Halcyon Halls

Who: Sasha and Ezra (and Dreizen, but that’s a given)
What: Guidance
When: Thursday, late afternoon
Where: Ezra’s office

There was something tartly sardonic about meeting her “guide” on the alleged Day of Bad Omens. If Sasha had been superstitious, she’d worry about luck and timing. If she had been high-strung, she’d worry about impressions and partiality. If she’d been of a hesitant nature, she’d worry just because.

Instead, Sasha was as her life had made her; pretty heels clicked down the hallway, the girl inside them curious and impatient only. Maybe more than a little wary, too, but she blamed that on the rain. The mendacious, tempting, ill rain and its whispers, its sway—Sasha was always cautious when it rained. The potential for trouble was too great to feel otherwise. There was one other reason to feel nervous, less malicious than the rain’s pressure.

When did I last see—Good Lord, talk—with another djinn? The species was suspiciously scarce during her childhood. Oh, there had been Mama and Sherry, of course, but they were hardly fair examples. Alleluia was inscrutable and wild, impossible to typecast or learn from; everything Sasha learned from her proved to be a mirage. Sherry was similarly unattainable. Their link aside, her sister’s power diverged from Sasha’s own early on. Sherry had taken better to their father’s legacy. She loved the rain.

Josiah didn’t encourage Sasha meeting those of her kind, his reasoning being that they were not her kind. Her godfather never forbade contact outright (he never forbade anything outright), but he was intractably harsh of any candidates in range. She remembered one such rare specimen, an ironically kindly ifrit with an inexplicably Parisian accent. He was an engraver often employed by Josiah. Sasha had met him entirely by accident. She was supposed to be in Naples that week, but had gotten bored and wheedled Kostya into returning home early. While her chaperone was dutifully reporting to the master of the house, she’d wandered into the library and found a strange, amber-eyed man playing chess solo. Sasha sat on the opposite side of the board without hesitation. They played, they talked. He told her there were 72 consecutive Queen moves in 1882’s Mason-Mackenzie match; she told him the folding chessboard was invented by a priest afraid of having his guilty pastime discovered by the Church. He’d offered to have her read his memories. Curious, Sasha went to fetch tea. When she returned, Josiah was in the room. Alone.

The expression on her godfather’s face was nothing she knew.

She saw the ifrit one other time, at a party in a LA celebrating some Hollywood sorcerer’s dull success. But he paled when she raised her hand in greeting and all but ran out of the room. Sasha didn’t bother guessing what Josiah had threatened with; that the threat was made was enough reason to accept the matter. Josiah knew best, after all.

…yeah, so said the unicorn on the dark side of the moon. Her painted mouth momentarily tightened, then smoothed back into affability. She passed a window and paused to inspect the reflection, ignoring the rain beyond. Calm and critical, Sasha studied the girl on the glass. Her colors were muted by the storm, showing only that the hair was dark, the skin was light, but the general outline was lucid. Short dress, high collar, a pleasant expression opaque as the opal wreath around her wrist. A tote on her arm, a dog at her heels. A nice girl, almost certainly. Trustworthy. Satisfied with her craftsmanship, Sasha turned away and found the door she needed.

She knocked in a way that didn’t match her expression while she did it.

“Professor Rishi?”

Who: Ezra and Rudra
Where: Thrift shop/clothing boutique(s)
When: Wednesday afternoon
What: Ezra demonstrates that his greatest work as a Guide is being a fashion plate. or something. Anything to keep him from wearing all those layers of clothes.

Ezra walked through stores the way small children did after having that stern talking to outside the china department. Hands by your sides. Don't touch anything. Avoid perilous looking displays as if they were made of burning coals in the mouths of undead gorillas with a taste for living flesh (sharp teeth optional). Way too many altercations with usually benign retail paraphenalia such as the hanging rack, the circular display, and the dreaded utility hook wall had led him to this way of caution.

Still, he was a very good shopper, even if it was a long process. First he'd find an item that would catch his eye. Stare at it for a moment, consider what he'd wear with it. Pick it up, hold it away from him, bring it up close, inspect any details, and then possibly decide to try it on. Although occassionally, he just got the feeling that an item was juuuuust right. All he had to do was find the entire rest of the outfit to go with it. This involved bringing the item to stores and holding it up to things.

He had a notably hipper version of his wear for Kenzie. Ezra probably was not the target audience for magazines like Nylon Men, GQ, and the like, but not a lot of magazines targeted disabled Djinn's with a time and space cognition dilemma. Rudra, however, lived in the Real World and needed an updated look he thought. He'd started a small pile while Rudra was...somewhere. Ezra had a tendency to just hand him money and there had maybe been talks about pizza. Or piazzas. Although he wasn't sure what Rudra might think about piazzas, he wasn't one to say anyone would know anything less about architecture than what they might now.

"Now this is dapper." He said to himself, satisfied, having just inspected a black and white checkerboard hoodie in a size small.

Who: Davia and Ezra
What: Davs has been a bad, bad girl and needs to be punished.
When: Evening, after all of her classes are done

Today had been nothing short of the longest day of her entire life so far. She had had one of those nights, one of those down swings, and she had spent pretty much all of it sitting in front of her computer, staring at nothing in particular. That alternated with crying, and some frantic writing, or typing rather, that had resulted in a couple of emails that she would never send. In spite of Kissy's advice of trying to look cute when you put yourself in view of boys that you might like, she had gone to class looking like hell and that haggard appearance had done nothing but increase as the hours of the day crept by.

She probably would have been incredibly nervous about this meeting had she had the energy to be that way. Instead, she was just mildly worried. Any form of punishment that had come in her life prior to being here was in the way of physical punishment, and it was always quite harsh. She wondered if they believed in that here, if he was going to take a strap to her back side, or worse. At least she was numb enough that she might not even feel it.

Hands moved up to her face to rub at her tired eyes before one dropped down to her side and the other moved to knock lightly upon the door. The knob was turned to allow herself entrance once she was urged to do so, the door closed securely behind her after. "Hello, Professor Rishi." She spoke in a voice that was decidedly both tired and timid.

Who: Cassandra and Ezra
When: Wednesday, After classes
Where: Ezra's office


Cassandra was fairly certain that her backpack would make her topple over one day. That the books inside would decide to multiply at random and she, unsuspecting, would toss the blue satchel over her shoulder and the rest of her would follow suit. It would probably end up looking like someone learning to walk on stilts, all awkward limbs toppling over and winding up in the air. She really wasn't the most inherently graceful of people and there were times still that she felt as though she hadn't managed to fully grow into her height. Luckily for her, today her backpack wasn't going to be the death of her, it was just heavy as all get out.

As soon as her math class had finished up, and not a moment too soon, Cassandra really wasn't particularly enjoying the pre-algebra level she was at, always felt a bit funny being that old and that far behind in something like that, but it was what it was and she was determined to get caught up as best she could. Though sometimes she wondered if it would just be smarter to focus on the important classes and then catch up on everything else a little bit down the road. She was pretty certain she had a lot of years left here. A LOT. But unlike some people, that really didn't bother her. Actually... it made the future seem a little more bearable.

Though Cassandra wasn't the biggest fan of the future. It was kind of a pain.

Her immediate future was fairly simple. Homework. That was what it typically was and the routine was something she liked. Not that she always had to follow it but she did like to have that to fall back on. Actually she did enjoy some spontaneity, it was all about having the choice to be spontaneous or not. Probably a small distinction but if you hadn't always had that choice... it could mean a lot. Cassandra had been on her way to the library, to get a bit of the homework she had stacked up in her backpack done before a trip to the cafeteria was in order when... the spontaneity bug hit her.

There was that really nice teacher. If she were still in Divination he'd be her teacher, she was thinking of going back to that class next term. He had said to come stop by his office hadn't he? Hopefully he had because instead of the library, Cassandra found her feet taking her in the direction of his office. Even found her knuckles rapping on his door.

It had been 3:30 AM when he woke, sweat and possibly worse sticking the sheets to his body. When these things happened in his sleep, he never knew what he was going to get. Sometimes you got lucky and you woke up to enjoy the sticky feeling of sweat and your own satiated excitement. Sometimes you didn't get so lucky, like tonight. He'd dragged himself against his better judgement out of bed. His head pounding and his body aching, just to get enough time in the shower to clean himself for a painful morning on the couch. If he was lucky, he could still make class, although he was probably fooling himself. Going steady for a month and a half was something he knew was just pure chance. This had been a long time coming.

His safety shower nozzle had a motion-detector safety measure, ensuring his head was above its low set every fifteen seconds or it would shut off. The pressure was so low to ensure there wasn't enough water in the tub to drown him if he passed out. And for good reason. The tiled wall was sort of moving in front of his eyes. Ezra fought, thinking about class schedules and anything banal he could, but the images fought. Like a wound you couldn't stop touching, the same image of a rainbow concentric circle suncatcher came to his mind. Oh no no no no no

With growing dread, he stood, a bar of Irish Spring clutched in his left hand, now held against his ear. Ezra was frozen to the spot. Those circles. Those circles! They flung out of the image of them hanging in his aunt's garden window. He'd just seen it once, back in the days he could hardly remember, possibly ten. His mind went blank and those circles started turning to pure color and spinning. Now twisting into different Ovals and turning within and outside one another and stretching. Oh lord. Oh no. His head was splitting down the middle and they were arching towards him. He opened his eyes and could see them in the dull glare of his bathroom's light, shooting out of the water, making a roaring sound in his ears, entering his head. He was losing it, could feel his thoughts slowing. In a moment some called the alpha state, Ezra knew he existed but did not have solid thought, only that horrible sense of lifelessness as he felt a rope of fate attach to his brain and pull him where it would.

He was too weak to either resist or go. Instead Ezra blanked out like a burnt bulb. A quick flash of pain on his face and then darkness. Thank the gods for safety, or he would have possibly been dead instead of waking up five hours later, naked, shivering, and barely strong enough to pull himself from the tub and wrap himself in a couple of towels before losing himself again to those spinning discs in his brain. There was a trigger inside his brain, some arcane machine that just would not be silenced. Least of all by Ezra himself.

Who: Ezra and open
Where: Hallcyon stairwell, between tarot reading and going to his office
When: Week One: Wednesday

School, in any capacity, was still somewhat of an unfamiliar and strange experience for him. His learning had been at home with his mother or in the more intimate setting of having a mentor or personal teacher. All this hustle and bustle was a bit foreign in his life. Even when he travelled he eschewed the busier parts of life and tried his very best to stick to the quieter, more serene atmospheres. It had only been a little over a month, but Ezra already knew some of the best ways to get around with the least people. Little corners that weren't being used with usually empty stairwells and hallways.

So far, so good. He hadn't had any really bad episodes. For Ezra that meant he'd been able to attend all his classes and, thus far, hadn't spent a day or two stuffed into a little box trying to regain his sense of sanity and self. There were good days and bad days, then okay days and extremely tough days, but he was weathering the storm. He thought his students sort of knew, anyway. When they asked him a question and his eyes were glazed over for a minute or more while he mindlessly stroked a card or watched tea leaves settle.

They looked at him curiously for knowledge, but, probably just as curiously to them, he resolutely acted like he'd seen absolutely nothing. In the hallways, no one paid him much mind, except a few people complimenting his dress. That always kind of made his day. Today he had on black pants with a black button down. Over that a black satin-backed vest with a houndstooth front panels, pocket watch and dapper black sports jacket with black and white faux-suede shoes. His hair was immaculately pointed and his briefcase all leathery and new, strapped over his shoulder.

He should have known he'd pay for his lack of attention. His divination class was too many floors up, but he had too much pride to complain about it. All it took was a swirl of dust on his usual, slightly darkened route. Those curiously swirling eyes of his glazed over for less than a second, nothing really, but it was just enough to make him miss that his eyes misjudged the distance, just by a smidge, between his foot and the first step. Twisting, he tried in vain to avoid the inevitable.

There was that moment of weightlessness, when the world seems to stop and you realize what's about to happen. He felt himself react and float, literally, for at least a full half or three-quarters of a second, before good ol' gravity returned again. Dimly, somewhere in the thud and twists of his adventure down the stairs, he heard one of his shoes clatter and stop somehwere halfway down. He hit the ground hard enough to slide a few inches across the slick marble floor. Coughing, he pulled his bag from around his neck and just lay there for a second, getting his bearings slowly. Damn, traitorous eyes. He'd probably made a right racket with that one.