At The Gates

Who: Ephraim Sullivan
What: The last six months
When: An aggregate

( His head is pillowed on the thin cushion he's kept there, and Sully rolls onto his back, his suit rucked up and his bony ankles and his thin wrists exposed and folds a hand behind his head to think it over )

Who: Gryff and Lizzie.
What: Gryffiths doesn't live here anymore.


( The gate at the end of the path to Haven was unlocked. )

Who: Emily [Narrative]
What: Magic the constant bedfellow.
Where: Haven, mostly.
When: The past few months.

( Magic is the tide lapping at her shores. )

Who: Gryff (immoveable) & Em (wordsaremusic)
What: Checking in.
Where: Haven.
When: Sometime current.

( Haven continued to sleep, for what it was worth. )

who: clyde (aeaeae)
what: post-second death doings
where: some ambiguous room in the library (carpeted), some marked but unremarkable little grave (marble).
when: recently

( she was 15 years old and never seen the ocean )

Who: Gryffiths'. You've been warned.
What: 'Family' is a word applied often and without meaning.
Where: Gryff's office at Haven.
When: Recently.


Time and tide both passed, Haven remained solid as stone walls and oasis in London provided and by the time the blossom had patterned the cemetery grass with the spidery white spirals of delicate snowy drifts, walls had been scrubbed of blood and the place recovered enough of itself to resume sluggish heartbeat and rhythm, both. Another year go-round, another spring and he'd sat last year within the same room, the same spread of paperwork until the decade blurred back to watching the then-head of Haven do the same calculations, lost in the complexities of making a place pay for itself when it never did (echoes, echoes of Anna and of whomever had been before Anna, all the men and women who'd sat in the office and made paper-chains out of financial files that rarely added up to zero). Gryff sat in the old office, that which had been abandoned and even now had the faint air of disuse. The smell, perhaps; stale and dead paper, of damp in the walls that had not fully dried out and the thin crack beneath the window pane that shrieked whenever the wind caught up, that let in the thinnest tinge of spring air.

The same spread of manila folders and half-dry ballpoint pens scattered across the desk's surface, the same half-cooled cup of tea sat like an afterthought amidst all the destruction (the last the result of half-hearted trip to the small galley kitchen, relearning the route with the hesitancy reserved for things that must be re-established rather than begun from scratch). Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. With a head too full of Haven and its inhabitants, there was little room to spare (or so said head of Haven to himself, with the determination others might call 'stubbornness') for that other-family, those blood relations and links gone loose in a chain made long ago.

Or so it went. There was the journal, somewhere amid the rubble -- topside, rather than buried, he'd been at this long enough for chaos, but not long enough that he'd slept in the room rather than shutting the door of an evening and leaving what was leadership behind, a note written in to-the-point yet feminine-slanted hand. An adieu, as far as such things could be composed, from a sibling that had almost been rather than was. Gryff's sigh was the small, thin-winded thing of unconsciousness to even beginning it; the response to the knock (for it was a knock, bold, bad salute rather than timidity of request of entry) was the instinctual growl and knitting of eyebrows particular to being interrupted, regardless of having set down the work at hand, albeit briefly.

Who: Nives Gagliardi & Ophelia Ziegler.
What: Post Traumatic Cuddling.
When: [Backdated] February 16th; Evening
Where: Haven. Ophelia's Room.

( oh I'm sure / no harm will come to you no more / 'cause I find myself in your hands / don't you be so hard on yourself... )

Who: Jocelyn Makepeace (mentions of Arazia Santoro)
What: Narrative: why magic ceased to play games and tricks
Where: The Circus grounds/Morden's tent.

( she was caught, butterfly on backboard and admiring a world where no one’s shadows made sense )

Who: Sachiel (hymnalize) & Elizabeth Gryffiths (outofboundaries); special guest appearance by Saul Cain's (byliner) near-corpse.
What: Bailing folks out.
When: Sometime during day two (Feb 10) of London falling down around everyone's ears.
Where: The Metropolitan. Eventually Haven.
Warnings: Nothing to speak of.

( If this was magic, then she didn’t want it. )

Who: Librarians and the Library
What: Orders from above, invasion from Rome, anything to post for the wrap-up. If you have a Librarian and wish to thread out anything, here's the place to do it.
When: Backdated to day three. (February 11)

The Library was sleekly oiled mechanism, was a parody of bureaucracy when it came down to the bones, to the very inching line of what could be done in the name of efficiency. It had stood, paralyzed briefly and horribly by magic spreading wild and in disorganised frenzy across London -- freak chance and accident and the screams from the Precognitive Department resounding awfully through corridors close by. Monitors had been recalled, hastily from their territories, debriefed in a swift and perfunctory fashion. Paperwork had been abandoned, and then demanded in triplicate. Trainees towards the end of their training had been informed of changes in policy and procedure, hustled out onto the streets solo in advance of all that was known, to 'help handle this'. And then, somewhere in the middle of the night, between the second and the third day, Rome pervaded like a coolly unfurling smoke, ashen-grey and sleek. Arrivals through the basement portals, summons of department heads to secret meetings, advisers hustled off and returned, tight-faced and harassed-looking, only to pass on the bad mood to subordinates.

Everyone, regardless of position, was suddenly keenly aware that Rome held them accountable for the crisis, Rome had invaded and pervaded and now sat in head offices and running fingers through records. Rome would order transfers of transgressors, required paperwork filled out within an inch of its life, and strange Librarians with the too-perfect English of the non-native gave orders as if by virtue of being London's own, they were suddenly inferior.

Clean up, hunt down perpetrators, look for signs of leftovers and remnants and above all, make notes and keep your noses clean.

Who: Everyone at Haven and incomers
What: Backdated -- Days Two and Three (February 10 & 11) at Haven: all people using it as a refuge in the plot, all resolutions and wrap-ups can go here!
Where: Haven

When it turns to the second day of the madness, when the night has long since fled and left Haven still wreathed in nightmare and shadow and demons are the stench of sulphur and the flicker of flame beyond the graveyard -- Haven girds itself for all its lack of wards, for all its failure to hold together and endure. They have a healer -- one broken, one who does not go willingly but in dazed, dragged-to-heel need, they have the clarity of two or three (far beyond nightmares, these folk, too abjured by all they’ve seen to find the vivid imaginings a scope too far) to link them together. The church herself holds fast, is steadfast stone bones for all the disease and calamity that wreaks itself out within her until she is shattered glass and blind eyes, the wreckage of a structure built so solidly, it seems impossible to take her down completely.

And within? As the day elides into the next, as the hallowed madness shrieks itself on, inside is triage and emergency only, the war-wounded alongside those locked inside themselves, unable to bear what has been fear and fancy only made flesh.

Who: Theo Rhyme and Ephraim Sullivan
Where: The Shamrock Inn
What: Displays of magic, 'manly' prowess and the nigh-certainty of swearing from the aforementioned teenage werewolf.
Rating: See above.

( He was not the most noticeable of candidates for notice in the Shamrock. Perhaps that was why he came )

Who: Nic Santoro, Marion-the-Ifrit and later, Julia Rayne.
What: The downfall of a Merchant; what rises up in its place.
When: Day Two.
Where: Nic's apartment, Merchant headquarters.


( Whilst Nicolas Santoro had slept, his world had burned )

Who: Emily Andley (wordsaremusic) [Narrative or open for violence or whatever, yo.]
What: Knee-deep in the worst place to be in London.
Where: Haven.
When: Backdated like whoa, of course. Some period between days one and two of shit getting real.
Warnings: None to speak of.

( It was dark. )

WHO: ‘Edward Rich’ & ‘Vivienne Rich’, with some guests.
WHAT: The unhappy husband finally wakes up to the vampire he used to be. The divorce is messy.
WHEN: Dawn of Day 2, after the domestic strangeness of the night before.
WHERE: His dream!apartment (i.e. tent) at the Circus.

( When he opened his eyes, he wanted to die. )

WHO: Jim Chatterjeee and Not a Horse.
WHAT: A bad couple of days takes a turn for the bizarre.
WHEN: Afternoon on Day Two.
WHERE: Streets of London.

( He'd wanted this? )

WHO: Balthazar & Gremory
WHERE: A small private gathering in London
WHEN: Mid 1700s
WHAT: Gremory has her eye on a new body; centuries of sniping becomes a full-blown vendetta (nsfw -- demons!)

( Such a specimen, this one. )

WHO: Catherine Gryffiths.
WHAT: Narrative and a voicemail left during Day Two, with no real expectation of reply.

( Catherine Ingrid Gryffiths had never felt so fucking alone. )

WHO: Brielle LeBlanc and Mr White (& Mr Black, at his convenience)
WHAT: Ain't no party like a Nephilim party! Great-uncles come to the rescue.
WHEN: Day Two.
WHERE: An alleyway in London, also passing as Hell.

( Apparently, under times of duress, mister Aaron-Ahya-Nariman-White (at your service) was a consummate do-gooder. )

WHO: Wren Shelley, ghosts of London's past, and YOU
WHERE: Wren's head/Various locations around London
WHEN: Past midnight, in between Day 1 and 2.
WHAT: Wren's powers go haywire. During the middle of this
RATING: R for potential violence/bloody occult activities.

( 'We deserve to be remembered.' )