Cauldron Bubble
22th of August 2006 A.D.
"Well, first of all, what would you like to order? My treat." you ask, as you try to project the image - not one of a Dreaded Empress upon a Throne of Black Ice, but one of Molly Carpenter - the teenage church going girl, who is still very much a part of her community. "I wanted to ask about the local community. If I was your neighbor's daughter, newly come into her gifts, who would you introduce me to? What places would you recommend me to visit? Dad and Harry can explain geopolitics to me, but what's the local scene like? Oh, and if you want to ask me anything in turn, please feel free. I won't promise to answer everything, but maybe I'll be able to soothe some of your worries".
"You know it's not something that is done very often, answering that many questions." Pauline shifts uncomfortably on her seat not-quite-looking at dad .
Honestly does she think you need a minder or that you are about to eat her soul, one or the other. "Yes I know, but circumstances being what they are... I trust you not to use anything you learn against me. People who would help random strangers online don't just turn around and use secrets when those same strangers try to be... less strange. "
If you were not looking so intently at her face you would have missed it, nothing as obvious as Harry's tell when talking to Lasciel, but her intense blue gaze loses just a bit of focus like someone glancing at their phone in the middle of a conversation. That is when you realize another odd thing had sneaked up on you. You cannot feel the air move from your left even though you can hear the air conditioning. Experimentally you stretch out one foot under the table and yep, there is the air current.
"Alright, I'd like to know how you came into your... power, where it came from," Pauline continues.
So you tell her, not the details, not why you had come to be in Actis Tor in pain and doubt, that in that endless chill you had found a crown meant for a mortal brow, a weapon fit for your hand that wished to be wielded and by its power you escaped... but as you tell the tale you also lean a little back and you discover that your unseen windscreen is only a few feet wide. Getting up to signal one of the waitresses you discover it's only about four feet tall, It does not move an inch when it looks like you are going to walk in that direction either.
Spirit, you deduce,
not humanoid, not particularly strong either or you would have felt its mark in something other than the movement of air, but given that it's willing to stick around... well you it has to be pretty devoted to Pauline.
"Well..." the lady in question finally speaks. "I do not suppose you need the usual introduction to the Mysteries, that is what I had come here prepared for."
"I would like to hear it though, to help me understand..." The words sound wistful in your own ear. If you had chanced upon Pauline online or off before you has misused your magic you never would have been in Arctis Tor most likely and the Crown would have laid there still.
"I for one am glad you did not encounter her mistress, I am a selfish creature," Usum notes.
The words come more quickly now, smoother, like something she had said a dozen times before: "We are all made in the image of the Divine, whether one sees that as One or Many, Male or Female, Manifest or Transcendent and we all seek to cleave to God by whatever Name we call Him, magic is not something you do, something you can choose to stop, no more than you can stop breathing, it is just that some of us make wider ripples than others, blessed with the power to touch the fates and hearts of others and cursed with the eye of dark things, things like he Pathfinders. This is a world at war and it has been so long before the White Council noticed that vampires are indeed terrible." She laughs, sharp and hollow. "The best any of us can do is keep our wits about us and support each other as we can, check up calls, common workings, that sort of thing."
"Us?" you prompt.
Pauline stops to think, weighing danger against opportunity and perhaps the presence of a Knight of the Cross against whatever you feel like to her spirit companion. "The Ordo Lebetis, I guess you could think of us as a coven,, though really the only common rede we have is 'Do as ye will, harm ye none'. It's like the way people would gather in the old days to build a house or some other meaningful task in a village."
"Call up the militia?" Lydia interjects, curiously.
"Heavens no, we are not a power, we would be ground to powder and cast into the winds if we tried that. Just knowing there are other people in the know around you is enough to keep off most predators and for those insistent or malicious enough to persist a strong ward and steady hands bearing their banes usually suffice. Strength in numbers basically."
A herding tactic, you conclude mentally. Enough to keep most of the members safe most of the time, but really only because it suits the predators as well, because it lets them more easily find the weak and the desperate. Part of you is touched that she had wanted to explain all this to you, perhaps make the offer to join as well, but mostly... you are just angry, not at her but at the world that would make her speak of being hunted so bluntly, like it is just another fact of life. Water is wet, fire is hot and we are at the bottom of the food chain.
Pauline continues to give what you judge to be as good advice as she can: when to call the police and what to tell them to scare off a vampire or opportunistic fey without coming off as a crank and losing the protection that the threat of exposure gives how to tell a truly malicious haunting from the merely bored antics of a spirit looking to get a rise out of you, when to stand your ground and when to run, hoping that distance will offer some protection by inconveniencing the hunter. The more she talks the calmer she seems to get, the familiar conversation soothing her worries maybe.
A screech, faint but growing louder fills the air, the sound of bending plastic... as you look down to see your fingers gouging into the table.
"Sorry, It's just..." How do you live like that? would be really impolite to ask, but it's the question you desperately want to pose. Lydia's militia sounds like a better idea all the time.
I could make it happen. You do not need Usum putting the thought into your head.
I could help them, lead them, forge them into the power they had so swiftly dismissed.
Still you do not think Pauline would take a recruitment pitch well right now. "When is your next ward-raising. I can help. I want to help."
"Me too," Lydia pipes up. "I have some books from by dad, I have a lot of books and if you need someone to put the dead down I'm good at that, it's what I'm
supposed to do."
"That is a very generous offer. " It seems you almost as if Pauline breathes a fresh sigh of relief.
What did she think Lydia was, the head of the Kemmler Junior Fan Club?
"I will have to talk to some people, but we will keep the offer in mind."
That is as much as you get in that meeting, she does not even eat anything, instead taking a single coffee, taken in jerky gulps caught between the scylla of politeness and the charybdis of 'getting out of there as fast as she can'.
Lost 3 Essence -> Now at 7/12
***
25th of August 2006 A.D.
Restore all Essence -> Now at 12/12
Though you go home that day disappointed the next Thursday you get a message from Pauline, it seems the Ordo Lebetis had decided to take a chance on you, asking for your help in protecting the house of their newest member, a Mrs Helen Beckitt. From the way Pauline tells it at least half the reason for the meeting is to make sure everyone in the cover knows you are not a danger, though you have to wonder if they are still trying to feel out how much they can trust you.
How do you present yourself to the Ordo Lebetis?
[] As Molly Carpenter, inexperienced sorceress just learning the ropes
[] Try to set yourself up as someone they might trust in a leadership role
[] Write in
OOC: Rolls will be posted later, I'm still running a bit short of time. 
