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Getting to Maddy's is an odd experience as far as arriving at diners is concerned. There's a dead-end alley in Philly that only people who aren't Sleepers, who are part of the Consilium if they're Sleepwalkers, and who have agreed to the rules can actually find. Down the alley there's a portal that can only be seen by the people who met the same criteria, which shows a train-car diner on the other side.
In the diner, Maddy is seated at one of the tables with a battered paperback and a cup of coffee, sipping as some of the diner's staff moves about, keeping things tidy. Outside the diner it's early morning, a cool one with the sun rising above the woods that surround the clearing where the diner is situated. The ground in the clearing is covered in a foot or so of low-lying fog, which is slowly receding back into the surrounding woods as the sun climbs higher.
Quiet footfalls sound out Harmony's arrival, the Thyrsus dressed in a yellow dress that comes up to mid calf to leave her lower legs bare. The same is said for her arms and she enters with flowing steps, grace in her movements. Looking about she sights the other mage and heads her way, spreading arms in an offer of a hug. "Maddy! How are you doing?"
Maddy looks up from the small book her eyes had been scanning, registers who has arrived, and smiles broadly. "Mary!" she answers, already sliding out of the booth with coffee and book alike forgotten, so that she can offer the Thyrsus a hug. "How are you? I was going to head out to work in the garden in a little bit, when the coffee sets in and the weather warms up a bit, if you want to come help."
Outside Maddy's there's a large clearing that's mostly filled with gardens, of the sort that are meant to produce large amounts of healthy food. They're even visible right out the front windows, with the back ones up toward the edge of the woods.
Athletic arms close around Maddy as that hug's accepted warmly, a huge smile on her expressive face. "You know me so well. I'd love to get into the garden, mm." Her gaze drifts that way, a little longingly. You can't separate Life mages from their loves for long, after all. "I am very good." She confirms cheerfully. "Been working on a crop of tea plants, and will give them a couple of days. Any projects on the go yourself right now?"
"I found a nice new spot on the roof of an abandoned building across town." Maddy finishes hugging and slides back into her seat at the booth, then gestures for Mary to sit across from her. "I've been putting together some raised beds up there, and hauling dirt to fill them, so I can get another garden started. I've also been thinking bout how I really should learn some Life so I can cheat a bit. Sinensis or assamica?" The tea plants, that is.
"Camellia sinensis, though I plan to reshape them in different ways for a couple of results." Mary confirms, then offers a wry look. "With you and your own grasp on things, is across town just outside?" A chuckle as she slips into the indicated seat, then cants her head thoughtfully. "I'm always ready to offer you guidance if that's what you want." A teasing grin. "And cheating, tch. Cheating is for us batting chance at one another."
Maddy laughs and shrugs like she got caught at something, but isn't really very embarrassed by it. "As the crow flies? It's across town," she answers with a wink. "When I'm trying to move wheelbarrows full of dirt? It's on the other side of a portal, absolutely. I'd love for some guidance with Life, if you're offering. I'd offer to pay you in tomatoes since I'm going to be drowning in them soon, but I'm betting you'll be figuring out what to do with plenty of your own, so we can come up with something else."
"I do love tomatoes." Mary notes happily. "They are an excellent way to win me over for lessons. Either or, something can be sorted." She nods keenly. "Honour is Enlightenment." Oh no, Arrow thoughts. "I'm happy to give lessons that'll be turned to that end, and if it makes this place prosper all the more." A hand gestures to indicate the diner. "I consider that a perfect payout. As for plants, hm. I can adjust existing ones, but evolution's got a little bit of time on me. Maybe one day you can come across some rare seeds for my collections?"
"There are definitely times when just being able to tell what's wrong with an ailing plant so that I can address it would be useful, which seems like it's probably the purview of Knowing, isn't it?" Maddy asks curiously. "So that shouldn't be the hardest thing to learn, as I start to tap into Life at all." She picks up her coffee and takes a sip. "I'll keep my eyes open for unusual things as I'm traveling," she says. "I've been trying to decide where I want to wander to next."
She nods. "It is, mm. To study a lifeform and understand it. And anything it's suffering from, of course. A knowledge that lets you apply the tools of the mundane a little more accurately." Her smile blossoms. "I don't have the grasp of space you and Jay do. How much of an object.. I mean, if you had a stone from somewhere far away, is that enough?"
"I thought so." Maddy sips her coffee, pauses midway through that as her eyes drift down to look at the coffee at her lips and then rise back up to look at Mary, and then she stops what she's doing to ask, "do you want anything? I can't believe I haven't asked yet." She answers the question then, "it depends, is the answer. How long was the stone there, for instance? It will probably work, but it depends on the connection it has to the location."
"I'd love some green tea." Mary admits impishly. "One of my guilty pleasures." A nod as Maddy explains more. "I always wonder about things like that, Arcana mixing when they don't appear to on the surface. A rock doesn't remember, but the spirit within it can. So is a rock Matter or Spirit when used with Space for sympathy?" She ponders. "Me going off tangent aside, any places you're debating between right now?"
Maddy reaches over to the book she'd been looking at it and slides it to the middle of the table. It's an old, battered copy of a travel book in the Philippines. "I wish you could grow jade vines here," she says like it's connected somehow to the book, so it probably is, but she's an Acanthus so who knows. She starts getting up from the table. "I'll get some tea for you, and then we can talk sympathy." Which is just what she does, before coming back with a pot of hot water and a cup with a tea strainer and some loose leaf green tea in it, which she puts down at the edge of the table for Mary.
"I, hm." She smiles. "If you're able to get me some seeds, I might be able to. I'd likely need to adapt them to a degree, and tend to them so they thrive, but it's possible." The book gets a curious look, and she settles back as Maddy goes to sort the tea, humming in quiet thought.
Once the tea's brought out, which hasn't been started steeping yet so that Mary has her own control over that process, Maddy returns to her seat. "They're so beautiful when they flower," she probably means the jade vines. Disjointed conversations are part and parcel of talking with Maddy, who doesn't always have the best grasp of either spatial or temporal proximity. "They can't tolerate the cool weather here, though. At least not without help. Maybe indoors or with some other way to keep them warm."
"Indeed." She smiles in agreement. "Well, I've not seen one flower, but I find most plants are. And that's something to bear in mind, I'd work to understand their needs and make sure they're met. I don't want to put them through any sort of pain, after all."
"Neither do I, which is why I haven't started to try to grow any here yet," Maddy agrees wholeheartedly. "Especially since I tend to choose some harsher climates or locations for the things I do try to grow. Rooftops and vacant lots aren't always the best environments. I don't want to push any of them too far."
A sip of her tea and a contented sigh. "Life often finds a way. Your rooftops and lots will have a great many plants entirely happy with where they're at. As for those that wouldn't be, I'm sure options can be figured out. Rooms with heating or cold as needed, all that." A keen nod. "And I'll bear in mind jade vines are something you'd love to see."
"There's go and see, and then there's enjoy routinely," Maddy explains as she returns to sipping her coffee. "I can go and see almost anything I want, these days. It's not the same as filling my life with things, so that I wake up and go about my day and there they are. Don't get me long, I love my touristic freedom, but there's more to experience than just witnessing things fleetingly, for sure."
"Ah." The Thyrsus nods lightly. "Because far better to have those things woven into your home, part of it, then separate? Yes, I think I can understand that. So no matter how far you might travel, you'll always come back home?"
"There's not much to my home," Maddy admits with a smile. "It's comfortable and mine and I do always return to it, true. I'm not even entirely sure what I was getting at. Maybe just a reminder to myself that just because I have glimpsed things briefly in my journeys through the world, it doesn't mean that I really know them."
She chews her lip, thinking it over. "It's hard to know everything. I mean, how far does it need to go before it's enough? A single flower is a creation of Life, but it's also Forces if you delve deep enough, Matter too,, and Death waits. Not that I understand all those in detail, but.." A pause. "I'm not even sure what point I'm trying to make." She admits with a slight blush.
"We're good at asking a lot of questions, I guess. Answers are harder to find, but most of us Awaken because we can't stop pursuing them, right?" Maddy finishes her cup of coffee and puts the cup down at the edge of the table. "Like I've been thinking about the Tree a lot, lately."
M
"And there isn't always just one answer." She notes, finishing off her tea at roughly the same point. "We learn to explore and question." Her eyes widen at the mention of the Tree though, with what's almost a look of rapture. "It's almost always near my thoughts." She admits in a hushed tone.
"I've been constantly nagged by the question: does the Tree exist in the Mists, as well?" Maddy answers, leaning forward in eager anticipation of answers that she's not going to find in this conversation. "What fruit might it bear there, if it does?"
"You would need to tell me more about the Mists and their nature for me to ponder too." Mary admits. "And your understanding there would still be greater. But the Tree seems to be far more then just a plant, if that's even a suitable description. It seems to reach deep into the Supernal, and other realms of the Fallen. There's a reason it resonates with the story of Ygdrassil, I feel."
"The Mists are the realm of unknown destiny," Maddy explains, because this is really Her Thing. "The mist itself is the unformed potential for all possible destinies that haven't yet coalesced into defined events. It's a place you can go to shape your own future path, if you know how, but all the places, and people, and things that might possibly come to be are contained within it." One hand gestures in the direction of the Tree, like she knows unerringly where it is. "So surely the Tree must exist there too, right?"
"It sounds like everything must." Mary nods slowly, digesting this. "If that's true then the Mists must be.. everything, at once. Infinity. Every decision, every choice, every possible event. If you go into it, how do you keep from being lost, how would you find your way?"
"That answer is going to be different for me," Maddy points out first. "Than it would be for most. My Legacy tunes itself into the Mists, and can do things with them that others can't. I'm also a Master of Space, so getting lost doesn't tend to happen to me a lot, and being able to make use of Space like it's the signature arcanum of the Emanation of the Mists makes that easier. In a general sense, though, the most important thing is being sure that you've crated a destiny for yourself out of the mists before you leave." She shrugs and says, like it's no big deal, "otherwise you might not come back out at the same time you left. It might be tomorrow, or next week, or in five years."
Mary grimaces. "That would terrify me." She concedes. "And is something I need to work on. If I have to enter the Mists, I'll have reason for it. Caution's valuable, but sometimes needs overruling." A small grin. "All that said, if I ever feel I need to, I'm quite likely to ask you for advice, given your Legacy."
"You study Fate, don't you? It will help," Maddy answers with an encouraging smile. Seems to be reacting like going into the Mists is just something they will be doing at some point. She might be right. "Shaping your destiny is something managed mostly through the use of Fate or Time, so your study of Fate will make it considerably easier. And it gives you some degree of power over your own future."
"Some, yes." She confirms. "I an adjust what could be to an extent, and pluck at the edge of things. But I feel we all have power over our futures." She smiles. "Fate just allows you to reach further, mm?"
Maddy hmms softly and then shakes her head. "I don't mean in quite the same way. With Time, I can look ahead at what the most likely outcomes are for certain things. 'Will Mary meet the love of her life in Philadelphia?', for instance." With a small gesture she brushes the question itself away. "We can nudge those things, but in the Mists you can shape a new destiny and work to make it come to pass. So say that the answer was 'no', and we didn't like that, so we decided to go there and reforge it to a 'yes'. You could return with knowledge of the path that could get you there, reinforced by your personal fate in ways that aided you in bringing it about."
A slow nod. "You can quite literally forge your own destiny then? That is.. a lot of power. But that's something we have in spades, isn't it? It just needs partnering with wisdom and understanding. Which I'll note I feel you have." A warm smile.
"There are limitations to it," Maddy admits as she reaches for her coffee cup, realizes she finished it and moved it to the edge of the table, and glances over at the coffee machine behind the diner's bar. She doesn't end up getting up for more. "Just because you forge it doesn't mean it will happen, but you'll have much better odds of making it so. You can't go in there and forge a destiny that says 'I will discover ever secret of the Tree!' and expect that it's just going to happen." She offers a warm smile in return. "Thank you. I feel the same way about you."
"I feel the Tree's very existence is to teach, and it'll have a lot of secrets." Mary muses. "I like to think I've already learned one of its lessons, at least. But I see the value of adjusting what your destiny might be. If you know something is coming, or you seek something of worth, you can prepare to have far better chances of success."
"I expect that would be an impossible destiny anyway, since some of the secrets have no doubt been discovered already," Maddy points out too, flashing a mischievous smile. "But you're right, and there's also the ability to help solidify a destiny you already think is going to come to pass. There's nothing wrong with reinforcing what we already anticipate, right?"
"I feel, as long as it isn't just for your benefit." Mary muses, nodding. "None of us stand alone, any significant efforts should be to benefit many. And I wonder if everyone has a potential destiny waiting out there for then? But maybe it's more accurate to say there are lots of smaller destinies along the path they walk?"
"I tend to look at the scale as larger than that, but I spend a lot of time in the Mists." Maddy answers the musing with serious thoughts. "I think we all have any number of greater destinies, and some of them might even contradict. Our lives are a web of them."
"Less a path, more a.." She raises her hands, gesturing as if displaying a globe. "A tangle of what could be, and what is? All woven together, especially if you factor Time in?"
"Yes." Maddy leans forward even further. Any more and she'll have to climb onto the table. "When we look at the to-be through the lens of prophecy, we're only seeing the outcome that's most likely to happen, not the one that will. We know that we can change what we see, after all." She halts quickly, pauses for a breath, and then amends, "in most cases. Some destinies have the gravity of a black hole." She holds up a fist, and then motions in a falling spiral with a finger of the other hand like it's dragged slowly in by unseen forces.
That lean is reflected, delight in Mary's expression. Exploring the universe in a quiet, warm conversation? Few things are better. "And sometimes two people want a different event or outcome. So they tangle things even more, and that creates unexpected events around the edges, no? Like a stone dropped into a pond." She peers at Maddy's fist in fascination. "Tell me about these destinies?" The Arrow requests in an awed tone.
Maddy's hands lower. "Oh, absolutely, people's destinies pull on each other. Especially as they tie their lives together, but sometimes even those of strangers. Look at something like a close political race. It could have been a potential destiny for both candidates to win, but only one can. The loss of that race unravels years, decades, of potential futures that might not longer come to pass, pulling them onto an entirely different course, while the winner's future changes very little."
For the other topic she turns to look outside, her eyes finding the fog that's almost faded completely into the forest around the diner, except for a patch here and there around the clearing. "I don't know any for certain, off the top of my head, to use as an example, but consider Gaveston." Her head turns as her bright eyed gaze finds Mary again. "The sheer scale of the travesty, the calamity, that his life resulted in must have been one of ruinous destiny, right? Well, must might be a strong word. And that doesn't absolve him in any way of what he did. Our destinies never do. But being who he was, I wonder if any other outcome could have come to pass but his Great Hubris."
"And with a political race, who wins affects the lives of many others too." She nods. "Everything is connected, nothing is truly isolated. Though I prefer grass roots, building that way, rather then a hand on high deciding how we'll grow." A shake of her head.
And then she's leaning back, her smile fading. "Yes." She agrees sadly. "We look at the Tree and it's wonderful and beautiful and means so much. And I remind myself that the knowledge that led to it, that they had, that the Martyr had. That's gone. Maybe forever. The Tree is a legacy to what arrogance and belief in only one way destroyed."
"I'm a Scion of the Tree, but if I was somehow presented with the choice: undo Gaveston's folly and shift history onto another course, one that resulted in the Tree never growing?" Maddy considers the possibility, but doesn't answer the question she put forward with anything other than a shrug and a brief, grim frown. The sometimes mercurial Acanthus returns to smiling a moment later. "It looks like it's warming up. Do you want to go do some gardening?"
A nod and Mary reaches out, offering to take Maddy's hand in an attempt of reassurance. "Let's." She agrees with a smile, nodding.
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