Driving with Mike [retro]

Michael
It's hard to tell if Mike wanting to go for a drive is a bad sign or not.

Though the two of them Awakened around the same time the amount of gossip that Farrah and River engaged in during the formative period of their apprenticeships was negligible. Of course they gossiped. But the gossip was more along the lines of comparing notes for the sake of their own self-improvement than it was idle chronocide.

Farrah once said she was starting to fear the words I'm going for a drive. They were always followed by Care to join me? And it was always a rhetorical question. If she declined the invitation he would just show up anyway. If they didn't end up going for a drive they ended up doing something else.

But Farrah also took to the whole Killing People stage of their lives with less trepidation than did River.

--

October 2013. A cool night not long after the autumnal equinox. A black Nissan Altima is parked outside the building where River works. She has just finished her shift. Even though the street is dark and the driver difficult to make out she knows whose car that is. She knows he doesn't keep the doors locked when he's parked.

At this point in time he is still a disciple of Entropy. That will not be the case at year's end.

River
Driving, as she had learned with her family, was not a good sign. They lived in places no bigger than postage stamps for years, there was no sense of privacy. When they went on a drive, it meant there were going to be questions that not everyone needed to be privy to. It meant that there was not going to be an option to walk out unless those questions were answered and, so long as you have a tank full of gas, you could drive all day.

Mages could just make gas, River found out. People could just make gas and drive forever if they needed to, renew the tires, keep everything running in perfect order to drive for what felt like an eternity. She didn't know that there was going to be driving tonight, though. Her car was parked outside and she'd intended on driving home tonight to do homework; River had a schedule that was strange at best.

Her job was something that her parents didn't talk about. Something they acknowledged but made her father grip his fork a little tighter and made her mother covertly avoid the topic. We'll pray something better comes soon was always the dinner talk. River didn't know that she was going to be doing this kind of job for at least two years after this. She comes out and she's not wearing shoes.

She has her shoes in her bag, though, and the duffel bag clunks along while she walks. Clothing is comfortable- a pair of yoga pants. A tank top. She's got glitter on her arms and her hair is a mess between the hairspray and the sweat. It's in one of those Texas beauty queen ponytails that has the bump at tyhe back. She's got a headband on in the front. She stops and looks at the Nissan.

River walks over to the passenger side, slips in without saying anything.

"Do I need to put on tennis shoes?" she asks.

Michael
Only two years have passed since she first met the man she calls her acarya. Hard to gauge a man's age once he's reached a certain stage. Americans refer to that stage as the prime of one's life. It lasts about twenty years give or take substance abuse or children and it persists until the hair begins to go gray.

Michael MacCarrick has thick black hair that he keeps combed even on days that he does not grace the office with his presence. He does not often grace the office with his presence. On the days that he does he wears a suit and tie. Being a little over six feet tall and entrusted with a trim build means he looks damned good in a suit and tie. On the days he works from home he does not bother with the tie or jacket.

Hard to tell what he's gone on soon as she climbs into the passenger seat. Urine-yellow street lighting doesn't do much to help her and the dome light in the Altima hasn't worked in months. He's wearing the glasses he needs to read and drive and see in the dark. If he really wanted to Mike could cast an effect to fix his eyesight but it is always temporary and Mike does not often indulge in unnecessary physical adjustments.

He's reading a book in the dark. Just because he won't use Life magick to fix his eyes doesn't mean he won't use Forces sometimes. Either that or he just has it open to confuse passersby. He's still reading it when River climbs in. Not until she shuts the door does he look over at her.

"Tennis shoes?" Mike closes the book and sets it in the backseat with some care. That there is a backseat tonight is a good sign. Sometimes the backseat is folded down to make room for a shovel or a corpse. When he glances back he realizes she's barefoot. It knocks a lopsided grin out of him. "Oh. No, that won't be necessary. At least, I don't foresee it being necessary." The jingle of keys as he retrieves them from his lap. "How was your night?"

River
"That's good, I'm breaking in a new pair of shoes and I didn't want to put socks on just yet," River doesn't like shoes. He's probably pretty aware of this; anyone who knows River for more than a day knows that River doesn't like wearing shoes. Occasionally talks about how she likes to feel grounded; she likes feeling grounded less when that ground she was connecting to was scorched pavement but she does like sand. Rocks. Dirt. Organic things.

How was her night, he asks? This gets her to lean back, smile a little and reach up to undo her ponytail. De-workifying happens the minute she knows she can settle in for a little bit. The ponytail gets retied.

"I only had two really handsy customers tonight? One guy was really drunk but another guy was a regular and he's just making the rounds on which girl he can grope for the evening," she grumbles, "I've been meaning to look him up to see if he has a criminal record or something because, yeah, there's a reason they tell you to sit on your hands and there's no sex in the champagne room."

Yes, there is. Some girls turn tricks out there, but River doesn't. She prefers to keep things strictly professional, or as professional as she can get. "Do you think I should change clubs? I mean, the pay is fine and all, and I meet a surprisingly small number of total skeezeballs so I figured that might actually count as due diligence," working while she's working and all that, "but I don't know."

Michael
Though he is engaged in the act of reawakening the engine and pulling back out into traffic River knows she has as much of Mike's attention as he can give to her without endangering the both of them or other people on the road.

He is not a skittish driver. He is however aware of the fact that distracted drivers are dangerous drivers. Unlike Farrah and River he was alone in his Awakening. It took him some time to find an acarya. No one knows what happened to the woman who guided him through his diksha. It wasn't who he thought it would have been. It was a car crash that Awakened him in this life. He was twenty years old.

This is neither here nor there. Mike listens as actively as a person can listen while driving.

"Well," he says. Like everything else in his life Mike exercises a certain degree of control over his speech. He thinks before he opens his mouth. If she hadn't asked for his opinion there's a good chance he would not have given it to her. "What would you hope to gain if you were to leave this club and go to another?"

River
Things would have gone very different if she had swam to shore and there was no one there waiting for her. She would have gone on with her days, spent months or years thinking that was all just some bad trip because someone drugged her drink and she just robbed a bunch of guys who were probably not good for her anyway. River might've dropped out of school, she might have been spooked. She might have married the first thing with a pulse that she saw because she was looking for stability in any place other than within herself.

Or, maybe, River would have found that order in her life, but she wouldn't have found a cause to believe in were it not for Mike. She would have definitely felt terrible about the person she'd been, not seeing the good parts of the man she was on account of not understanding the methods to his madness.

"Different management? I don't really like the way this place runs, but the pay is really good and I don't have to rent the space like I did at the last club?" because she's had to rent time on the pole before, lost more cash that way. "So it's a toss up between pay and work comfortable... ness... Is it the same way with day trading?"

Michael
Yet Mike was there waiting for her. It was not an accident that brought their paths together but rather a vision he had had. Some portend that he hadn't sought out. Mike is not learned in the art of divination. He can appreciate it but then again the universe also has a tendency to show him things he didn't know he needed to see.

He found Farrah years before he found River but Farrah did not Awaken until they had known each other for a long time.

That she attempts to compare exotic and day trading doesn't offend the man. He laughs a quiet flash-in-the-pan laugh that she would miss if she weren't looking at his profile and flicks his eyebrows as he gives the matter due consideration.

"Day trading calls for quite a bit of funds on the back end, between equipment costs and access to market data, and there was a time, before the technology bubble at the end of the last century, when it was virtually impossible for anyone who wasn't either a professional speculator or a member of a financial firm to, ah, break into the field." A beat. "To be quite frank, I would still be working for an investment management if it weren't for my, ah, desire for a certain amount of freedom."

That isn't answering her question.

"Certain lines of work will present a new yet similar set of challenges even if you change locations. I don't believe day trading is one of them. At least, not to the extent that, ah... adult entertainment is."

River
She does laugh, though. He seems to circle around to her answer, or at least comes to an answer that River finds satisfying. In the end, she ends up staying where she is, it's not too bad and the management changes in four months. She doesn't know she has to stick it out, but strip joints are like that. They rebrand, change the inside neon lights and a new owner buys the place. Same girls, same shit drinks, and same ATM with the five dollar surcharge because people will pay it. Nickel and dime themselves into the red because they wanted just another private show.

There was, of course, the question at hand though. The one she hadn't asked that had nothing to do with day trading but, then again, didn't require her to put on shoes. This was a mystery to her, then. Usually, any hard work required that she at least put on some flip flops, unless he doesn't plan on anything being too frustrating.

"So," that awkward so after her laughter dies down, "as much as I like you picking me up tonight-" all laced with sincerity. She did enjoy talking to him, afterall "-but what's the occasion?"

Michael
Truth be told Mike would have hoped that River would choose a different line of work. They have discussed this but only from a philosophical angle. In the sense that he cannot see that her pursuits are enriching the lives of the people she encounters on a daily basis and his pursuits don't exactly improve the world either. They're both really only in their respective fields for the money.

Maybe Mike was an idealistic sort when he first started out. He did work with nonprofits for a while. Then he realized he could right the world's wrongs a lot easier if he could figure out what had caused the imbalance in the first place. Like following a filthy river to the source of its contamination. Money was more like fossil fuel than water.

This is what conversations with Mike tend to be like. Driving gives him a sense of forward momentum. Linear thinking. He can really get wandering if River doesn't keep an eye on him.

Questing Essence problems.

"The occasion!" he says as if voicing the purpose of their night drive had escaped his recollection and he's just pleased as hell that she reminded him. "Yes. I felt a breath of change, earlier this evening, and I don't believe solitude is the medium that will, ah, enable me to understand what it means." A beat. They're on the highway now. Headed towards Harbison Canyon.

This is where the girls will bury him in a little less than two years. He doesn't know that now.
River
She's very much where she is, River Vasquez. She is one of those people who holds firm, stands and builds on what already exists instead of reaching forward. She doesn't pull, doesn't drive for that new big thing. Chooses, instead, to nurture her projects, build them for generations like redwoods and see them all flourish. She comes back to things, but her saplings are new and so easily whipped by the winds.

"So we're going to go experience change and whatever comes with it as it comes?" she asks, as though she needed confirmation. She smiled, teeth a bright white and nice. Not too sharp, as some are. She's not feral, but she's not entirely domesticated either. Tended, but not cultivated.

"The desert has a fantastic sunrise. I went to burning man when I was a freshman and it was an amazing festival, but I was so disappointed that I couldn't see the sunrise for all the throngs of people there trying to be more authentic than one another. Why use a festival as an excuse to be fantastical? Why not live the way you want and bring that person wherever you go," she shrugged, "I think I was hating on hipsters before I knew it was cool."

She waves her hands, as though she is dissipating smoke, or as though she is a little drunk and really emphatically needs to wash something away.

"No no no, if we can, I want to see the sun rise. If we can. Please please?"

Michael
As if they need permission to witness Nature do as Nature is wont to do.

Out of the corner of her eye underneath the darkness somewhere River can see maybe more like feel Mike grin lopsided at her enthusiasm. He is an earnest fellow. Always has been. The night they met she soaking wet having swum her way back to safety he was out for a stroll along the pier knowing that that was where he needed to be in that moment.

He had wanted Farrah to come along with him. Farrah was his student then but she was also a student at the university. They had put an end to their relationship after her Awakening. It would not have been appropriate. It also would not have been pleasant. Farrah had a sexual awakening along with a magickal one. But for a time they were lovers. In the last life especially.

Her name had been Chara, last time. His had been Gerard. Chara had killed Gerard. In the last life everyone knew why. In this one none of them know that it happened at all. Blissful ignorance.

When River pulled herself to shore the first thing Michael asked her was whether she needed a towel.

"Alright," he says. "I don't see why not." A beat. "What's Burning Man? Besides, I take it, a festival of hipsters."

River
Once upon a time, River had not been River- her name had been Adam.

Adam was a different sort of creature, specific, yes. Cold occasionally but invested... even if he seemed a little out of sync, like the rules and rituals and behaviors of normal people were just a titch off, like he had seen the game but never played it. For the entirety of the time either of them knew Adam, he tended a single grave with such diligence that it was merely part of his ritual.

The dates on the headstone were only three years apart. Three years, four months, five days; River remembers that much. Some part of it still aches in her heart in a way that had been stilled in Adam's. Three years, four months, five days.

Adam would not have erupted into sunlight should he have been in the same situatiosn River was in. All things come in their own time and she was exactly as she was meant to be. Came out of the water a little cold and seeing a complete stranger who would later become her friend. She had needed a towel, but mostly- she needed a shirt. Pasties and underthings do not an outfit make.

He doesn't see why they can't see the sunrise and her smile widens, as though it could not be wider, and she clasps her hands together.

"Yesssssss," she hisses with delight. Unclasps her hands and pats her thighs, "Burning Man is intended to be a counter-culture festival- it's sustained on gifting and trading with others. It's got a lot of experimental art. They build an effigy- kind of like a Wicker Man? And burn it. It was originally a summer solstice ritual?"

She shakes her head.

"But it does not fall on the solstice anymore."

Michael
"That's too bad."

As if he has strong feelings about the timing of certain events. Some innate reverence for the human observation of the changing of the seasons. And he does. Mike may have gone to school to study economics with the intent of changing the world someday and he may be changing the world in his own small way but what gives Mike the gravitas he has is his curiosity. It isn't exactly childlike. He has seen and done plenty in his life that casts a darkness over his appreciation of simple things. But he has a wide breadth of knowledge about human cultures and customs that comes from books as much as it has come from travel.

Mike does travel quite a bit. It broadens the mind, he says. It enriches the spirit and fosters an appreciation for the hardships other people endure as they go through life. For the beauty in the world. For the commonalities all people have.

They have argued this many a time. Farrah does not like flying and she does not, truth be told, like leaving her comfort zone. She has an ancient soul and she can't see as how life is any different in Mumbai than it is in Midwest City. People are assholes everywhere. Always have been and always will be.

Underneath it all Farrah is a generous person. Mike has long suspected that she behaves the way she behaves as a method of self-preservation. If she didn't keep other people at a distance they would find a way to bleed her dry.

This is neither here nor there.

"Although I suppose the majority of those in attendance wouldn't have a full appreciation for the significance of the date if they were to schedule the event on the solstice every year. There's a similar celebration in Tiwanaku, at what's called the Gate of the Sun, in Bolivia. Opposite side of the hemisphere, though. No sponsorship from Home Depot."

River
River celebrates Farrah, when she isn't busy looking so ungodly embarrassed that she can't quite process what exactly was said. Farrah lives River with her mouth open, trying to claw desperately for words because she is actually socially graceful except for the fact that she can not, nor has she ever been able to keep up, with Farrah's wit.

Who can, really?

But she says it doesn't fall on the solstice, and he says that's too bad. She nods, because she does feel that connection. Doesn't run around with verbena or others because her celebration is one of the soul, one of knowing where she is, where she is going, where she has been and yet to be. The changing of the seasons is an inherent part of who and what River is. She was always present, the parallels between herself and who she had been spanning generations. She doesn't know the extent of how the turns but she suspects sometimes. Can follow a pattern.

It's that fascination with the natural world that makes her perk up, that draws her attentions back to him and he tells her of some celebration she'd never seen or heard of in Bolivia and it draws awe into her eyes at the concept.

"Someday," she prefaces, "Bolivia is making its way to the list."

The list. The list with climbing mountains in the Himalayas and sliding quietly into Iran to see some of the architectural wonders that might still stand. The list that has her standing with arms wide at the Grand Canyon, ready to free fall- she's saving that one for when she can fly... or when hitting the ground isn't so hard. She has a list, to call it a bucketlist was silly. She didn't have a timeframe as to when she wanted to do them, just that she wanted to do them.

Checking things off all the time. She gave Mike a chunk of glass four months ago that was rendered by lightning. It looked like a piece of white coral. Check

Michael
"River, you would absolutely love Bolivia."

This isn't something he's saying just because her parents are Cuban. He has been to Cuba by way of Canada. He can speak with no small degree of intimacy about some of the back alley dive bars and the curbside cafes of Havana. Mike speaks fluent Spanish in a variety of dialects but he rarely speaks anything but English with River.

Exceptions exist. They always exist. Times are speaking in Spanish or French or any of the other languages they share makes tailing a mark easier than speaking in English. As much as Farrah has taken to the more unsettling aspects of their practice she and Mike have less in common than do River and Mike.

And yet Farrah is the one who can keep either one of them up talking late into the night when they really ought to go to bed. Mike has his moments of responsibility so long as he is with River. They are moments though. He is in this particular moment driving out into the desert because he has had one of his feelings that that is what he needs to be doing. No notion of what it means or what is going to happen there. Only that he did not want to be alone and he did not want to have to explain himself.

Farrah sees significance in everything but that doesn't mean she seeks to set it in stone. She would just as likely drive Mike away by asking him why if he thinks this is so important he can't do it himself. Why he has to drag people along with him. It isn't that she doesn't love him or want him to improve himself but holy shit dude people have lives.

"I spent a summer there, before I turned twenty-one, and to this day I firmly believe that if it weren't for the fact that I opened my eyes, so to speak, I would still be there." A self-depreciating chuckle. "What a fortunate turn of events that was."

They haven't passed another set of headlights in almost ten miles.

River
River speaks an inordinate number of languages. Has a passable level of understanding in a half dozen more thanks to some of the other things she's learned. Still can't piece her way through Russian, though she has tried. She has no problem transitioning languages, but to the closest of anyone's awareness River is completely comfortable speaking English. She speaks some pidgin mixture of English and Spanish with her parents, only to try and mask arguments with complete devotion to a particular language as though people couldn't tell that there was a row brewing.

He tells her she would love Bolivia, that he spent a summer there and she smiles- seasoned traveler. She's been all over the United States but has yet to leave the country. Her parents are only recently citizens, despite having been here as long as River can remember. They tell her about Cuba, have pictures of her brother being there with them. River was born here, as as American as apple habanero pie (which, despite the implication, is distinctly American. Americans will put weird shit together when it comes to food.)

"What was waking up like for you?" she asked, then raised a hand, "not the event, not the... pieces that bring it together, the actual moment."

Michael
Talking about Awakening is always a loaded question.

Farrah didn't know how to be honest about her Awakening in the beginning. Call it modesty or embarrassment. An innate awareness of the fact that her Awakening was atypical. Constant exposure to Mike's magick had slowly worn down the hinges keeping her mind shut. She'd thought she was having an orgasm at first. It was not an orgasm. It felt like being born again. When she came back to her senses she was sobbing in Mike's arms. Her Awakening had scared the hell out of him.

As for what the moment of his Awakening was like:

"Terrifying." A beat. "I was young, you understand, and I had never encountered Death before. Realizing that I had nothing to fear, that I had not lost my mother in the truest sense of the word, that I had not been left behind, it was..."

Of course he recognizes that this is a strange thing to say. He almost died in the same car crash that killed his mother when he was sixteen years old. But Mike is not a creature given to judgment. It is what it is. She asked what it was like for him. For him in that moment that is what it was: an epiphany. A second chance. A new reality.

"... well, it was rather like being born again. As if my continuing to live was the actualization of a sacrifice." A beat. He's rambling again. "Why do you ask?"

River
"Because I always thought of it as another one of those rites of passage, and I wonder if there's a common heartbeat with all of it- if we all touch the same piece of the world and just feel it at different angles. Pieces of a larger whole," she says.

There are things she thinks about, doesn't know about and can't touch yet. There's still time for her to be more than that ball of light that she is right now, she isn't yet touched with the kind of resolve Farrah or Mike have. Only radiant, but in a matter of months (winter solstice) things will be different.

"For me, the lead up was terrifying, like the whole world was turned on its head and monsters really were real... but the actual moment was liberating, it was... it was like moving past a certain plane of existing, burning up to ashes, walking out of stardust and feeling like a blue dwarf instead of a giant collapsing."

A second.

"I like seeing how things are different, and I like finding out what makes you the person you are."

Michael
Another cut of a smile. Something of an enigma though he has never held himself distant or above his students. Farrah recognizes that he pushes himself towards enlightenment in a way that she does not.

Mike has been a disciple of Entropy for the last three years. He is also a disciple of Life and has been studying Prime with equal fervor. He is interested in Correspondence and Forces. He could be deadly from a distance even as a disciple. He is not the sort of person who attacks from a distance. Never has another person deserved to die so badly or quickly that Mike has been willing to put them back into the Great Cycle without dirtying his hands in the process.

He has a particular reverence for the act of disposing of a body. Even the most heinous of individuals he believes deserves to have their shell treated as a sacred object. Just because the contents went rotten doesn't mean the vessel did not serve a purpose.

"It has been an honor and a privilege watching you become the person you are, River Vasquez, and I look forward to meeting the person you will be." They aren't going anywhere. This isn't a parting of ways. This is just the way he talks sometimes. "Would you be so kind as to open the glove box and open the bottle of water you'll find inside? I'm feeling a bit parched."

River
In truth, if River had any other mentor she probably wouldn't have fared as well. Very few people would probably put up with the way blood makes her queasy to get to the points where they can see her interact with those whose life cycles were approaching a new chapter. Patient, intent. Gentle in ways one should not be gentle but unwavering. It might take time, but she was more than capable of making sure people made their peace.

She admired the way he took care of bodies- in truth if she'd had the stomach for it she could have been a rather good mortician. She understood the importance. She could admire the way he studied, the same way she admired the way Farrah studied but it was in two different fields. She was astounded by how brilliant they were, pleased that she was with them.

Some part of her knew things would change. She didn't understand how abruptly, how strangely, how the whole process would hurt. She understood grief but wasn't ready for it, didn't know she might fall on her face trying to be the rock she and Farrah would have buried in this desert.

"Mmhn-hmmn-" she leans forward, grabs the water bottle and opens it. Reaches over to hand it to him. She never pays attention to people's glove boxes.

Michael
His own mentor was a crazed piece of work. Could have done so much damage to him if Mike had not already come to her tempered and ready to learn. He had encountered stories of death workers during many hours in the library trying to guide himself through the bereavement after his mother's funeral and he has not told his students many stories of his own mentor but the stories he has told have painted her as a distant and Jhor-ridden woman.

When he has told stories they have not been intended as cautionary tales. Mike does not tell tales. He shares information. He gives his students the tools they need to make informed decisions. To act with autonomy and strength.

By now Farrah is capable of administering a Good Death on her own. She has done so several times. It is a task she approaches with the same clinical precision with which she tackles her bioengineering homework. Mike is proud of her. She has come a significant distance since he found her smoking outside a dive bar with a fake ID in her pocket.

He is proud of River too. River is the bright light in the darkness they traverse and she has her own limitations to overcome. That she embraces Fate and Death and their children despite her fear of blood is a source of hope for him. Hope in a man who never loses hope ought to resemble a wellspring and yet even a man as optimistic as Michael MacCarrick has his moments of doubt.

In the dark his fingers brush the back of her hand. It is not purposeful contact and yet it does not feel as an accident either. He feels fondness and warmth for her. Gratitude that she would prepare the lukewarm water for him. The contact enables him to locate the bottle and take it in hand without removing his eyes from the road.

"Thank you," he says before he takes a quick yet mindful swallow. As he passes it back: "Can I offer you some?"

A moment later he flinches as if something just walked in front of the vehicle. Nothing there. At least nothing that River can see. She can see however the practiced and emotionless way in which the flinching gives way to reaction. Mike slows the vehicle and pulls it off the road without stomping on the brake pedal or jerking the wheel.

For a man on a constant forward path Mike is a calm man. He can sit still for hours without consequence. Something as short-lived as a flinch is obvious in men like that.

River
It's an awareness of space. Hands brush, she looks at him for a moment before she gets the bottle back. "Thanks," she says, probably hasn't had a drink of water since her shift ended so she does take a good, steady drink. Not too much, but enough that she doesn't feel residual cigarette smoke on her tongue.

God damn, she hated lap dances. Hated the way people breathed too heavily when she was close and she could count the beats of their pulse. Made sure she knew when people were going to move or when people were going to stay put. Knew when she should keep herself a little more distant than their money would pay. She danced for a man with lung cancer today, still smelled like cigarettes but she didn't call him on it. Heard him talking to his buddies that it was in remission.

Good for him.

She puts the lid back on the bottle, and back into the glove compartment it goes. Her eyes catch the movement more than the expression. Makes her look at the front of the car and she sees... nothing.

"Did we hit something?"

They pull off the road and she's unbuckling her seatbelt as though she would be able to do anything for whatever they might have hit. She didn't hear anything, though. Didn't see anything, doesn't presume it could be a bird because she's hit a bird before. This is not a bird.
Michael
It's a legitimate question but if they had hit something River could rest assured that she would have felt it. She might have seen something dart out in front of the headlights. Mike responded as if he had seen something but that calm is a fierce one.

Any of the other senses could have reared up and reminded the two of them that they exist. He could have heard a voice commanding him to move himself over.

Farrah's Avatar has never appeared to her and if she has it has been oblique. In dreams. She knows her Avatar was an ancient goddess in charge of the underworld. Sumerian mythology might have revealed itself to her as a constant in her history if Farrah were the sort to make sense of history but Farrah is a bioengineering major. She knows nothing of history.

Many things of which Farrah knows nothing exist. Some of them coincide with things of which River knows nothing. The student Michael has in Los Angeles is one of them. She Awakened two years ago. Her name is Ihsan. The three of them have not yet met. They may meet before Farrah dies. They may not. But Michael has an office in Los Angeles. He keeps a home in either city. Call it a double life.

He is a warm creature. Caring. Compassionate. Merciful, even. Call him kind. Call him anything but innocent. Mike believes in guilt and innocence. He also believes they both have an expiration date. He does not believe himself to be innocent.

This is neither here nor there. He doesn't see something in the road. He heard something. A breath of change, he'd called it. He heard it again now. He pulled over the vehicle and then River asked if they hit something and he put a hand on her shoulder to ensure she is safe and furthermore that she is listening to him.

"We're fine," he says. Eye contact as he speaks. Intense eye contact. His magick has moments of intensity. Dark eyes in a pale face will lend themselves to intensity in certain slants of light. "We didn't hit anything."

His eyes tick to his side. He's wearing a suit jacket. Underneath the suit jacket he wears a holster. From this holster he takes a 9mm pistol. Empties the chamber and ejects the magazine and feeds the fresh cartridge back into the magazine. Safeties the pistol. Aims the barrel towards the floorboard on his side of the car and presses the trigger one-two-three times before handing River the pistol and the magazine.

"Stay here. Hang onto this. I'll be right back."

And then he's out of the car. Engine dead with the keys dangling from the ignition.

River
The turning of the seasons, the points where the world shifts from one definition to the next- it's communion to her. She runs off and spends her time to herself, blocks out time and turns off her cell phone... like she would ever remember to charge it- River can't be bothered to figure out her phone for the most part. She just started really getting into Instagram, has an inordinate number of followers for reasons she doesn't understand entirely. We digress.

She blocks out time when she feels like herself, when she has moments to stop and reflect. She spent the winter solstice laying in the surf and counting the minutes until sunrise, tried to feel how the tide moved like it mattered. (It meant everything.) She breathed in long and deep and felt the world turn. She'd come back the next day, wouldn't say a thing about what she'd done, where she'd been.

She knows nothing of the life Mike leads in Los Angeles, only that sometimes there are times when he isn't around and she has a break to breathe and absorb everything that has been going on. Moments where she chats with classmates and says that, yes, she has Friday night open but, in reality, she doesn't go out. If she doesn't work she spends her time with Farrah. Cracks a book open. Maybe tries to convince her friend to go see some stupid stoner comedy with her or to finally explain what the fuck was going on in The Big Lebowski.

At the end of the day, her mystique with her mundane peers comes because she is unavailable. If people understood how much the prospect of inviting other people in made her uncomfortable, they would write her off as damaged. Realistically, River is clannish. Comes from a tight-knit family who wasn't sure why she was spending her time with some white guy but he wasn't a friend from her job so they were fine with it after awhile. She asked an Akashic out for coffee a couple weeks ago, considered it a triumph. (He doesn't show up, but she has coffee anyway, reads a book about the Himalayas and pinpoints which mountain she's going to climb.)

The point is this- Mike has things that he doesn't tell the girls. River doesn't know what she doesn't know but she trusts him anyway because, well, he's her people. Part of the unit, inside the gates and a made man. His hand is on her shoulder and she stops, tuns his way and looks.

Eye contact. Held. Kept. Unwavering.
River has never had a problem holding his gaze. Even if he was a blood-splattered mess she could have kept eye contact.

He hands her the pistol and that is when she looks away, looks down. Her stomach tenses and her breathing slows. She leans a little to the side to check over his shoulder, try and see what she doesn't actually see. Doesn't know what he's looking for.

"Okay, you'll be right back," as though her confirming made it so.

There is a long, pregnant silence in the car. The keys jingle, the gun doesn't feel right in her hands, but she's getting used to it. Her hands don't shake anymore. She still closes her eyes when she pulls the trigger. River leans across his seat, hits the automatic lock button and sits back up.

She adjusts the rearview mirror so she can see behind her and not turn around.

"Thirty minutes."

He gets thirty minutes.


Michael
The idea that Mike has a life he has not chosen to disclose to them could and will come as a surprise because Mike is an open and earnest individual.

They know exactly how old he is because he can speak to events that occurred in the year of his birth with some familiarity even if he was not cognizant enough to attest to their veracity as a witness would in court. They know where he was born (Wyoming) and where he went to school (Chicago) and where he charmed his way into his first job (New York.) They know his parents divorced when he was young and he traveled with his mother who was a physician with Doctors Without Borders and he was visiting her as a high schooler when a motor vehicle crash separated her head from her body and threatened to leave him paralyzed. He stayed in Bolivia for four years afterwards. His Awakening had not jarred him into sanity. The arrival of his mentor had. That was his eye-opening.

They know after Bolivia he came back to the States and used his job as an asset manager to travel extensively. That he had an intrinsic interest in economics and accounting and was not good at lying or bullshitting exactly. Neither was he booksmart. But he had a way of accumulating knowledge and information and winning over people who could give him experience. Plus: he was a wizard. He worked the system to let him turn the wheel.

Mike doesn't tell the girls everything. Ihsan does not know about River and Farrah. River would not have known about Farrah and vice versa were not for the fact that Farrah was sleeping in Mike's bed the night he brought her back to his house to recover from her swim ashore.

They had long since stopped fucking by the time River came along. A combination of factors. They had dreams about their past lives but nothing concrete. Mike and Farrah knew they had loved each other in the past life. They loved each other in this life. But in the past life they had had consummate love. In this life they were friends.

River has only seen Mike coated in gore twice in her life. One time he appeared concerned bordering on frightened to have let the situation careen so far out of his control with River in his care. The other time he had given the man more than enough chances before cutting his throat calm as you please. A misstep led to the carotid spray hitting him and Mike had not wanted to paint the room with the politician's blood. It drenched his shirt and splattered his face and he had stood stone-faced and dark-eyed afterwards before ordering River to fetch the bags from their place in the hallway.

"I'll be right back," he says. Confirmation.

He is not booksmart. He has moments of absentminded eccentricity. Now is one of those moments.

Just so soon as he shuts the driver's side door Mike opens it again to reach in and remove the keys from the ignition. Plants them on the dashboard between his side and River's. Stands immobile a moment before leaning back inside the Nissan and putting a hand at the back of her head. He anoints her third eye with his dry lips.

"Thirty minutes," he says.

And then he shuts the door and walks off into the western darkness.

--

Ninety minutes later he has not yet returned.

River
River has a tape.

The night that she awakened, she swam ashore with thirty-five hundred dollars in cash and the kind of tape that goes into a camcorder. It has a date on it and nothing else. She thought that the event was a little strange- it had all been odd but nothing too weird. Her boss had told her she was booked for a private party, said she'd make about three hundred bucks, which was more than she usually made in a week in tips. Said that her clients had some specific tastes, assured her nothing would go on and sometimes she looks back and thinks little of herself. Thinks she's stupid because she believed him.

Went to the docks, got on a boat that was clean and well-kept. The deck was pristine and she was met by a man whose voice tasted ever-so-slightly of Sicily. Said his name was Antonio, that this was a present for his nephew who had finally been well and truly inducted into the family. River still doesn't know what that means, doesn't bother herself with these sorts of problems because it's in the past. It all felt odd, like something out of a movie with Demi Moore but she wasn't glamorous and this wasn't a movie set.

She met a younger man, Mark (Marco, his uncle corrected You've been in this country too long, he chided.) And another man whose name she didn't ever get. An antsy, rail thin fellow. He had a camera. They took off and he asked her questions, and she sat, awkwardly, giving little snippets of her life story to them. Her family was from Cuba. (Ohhh) She was in college (they laughed, her stomach hurt at that) studying urban planning and dance (which made them laugh; she laughed too in order to hide her discomfort)

The thin man held the camera, kept it at roughly the same angle when she danced. She'd done a private party before, knew that it was a little harder to make sure guys weren't handsy but normally she was scrappy enough that a knee in the right places discouraged untoward behaviors. Mark, for his part, was a gentleman save for the point when she was close, when his hand brushed her thigh for a second and all River could think was that he was cold. That when he'd pulled her into his lap that she couldn't feel his heartbeat, that when his lips were on her neck she was expecting the worst and the first thing that came out of her mouth before she started screaming was Stop.

This wasn't about sex, though. It was a production and the camera stayed steady and he sunk his teeth into her neck, dull, and she was struck with the most overwhelming feeling of all-encompassing agony. It didn't stop, she elbowed him hard enough that when she watched the tape again (because she watched it again. and again. And for months she watched and tried to figure out what she'd done wrong) she could have sworn she heard his ribs crack. She felt something give and when she pulled away there was blood on her neck, on her hands. Her heart was beating hard and fast and her eyes go to the camera. Her knees go weak.

She doesn't know how much blood she lost then, that her attention was on the camera man (What is wrong with you?!) to the other two men (please don't-) She didn't want to die. River didn't want to die and in that moment of terror it was confirmed that monsters were real and people like her didn't get heroes in their lives.

No. People like River Vasquez, blood-soaked and terrified, had to save themselves.

"I said stop."

The video is blocked out with light for almost three full minutes. When it dies back down, the only person standing there is River Vasquez, bloodsoaked and queasy. The first thing she does is take the tape from the camcorder on the ground.

Comes to shore and asks Mike for a shirt. Keeps her hands on her neck long after the bleeding stopped. Washes her hands for forty-five minutes.
---

It's ninety minutes and he hasn't returned. She holds the gun a little tighter. She leans over, honks the horn on the car.

Sits silent. Breathes in a slow and steady breath. Exhales and it's not so steady, but she reaches over, unlocks her car door but slides out of the car. She has the gun in her hands, emerges with caution.

Mike has been gone for ninety minutes. If something bad was going to happen, she wasn't going to be able to take care of it if it had downed Mike, but she doesn't care.

She gave him thirty minutes, and without hesitation she ventures out into the desert.

"... Mike?"


Michael
The first thing Michael MacCarrick ever said to River Vasquez was, "Would you like a towel?"

He was staying in a hotel room not far from the ocean. Farrah had left her dorm room to keep him company that night because he had wanted to go for a drive and had given her no option as to whether she could stay behind or go. Not that he had done anything overly obnoxious while waiting for her to answer his phone call but she had learned based on previous encounters that if she did not answer then he would either leave the car at the curb and follow a neighbor in through the keycard-locked door or he would jack the damned door open all on his own.

One of the many downsides to having an acarya who is an initiate of Forces. Locks don't mean shit to him.

So he had offered her a towel. He had offered to look at her wounds. He had pushed her hair back from her neck and expressed sympathy at the pain the wound must have caused but had not flinched from it. Had pressed a handkerchief to the wound. The wound must not have been so bad or else his pressure was sufficient or else or else or else. Mike had healed her wound with his hand and a hankie and magick. When she disappeared into the bathroom to collect herself he had sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked Farrah's hair until she stirred and told her what had happened.

Ninety minutes pass.

River honks the horn.

All around her the desert stretches ancient and exhausted and patient. Flat sandy promise in any direction. The mountains to the east. Michael had walked towards the west. The sun had already set. No symbolism there. If anything had taken him it would have occurred far enough away that she might be spared.

She steps out of the car. She has not loaded the weapon. A magazine and a gun separate and she knows in which direction he set off but that doesn't mean anything. For all she knows he's on the other side of the planet by now.

Out in the open air coyotes keen. No clouds in the sky and the stars scream bright as they hang overhead. River is not alone but it sure as hell feels as if she is.

River
[Perceive forces? Go go gadget tiny arete! +3 diff because she can't be fucked to take water with her]

Dice: 1 d10 TN7 (10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

River
If she had not met Michael MacCarrick, there would be a chance that River Vasquez would not be here anymore. She would have been ushered off to summertime and that would have been that. She had been taken back by the sympathy. Once she'd come out of the bathroom she'd offered to pay for his handkerchief and anything else she might have bled on. Even offers to comp the room, cover whatever, anything to be thankful or keep things good or to make sure things were alright for this man.

She had never thought of Mike to be anything other than kind. Did not think him cold, could not think him ruthless or capable of the kind of coldblooded acts she and Farrah would become privy to years later. Doesn't think him capable of it now; the thought would have never crossed her mind.

River has ammunition in one hand and a weapon in the other. She knows the direction he set off in, so she goes that way. Walks quietly, doesn't bother with her shoes though she knows better. Knows that if she's going to go out and walk through a desert she needs to put her goddamned shoes on but River doesn't think she'll be gone long. Knows that being barefoot is better than wearing her heels, that's for damned sure.

There is no other human being around. She hears coyotes and she loads the gun.

"You said thirty minutes," she insists, like he's there and she can argue with him, "we agreed thirty minutes and this is not. Thirty. Minutes."

She inhales sharp and deep and pushes outward. Can't see a damned thing but she takes a second to tune herself to a different frequency, to pick up the presence of heat instead of being so reliant on light.

Michael
And the desert is cooler than the human body would be stood out on its plains this time of year. It belies the heat signatures of those who have gone before it. River lets herself rely on a different spectrum of existence but time and thermodynamics conspire against her. The chill of the night has stolen away what traces of heat her acarya left in this place.

Hard to pick up on the friction that his resonance must have given the word. The signature of it. Wind blows out here and it blows cold and Mike's resonance feels like wind same as his Avatar presents itself as wind and River can make no sense of which direction he must have gone in. Where he was going or what he intended to do once he arrived.

He is a Disciple of Entropy. He is a Disciple of Life. He is a Disciple of Prime. He is studying Correspondence and Forces and Mind.

To say that he does not need his gun is a truth. To say that he does not need River is not. As competent and diligent a man as he is Michael is very much a social person and the rare moments of solitude he pursues are less for the purpose of recharging his mental energy and more for the sake of centering himself and restoring Quintessence and sense of purpose.

She has no idea where he went. The wind tells her nothing.

River
The noise she makes is an unhappy one. High to low, a little wordless grumbling before she turned around to make her way tot he car. The keys were in there and Mike was on foot and maybe, maybe she could find him if she drove. It would be safer that way anyway.

She looked at the Altima again, started the trot back over and she went for the driver's side door. Pulls on the handle like she expects it top be unlocked.

It's not.

She huffs and goes around tot he other side to go in through the passenger side, which is unlocked. She scoots over, slides over the gear shift and parking break and pulls the seat forward. She likes the Altima; it had nice seats and she adjusted the rearview mirror again. River started up the car and pulled out to point it in Mike's direction. Expects tiretracks will be able to get her where she needs to go.

River turns on the brights and starts driving.

Michael
At this altitude in this temperature dressed as he was and in the physical condition that he is in Michael could have run ten kilometers in an hour and a half if he paced himself. If he flat-out sprinted he could have gone a two kilometers in five minutes and then slowed.

The road is not in the direction in which Michael set off alone but the Altima can handle driving over desert terrain so long as she keeps the transmission in low gear and does not try to take it through brush. He did not purchase this vehicle because he expected to use it on bumpy high-speed chases through uncertain territory. He purchased it because it is reliable and it handles well in cities and it has a large trunk.

Now that she is not on foot River can make up the time she lost waiting for him by chewing up the distance but Mike has not been walking this entire time. She does not have to drive far. Less than a mile into the darkness the vehicle's headlights wash over a dark figure in the dirt. First his shoes and then his back. She has to stop the car to see what sort of state he's in.

Mike has collapsed facedown. The wind tugs at his hair and the hem of his suit jacket. He has a pulse and his breathing is slow but even. His skin is cool. He has been lying out here for at least an hour.

Though he is trim Mike is also six feet tall. He weighs one hundred and sixty pounds. It will take both Farrah and River to pick up and move his body when Farrah shoots him in the forehead in a couple of years but when that time comes River will be sobbing and Farrah will be shaking from adrenaline and shock. A corpse and an unconscious man weigh about the same. 'Dead weight' is just a name.

River
[Life scan, because I have no medicine score]

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (2) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

River
[and extending?]

Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (2) ( fail )

River
He's face down in the dirt.

It makes her turn off the car and scramble out of the vehicle. She's still got the 9mm with her, still loaded, though her hands are shaking again and she doesn't know what's going on but her first thought is that something happened and something went very, very wrong. She looks around, tried to place anything but they're alone in the desert.

She looks at him, bites her tongue and tastes copper and pushes against the reality of it all. Tastes blood and it makes her stomach turn but it's not enough to cause problems. A few droplets at best; if River could survive menstruation once a month then she could withstand biting her tongue. She puts her hand in front of his face, feels air against her palm and it makes her exhale.

Relief. Yes, that's the word.

She has to move him, she decides. Tries to roll him over and take hin from under his arms but she can't quite get any leverage. At best she could move him a couple inches before she falls flat on her ass. Dust clouds upward and she exhales, harsh. River dropped the gun at some point when she was trying to move him.

She opts, instead, to put his head in her lap. To stroke his cheek as though this gesture out make him wake up. As though this would make his skin feel flushed instead of cool- it's the weather, she decides, that leaches the warmth out. Deserts get cold, this much she knows. She tries to remember if he has a blanket in the car.

"Wake up," she tells him, softly, "we have to watch the sunrise when it comes... you have until sunrise to wake up."

Michael
It is no effort to get his head into her lap. River can read the fall in the points of impact on his suit. How he must have gone to his knees first before making a half-conscious effort to break the fall with his palms and then finally just lying down and accepting his impending unconsciousness. This was not the result of something striking him. He did not go down to the ground in pain.

Plenty of people look as if they are at peace when they are asleep but that is because humans are a mess of sadness and turmoil. They create their own suffering. Michael is a thoughtful individual and his thoughts take him to places of darkness and pain sometimes but it is not his own darkness and it is not his own pain. His frown lines are the result of contemplation. In wakefulness Mike knows peace. Asleep he almost looks angelic.

It is cold out here. He does keep a blanket in the trunk along with a cache of roadside tools and a first aid kit. Sunrise is 6:40 in the morning.

River
She does get up, puts his head down carefully as she meanders to the trunk. She takes out a blanket, because he's a creature who is prepared for these sorts of events. Sometimes, you get stuck in a situation when you might get cold, when your heater might not work. Well and so, she goes about her process of getting him covered. So when he wakes up his joints don't ache from the cold.

River is careful about things, not to say she is trepidatious but that she does take care. There's a little smile on her face, something small and concerned but a smile none the less. She trots over, feet in the dirt and sand and she happens to like the cold. She likes the way the earth feels underneat her. His head goes right back in her lap.

Keeps some repetitive, assuring contact with the peaceful man. He's not in pain, that she can see now.

"I'll protect you," she tells him, assures him while he's asleep, "nothing's going to happen."

River likes the way that sounds. It makes her smile, a little more contemplative. Yes, she does like that. Maybe it's what drew her to this, had her believe in the cycle and their sacred tasks- at the end of the day they were protecting people. At the end of the day, she wasn't the victim but the victor. That there wasn't hatred motivating her desire to make the changes but a desire to fulfill a firm-held belief in her heart.

So many people deserved a second chance. So many people would be benefitted by being allowed a blank slate, to learn from their mistakes and start over. That, in her mind, is what they offer. A second chance, a blank slate. Cut ties from all those things that molded people into what they were and let them just be.

And in other instances, being a wall against mountains. Against things she knows she can not change. It's why she keeps coming back even after she thorws up and after she has quiet, private moments where she cries and why she looks the condemned in the eyes and smiles at them like they're precious. Like she knows some beautiful truth that they are going to find out.

Sunrise is at 6:40 in the morning. She does not know if he will stir but when it comes her eyes are on the colors. "The sky turned scarlet before it hit pink," she tells him, "started with a bleeding indigo that gave way to scarlet and then blook orange burgundy and that pink that only comes in the sky."

A little, private smile.

"The sun's the size of my fist," like this will permeate his dreams, she just keeps going, "then all the facets of orange and a brilliant, radiant marigold. The sky wants to be blue but indigo keeps holding on. The stars are still here... moon's still high in the sky. It paints the sand, you know. Takes those far off figures and says why be tawny and acts on their potential."

Michael
In his mindscape Michael is following a voice belonging to a being he cannot see down the side of a mountain. He smells sulfur. He feels heat. He is not afraid.

Perhaps he ought to be afraid. This is not a true descent into Hell because the Hell of Judeo-Christian mythology is not the universal truth and the universal truth is what he seeks. This is the borderland between personal and cosmic growth. This is the most important task he has undertaken yet.

Michael approaches every task as if it is the most important task he could undertake in that moment. Trips to the grocery store he gives his full attention. Talking to a barista after she has poured his coffee. Waiting at a red light. This is how he is. This is why when he opens his eyes again in several hours he does not open them in pain with reality's tags niggling at his skin.

At one point a fox comes running across the desert. It runs as if it is near to becoming prey. A chorus of coyote voices in the distance. Pauses when it sees the pair of humans by the silent metal monster and perks its ears and sniffs the air before trotting a circle around them and continuing on its way.

They are alone again after that. River may well lose track of time. An hour passes. Another. Time is fluid out here with no tells and no civilization to provide her with the tells. All she has is light and the absence of light and for a time she goes without light.

And then the sky begins to awaken. Void-black giving way to a hopeful shade of dark blue the stars' light dimming for their competition with Sol and the coyotes have ceased their yipping. With his eyes still closed Michael takes a deep sharp breath and stirs beneath the blanket. A brief flick of a frown creases his brow.

Before he had felt like breeze and disentanglement. A steadiness comes with him now.

With his eyes still closed Michael says in a dry voice, "Good morning, Sunshine."

River
"Good morning," she replies, her fingertips are cold but the rest of her is warm. Her hand is on his cheek, like it had just gone to rest there and she was willing to stay there.

And that she is, sunshine. Literal radiance like some modernized version of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She looks down but she doesn't move. Hasn't moved in hours instead stood sentry because she'd told him that she would protect him, even if there was nothing truly dangerous. Even if the most she had to do was listen to the howls of coyotes and stare down an overly-curious fox.

There is a steadyness to him, a constance. As though the way the wind felt when it was certain; a great day for flying kites and a terrible day to be at the wind's mercy. It wouldn't abate.

"Where did you go?"

Michael
"Mm..."

He's content to rest a moment longer. To keep his eyes closed and make visceral sense of the chill earth beneath his body and the warmth of the blanket over him. The significance of his student's presence out here.

A Seeking is a conscious decision. The atman does not in general push an unwilling student but every atman is different. Farrah's causes her a deep and ancient unease. Her magick puts her into tune with the cycle of living and dying and it lets her see what is behind and what is ahead.

When Farrah comes to River with her concerns about their acarya she will do after having scried backwards in time. This was an interest that she took up independent of Michael's guidance. Michael has no training in that Sphere. An interest sure he can talk about it with Farrah for hours but he cannot sense its direction and he cannot alter his perception of it.

What Farrah will not tell River is that she went back far enough that she could see the night that Michael's eyes rolled back in his head and when he came back to himself he was not himself. He was a violent entity. She will not tell River that she saw how Mike grabbed her by the upper arm and pushed her back against the wall outside the door that he kicked in. That she saw how he taunted the young man to whom they were meant to administer the Good Death. Mocked River for pleading with him to stop before pushing her away. Followed the young man through the house using magick to halt his progression before wrestling him to the ground and tying a rope around his neck. Dragging him down the hall like that. Dressing him like a deer while he was still alive and screaming.

River had locked herself in the bathroom. Mike had collapsed after the episode had passed. Came to moments later with blood and flecks of stomach contents and god knows what else on his hands bits of brain and bone staining his face and Farrah saw the fear stain his face too. Saw it in his eyes as he walked away from the mangled mess that had been a 27-year-old man and found the bathroom in which his student was cowering.

This is why Farrah will hesitate but not back down when she decides to shoot Michael MacCarrick. Because she knows him. Because she does not know who he is when his eyes take a cold sheen just before he breaks a man's skull.

"I went down," he says. Something like bliss in his voice now that he is coming back into his body. "Into the center of the earth." A deep breath and he opens his eyes. "The center of Creation. I understand, now." He puts a frigid hand overtop River's and gives hers a squeeze before he sits up and faces her. A smile underneath the surface of his skin. "You're almost ready for your diksha. I can feel it. Soon you won't need me anymore."

River
He's content to rest. She's content to let him, because he is the one who went on some journey, he is the one that came back changed. River was just here, guarding a body that may or may not have needed to be buried. Keeping care of a vessel.

River doesn't know what her atman will do. Doesn't know the draw to natural places beyond what she feels normally. She's a city creature but a part of her rails against that, begs for being grounded, for being aware that all things change but this- this was steady. Dependable. Strong. That she could be that, that she was like the turning of the world even if she didn't realize it. Capicrious only to those who think in limited terms.

When Farrah comes to River with her concerns, she had no idea how far she's seen but she remembers that night. Still does. River had never shied away from looking Mike in the eyes. Never wavered or faltered from that. Always- never cowed, even when she was afraid and in that moemtn when she'd been searching his gaze she had been terrified. His eyes had rolled back, and she'd asked him if he was okay.

River had no idea.

Didn't come out of the bathroom without coaxing, had wedged herself between the toiled and the bathtub in such a fashion that she would have been hard to pull out if push came to shove- like it mattered. Covered her ears while she couldn't drown out the screaming.

She remembered screaming like that. Wouldn't let him touch her the whole way home. It took a week before things were fine again, until she wrote it off as an accident, as a fluke, as anything she could delude herself into. She could forgive a multitude of sins under the banner of loving another person.

In the present, he says he went down. There's bliss in his voice and she's smiling, isn't shying away from where they are here. He went down, to the center of creation. She imagines it has a heartbeat. She imagines that it burns, that it persists. She can feel it on him, it's steady.

"What you saw there is yours," she tells him. Looks proud, feels proud.

She pulls her hands away and puts them in her lap. She's cold, but it doesn't show. It's cold, but she doesn't make a show of it, River is merely... relieved. He says she won't need him anymore.

"We're human, we always need each other... just differently after this."

Then, with uncertainty.

"... what if I don't come back?"

Will you be disappointed?

Michael
"You'll come back. I wouldn't take you if I thought you wouldn't come back."

Certain even in this. Michael believes that Creation is benevolent and human beings suffer because they expect to suffer. That the world bestows upon the patient and the kind blessings and positive karma. That if he maintains a positive attitude that that attitude will become a force and that force will fuel the wonders of which he is capable.

Farrah thinks Mike smoked too much weed when he was a kid. Farrah approaches life with pragmatic acceptance and the occasional moment of happiness. So long as he is in control of himself Mike does not abandon his optimism.

He does not have a warm resonance. His personality exudes warmth enough.

"You must be freezing!" he says as if it has just now occurred to him how long he must have been out. Peels the blanket off of his own body and drapes it over River's shoulders. Helps her to her feet. "Come on. I'll buy you a coffee before I take you home."

River
She takes the blanket with little fanfare, gets to her feet and wipes the soles off on her pant legs. She smiles, "I'd like coffee."

And she walks back to the car.