At The Gates

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


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

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

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

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: 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. Balthazar
What. It's a great day to be a demon
Where. Yours truly ends up in Haven
When. As the party gets going and chaos extends throughout London. A short while after this exchange.
Notes. Uhm, I didn't know how people wanted to go about doing this, SO if anyone looking to join in Nina's Bohemian Rhapsody of Doom wants, perhaps we can thread it here? idk idk

( It wouldn’t matter if he had been bowled over by the magic, because he’s going to live it up as though this really were his greatest, wettest fantasy. )

Who: Emily Andley (wordsaremusic) & Leo Gryffiths (immoveable)
What: Gryff's home, the truth is out, now we work on the rest of it.
Where: Haven's garden
When: Backdated to mid-January, shortly after Gryff's return to Haven.
Warnings: None.
Notes: Part two of two. Yeah, no more gdocs writing.

( There they were. )

Who: Emily Andley (wordsaremusic) & Leo Gryffiths (immoveable)
What: Gryff's home, the truth is out, now we work on the rest of it.
Where: Haven's garden
When: Backdated to mid-January, shortly after Gryff's return to Haven.
Warnings: None.
Notes: Part one of two. Again. -_-

( Haven still chugged along to its perpetual pulse, a behemoth set in motion and now next to impossible to halt. )

Who: Leo Gryffiths / Cian Andley
What: Gryff's fantasy, the 'still a Librarian, still telekinetic' re-emerges.
When: The first night.
Where: Haven

( the end of the pen picks itself up like drunken staggerer setting mind to task, and the whole hangs and dangles from invisible string in the air )

What: Narrative: how Leo Gryffiths tries to salvage himself.
When: Backdated-ish, running from Christmas through to round about now.
Warnings: None!

( for a minute stood at gate's edge Leo Gryffiths stands with hand over eyes to blot out winter sunshine and hesitates like any of them )

Who: Gryff (immoveable) & Em (wordsaremusic)
What: This is why we can't have nice things. (Or, The Band Breaks Up.)
Where: Haven.
When: December 21, after Gryff returns from the Merchants' Masquerade.
Warnings: A little bit of assault.
Notes: Part two, continuation of part one.

( He would hurt her, or he wouldn't. )

Who: Gryff (immoveable) & Em (wordsaremusic)
What: This is why we can't have nice things. (Or, The Band Breaks Up.)
Where: Haven.
When: December 21, after Gryff returns from the Merchants' Masquerade.
Warnings: A little bit of assault.
Notes: Embarrassingly enough, we hit the post count limit. Again. Consequentially, part one of two.

( 'What exactly are you trying to do?' 'I don't know.' )

The Market was not a creature of blood and of salt today, not a slinking, shadowy thing that kept itself carefully to the demarked edges of where it ought be with wards and signs and sigils spilling along its skirts to tell people where they could and could not be (with the sly smile, the wink, the glint of gold almost-hidden that was the Merchants and the Market itself forever). It had thrown wide its doors (beyond of course, the careful delineation between London and this Other London, this parasitic presence deep below the innocent preparations going on above, the tired trudging of Christmas shoppers and the artificial buzz and hum and florescent glow of lights strung on wires across the streets). This place, sketched out across bared Market grounds was a delight, a poetry-in-motion of silks swung from erected arch to arch, of paper lanterns strung seemingly from nothing until they sent soft glow across the path with the delicate tinge and blush of soft jewels.

A vast tent (such as it could be called - such a thing was an artifice and construction beyond the notion of words and language) was main event; soft light and swelling music and the laughter and low-voiced flirtation of masked men and women circling one another within its depths. To the left, a staircase that wound up above to a platform cordoned off into sections more suited for intimacy, for quiet conversation amongst the numerous silk cushions, the low tables thoughtfully placed of a height to lean a glass on and gossamer-thin curtains to keep privacy at utmost. To the right and below, a table of all good things to eat spread out for all, clusters of tables and spindly chairs for diners to seat themselves at and still admire the whole. A bar (for all who came to these events in formal dress a little too unfamiliar to be comfortable sought out such places, such things) took up the back, a obtrusive but elegant creation served attentively by low-voiced, dark clad whisking things that were too quietly efficient to be anything but those low down on Market pecking order.

But of course, a Market is not a Market without a little magic. Those who stepped across the threshold, those hidden from clarity by the dominoes and masks of anonymity for the night had fresh flush of confidence. Those that did not identify themselves to their companions could not be identified - strangers within a party, mysterious and interesting both. For a night, all who attended were given ability to move as though they were unknown -- be the end result a flirtation heartily enjoyed but set aside by morning, or a flash of an argument forgotten by the time they left the dance.


[Open to all characters - Market is open to everyone for this. There will be areas in subject lines and comments below, so hop in and leave no one untagged!]

WHO: Catherine & Leo Gryffiths.
WHAT: The brother reaches out and the sister catches the serve. The next step in learning how to be siblings.
WHEN: After this exchange.
WHERE: A coffee shop.
STATUS: Complete!

( I don't know what I'm like, but everybody says you're not the kind that gets out of your head. )

Who Leo Gryffiths & Cian Andley
What The aftermath of a father telling his daughter enough about herself to make her fatalistic and a brother rediscovering actual family - in other words, manly men being manly.
When Tonight?
Where: Cian Andley's flat.

( Family, family unwanted and family unasked for and family that did not fail to set prying hands around neck and choke life's breath out of individual on bare premise that it had been given before and could be taken back at whim and will )

WHO: Leo Gryffiths and Jegudiel/Johanna Levine.
WHERE: A small Catholic church, off the beaten path.
WHEN: Late Sunday afternoon, September 25th.
WHAT: Gryff is approached by an angel.

( It was clear as day to her when something new was troubling him. )

Who: Gryff (immoveable) & Em (wordsaremusic)
What: Breaking the news.
Where: Haven.
When: Way backdated to August 16, after this.
Warnings: It will get shouty.

( Better something than nothing, she told herself. )

WHO: Catherine Gryffiths, Emily Andley (wordsaremusic) & Leo Gryffiths (immoveable).
WHAT: Six years of cautiously circling Haven finally come to an end, and Cath meets her brother for the first time. First encounters are difficult things.
WHEN: Somewhere in the last couple weeks.
WHERE: Haven.

( There once was a crooked man who lived in a crooked house. )

Who: Leo Gryffiths (narrative)
What: What happens when Haven's head comes close to breaking? He seeks out old mentor and tries to reacquaint himself with peace. ._.
Where: Haven
When: Soon after the Em & Gryff log.
Warnings: Nada. Unless the angst is ridiculous.

( those glass-brittle men and women who eked out existence even as magic lit them up like human lightning storm )

Who Gryff & Em
What: Trying to resolve Haven
When: Tonight
Where: Haven, Gryff's office.
Warnings: It's unfinished, so no idea.

( Doubt had crept in, curled itself neatly up in the corner of the room and sat there, wide-eyed silent and curious as to when it could fasten teeth to life-blood pulse and shake )

Who: Leo Gryffiths & Maria Nives.
What: Checking in and checking up on Havenites dispersed.
When: Friday the 29th July.
Where: Liam's flat.
Warnings: Well, it's Nives. There might be trouble.

( if Gryff's lip-curl of distaste for young people's affectations, surnames adopted instead of serviceable first names was entirely hypocritical, it was not thought long enough on to be acknowledged as such )