2020-10-19 Home Sweet Chantry

Home Sweet Chantry

Participants: Jinny Luu

Location: Winters Retreat

Date and Time: October 19, 2020

Summary: It's not easy when your home become a Chantry

Mood Music: Kelly - "Shoes"

A sense of duty, a sense of responsibility, these are excellent virtues, but Luu is becoming keenly aware that not everything about them is nice. When they first received the Vision for the Chantry, Luu thought it would be simple to call off her budding romantic relationship with Jinny. There hadn’t been any sleeping together or U-Hauls, so in her thinking at the time, it wouldn’t be so hard to do. The past few months of developing the Chantry and getting closer to the other woman has actually made it quite difficult and confusing. Along with that, Luu is dealing with her home getting converted into the Chantry. Admittedly, the house was a bit big and empty before, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to all the sudden have two additional people living there and practicing magick. Two and a half really, if you count whatever’s been skittering through the vents and deconstructing clothing that it finds. Besides the new housemates, really, Chantrymates, Luu has been dealing with giving up a lot of her storage space. Originally, Luu was a bit worried about the realization that people that collect weird things tend to die alone, but now she’s wondering where exactly to put her weird things.

With a sigh, Luu opens the door to Shoe Antechamber 3-C, pulling a chain to turn the lights on once inside. The space was already crowded from having to decommission the Shoe Antechamber 4-Series, and the space was looking less like the display room she had envisioned, and more like a common storage space.

“What would Prince do?” Luu asks herself as her eyes slowly move along the shelves, looking at the beautiful shoes she’d collected over the years. After taking mental inventory, Luu looked to the back of the room where the large shoe combo safe was located. “I know, I know,” she says as she eyes the safe, “but it has to happen. Heels alone won’t get us to Ascension.”

Bending down to enter the combo, Luu feels something thwack her back. Looking to see what happens, she notices one of her Balenciagas on the ground. Eyeing the it’s pair alone on the top shelf, Luu finally gives a small shrug and leans down to pick up the shoe. Getting on her tippie toes, Luu tries to reach, but can’t quite make it.

“Eh, eh, eh,” she grunts as she tries jumping up a few times. Finally, on the third jump she makes it, getting the shoe back to where it belongs. Unfortunately, in the process she grabs onto the shelf, and down it comes. Luu drops to the ground as the shelf crashes from one wall to the next, wedging itself at an angle just above where she lands. A cascade of shoes follow, pummeling Luu mercilessly and burying her under a pile of fashion.

The first order of business, before getting a bunch of new shelves put into a room, before having multiple people move into a house that, for the longest time only contained a single soul, is to make room for everything. Finding a place for the new shelves and that is remarkably harder than one might think when every bit of space in the house seems to have its own ecosystem of tchotchkes covering surfaces and shelves, filling cardboard boxes and cabinets in an inscrutable filing system known only to Luu. One of these days Jinny will have to sit down and find out, lest she move something innocuous looking and then suddenly there’s some implosion of elemental wind that blows out the windows or a void opens up and they suddenly discover a path to a cavern deep in a mountain somewhere, but for now, she’s busy making room in one of the spare bedrooms, stacking and moving things against the wall so stuff in the room Luu’s working on can be moved in there, then when the shelves are installed - scheduled in the next few days, so there’s a time limit to force them to work - and then moved back in. How she managed to find them she has no idea, but somehow fortune and favor fell into her favor and these shelves from an old library were going to scrap, and could she just have like five of them? She’d pay to get them moved in, of course, as well as installed, with a nice tip for the workers, too. And that’s what started this whole affair.

Part of this effort, of this hard work, was putting the whole situation with Luu out of her mind. Distracting herself with Alison and planning for her outdoor film festival was the primary goal, but thanks to the explosions in Skid Row, the whole thing was on hold for the foreseeable future. This sucked because now, instead of having something tangible to focus on, aside from her art, Jinny now got to wait and wonder and be very close to Luu. The adage ‘idle hands are the devil’s plaything’ certainly applied in this case, so she tried to stay busy. Jinny understood why they couldn’t be together, for the good of the Chantry, and how that would look if they were in a relationship. She didn’t have to like it, of course, but she did have to accept it. The rumors would certainly swirl if they weren’t already - oh, that chantry might as well be a Cult of Ecstasy one, with all the orgies they have going on, they make each one service them a dozen times to completion before considering allowing the person to join. Not that any of that is true, of course, but from an outsider, that could be one of the many explanations, wouldn’t it?

It’s amazing what the human mind can make up when presented with a limited number of facts and is forced to fill in the blanks.

Taping closed a box filled with books - an old box that contained alcohol from the 1960’s (Enjoy the true style of an old Kentucky Bourbon, drink Early Times!) - Jinny took a moment to think of what all has gone on over the past few months with Luu. From a chance meeting on the street to another chance meeting on the street, to learning of their magickal connection, to someone had told her she’d be living in an old house in the Hollywood Hills in a chantry that she was helping found, she would have called them crazy or, at least, imaginative. But here she is. Yes, being close to Luu is extremely confusing. A few times she’s caught herself standing outside the other woman’s door, just listening to the sounds from inside during the quiet hours of the night. She was too afraid to step inside, lest what they’ve been working on for so long be dashed against the rocks like a ship without a rudder. No, for what they have and for what they’re building, friendship will have to do. That budding relationship from when they first met will have to remain a bud for the foreseeable future.

Right?

Although…. She smiles. Those stacks that are going in will have a memory attached to them that might be unexpected. Jinny finds herself blushing at the recollection of a brief, passionate time in the Library at Ascension Lodge, nestled in a nook hidden amidst the shelves of books with a familiar woman who’s main descriptors could be ‘colorful hair’ and ‘high fashion.’

Stacking the box she had taped closed on top of others, Jinny takes a moment to study the room - a room she has been painstakingly labeling and consolidating, Tetris-like, to fit as much stuff in there as humanly possible. While some Chantries are bigger on the outside than the inside, this one hasn’t reached that point just yet, so they’ve got to work with the space that they have. What would Prince do? He'd build a wing on to Paisley park and display whatever he liked, but a reasonable collector? Organize, organize, organize! Then display the ones that meant the most or that would be worn more often, rotating them with the season. It's going to be interesting, Luu's seeing what treasures she has, every year. What is old is going to be new again.

The sound of several different things tumbling down from a high place catches her attention - falling shoes in a shoe hoarder’s house will catch your attention after all - so she abandons the box she’s working on and starts up the stairs two at a time, calling out. “Luu?” Down the hall to shoe Antechamber 3-C she goes, the door closed tight. Carefully she twists the knob and tries to push it open, a literal drift of shoes keeping it from opening too far. “Luu? Are you okay?” she asks, not wanting to push the door into the shoes or, gasp, push them against the floor, potentially scuffing them. Jinny pauses, listening, the only sound is the skittering of something running into the back of the room and into the walls. Must be their little hanger-on. She crouches down, trying to pull the shoes from beneath the door so she can slip in easier without destroying them.

So this is how it ends, not with a ballet flat, but a wedge. Luu tries to scream, but sandal straps fill her mouth, causing her to cough and choke. Remembering what she’s heard of avalanches, Luu realizes she could spit to find which way is up, but she can’t do that to her shoes, even if it means her life. Thankfully, she can dimly see a heel she recognizes. Taking mental inventory of what she can see, Luu relaxes and closes her eyes as she begins to recite the names of designers within an Angelic language.

In her Mind’s Eye, she reconstructs the room. The shoes are placed back on the shelf, and then allowed to tumble downward again. Tracing their movements, she comes to an understanding of where everything would have landed, and through that orients herself within the piles of shoes. Sensing a structural weakness, she punches through it, knocking a few shoes away.

As Luu’s arm emerges from the mass, it waves about until it feels the shelf above, helping her further understand the situation, as well as get some leverage – the shoe shelf has already fallen, how much worse could it get? Perhaps not always the best reasoning, but in the case it works out for Luu. Grasping at the shelf, she pulls herself up a bit, sending a few shoes rolling from the top of the mound and down towards the door.

“I’m ok,” Luu responds as she hears Jinny’s voice, “there was an incident.” There indeed was an incident, and while no longer completely buried alive, there’s still plenty to deal with in the situation. Her head and arms poking out of the pile, Luu gives a sigh. Soon she’ll have to find another place for all these shoes, perhaps even some sort of storage locker somewhere. It is lucky the incident was not worse, as Luu sees what happened as just one possible way that someone who collects weird things could have died alone. She’s not dead, and she’s unlikely to be alone much more in what was her home and is now her Chantry. Whether or not this is a consolation is not something she has quite come to terms with yet.

Well, she’s talking, so that’s a good sign. Jinny’s arm swings inside, her latex glove having been removed on the way up so it’s bare, clean skin. She carefully dips down and rummages until she feels something, then plucks whatever it was she grabbed - usually a shoe - from the ground. With a careful, firm grip, she withdraws it to be set carefully out in the hall. This process continues, over and over again, the woman slowly trailblazing her way through the fallen footwear until the door is mostly open - enough for her to get herself in to see what happened in the confines of 3-C. What she finds is Luu pinned, sort of, beneath a veritable mound of ballet flats, high heels, court shoes, sandals, sneakers, some roller blades and, as a call out to the brief ‘urban’ period of fashion Luu experimented in during the early part of a season, a pair of Timberlands in white suede and rhinestones.

Slipping sideways through the door, Jinny takes a moment to regard the carnage that’s taken place. Shoes, shelves, and various and sundry items have toppled haphazardly over each other, with a Luu partially entombed in a prison of artfully colored leather, suede, and textile. “I see.” She says, shuffling her feet to maintain contact with the floor as she trudges past fallen footwear to the shelf that’s laying at a jaunty angle over the pile of it all. “I’ll get you out of there. The last thing either of us want is a second mummy to appear in this place.” Gallows humor, sure, but when it’s what you got, it’s what you use. She studies the wall for a moment, and the shelf, her tongue slipping out to wet the bow of her lips. The shelf was installed correctly, but something went wrong and, with a little examination, it became clear. The screwed-in plate that was there to keep the shelf from falling was hanging from one screw, the others missing or showing where they were ripped out of the wall. More troubling? There are some rather deep gouges on the wall that indicate something was getting a wee bit frustrated while trying to remove them. Something to definitely be discussed later. Setting her shoulder into it, Jinny gives it the ol’ college try and heaves, managing to get the shelf levering back up to rest against the wall, scooting the bottom out a little so it can lean back, out of the way, to keep from falling over a second time.

Now, with the shelf off, Jinny moves to the woman of the hour, helplessly trapped beneath a pile of footwear. Grabbing the one free hand, Jinny heaves a second time and pulls the other woman up to her feet, the shoes going tumbling as Luu stands.

Giving her a quick once-over and nodding with satisfaction when she sees the only thing injured on Luu is her pride, Jinny can’t help but smile and shake her head. “Well.” Jinny says, looking around the room, finally ending on Luu with a smile. “I guess that’s the fastest way to clear off the shelves. Not very organized, sure but…” She shrugs. “Can’t fault the efficiency.” Yes, she’s very much teasing there, but it’s the thing that’s going to keep Luu from freaking out about all of this.

“The good news is, with the new shelves going in, you won’t have to worry about this. And if we get permanent display shelves in 3-C like I’m planning, you’ll be able to display the jewels of your collection without the fear of dust or anything - just like Prince - and keep the rest of your collection in one room.” Jinny’s looking on the bright side here.

“Attached! Attached!” Luu calls out aas Jinny grabs hold of her shoes and pulls Luu a little bit further into the pile. Once her Chantrymate lets go, Luu does her best to wiggle out of the undignified position she is now in, and back to the slightly freer undignified position she was in a few moments ago.

“Oh, ha, ha,” Luu responds as Jinny jokes about a second mummy in the house, “I’ll just be glad if our ‘Elf in the Vent’ doesn’t eat my eyeballs.” As Jinny pushes the shelf back against the wall, Luu watches it with some amount of trepidation, half expecting it to come crashing down again. While the shelf seems to be standing once again, Luu still keeps her eyes on it for a moment. Even if it is stable on its own, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have some help in being toppled.

With the offered hand, Luu works to ease herself to her feet. Surrounded by a massive pile of shoes, Luu rubs the back of her head as she looks around. “It might be efficient for getting them off the shelves,” Luu notes of the situation, “but that’s less than half of what I’m going to need to do. I’m starting to realize that this Chantry taking off means I’ll probably have to get a storage unit somewhere. I’m glad things are working out, but I’m still kinda adjusting to losing my space and having people to live with. I’ve got no problem with you or Jason, I’m just not really used to living with other people. My parents were hardly ever home, and I guess I had a roommate for three weeks during my freshman year, until she got a boyfriend and disappeared into the system.” Looking to Jinny, Luu shrugs as she tilts her head to the side and gives an ‘it is what it is’ face.

Letting go of the surprisingly sturdy boots Luu has on, Jinny steps back and sits down on the nearest overstuffed chair, squeaking as a leather toe nestles somewhere sensitive. She levers up to take hold of the red pump that landed in just the perfect position on the seat, setting it on the table nearest and then sighs, settling down, letting Luu wiggle herself out of the pile now that she’s unpinned from beneath the collapsed bookshelf.

Jinny gives a glance to the vents in the top half of the room, fully expecting a pair of dark eyes to be gleaming out of the dark, staring down at them, but alas, no eyes are there. Whatever it is has retreated to it’s little hideout in whatever corner of the house it has claimed for itself. It chooses to emerge whenever it wants, and not on any kind of schedule, and if it weren’t for the signs that it had been there before; things like the sewing book’s pages getting turned, the needles and thread left out going missing, and little sewn-together bits of cloth found in various places, it might be considered a figment of their imaginations.

“I guess we need to figure out what you have and go from there. I mean, surely there are shoes in here that aren’t going to be worn with any sort of regularity.” Once a decade may be putting it generously, but Jinny doesn’t say that, and she absolutely does not say ‘and you could get rid of some’ because that would be a fast track to a smacked bottom and, besides, a collection like this is something to be cherished and treasured. After all, where would one find vintage platform shoes with fish tanks built into the heels besides this place? Rummaging in the pocket of her overalls, Jinny pulls out a small folded bit of paper which is unfolded into a full-sized sheet, scribbles of shelf size and the like on them. “Okay, so…” She looks up at the room and then back at her sheet. “We’ve got an eight foot wall shelf and five other dual sided ones coming in here to be mounted on tracks running…” She looks up, waving a hand perpendicular to the door. “That way. I figure an average pair of shoes will fit in a cube about a foot to a side with shelves themselves being adjustable height-wise so….ten pairs to a shelf, seven shelves on a side, ten sides plus the one on the wall…” She blinks. “Seven hundred seventy pairs? Thereabouts?” She glances towards Luu. “A good start, at least, right?”

She pauses, tucking her paper away. “How are you handling this, Luu? It’s a lot of changes, having me, having Rhode, having…” She waves a hand towards the vent. “Whatever that is. All of us, moving into your quiet little abode? It’s a big change.”

“I was trying to get the master list out of the safe,” Luu begins to explain, as she glances about to see if she’d be able to hop out of the pile. “A little less helpful now that the organization is gone,” she notes, “but still good to have an idea of numbers for, like, planning.” That Jinny makes no mention of how infrequently Luu would probably wear each pair of shoes, is probably a good thing. Perhaps Luu understands this, but there are other views of the shoes that override this in her mind. She might only wear them so often, but having them all together and easily viewed is something of a reminder and an inspiration for planning outfits. A particular pair of shoes might not get worn frequently, but it also might be the pair of shoes she needs to wear tonight.

“A cubic foot for each pair,” Luu begins to say, “will hardly give them any room to breathe, plus some are larger, and some will certainly need to go into storage if that’s all I’m able to have on shelves.” Leaning forward, Luu grabs onto Jinny’s shoulders, using a bit of leverage as she does a fairly athletic hop out of the pile and onto a free bit of floor. Luckily, Luu manages to avoid toppling both of them in the process. Letting go, she looks back to the pile, and with her hands on her hips, she shakes her head.

“Ok, I guess?” Luu responds, still staring at the shoes. “I mean, it’s great that our vision seems to actually be taking off. At the same time, there’s still a lot of adjustments to be made. A lot less storage, for one. Then there’s getting used to living with people, for what feels like the first time, almost. It is nice to have company on some lonely nights, but it makes it difficult to indulge in certain guilty pleasures, not to mention I have to remember that I can’t just walk around naked anymore. I figure it will probably be a while before we get more people, if we even get more people, so I’ll have some time to adjust to there being three of us before I really need to start making changes, and have to really let go of the idea of this being my house. You’ve got the option of getting away to your studio when you need the space, but the best I’ve got is the carriage house.”

The issue with math is that it’s absolute. Jinny hadn’t thought of needing any sort of breathing room for the shoes, so, a little more back-of-the-napkin math follows. “So not ten to a shelf…so…eight? That gives you another four inches per shoe for breathing purposes.” She looks over the room for a moment, thinking. It’s really nothing that they could plan out, like tiles required to cover a bathroom wall or something like that, until the shelves are actually set up and the shoes start getting placed. They may be able to fit a thousand pairs in here or a hundred - she’d hope considerably more than a hundred, considering the amount of shelf space that’s being crammed in here, but until they actually see, they’ve got to go with math which, as precise as it is, may not be the best thing for estimating imprecisely-sized things like shoes. “At least you’ll be able to organize them a bit more compactly in this way. That shelf has all the boots, that one has all the wedges, and so on. Then by color.” She giggles. “I can imagine you standing, with the shelves pivoting to exactly what you’re looking for, like a treasure chest opening.”

She helps Luu to her feet, nudging a pair of Jimmy Choo heels in black with her toe out of the way so they’re not trod on when Luu gets her balance, looking to the heavy iron safe in the background, innocuous. “I’m assuming that, in addition to the master shoe list, that has a few of your rarest pairs.” Jinny says. “I won’t look at the combination, promise, but we need to get that list so we have an idea.” She has visions of it being filled with three-inch-thick binders with neatly annotated pages, each one containing a dozen intricately documented pairs with notes for wearing, like a pretentious wine aficionado would have for that rare wine they paid entirely too much for and tasted only once.

Jinny bends down and plucks a pair of shoes off the floor and places them on the shelf - low, so it doesn’t get overly heavy on top - and then another, leisurely blazing a trail through the fallen footwear towards the safe so Luu can get her documents. “I haven’t been to my studio in a few months, honestly.” she says, pausing with a pair of calf-high calfskin riding boots held carefully off the floor, set aside so smaller pairs can be got, the woman noting, mentally, that these are here and she should try and borrow them to pair with a skirt or some long pants at some point. “I’ve pretty much been here, in Antechamber 4-B, or with you.” She turns and sits on the floor, looking up, legs crossed beneath each other. “Speaking from personal experience, walking around naked, while certainly liberating, does get a little chilly, now and again. We could always just make one of the downstairs rooms up for Jason and leave upstairs a girls only kind of place. It makes it a little more likely one might catch the other au natural, after all, and who knows what sexy hijinks that might lead to?” Jinny’s playful smile and the wiggling of her eyebrows as an indication she wouldn’t mind too terribly much if that were to happen from time to time.

“Seriously, though…” Jinny’s head turns to regard the shoes. “Let’s use 4-B as a staging area. I don’t need a lot of room. We can get this all sorted out like they need to be sorted and out of the way for the installers to come in, then transferred over. It’d leave 2-C as a possibility if we found another Chantry member, and downstairs we have Jason. I mean, worse comes to worse? We throw them outside to the carriage house and keep the chantry proper for you. The thing is…I kind of like hanging out with you. I understand the need for alone-time; I mean, God knows I’ve enjoyed a lot of it since that bath…um…” A wee bit too much information there being shared, Jinny. She coughs, blushing a little, dialing it back a notch, hoping Luu hadn’t noticed. “I get it, though. Being alone is good sometimes, but being alone all the time?” She shakes her head. “Not so good.” It didn’t turn out well for the previous owner of this place, after all, and the last thing Jinny wants is for Luu to follow in those tragic footsteps.

Listening to Jinny’s plans for the structuring of her shoe collection, Luu seems to view these changes as a downgrade. True, they might end up with a nicer way to show certain shoes, but the lack of space means that a number of shoes will have to be hidden deeper in storage, and obviously those will be the shoes she wants.

“I feel like I’m listening to you describe an autopsy,” Luu says, as she lightly touches her stomach, “and not like an alien autopsy, or some sort of mummification process, but just the dissection of my beloved. I’ll find a way to come to terms with all of this, but I’m not really sure I want to think about all of the details right now. I might get a little light headed if we go too in depth on the future of my shoes.”

Stepping around the shoes, Luu shimmies through the narrow space between the shelves and the piles of shoes, and makes her way over to the combo safe. Crouching down, she looks back at Jinny for a moment, and then makes sure she is covering up the combination as she enters it. After a few moments of dialing, the safe pops open, and Luu retrieves a few notebooks from inside. With the notebooks out of the way, it is momentarily evident that there are at least a few pairs of shoes in that safe. What they are is hard to tell, as Luu says nothing about them, and makes sure to close the safe up quickly, before spinning the combo dial around. Raising up from the ground, she places the notebooks on one of the shelves, and then looks at Jinny, slightly crestfallen, but doing her best to accept this new reality.

“You still have the option,” Luu says, regarding Jinny’s studio, “and I’ve been enjoying having you here, as well as Rhode. It’s not a bad thing, so much as just adjusting to all the little changes that I need to make in my routine. Perhaps it will allow me to rebuild myself stronger than ever, but in The Great Work, lead becomes gold by way of – Shit!” Luu dives down to the ground, lifting a Louboutin heel – or at least what was a Louboutin heel. In the fall, it must have gotten damaged, as the heel itself seems only partially attached. Touching it slightly, Luu watches the heel sway further away from the body, the look on her face suggesting she’s not at all pleased. “Shit,” she repeats, but then narrowing her eyes she begins to examine the shoe further. “Oh phew,” she finally says, touching her fingers to her chest and looking relieved. “It’s one of the fakes that we got from Lei,” she explains to her Chantrymate, “they’re well done, but you can see some of the problems with the craftsmanship.” Poking the heel again, Luu watches it sway more, before offering it to Jinny and saying, “Present.” With that, she grabs a notebook, paging through it, before making some arcane markings near one entry, presumably as a way of explaining what happened, and why this shoe has left the protection of her collection.

“I’ll have to think about the idea about a ‘girls floor,’” Luu says to Jinny, “I see the advantage of it, but at the same time there’s some elements of segregation and hierarchy to it. I think the important thing in our mission is to change the fundamentals, rather than just finding a way to get what we want by repeating old patterns. I mean, seeing the kind of hippie that Jason seems to be, I imagine the idea that I can’t walk around naked is more my hang-up than his. We’ll probably come home one day to him sitting on the couch reading a newspaper and drinking his coffee, while in the nude.” This mental image gets Luu to wrinkle her nose slightly as she does a little wiggle. “Point is,” she continues, “that I can try to change my behavior, or cause separations that allow me to continue my behavior, but that’s not going to do anything to change someone else’s behavior. I think we need to come to a more holistic understanding of the situation, and beyond that, we need to include him in this thought process.” A beat, as she notes, “but we also need to be aware of these things, as that could have easily been him that mistakenly jumped in the bathtub with you.”

Sitting on the floor, Jinny makes a point to study the corner opposite the safe while Luu puts in the combination, making sure that she’s not able to see the combination, code, or which finger is required to open the biometric lock. “I know how important these shoes are to you - even that broken knock-off that Lei gave you - and I can’t say I exactly understand, but I do get where you’re coming from. These aren’t just shoes to you; they’re a collection that spans your time as a designer, and every pair strikes a memory, fills a purpose, or simply is the right look for what you need at the time. Having them at your fingertips like this is like having a lending library with all the books you could possibly need to reference. It’s so much easier to say ‘this shoe needs to go with this look’ when you’re working, or to delve into the library whenever you need the exact thing that’s missing. I guess it’s like a sports card collector, wanting to make the set, except your teams change every season and the collection gets bigger and bigger, no matter what you do.”

“It does give us a goal, though, to figure out a way to come up with the space in here that might not physically be possible. I’m picturing a door that opens into an alcove that’s deep and wide enough for all your shoes, but only fits in a space as big as the average closet, but that might be beyond the Magick that we have available at this point. I’m guessing something in the correspondence sphere, but I may need to do a little more research on it before saying absolutely that, yes, that’s the way that would work best. Or at all. Man…so much to learn.”

Jinny stands, wobbly, after a moment and makes her way over to Luu, ducking down and wrapping her arms around the other woman’s shoulders from behind, giving her a big, big hug. “It’s a learning process for all of us, Luu. There’s a lot of different things going on with being in a Chantry - for you more than anyone. You’re moving from solitary hermit to a chantry of your own making in about eight months since I started hanging around. That’s a big deal. You’ve also invited me into your home, taken me on roller skating trips around the world, taught me a new way to play pinball, ruined and beautified one of my thrifted dresses, and have just been the sweetest, most kind person I've ever run into.” She gives a light kiss to the back of Luu’s head, then releases her and stands. “Any growing pains, or discomfort, or whatever, if you want to talk, I want to listen. If you want to be alone, I’ll leave you alone. Ascension isn’t going to be comfortable, and we’re all going to have to spread our wings a little in one way, and become more intimately entwined in others.”

She pauses, looking down. “And were it Rhode who got in the bath with me, I’m fairly sure it would have been a much, much shorter engagement that would have ended with me running back to my room and slamming the door closed.”

“Lending library?” Luu responds with a tilt of her head as she looks to Jinny, “I’m not so sure about that. I still haven’t found that Manolo Blahnik, and while there’s a possibility that it is the work of our vent child, somehow I think you had something to do with it.” A sigh is given, before she admits, “but I do think you have a pretty good understanding of the situation. The shoes are more than just shoes. In a way they form a Memory Palace for me, that connects to various times in my life, as well as to the glamour of the larger world. Fashion itself has so many connections, but the fashion one owns? There’s even more connections, and they can be quite personal. I kinda empathize with the protagonist in High Fidelity, who organizes their record collection after each break-up. They’ve tried genres, they’ve tried years, but after a particularly bad break-up, they decide to organize their records autobiographically. In order to find anything in their collection, they need to recall their past and the circumstances of acquiring that record. Like I said, my shoes can form a Memory Palace, but now – “ Luu gestures at the pile of shoes on the ground, and says, “Now I’m trying to deal with a new situation, to reconcile my past with my present, and my goals for the future.”

“Not physically possible,” Luu slowly repeats back, before realizing, “That’s it! Why didn’t I think of this before? I can just twist space up like Alice in Wonderland. The ‘bag of holding’ as ‘impossible shoe rack.’ I’ll have to think on the specifics, and perhaps even get some help, but there are ways to do it. I mean, if we warded the Umbra around the Chantry, which might be a good idea anyway, I could even store my shoes on the other side. Oh, I could just kiss you!” In an excited state, Luu grabs Jinny by the shoulders and plants a big smacker right on her lips. There’s nothing romantic about the action, but it is a kiss nonetheless. “Oh, this is perfect,” Luu says as she lets go of Jinny and crouches down to begin sorting through the shoes, seemingly almost unaware of the fact that she just kissed her Chantrymate and how that might be taken by her.

Standing up, Luu’s arms are filled with a variety of shoes. There’s no ‘impossible shoe rack,’ but in an almost manic state of enthusiasm, she seems to feel that holding – almost hugging – her shoes might be accomplishing part of the task somehow. Turning to the shelf, Luu begins to place them almost haphazardly, before she grabs one of her notebooks and begins to page through, counting out numbers and doing mathematical equations in her head as she goes.

“Not that you’d be lending anything out from here, but that you…you know what, I think you get the metaphor I was going for with that.” Jinny just drops it at that point, too. The Manolo Blahniks were returned a bit after the creation of the earrings and the dress, so Jinny does give Luu a confused look for a second, shaking her head no. “No, no. I returned those to you right after we did the thing with the earrings. I don’t think the Vent Child had anything to do with it, just as much as I had nothing to do with the Vent Child. It just kind of…appeared out of the ether, when…I did.” Jinny frowns at that thought and the realization it brings along with it, looking up at the vent. Was she responsible for whatever-it-was waking up or coming here? And if she was, how could she make it up to Luu?

It seems that mentioning an idea, an off-the-cuff thought, was all that it really took. She grins at the thought of a matrix-like space full of shelves of shoes; all the shoes one might ever need, want, or could conceive of having. “Storing them in the Umbra may work, but I’d pump the brakes on moving the physical into the spiritual until we’re a little…okay, a lot better with that sort of thing. Objects that are loved, like your shoes, do have a certain something to them, and attracting a bunch of spirits to your shoe collection might leave them with marks that could be a little problematic to wear around the physical world. The classic ‘bag of holding’ transformed into a shoe vault?” Jinny grins. “I’m picturing a door, free-standing, in the middle of a room. You can walk around it and see the other side, even open it and look through it, but if you open it the right way….something keyed to those who made it and those you trust with the keys…voila. A climate-controlled domain with as much space as you could possibly ever need, with room to expand to the horizon. Seven Hundred pairs would just take up the first row of shelves. Just imagine what we could do…”

Jinny hops to her feet, just in time for the grab by the shoulders and the enthusiastic, joyful kiss that, despite it not being romantic, it does definitely take her breath away. She swoons a little, eyes fluttering after that kiss is broken, the train of thought she had definitely derailed for a solid minute. She finally does start to come back to it, turning to watch Luu sort through shoes frantically and, without a word otherwise, moves to start helping, matching pairs as best she can, others left on the floor to be matched up later. Not being able to use the upper two shelves is a little dangerous and the shelf proves it by swaying slightly after a pair of Versace–patterned heels are placed a bit too high. She stops, hands flinging up to hold the shelf in place, scanning the room and finally pointing. “There. There. Get me…that, over there. The flag…thingy.”

In the corner is a flagpole and flag Luu picked up from somewhere, still wrapped in rubber bands and paper. The important thing is that there’s a long, long pole that can be used to prop things up and keep them from tumbling down, long enough for her to go get her little drill and some screws to properly mount the shelf to the wall again.

“You also said you didn’t take the Monolo Blahniks,” Luu notes as she places more shoes on the shelves. The tone she uses isn’t particularly accusatory or annoyed sounding, more knowing, as if to be clear that whatever the current situation might be, Luu’s still keeping an eye on Jinny when it comes to her shoes. “Whether or not our little friend was involved in all of this,” Luu says, “I think we should start thinking about a plan for it. Some more information would be nice. I don’t know if we should try to catch it, or try to lure it out, or figure out how to live with it, or all of the above, but if we don’t do anything, Rhode’s liable to just blow it away with a shotgun by accident one day.”

“I gotta take some time to plan out the shelves,” Luu says to her Chantrymate, “but at least now I have a direction to go in, and I can stop stress eating about it. That along with the Wards, and the possibility of gender segregated floors or what not, are all things we should start thinking about. I think it would probably be a good idea to have a Chantry meeting and discuss some of this. See what thoughts Rhode might have, and give him a voice, rather than just having the matriarchy hand down their decisions. I’m sure all of this is a bit weird for him too. I mean, he has some vision with JFK and his dead dad or whatever, and it spins his head to the point where he ends up moving in. Then he’s only here a few days and he’s finding out the place is also a design house, has some weird creature skittering through the vents, and comes back to blood all over the porch. I think we’re really starting to develop something here, but we need to remember that all of us are people, and there’s plenty about this that can be tough. I think that talking and planning together, and just generally being there for each other is going to be helpful for all of this. I think it would be good to have a way to do some bonding as well, perhaps a party of some kind, either for just us or for the larger Traditions community. We’ve got Halloween coming up, so that’s a possibility, and I’ve always wanted to try making ‘Stone Soup,’ I heard it can be quite tasty.”

Continuing to put shoes on the shelves, Luu is too manic to really understand the effect her kiss had on Jinny, but perhaps soon things will calm down enough for her to realize and blush. She’s about to go and scoop up another armful of shoes when Jinny starts to call out. At first Luu is confused, but then realizes that Jinny is referring to the ‘Pride Flag’ Luu had acquired a few months ago. Dodging shoes as she takes a few steps through the Antechamber, Luu grabs the flagpole, handing it over to Jinny. “You want to ‘borrow’ this too?” she asks, with a slight grin and a tilt of her head.

“Unless you want this shelf to come down again, yes, I need to borrow it. Come on.” She gestures for the flag to be handed over. “Gimmie.” When it’s given, the point is wedged underneath one of the corners of the shelf, the butt wedged against the baseboard and, hesitantly, Jinny stands back, the shelf teetering, but supported. “And yes, I said I didn’t take them, but at the time we were also testing the earrings to see if they helped you pick out tells, so I said something that I knew was untrue to help you out. And you said the earrings worked. I am a /terrible/ liar, though, so take that as you will.” She heads out into the house proper, returning a bit later with some long screws, a block of wood, and a stepladder. The stepladder is put on the wall where she can climb up and look closely. The bracket is still there, but hanging loose, so a few of the long screws into the studs take care of it falling over again and that block of wood is actually screwed into the wall through the bookshelf, giving it another point of contact. “There.” Jinny says from her spot on the ladder. “That should take care of that until you get your four dimensional shoe closet taken care of.”

The subject of the scrambling visitor does get her to nod, Jinny moving down the ladder. “We should see if it was here first or if it came after you moved in, or after I moved in. I mean, judging from the size of the vents and the things that it’s taking, I’d say it’s about the size of a raccoon, which means there are going to be a lot of places it could take up residence without us being any the wiser. And we don’t know what it wants, needs, or anything. I haven’t seen any food missing in the kitchen, so it doesn’t eat, and all it really seems to do is craft things. It does seem to be getting better, but I don’t think that means much to you if it takes a chunk out of a Kate Spade dress or something because it likes the texture. I mean….” She comes closer, whispering.

“We could try and trap it, somehow? So we could see what we’re dealing with and then deal with it however we need to, Magickally or not. We should talk to Rhode, too, to see if he has any ideas.” Who knows what that old hippie will come up with, but right now it’s better to have any ideas than none at all.

And the soup idea? Jinny smiles, stepping back. “That sounds perfect. A wonderful way to get together and learn about each other. And who knows? Maybe our guest will add something good to the pot, too.”

After observing Jinny wedge the flagpole against the shelf, Luu works to get the last of the shoes put away, before she starts going over her notebooks to make sure that everything is still there. Her survey is thorough and meticulous, as one might imagine from someone that stores their lists in a fire safe vault to ensure that no one tampers with it, and that if the unthinkable happens the insurance companies will pay up for everything. She’s just wrapping up her second confirmation run through when Jinny finishes installing the bracket from the step ladder. “Minus the pair of Louboutins I gifted you,” Luu says as she looks over the shelves, “It seems like everything is in order. I think we also have a good plan for how to proceed in the future in order to make the most of the repurposed Antechambers. I guess it won’t be so bad.”

Making her way back to the combo safe, Luu crouches down, and once more checks behind her to make sure that Jinny isn’t peeking. Then, covering the combo dial with her hand, Luu proceeds to carefully spin it a few times, and then finally open the safe. There are definitely a few pairs of shoes in there, but Luu is too fast with returning the ledgers and closing up the safe to allow anything more than a fleeting glimpse of a tantalizing mystery.

As she makes her way back to her feet, Luu gets closer to Jinny to allow the other woman to whisper her plans. A small nod is given to confirm that Luu could see trapping their little friend as a potentially viable plan. “We just need to expect the unexpected,” Luu whispers back, “it might be the size of a raccoon, but this isn’t a raccoon we’re dealing with. I’m not sure where it might have come from, when it might have arrived, or what it might want, but anything that can craft – no matter how rudimentary – has something going on for it. Opposable thumbs at the very least, not to mention some ambition.

“Come on,” Luu says with a slight gesture of her head to the door. “Let’s get out of here before this thing comes crashing down on our heads again. I could use a break as well. Getting trapped under there was a bit stressful, and this whole thing is kinda emotional. I dunno, I guess I’m good at working with or through people, but living with them is a whole new thing to me. It’s not just that I have to learn to share my space, but I think I also need to realize that people also need their space. I’ll have to figure out how to not just barge into the bathroom and hop in the tub with you.” A small chuckle is given at this, as Luu heads for the door. She doesn’t say it, but it’s not so much Jinny’s private space that she is worried about – though this is obviously something of which she is mindful – as much as Luu is concerned about how all of this might make her feel. It is tough to live with some that you have romantic interests in, especially being aware of the note that Jinny left in Lloyd the alien, even if Jinny is unaware that Luu is aware. It is going to even be tougher once Jinny has moved on from those feelings far enough to start bringing home a lover. Luu wouldn’t fault her for doing such, but still she knows that it will crush her inside when it happens. She’s also aware that Jinny might feel the exact same thing about her bringing home a lover, but if she doesn’t do that eventually, how will she ever move on?

“Come on,” Luu says as she exits the antechamber, “we can hangout in my bedroom.” It is possible that Luu would have suggested that anyway, it is after all a comfortable place to hangout, and they are comfortable with each other, but it is also possible Luu’s subconscious is partially driving the narrative, reminiscing about past events and hoping for future ones, and yet to repressed for Luu to be truly aware. Heading into the bedroom, Luu twitches her nose slightly before adjusting her septum ring.

The trip to Luu’s Bedroom from the disincorporated antechamber of shoes doesn’t take long. Out one door, past the bathroom, then down the hall to the door at the end, passing another two bedrooms that, more than likely, have more of the same amount of stuff in them that the other bedrooms in the house do. She hasn’t explored, though. It would be extremely rude to dig through Luu’s stuff without her permission and Jinny wouldn’t like it if Luu dug through her stuff without permission….well, not really, but still, the principle of the thing. Baby steps here. Luu’s just now getting used to extra people in the house and giving up shoe storage to house them, as well as an unknown creature living in the walls that occasionally crafts things out of other things, so throwing uninvited exploration on the pile might trigger a meltdown that could rival the explosion that just happened in Skid Row.

Some of those doors though? Super, SUPER tempting for someone with an Avatar dedicated to exploration.

“As long as you knock and announce yourself before coming in, I won’t mind too terribly much if you decide to hop in the tub with me.” Jinny follows behind through the hall, pausing by her room to slip off her shoes and socks and leaving them inside the door, choosing to go barefoot now that she’s not having to tromp around in storage rooms. She takes big steps, wiggling her toes on the long rug that covers the polished wood of the floor as they head down the hall. “You got that spot on my back I can’t reach, so I’m not going to complain.” The tone is teasing, but there also is a bit of truth included in there, too.

The hall is only fifteen or twenty feet from where they entered it, but it seems longer as they move along it. Or time is slowing down. The last time they were in here was a rather close, intimate moment that ended with Luu on the floor when a roller skate made an unexpected appearance so, taking a breath, Jinny tells herself to be good. No seduction. No flirting. No nothing. Living just a few doors down from Luu, the free spirit that she just clicked with in all the right ways, is difficult, but she’s going to have to learn to see her as a friend, not as a potential lover. Seeing the way Luu interacted with some of the models she worked with was sobering. They were so beautiful, with long legs and hips and curves in the right places and faces that were perfect in Modeling terms, that Jinny feels very much like the ugly duckling of the parable. Sure, one day she may grow up to be a swan, but right now she feels like a scrawny, red-feathered waterfowl compared to some of those women. It’s enough to give a girl a complex. Hopefully she’s not there the morning that Luu sends a girl downstairs to get coffee, leading to an awkward conversation on the stairs or in the bathroom, or, worst of all, having to listen to it all. Headphones. That’s what she needs, just in case. Headphones. Luu’s obviously going to meet someone and bring her home and when that happens Jinny’s going to hole up in her room and cry and try and get that knot out of her stomach that just builds and builds and builds until she’s starting to cry and then…

Oh. They’re here.

Stepping inside Luu’s bedroom is like stepping inside a church. Wide open with high ceilings and a pentagonal dormer on the far wall - large enough for the bed if she wanted to put it there but now holding a few mannequins in various states of dress, including one from the 1950’s repaired with gold thread and patchwork cloth. Striking and beautiful and just Jinny’s size.

“So.” Jinny says, looking around to find a spot to sit, finally settling on the foot of the bed, lowering herself so she’s sitting cross-legged and comfortable, wiggling her butt to get settled just so. “Stone soup, huh? Knowing our luck, it’s going to be more than just us and Rhode. We’ll probably get another one or two knocking on the door while we're making it.”

Taking a seat at her desk, Luu spins the wheeled chair around almost haphazardly, coming to a rest as it faces the foot of the bed, Luu leaning forward and pressing her elbows into her thighs, holding her head in her hands. Puffing her cheeks out, she exhales noisily, vibrating her lips in the process. There’s things on her mind, but they’re inaccessible to her at present, the chaos and exhaustion of moving her life around making it in some ways unrecognizable to her. When the dust settles, she’ll see more clearly and understand just how things have changed, and how she has changed with them, but will she like what she sees? ‘Like’ isn’t the right lens afterall, they’re on a mission through The Fragile Path, and certainly there will be things about it that she doesn’t ‘like,’ but that won’t stop her steps forward. She knows how well that worked out for Orpheus and Lot’s wife. It didn’t work out particularly well for Eurydice either, but is being dragged back to the Underworld better or worse than being a nameless pillar of salt? This world can be unkind, and that’s just for the ‘heroes,’ don’t even ask what it means to a woman finding her own way, making her own way, trying to change things for the better. They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but they seem to forget that she’s the one that bleeds.

About to say something, Luu insteads changes her mind; saves that thought for later. Still sitting, she spins the chair once more, propelling her a few feet around the room and coming to a rest by her turntable. Tracing her index finger along the spines of her records, she passes by some classics, figuring that now is not the time for Prince or B-52s. Too loaded for the moment, but maybe tonight she’ll put on a pair of headphones and think back to earlier this year, on a late Spring day that seems both familiar and alien to her current situation, now both more involved and less involved with Jinny than she could have imagined at that point. Instead her finger lands on Brian Eno’s ‘Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy),’ and the almost divinatory method by which that album was constructed seems right to her at this moment. Trying to chart the path on your own or even with good company can fail, easily leading you to simply retrace your old path over and over again, no longer recognizing your footprints, as they’re now obscured by that which you had earlier sown. Instead, giving in to the freedom of strategic chance operations can be freeing. After all, there’s still the necessary element of interpretation, and in that way one is working with an externalized and unrecognizable self, getting to what one has overlooked or buried, and unearthing it without guilt or shame, but instead fresh eyes of revelation. In this case, fresh ears, but in the end no part of body, mind, or soul will be left out of the process of storming the mountain. Selecting the record, she carefully pulls it from its sleeve, placing the record on the turntable. She starts to glance at the back of the album, but instead decides not to refamiliarize herself with the details, at least not in that way. Placing the needle on the wax, she listens to its light crackling for a moment, almost waiting to make sure there is still music preserved. Luu closes her eyes as the first notes sound, the spinning circle revealing its hidden spiral structure. A moment later she spins the chair back towards Jinny, and jokes, “This way the skittering will be a surprise.”

“Stone Soup,” Luu repeats back, giving a few nods, not entirely to the beat. “I’ve known of it for awhile,” she explains to Jinny, “but I’ve never made it. I figure it is a good way to bring a community together. Especially our community, where people are able to contribute to both the cauldron and its magick. I imagine we’ll get something interesting, something unexpected, but at the very least we’ll get a certain kind of nourishment that doesn’t always materialize in the food we cook for ourselves. I think working to reveal the community is something that can help me through all this weirdness of transmuting my house.” A beat, as she looks to Jinny with a smile, and says, “Sorry for being so weird lately.”

Jinny’s default state, growing up, in college and the like, was social. Every day was spent surrounded by family and friends, and privacy was meant for the bathroom. Being alone was a rare, treasured occasion that only lasted, at most, a few hours, when everyone was out of the house for some reason and you happened to not be. Sure, there were those spaces that were exclusively yours or that you were given leeway to decorate and shape to your heart’s desire, but heading downstairs for breakfast and not seeing three people, at least one of which you’re related to? That was a rarity until Jinny hit college, and even then, the numbers really didn’t change appreciably until she had her awakening, returned home, and moved into her little studio. That first morning, waking up alone to the sounds of traffic outside and not to the smells and sounds of cooking, conversation or laundry, was distressing to the poor girl, so it’s no wonder that when the opportunity to join Luu at the Chantry made itself known, she was very much game to move in. And from what she knows of Luu’s upbringing? Luu’s hermetic solitude was very much her style of living. This is a massive, massive change for the woman. Instead of being the lead, she’s a component. A part of the whole system that she’s creating. She’s trying to find a place for herself in the puzzle she’s continuously tinkering with, the shape, even the medium changing at a moment’s notice on a whim. For someone as used to being in control as Luu, having less of it must be frustrating. Thus, the blowing out of breath.

Jinny spins on her butt and flops back on the bed as Luu leans forward, leaning her head over the edge of the bed, her red hair spilling down almost to the floor as she looks over at the other woman, tilting her head as Luu selects an album and places it on the turntable. Letting out a breath, Jinny wets her lips and lets her eyes close, the hiss and pop from the needle finding the groove of the record a memory of yesteryear, when families would gather around the phonograph to listen to the latest hit, or comedy sketch, or political statement from whichever party was in power that day. The volume is low - quiet enough to be heard but not so loud as to interfere with conversation, the quiet, tinny guitar playing from the first song reminding Jinny of wind chimes during the summer months. They should get some of those, she thinks to herself. Use those as wards and detection for intrusive sorts who might want to peek in on what a pair of ladies and their one, lonely gentleman would get up to in the middle of a chantry.

“I haven’t heard this record before.” She says softly. “It’s nice and relaxing sounding. At least this first song is so far.” She sits up slightly, calling towards the vent. “If you’d like to come listen, you’re welcome to.” She glances at Luu before looking back up there. “You can sit up there in the vent. We’re just talking. We don’t mind. We’ll leave you be.” And with the invitation given, Jinny’s head flops back down to regard Luu, cat-like, blinking lazily.

“Stone soup does sound like a good idea.” She turns over, laying on her stomach, bare feet crossed at the ankles, chin pillowed on her hands, looking at Luu on her rolly chair. “Will you provide the stone, or should we go find one? How about something from the Node? Just a bit of water-polished stone from there, brought in?” A beat. “Don’t apologize for being weird. I’m into weird and, besides, this is a lot of change for a Luu. If you came through smelling of roses I’d have a few more questions about your sanity.”

“They made it with these cards called ‘Oblique Strategies,’” Luu begins to explain to Jinny, “I guess they designed them around making music, but really they can be used for anything. The idea is when you get stuck, you consult the cards, and use that as a strategy for moving forward. Some people might use something like I Ching or Tarot for this – and there are a few things that you could use those for – but in this case you might get a card like ‘What would your closest friend do?’ and then you’re supposed to use that as a strategy for moving forward. You can take more than one card, and what the card means is up to you. It seems to have worked well. An instrument for chance operations.” A shrug is given following the explanation. Maybe all of this is useful, or maybe just meaningless. The album still requires the musicians, and it would be something else with other musicians and the same cards, but it would also be something else with the same musicians and other cards, or no cards at all.

Leaning back in the chair, Luu slides down a little as she spins around, coming to a stop as she watches Jinny speak to the vents. She’s not sure if the creature is listening, or even how it might react to such statements, if it can even understand them. Then again, Luu is not quite sure how she would react to the creature appearing and taking Jinny up on her offer to join them. For now they seem to be alone, but it is becoming more clear that in the near future they’re going to need to develop a strategy – oblique or otherwise – to deal with this creature. How that will all work out, only time can tell.

“I don’t know if it is really ‘Stone Soup’ without the stone,” Luu notes to Jinny, “so I think we’ll need a stone. Water and a pot or cauldron as well, a flame below it. Those are the essentials, the constants. They’re the setting for what will follow, the needed path to a communal magick that can exist in infinite combinations. Something from the Node might be a good idea, there’s definitely rocks there. We could also gather some water, but there might be heavy metals or other things we’d have to worry about when it comes to food. Those are things we might want to look into anyway, considering we have to swim through said water. All I know is it hasn’t been bad for my hair, so I’m not too worried as of yet.”

“Thanks for being so understanding,” Luu says, as she pulls her roller chair closer to Jinny using her feet. Reaching forward, she gives her Chantrymate’s hand a little squeeze. “I think I just need to consider all of this as some sort of alchemical process,” she says after some consideration, “turning a base substance to gold. There will be many steps to the process, and if I consider the substance not through the lens of the process of transmutation, but by only considering what it is at that moment, then it will be easy to get frustrated or lose sight of what is actually going on. This isn’t supposed to be easy, I’m supposed to feel challenged to a certain degree. Being made to question things is what will allow me to shed my skin, my emotional baggage, to be reborn as a shining star. What I’m feeling might not be the sensation of losing my home, but rather that I am building a home, gaining a family. These are unfamiliar things to me, and it is going to take some adjusting to, some reconsiderations. Yet, I like totally think it’s the right direction forward, I just need to accept that my steps might be a little unsteady, that the ground might feel a little strange below my feet, but I need to remind myself that I shouldn’t be worried about these things when the point is to fly.”

If the creature is listening, Jinny wants to know that it’s welcome here. Maybe they may get a glimpse of it, or at least know where to look if they hear it scurrying through the vents over the dulcet tones of Brian Eno, but if they don’t, at least the gesture was made and whatever it is might be a little more lax, or a little more willing, to show itself as the time passes if it knows that it’s known about and that the residents are okay with it being there. Who knows what magick might emerge from learning what it is and what it could do? The potential is there; they simply have to seize it.

“It can be any kind of soup, as long as it has the elements of a cauldron, heat, and some liquid to cook the ingredients in.” Jinny says, her head lifting slightly to let one hand out, flopping where Luu can more easily grab it. “The thing I would wonder is whether or not it’s going to be edible, or some manifestation of the magick we all bring to the table. Either way, it’ll be interesting.”

Her hand taken, Jinny gives the other woman a squeeze, letting that contact linger while she surreptitiously scans the room. The last time she was here, it was dark and she was in the middle of a make out session. The time before that it was dark and she was naked and wet and in bed with Luu who was also naked, but not wet, considering she had been placed there by Jinny after a quick scrub and dry after a long endurance run of roller skating. That is something that definitely will need to get done before the month is out, too, so Luu doesn’t go through that exhausting ordeal again.

“You’re my best friend. I’d be doing something wrong if I wasn’t at least a little bit understanding.” Jinny says with a smile, turning on her side, her attention moving from the room proper to Luu herself, perched on the rolling chair. She pulls in with her arm, drawing Luu Closer, then pushes her away. Roll Roll Roll. A little form of exercise that pumps her bicep up to beefcake levels.

Or not. It’s just moving Luu back and forth.

“Alchemy I don’t know much about. Just the basics, really, but if you try to get me to somehow turn lead into gold, I might do better trying to convince you that what you’re looking at is gold instead of actually transforming it from one to the other. But transmogrifying your life into something new, something different and new, like what we’re doing now, is definitely a process with not a little bit of discomfort involved. You and I, when I arrived, it was kind of a change but you could live with it. I’m not that big of a rock tossed into your pond, but with Rhode? With whoever else might darken the doorstep?” She squeezes Luu’s hand and looks around, a gray something on the bedside table, sitting on a pillow, looking familiar, taking her aback when she recognizes it for what it is. “...well, it’s going to be like a wheelbarrow crashing into your nice, still pond. The shape may change, the water may get rougher, but given enough time it’ll all smooth out again.”

Holy crap, is that Lloyd? Sitting there on the bedside table? She squints briefly and then recognizes the embroidery on the belly that declares it to be a gift from but does her best to not really show that she’s noticed, dragging her attention away and back to Luu - the more important thing in the room at this very moment, rolling back towards her and away from the stuffed alien with the stitching under its arm, hand still in hand. “Listen.” She says softly. “I know it’s a big change. It’s a big change for both of us, really. It’s what needs to be done, though. It’s the right thing for both of us and it’ll help so many people once we’re up and going strong. I wish that we could help in Skid Row, but right now, we can’t, but once we’re more established? Who knows what good we could do bringing people, bringing Mages of all sides together?”

“I think it should be edible,” Luu responds with a laugh, “I mean, the point is to feed people, right? In other variants of the story, it isn’t even soup, but something like an Islamic feast. The way I’m imagining it, people would be contributing bits of food to the cauldron, but then also maybe using their magick to somehow improve the soup. Still, the plan is like totally to feed people, while bringing the community together. I mean, if like we don’t feed them that way, we’re going to have to feed them another way. Plus, what’s the message if coming together just makes a big inedible mess in a bubbling cauldron?” Thinking about this for a moment, Luu says, “Then again, given how The Traditions are sometimes, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised if it ends up an inedible mess. Too many cooks and the like?”

“You’re my best friend, too,” Luu responds, and whether she is a friend or not, she can’t help but want to kiss the other woman. It just seems so right to her, something that makes sense, and would be comfortable. Despite this, she knows the plans they made together when they founded this Chantry. To do something like that just because it’s what she wanted? No, not what she wants. It’s what they want. Luu read the secret letter to her that Jinny had left within Lloyd, and she knows the other woman’s true feelings. That’s what makes this all so hard. It’s something they both want, but also something they both know they shouldn’t have, as it will interfere in their larger goals. To push the topic wouldn’t change anything, it would just make it harder for both of them to move on.

As Jinny pushes the chair back and forth, Luu moves across the floor, giving Jinny’s hand a little squeeze in return. Then letting go, she spins around, kicking her feet out a bit so they avoid the floor. “The gold isn’t always literal,” Luu notes as her spin slows down, “if your stories are able to make something into gold, then they have succeeded. Maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about the ripples in the pond. They’re small things compared to the tide as it moves to the lunar pull, and that has never bothered me. Seasons change, no things come into fashion, embrace the future today and marry it with retro charm.”

Putting her feet on the ground once more, Luu slowly scoots in the chair, the wheels giving her a slightly uneven motion, and yet still getting her to where she needs to be. “I want to help there as well,” Luu notes of the Skid Row, “we also need to be careful. I’ve thought a bit about the things you discovered, and I’m not sure I agree with Johan and Norea’s conclusions. There’s reason to think that the Conquering Child and the Conqueror Worm might be too different phenomena. I think approaching them as thus – and doing so cautiously – is the best move. If they turn out to be the same, then great. If not? Well then I think we will avoid a lot of trouble this way. I sent a text to Calvin, and hopefully he’ll get back to me so I can ask him a few questions about the ley lines, as well as get some of our intelligence to him.” Luu sighs and notes, “I don’t know that we can stop anyone from doing anything foolish in this investigation, but we should make sure we stay safe, and also be careful that we don’t give anyone directions off of a cliff, by accident.”

As Luu speaks these words, they seem quite far away, her mind taking her to early Summer, and a celebration at Joshua Tree. That night marked many changes, the Awakening of Norea as she moved further through her Hermetic apprenticeship, and for Luu, being another year older. She’d spent time with the others, but often she’d find herself alone at night, just the sound of distant animals and close-by bugs. With a glass of alcohol, or maybe a spliff, she’d sit by the water or the fire and think things through. On one of those occasions, joined by Johan, Luu spoke of the Chantry and her feelings for Jinny, as the other woman slept in a tent nearby. She explained the sense of duty they felt towards Ascension, the sacrifices they had made – to not be together, so that they could be together. Johan listened to all she had to say on the matter, and in the end proclaimed her a fool. To him her sacrifice was unnecessary, it gained them nothing, and only caused them hurt. He let her know that plenty of people in relationships work together on important projects, and if they fail, they fail together. Yet what if failure is not an option? Is that true, though? Perhaps failure, while not inevitable, is an acceptable outcome, and only her hubris makes her think she’s so important that it couldn’t be otherwise. These things she wishes she could say to Jinny, to work through them with this wonderful woman, but she knows that if Jinny did not see it this way, that she would only be causing them pain, and perhaps leading them to failure anyway. She couldn’t bring that kind of hurt, even if she herself hurts, needing to shift her gaze so as not to look onto her Chantrymate’s lips with such longing. An alchemical kiss that transmutes them into what? She can only dream, and that has to be enough.

My sweet Goddess, you are so close to me, and yet I fear what that closeness could bring, and at times I don’t even know why.

Finishing what she was saying about various dangers, Luu offers a small smile, before taking a slow spin in her chair. As she faces away from Jinny, her heart momentarily sinks, weighed down with an almost unbearable heaviness, and yet she pulls it together. For Ascension, for Jinny.

This is all harder than she expected.

There's always the hope that Stone Soup will be edible, but there is always the chance that something will end up in the pot that isn't exactly what tastes right, good, or reasonable. Sure, things like Turnips or beets will easily fit the motif, but if someone shows up with Licorice? Durian? Surströmming? Something equally strongly-flavored that could overpower the soup entirely? Jinny would more than likely call an audible at that point and use that as a side dish.

Outside.

Where it can't bother anyone.

Of course, Jinny would outline the exclusion of said item as a metaphor for every idea having merit on its own but not being the right idea for the current situation. She would also keep it polite and direct, with no mincing of words. The last thing that she wants to establish is a pecking order or, god forbid, politics. None of that needs to be in Wayak, since that's what causes so many issues in the world surrounding them. No dividing of the soup, for one to take the ingredient and another to not, because that shows the division that would rise from being a house divided, but not doing it could mean that the soup itself would become a metaphor for...Hmm. She may be overthinking this just a little bit. "I think it'll be interesting to try, to say the least. People know what goes in soup, so if we at least let that information go out there first we shouldn't get anything too off-the-wall." Jinny's contribution, as of right now, is going to either be some long-cooked broth from pork bones, some Miso, or maybe some Bok Choy for some greenery. "I think there would be something appropriate about getting an old iron cauldron and hanging it over the fireplace or a bed of coals in the backyard, but the kitchen would be good, too." Something to plan out for later.

And then silence.

Jinny and Luu, linked by their loosely entwined fingers across the gulf between the side of bed and chair, simply look at each other, the thoughts swirling, unspoken, but very much relevant at the moment. She squeezes Luu's fingers gently, resting her head on the comforter, just watching her, blinking slowly, languidly in the quiet of the Foreboding Jacobean. That little meeting of lips earlier, that joyful, unbound kiss when Luu was so pleased with the idea that Jinny had come up with - an idea that would allow her to maintain her shoe inventory without sacrificing space for potential Chantry members - is still fresh on her mind. That little motion was enough to strike Jinny dumb for at least a minute, the knot in her belly twisting and loosening just a bit from that blessed, blessed contact. It would all be so easy, you know? Just to draw her in, to lift her hand up and tangle it in Luu's hair, then draw her down into a kiss that would last as long as it needed to and then, when it broke with a soft puff of breath they'd smile and laugh and she'd pull Luu down to lay with her on the comforter. Close, but not too close. Not yet. It's something that Jinny has had to come to terms with, after all. If they were to be together she doesn't know what she would feel. It might make her shatter to a million pieces, like a sculpture of ice pushed over, or it might be what they both needed in a way that they had never considered. Or it might change everything and they'd never be able to go back or it would change everything and they'd wonder why they hadn't reached out before.

Her heart hurts and, as Luu rolls away, Jinny hesitantly lets go, pulling her hand back to rest her chin on it, closing her eyes for a second and rubbing her face against the comforter to wipe away any potential tears before looking back up. "Yeah." She manages to stammer out after a moment. "They may share a similarity but that may be the only similarity. You can't go into a situation thinking your wards will protect against one thing and then suddenly discover that they're totally inadequate and you were foolish for even trying. If that's the case, I see a lot of 'if we only knew!' coming back from anyone who manages to survive. We can just give the information that we have and hope that whoever decides they're grown up enough to deal with it takes our advice. Willworkers can do a lot, but there's even more we can't when something decides to change the rules of engagement on a whim. Which, for a spirit, is exactly what they’d do."

She turns to look up at the ceiling, glancing at Lloyd momentarily, grey and shapeless, sitting on a pillow on the bedside table. He looks like he belongs there, propped between a bottle of extremely expensive moisturizer and a lamp that probably came with the house or had some kind of creepy, esoteric connotation to Adrenochrome, Flat Earth, a UFO Cult, or some kind of cryptid. And as Luu speaks, Jinny listens and thinks, too, remembering the time in the desert, with Johan and Norea and Luu. She had gone to bed earlier in order to not think of some things and, in the night, woke up and heard Luu and Johan talking about different things around the campfire. Sure, a lot of it went over her head, and a lot of it was potentially drunk talk, but some of the things Luu said - how she and Jinny had made a connection, how they had a shared view of Ascension - but some of what Johan said, calling them to just be together, was striking. And Luu....she was heartbroken? That's the thing that really, really struck home, and the thing that Jinny's trying to reconcile.

"You're such a strong, wonderful person, Luu." Jinny finally says softly from her position on the bed. "All this is going to work out okay."

Whether she means the Stone Soup, the Chantry, or them? Jinny leaves that ambiguous. Her and Luu and Ascension. Luu's fear of commitment due to her word being Triangle and not being one for monogamous relationships where she got the short end of the triangle. It's all so /complicated/. Jinny closes her eyes and forces herself to relax, letting her mind drift.

My City, my patron, my totem, my love, my Luu....

This isn't going well. It's so much harder than she expected.