch, offering her a bit of a wink. "You should work on your peripheral sight. I can just see the Hall, actually. I was wondering what would happen if I walked out of your spell, though. I'm starting to work on these practices myself, actually." He waggles his phone which is still showing the view of the camera and, therefore, the presently empty assembly hall where they 'are' and 'were' at the same time. "I know just enough to be dangerous, actually. I'm learning all sorts of ways to be dangerous with it, though."

"Going the sand route was smart. Acanthus can count on chance, no one else. Everyone else has to count on themselves."

She looks quite proud of the whole thing, and doesn't even blink at the peripheral sight comment, true as it is. "If you wander out of the intersected region, you just aren't touching the Assembly Hall anymore. Without the use of another spell you wouldn't be able to return to it without returning to the area. It helped me to think of it like a big blobby portal in three dimensions."

"It's...very easy to be dangerous with it. The amount I knew how to do, even right after my Awakening, was enough to wreck untold havoc with. Once you can deny the lie of separation, when you can appear anywhere unwarded at will..."

She looks up at him after the last part. "I could kill any Sleeper I wanted. Or steal from them. Completely evade any retaliation from them and their world." It doesn't sound like she relishes the idea much.

"Yes. That's one reason I always found the Seers so uncompelling." That, and the lifelong conditioning. "Bribed with money, sex, influence, and power. When none of that is meaningful in any lasting sense. I can just imagine myself a fortune if I wish it. Same with influence. And while I could technically be more powerful, I don't think I could get much more efficient at what I do. Especially now that I've turned coat." He begins to back away from the tree edge again and heads over to the surf line to begin looking for a souvenir. That's something the old him would never have done. So he does it, picking up a likely shell at seeming random. Which for an Acanthus is probably a dubious proposition.

"Once you get over the fact that you have all of this power, you're left figuring out how to use it responsibly. If... you're not an asshole, anyway." He gives her a wry glance aside, spits on the shell, and buffs it with his thumb. He seems to approve of it, and so tucks it into his hoodie pocket. "Murder, even murder for the so called right reasons isn't fulfilling. I think I've killed my last human being, actually. Now that I say that aloud." (edited)

Just as predicted -- by someone, anyway. Who's predicting, here? Probably Vasha. Anyway, just as predicted, a cloud of Monarch butterflies flutters into the Assembly hall. Did Vasha predict butterflies? Probably.

The cloud of butterflies pulls up short, then sort of flutters awkwardly in place, almost ... spinning about, somehow. Can a cloud of butterflies stomp its foot, and if it did, would there be a monsoon on the other side of the planet?

"My wife is being butterflies," he remarks dryly, holding up his phone to indicate what is indeed transpiring on the other side of the planet from himself at the moment. The coolness of what he is doing is mitigated by the fact that technology can do this just fine, too. Which is why the magic works in plain sight as it does, of course.

The only part of him still on that side of the globe, relativistically, is the part of him that is also a sparking neurotic energy spirit that goes by Oontz-Oontz. And that little panic ball zots once in twilight, causing the computer at which Vasha had been seated only moments ago light up and awaken as though someone jostled the mouse.

Once it's alive, a digital version of Oontz-Oontz in human form walks out onto the screen and plays Joey from Friends asking, "How you doin?" Followed by a second sound bite. Eddie Izzard intercut with someone with a Korean accent saying the inserted words, "I'm IN THE SEYCHELLES with TANYA." It ends with a solid eight bars of BTS while Oontz Oontz dances on screen. (edited)

Tanya listens to what Vasha has to say, and nods. "That's what I'm working on. Getting over it. And figuring out what it is I actually want. The Seers don't actually care about that shit though, they..." She pauses just long enough to hear the comment about Fox being butterflies, and turns her head, looking directly in the cloud's direct. In the next moment, Vasha is alone on the beach (save for his crab friend) and Tanya is back in the Assembly Hall. "Would you like to join us?"

The butterflies startle -- all at once -- when the neurotic little spirit wakes up the computer and makes it start doing things. The wings fold into each other, assembling like a jigsaw as gold light seals up the gaps like some sort of esoteric kintsugi. The process finishes, resolving into Little Fox in a ratty pair of cut-off jeans and a worn out tank top. She pap pap pap barefoot across the floor toward the laptop.

"Oooh, I love that one! Boy With Love is so cute, and I love that they did a song with Halsey," Fox offers cheerfully. "How you doin', Oontz Oontz?" She plops her backside in the chair in front of the laptop, folds her legs up criss-cross applesauce, and asks, "Do you know when he'll be back?" A large husky pads in seconds later, muttering (???) something under his breath about butterflies, and huffs. He circles thrice and plops down next to the chair. It's a big shift in energy between hanging out with Balm and hanging out with Fox.

She blinkblink at Tanya. "Oooh, you're getting good. Soon enough you'll be trading tips and tricks with Pheme." A broad, fox-toothed grin. "Gus likes the water. I think I would." She unfolds from the chair and hops up.

Tanya looks surprised at first, the compliment unexpected, eyes wide...then beams giddy with pride. She looks down at the Husky. "If you can trust him somewhere utterly uninhabited. I will have to touch him, and you, to bring you there and back, at least with this current spell. So make sure he doesn't run off or eat a lizard." She beams down at the dog, extending one of her hands down to pet it, and holding the other out towards Fox, black-painted fingernails wiggling to beckon.

When they make contact, they simply go from being in the Assembly Hall to joining Vasha on the truly deserted island, as the sun is beginning to creep down to the horizon. Tanya casts her hand wide and gestures proudly once more, knowing she won't always get to show off and mug like this so blatantly. "Welcome to the Maldives, I told Vasha it was the Seychelles."

When you're friends with a Fate Master, it means your vacation to the Seyschelles in the gloaming of the afternoon can be accompanied by shooting stars in abundance. Ever since he learned he could do this, he's abused it. Even if the abuse is helping to clear the earth's orbit of debris! Ahem. In any case, the sky is bright and beautiful even forgetting the sunset on the water, and the haze of Africa's dust rising over over the horizon.

He's made it as pretty as he can, in short, when they return. He still looks like central casting's archvillain to a late 90's Tom Clancy adaptation. But at least the visual effects are top notch. He ticks up his chin at them both. "That's because it is the Seyschelles. It's odd being this far away from anything of note. But also that close to everything that's noteworthy to me."

"I will not run off and eat a lizard," the dog deadpans, slowly blinking his mismatched eyes (gold and teal today). "You may touch me."

Fox shrugs at that, one corner of her mouth lifting just so before she shrugs her shoulders at Tanya and winks. "We're good."

Pretty much the moment that they arrive in the Seychelles, the husky peels off from Fox and heads directly toward the water. "Don't go too far, Gus!" she chirrups, and the husky spirit chuffs once as he continues on to the water. One gets the feeling that if he were facing the trio, they'd have seen him roll his eyes.

Fox, on the other hand, barefoot shush shush shush through the sand before flinging her arms around Vasha's neck and smooching him noisily, wiggling feet dangling in the air. She'll notice the shooting stars in a minute. (edited)

Tanya sticks her tongue out at Vasha, as if he's totally overshadowing her with his cool magic and being Fox's spouse and stuff. She dissolves into giggles within seconds, and then just stands there watching the streaks across the sky. She squints up at the sky, then looks between the spectacle of stars growing brighter with every second, and Vasha in his decidedly frumpy by choice state. "Is that you? Did you do that? I've never seen it like that all the other times I've been here," she chirps. Gus is by now trusted to roam on his own, though his presence makes the Social Democrab slowly scuttle in the opposite direction towards the jungle.

"Yes, yes, flee to authoritarianism. It's what you're best at," Vasily complains at the retreating crab's back. A crab that only wanted healthcare.  :.( He catches up Fox and returns the smooches, though with far less of his usual flair and aplomb. Perhaps plain old Vasily is not quite all that compared to some of his old pretenses. He does seem happy, though. So there's that. He leans back from Fox to peer up at the sky, watching bits of Skylink garbage gutter out into streaks of gold.

"I did. I don't see why we shouldn't enjoy some beauty tonight. Especially if there's no one here to see it but us." The new Vasily seems to be rather sanguine with the sudden change in doctrines. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on how one feels about adherence to rigorous doctrines.

Well, all things considered, it's probably best that the crab ran away before Gus realized he was there, let's be honest. The husky heads off into the waves, there to contentedly splash and play like the ageless creature he is, away from the eyes of ... well. Everyone.

She doesn't seem put off by the lack of usual aplomb. No. In fact, she grins broadly at him, as if something just happened which delighted her beyond all reason. He gets a second little smooch and then she digs her feet into the sand. "Why did we come here? You showing off, Tanya, or is there another reason?" Her head cants to one side as she turns back toward the younger Mage, though she's looking up at the sky as she asks.

"I was showing off," she admits, reaching behind herself and pulling an orange chair out underneath herself from thin air. "I was going to have a moody conversation with Vasha about coping with all this power, and what to even do with it, but to be honest?" She puts her hands behind her head, takes in a breath, and stares up at the sky. "I think I just needed a break."

She's quiet a little longer, looking to the moon. "But moodiness aside, it is a lot to cope with. The sheer scope of it. The lack of boundaries, of limits. The list of what you can do being so much longer than what you can't." She reaches out her sleeved arm to point a finger directly at the moon, and look over her shoulder in emphasis at Fox and Vasha. "I could probably get there if I wanted to. Right now, from here. It would be stupid and I'd die immediately without other spells. But I could do it."

"With Steve?" Vasha asks, and then laughs about three seconds later at a joke only he could hear from a smartass spirit that isn't even in this hemisphere. He then apologetically explains, "Sorry, you kinda had to be there."

He has a conlang with his familiar. They have in jokes. That, too, may be encouraging or disturbing depending on one's general relationship with conventional reality.

"I could, too, actually." He then points at his head suddenly at mouths, "With my mind." And, again, another belated chuckle at his spirit's in jokes. That'll probably get annoying after a while. "Seriously, though. I believe Fox has been to the moon in her mind. I'm not entirely sure which one is the real moon, either. Or if that difference matters. That's the sort of things on my mind. That's what keeps me up at night. I think, honestly, that's the fastest way to get past your monumental hubris. To turn around and look up. Step into the Astral. Experience how inconsequential you are. How fleeting and how false. Gnats shouldn't have egos. Building back from there is the real trick." For whatever reason, he gives Fox a sidelong glance and a small smile.

She plops down on the sand and flops backwards. Fox is going to track all sorts of sand all over the Assembly Hall, isn't she? Yeah, that's inevitable.

"I have been to the moon in my mind," she agrees. "Mars, too, I think." She wiggles her head back and forth on the sand. "Or maybe in my dreams? I'm not exactly sure. Anyway, my soul went to the moon instead of Sinai." She pat pats the sand next to her indicatively at Vasha, and then falls silent when he continues speaking about the Astral. Something about her smile becomes briefly sharp and brittle, and she looks off to one side, away from everybody. "It's certainly a way to feel small again," Fox agrees.

Tanya shakes her head, taking another hit off her vape and puffing the faint wisps skyward. "I don't want to feel small again. This isn't just hubris or pride. It's..." She pauses. "It's the call of the void. The awareness of just how easily one could cause grave and irreparable consequence in the blink of an eye. Like holding a baby bird in your hands, soft and warm and innocent, and realizing you could crush it without even meaning to. The fragility of myself and the world. I don't feel large. I feel dangerous. And at first, that felt amazing, but the rush has worn off, and now it's sobering."

Silence hangs a moment before she admits, and clarifies: "Frightening."

"Perspective is helpful. At least I've always found it so. I suppose this just speaks to the fundamental differences of our Paths. To me, the most interesting question that life is constantly presenting me is 'which way?' Every fraction of every moment, just an endless cascade of petty little decisions that I can never, ever take back. You're concerned with acting within the confines of your moral self, and I'm worried that every stray impulse I act upon is an error I will regret."

"In the end, we're all paralyzed but what we think we know about ourselves and our world. We're all walking some boundary between being and not being one thing or another. Person and beast, man and myth..." Vasha won't hazard to apply labels to a young student still finding her sea legs, but he includes her in the comparison, and her present predicament in this balancing duality. This internal conflict.

"Given the power and awareness to surmount these questions, we instead obsess about them. Ad nauseum. Define ourselves by how we address them. It's maddening to me, now that I've seen it in myself."

Whatever it was passes, and Fox returns to herself, so to speak. Her attention turns back toward the other pair, and she shrugs. "I just want to be as alive as I can for as long as I can," Fox replies. "And when I'm not alive enough anymore, then I'll find out what comes next." Just like Mom.

She rolls onto her side and props her head on her hand, watching Tanya. "I think it's actually good that this scares you a little bit. I'd be a lot more worried if it didn't. You just teleported us around the globe in the blink of an eye. The other day I pulled the past selves of three very frightened people forward in time so that I could explain to them that when I let go of the spell holding their uninjured selves in the present, that time would resume properly, and they'd be in a tremendous amount of pain and want to lash out but they should try to remember not to." A beat, and she adds, "Plus, I wanted their active consent to bring them back into the timestream and into all that pain." She scratches her cheek, stopping there, as if she's just realized that she lost the thread somewhere along the way.

"Anyway, a certain amount of fear about the things you can do to reality is healthy."

Tanya nods in sincerity, looking back at both of them. Smiling. Standing again and scooting the chair back, into invisibility, into the Assembly Hall. She reaches down to unlace her shoes and puts them aside, where they disappear from view as well, safe back in the other space as she walks barefoot on the sand. "I think what I'm hearing from both of you is that being an adult with responsibilities and power is hard, and nobody has a good answer for it because we're all struggling with it. But that's how it should be." She sticks out her tongue and winks, positively glowing. "That helps, though. Validation from my elders. From my former mentor," she intones with a little sparkle in her eye.

"I think we're all just trying our best to figure it out, and self-awareness is a healthy trait. Self-doubt, too. I'm always suspect of people who are certain of themselves. I've never been." He sure doesn't look it, either. It's plenty warm here, in other matters, and his hoodie is starting to become uncomfortable. Conversely, the sun is going down and Fox is barely dressed as per the usual. So he unzips his hoodie and passes it over to her, keeping his flask and his cigarillo in the doing.

He uncaps it and takes a nip before having a puff and plopping down onto the beach to watch the light show he'd conjured for them. "Anyway. Thank you for letting me study your practices." Heyyyyy. Sneaky. "I think I could have a go at replicating the technique if I had to. I'll try it when not sharing space with the Assembly hall, however. I'll probably try linking my room with the kitchen, for example. To make raiding the fridge easier. Baby steps."

Fox sticks her tongue out at Tanya in return. "All growed up," she answers, her golden eyes sparkling, and then reaches out to take the hoodie from Vasha. "I don't get cold if I don't want to," she offers up to him, but the protestation exists merely as a means of thanking him, accompanied as it is by a wry little smile and a glance up at him from under her lashes. It's gotta be like watching your parents flirt.

Once Vasha is settled, she scoot scoots over to him and settles down with her head on his lap, draping the hoodie over herself like a blankie. D'aww. "That's basically it, yeah. It's scary, life is scary, we're all just making it up as we go." And then she looks up at Vasha again. "I should at least get the basics down. We can practice together."

It might have felt like parents flirting before, but Tanya feels more than included now. She is all growed up, and her chin lifts proudly. Sitting on the sand with the two of them, she beams proudly at Vasha. "Oh, and now I'm the teacher! You have it figured out already, though. That's what I started with, at the very same place. The hardest part was actually not violating everyone's privacy on accident." Her gaze turns to Fox, not actually saying 'for those who have privacy', but likely thinking it.

Vasily just chuckles a little at that. "You have mind and it was space that you found tempting? That's interesting." It's as though that never really occurred to him. He learned Mind first, of course. So that stems to reason. With Fox settling down, Vasily takes another nip from his flask and hands it over to her, though he keeps his cigarillo to himself. Nobody seems to fancy them but him, anyway.

"For what it's worth, though? Your instrincts are good, here, too. When things get overwhelming, and the urge to crush the world under your overwhelming force of personality gets too tempting? A vacation to the middle of nowhere is a pretty good response."

Mmmm, alcohol. Fox takes a swig from the bottle handed to her, and then she holds it out to the newest grown-up in the room. The look that Tanya gives her makes Fox cross her eyes. "I have privacy! I'm actually an extremely private person about certain things."

"Ask Vasha how long he knew me before he knew anything about my pre-Awakening life." She sniffs, but nods her head once against Vasha's knee. Tanya does have good instincts. "Better instincts include bringing someone with you, so you don't drown in your own thoughts. So, doubly good."

Tanya grins wickedly, proudly taking a swig, and even managing to not betray her novice's tongue for alcohol. A minimum of shivering. "That might be why I've used mind far less. It's as personal as it gets. I didn't want to have to ask everyone for help all the time, I wanted to be able to practice on my own, but until leaving the house became trivial I'd run into certain issues. Like whether or not a spell that lets me see around and inside of everything around me means I'll be seeing under the clothes of everyone nearby. That wasn't a temptation, it was a moral dilemma," she retorts with another little laugh.

Passing the flask back, she leans against Fox with a contented smile, feeling good to be part of the family.