2020-11-18 The Trip
The Trip
Participants: Jinny Lee Lorelei Luu Rhode
Location: Winters Retreat
Date and Time: November 18, 2020
Summary: Sharing drugs and minds
Mood Music: David Dean Burkhart - "The Trip"
There was a craft services table full of drugs in the living room. For someone with no experience, not everything there could even be accounted for. White crystals, buds so heady that they filled the room, beer, wine, a prescription bottle full of Thorazine not prescribed to Jason... anything imaginable was on a lazy susan on the coffee table. "So. I'm going to kinda give you some guideposts so you guys know what's happening to your bodies." The Cultist explained as he reached out and took a little brown bottle with a dropper stopper out and presented it to view. "This is the game. LSD." In a display of health and safety, he squeezed the dropper out on his tongue. "A few drops will do you, but don't worry. You literally can't overdose on it, just burn harder and longer." He explained.
"So, now that I'm on the roller coaster, I can decide if I want it to speed up..." He turned the lazy susan around and scooped some of the white crystalline substance into his mouth, before making a god-awful face at the taste. "MDMA is going to help me get to full speed ahead. Weed is going to synergize with the overall experience, but it's important to note you can't actually get... traditionally speaking, stoned or drunk while on Acid. If you need some coke or speed or something, same difference, but really, try the MDMA." He encouraged as he explained the contents of each of the little ramekins he'd set out.
"Now over here." He spun the lazy susan again and pointed out the beer and wine. "These will pump the breaks and slow you down. You will get intoxicated and clumsy and all like you would normally while you were drunk, but you won't feel drunk on LSD. You can't. Trust me. You will die of alcohol poisoning before you feel drunk." He warned before picking up the Thorazine bottle. "We're locked into this for the next eight hours unless you pull the ripcord. This is the ripcord. It'll shut you down and put you to sleep. It's a waste." He stressed. "But it's here for safety and security."
"Please, in the name of all that's good and holy, please, please, tell me that you've locked your mannequins up." This is said with deathly seriousness to Luu from Jinny's spot on the couch. Shoes? Gone. The Dreamspeaker has chosen to go with comfy socks with sloths stitched on them instead of anything that would constrict her feet. Her method of dress, in fact, is reminiscent of Hugh Hefner from the 50's Playboy mansion, a rich maroon silk set of Men's pajamas and the aforementioned sloth socks making up her outfit for her very first trip using pharmaceutical substances.
She keeps wondering how she let herself get talked into this; Luu knows, almost as intimately as Jinny, how easily and quickly she gets smashed. A Pina Colada and a shot of Tequila was enough to get Jinny so out of it that she and Luu had an adventure around town that she's both a) still remembering bits and pieces of and b) still paying for, metaphorically. Thus the mannequin conversation. She does have a traffic cone set up already in the corner of the room, so they don't end up going to find one like last time, too, her keys are locked upstairs, so there's no driving, and really...she's done everything to keep herself and others safe and mostly sane during this.
The spot she chose to sit - a loveseat on the little end of the coffee table, and a spot just about as far as one could get from the pharmacopeia laid out, has a perfect view of the room, the fireplace, and, yes, Rhode, who is merrily ingesting what, in her eyes, seems to be enough substances to send a small country to the moon and back. "I really, really, /really/ have a low tolerance. Like nonexistent." She glances to the gathered Chantrymates, scooting forward on the seat to lean forward to look, first to Rhode, then to Luu, Lorelei, and Lee (the group she's starting to mentally the cubes because L3 - it makes no sense, just go with it), takes a deep, deep, DEEP breath, shoulders back, chest out, eyes closed. "A tiny bit, please." she says, her voice a tiny whisper, almost a squeak, her tongue out for the dose of LSD.
"I trust you." She adds softly.
Lee is there, attentive and alert, it's safe to say this isn't his *first* rodeo by the way he nods along with Rhode's explanation without questions or alarm. And the fact that he's got two extra packs of cigarettes on the table beside his lonesome chair, along with the half-rumpled pack that can be seen outlined in his jeans. Both packs are light blue American Spirits and they are, apparently, a necessity for this experience as far as Lee is concerned.
He straightens out of his seat as Rhode finishes his explanation, offering a nod as he moves over toward the dropper, extending a hand - assuming its passed, Lee will take the same, or at least a similar, amount as Rhode, lifting it up and dropping it onto his tongue with a faint wrinkle of his nose at the subtle bitterness. He'll hand it back when he's done for distribution amongst whoever.
Lee is dressed for comfort as well which, for him, is a gray t-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants. A pair of black flip flops are situated near the door to accommodate trips outside to feverishly smoke those cigarettes, and he's got a small duffel bag full of his street clothes to change back into once they've crossed the threshold together. Lee takes a moment to examine the lazy susan, turning it slowly with pursed lips before selecting a baggie full of nugs, a grinder, and some rolling papers. He takes a moment to tear off a little piece of the rolling paper box on his way back to his seat and settles in, fingers dexterously plucking the dried leaves from the stems and seeds and depositing them in the grinder. He'll take a moment to grind up the weed and then roll up a joint, using the torn off piece of cardboard from the box as a filter.
When he's done, he'll glance over to Jinny and nod, "I think we've got like four ways to pull you out if it gets to be too much." he says with a smile over at the woman, "Everyone here is your friend, we all want this to be fun." said before he sets the joint in his mouth and pulls his lighter out, sparking up as he settles into his seat. He looks to Lorelei then, expression difficult to read with the joint in his mouth and drags deeply, eyes wandering away from her and over to Luu, then finally on back to Rhode to see who the man puts on the rollercoaster next. He will, of course, pass the joint to whomever wants it once he's had a few drags.
The shimmering crystal brightness of the table has Luu wearing her Celine sunglasses, and she hasn't even ingested anything yet. "I'd say this looks a lot like a law enforcement museum setup," Luu notes as she examines what's before her, "that is except for the fact that you're providing useful information, as well as actively encouraging us to consume from the mind altering cornucopia laid out before us." Taking a few steps around the table, she listens as the options are explained, doing her best to remember which is which, and half-wondering if perhaps it's best not to remember and just drive by instinct. Perhaps famous last words, but it seems like it might at least be an option to consider.
While Luu might be less experienced on the consumption of drugs, she seems to be an expert in decorating for such experiences. The house is too large for a complete transformation, plus some of the familiar -- even if familiar is a bit haunted house -- is nice to have, but a number of side rooms have gotten the full treatment. Varieties of fabrics in different textures and patterns have been interlaced around the house, transforming spaces into canvases for further transformations of the mind. All of her mannequins have been hidden away, both to avoids traps of the uncanny valley, or just wanting to preserve their lives.
"Way ahead of you on the mannequins," Luu responds as she looks up from the table. Then looking to Rhode, Luu confirms, "She does in fact have a low tolerance, but I figure we have ways to deal with such things." A small look is given to Rhode as if to say, 'I don't actually know that we have a way to deal with such things, but we'll find out soon enough.' With that assurance, she sticks her tongue out and awaits her destiny.
Lorelei is here, compliments of a hired driver who whisked her here from the veritable compound (however luxurious) where she lives. She has taken a seat on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, as she alternates between texting on her phone and listening to Rhode's spiel. She nods her head, mostly paying attention, but she is just so viscerally confident that she is /sure/ this will be no biggie. The blonde 20-something had done a /lot/ of coke in her time, not to mention ecstasy, weed, and shrooms (once), so the idea of an LSD cocktail does nothing to ruffle her feathers. Yeah, she has heard that LSD is a /much/ different trip, but she's also sure that it's nothing she can't handle.
Unfortunately, Lorelei is *also* competitive, so after Rhode does his dropper of fun, she'll rise up from the couch and wander over to take her turn. However much he did? She'll do more. A good solid squeeze more. And then, wordlessly, she'll twirl her long blonde hair around one finger to keep it held back while she leans forward to look at the rest of the spread. "Eeny, meeny, miny..." Moe lands on the MDMA, of which she'll also partake. She'll wrinkle her nose at the taste, but is too prideful to demonstrate any further reaction. "Thanks for the spread," she'll say to Rhode, still trying not to cringe at the flavor, "Let me know what I owe you."
Lorelei rises back up from the table, releasing her ponytail. She'll flash the Cultist a brilliant smile before turning around to sashay her way back to the sofa. Ever so impatient, she'll eyeball the coke consideringly before crossing her legs and tapping her fingers on the armrest. "How long until this party gets started?" she'll wonder, letting her gaze swivel around the room.
Unlike the wise Jinny and Lee, Lorelei is not at all suitably dressed for a casual trip. She's wearing a white lacy crop top and matching skirt ( https://imgur.com/a/fSFhSRY ), perhaps the first indication that she has no idea what's about to come at her. She's removed her heels, at least, allowing them to lay slumped nearby. "You can always cozy up with me, Jinny," she says to the other woman, patting the seat beside her. "I'm skinny, but not skinny enough to be confused with a mannequin."
"Nobody has a tolerance for acid." He countered. "You just have -experience- with it." He explained. Whether or not this was strictly true was a matter of discussion, but the point he was trying to make seemed to be that they'd all be in the same boat. "It'll be like visiting a new place. It can be a little new and scary but..." Rhode made a gesture to Lee just following his 'everyone here is your friend' statement. "Ego death can be rough. Remember, I have chosen and am choosing all of you to be in my life, and I will again when I emerge. Whatever lens you come to view yourself under, we accept you as you are."
"So we're going to be alright." Jason insisted as his eyes swept to Luu and he nodded to her in such a way as to at least inspire momentary confidence in the idea that they have ways to handle such things. He nodded a couple of times to affirm before he rose up in his heinously ugly baggy vertically striped brown and creme pants and started with the dropper around the table to make sure everyone received their carefully measured dose.
Until he got to Lorelei anyway, upon whom he paused and stared for a long moment as she put a dent in his X supply. "Uh... well.. that massive dose of molly you just took is probably going to get there first." He didn't seem mad. Maybe proud? Impressed? "But give it seventeen minutes. At fifteen you'll be trying to convince yourself you're feeling something too hard. At twenty, it'll be clear where you fucked up at 15. Seventeen minutes." The Cultist insisted.
Jinny can't help but glance at the clock. Three after the hour. If what Jason is saying is true, and she has no reason to believe it's not, the effects should start kicking in, oh, about fifteen after, with the train leaving the station a little bit after that on its eight hour journey along the streams and eddies of consciousness. This is supposedly awakened LSD too, so it may hit faster, harder, slower, or just put her into a mind state where she's not entirely clear on what's real and what isn't. They're all going on this trip together.
The dropper on her tongue is surprisingly...nothing. It seems like nothing, the water indistinguishable on her taste buds. If it wasn't for the faint bit of cooling from the contact and Jason moving away after he had dosed her, she would almost think he didn't really do anything at all. But he almost certainly did. "Like easing into a cold pool." Jinny tells herself, watching the progression around the room, the little brown bottle of mysteries holding an uncountable number of doses that add up to literal days of talking to aliens, the self, and the universe around you. She settles back into her seat and gives Lorelei a smile and a blush. "Might take you up on that, honestly. The rest of that stuff...that'll hit me like an absolute truck. I don't know if I'll even dare to go that far. Turning up the wick?" She shakes her head. "Let's see how hot the fire burns for me to begin with before going deeper." She breathes out a breath and settles back on the loveseat, brushing the velvet cover Luu placed over it with one hand, just...waiting and watching.
Lee grins over at Luu's reaction, nodding some, "Yeah, we can get one of us out, I'm almost positive." he says, confidently, backing up Rhode. Though, he's maybe not thinking through the fact that whoever would need to focus their will enough to perform magick is going to be experiencing the same level of ego death as the person that wants to get off the ride. So that might be fun.
Lee glances around, realizing he's isolated from everyone else and then stretches up to his feet and makes his way over to the couch, sinking down next to Lorelei. He offers the joint over and says, "Should probably smoke a bit or you're gonna get a little jangly. That was a heroic dose of molly you just did." said with a grin aside at Rhode. "And if it gets too crazy we can step out and have a smoke." His fingers already twitch just a little bit in anticipation of the slow growing build up of LSD.
He relaxes into the couch near Lorelei, a respectful distance between them, joint still hanging in the air, offered over to see if she'll take it. He looks to Jinny and smiles a little. Then he just relaxes, reaching to reclaim the joint if Lorelei smoked it, or just lifting it back to his lips. "Oh I bought a bunch of fruit, it's all cut up in the fridge." he says with a glance around, "In like three hours everyone's gonna be extremely happy about that."
Taking her drops, Luu looks to Rhode and notes, "I've done the whole ego death thing before -- " A glance is given to Lee, as Luu notes, " -- actually, fairly recently at the House of Dreams. One of the people we were with couldn't quite handle it and poofed into non-existence before, but -- " looking back to Rhode, she continues, " -- I /think/ that isn't a worry here?" A little shrug is given as she says, "Guess we'll find out soon enough." While she might not have much knowledge about what's before her, it doesn't seem to bother Luu too much, the ticket has been bought, and she's going to enjoy the ride.
While her hair has been dyed metallic red and paired with a matching septum ring, Luu's outfit is otherwise fairly simple: a blank tank top with illegible pale pink screen printing, and a pair of rather short denim short-shorts. An outfit which does a good job of showing the light and sparse hair of her unshaven legs and underarms, though its real purpose is to facilitate quick costume changes throughout the evening. Luu isn't quite sure what to expect, but she's pretty sure she should expect that, at least from herself.
Taking a seat on the arm of Jinny's loveseat, Luu gives her Chantrymate a reassuring pat on the shoulder, along with a small smile.
Jason nodded in enthusiastic understanding for Jinny. "Nothing wrong with that. If you feel like you need to switch tracks for whatever reason, let me know and we'll figure that out down the road." He insisted in an assuring, soothing tone. He didn't really flex what his voice was capable of as far as suggesting and guiding emotions, but there was... weight behind that. Not a spell, but it -could- have been if he'd pushed. It was really the first time they'd seen him with that focus brandished, and just as soon, at least for the moment, it was gone;
"..Wait a second, did you just offer me money for drugs?" He turned back at Lorelei and gave her a wrinkled-stink nose. "...Don't do that. I feel gross now." In spite of the insisting, he still seemed playful. He shook his head slightly to rid himself of the bad taste either that or the molly had left in his mouth.
"So this is going to be parabolic, like a lot of drug experiences are. You will come up, there will be a peak, and you will dive again. Probably three and some change hours up and a little longer than that down, trailing off into a fuzzy buzz for the rest of the night. There is a strong likelihood that I'll dose again right at the peak so I can do a wild double peaky thing." He considered his own worlds. "You don't have to do that. That's not like...metaphysically important. It's just, you know. Fun." He added as he broadened his grin and shook his head firmly and enthusiastically to Luu's suggestion that they were about to find out.
Ego death? Pffft. There isn't a lazy susan big enough to sink Lorelei's ship. At least, that is what she assumes. The young woman has picked her phone back up to resume texting or maybe managing her flourishing social media accounts, listening to all of the reassurances about ego death, friendship, and whatever other touchy-feely nonsense is being bandied about without really absorbing it. One hopes that she'll put her phone away before things get weird...or maybe not.
When Lee rises to join her on the couch, she'll look up from her screen long enough to give him a once over -- followed by an almost imperceptive half-smile -- and then leeeean over to take the offered joint. She'll puff-puff...puff...and then pass it back, holding the smoke in while she leans back. When Jinny says that she might join her on the couch, Lorelei will blow her a kiss with the actual 'blow' accompanied by an exhale of smoke.
Lorelei coughs afterward, just a few sharp hacks, and then practically melts back into the cushion. She'll cast another look at Lee, her eyelids now droopy and eyes a bit bloodshot. "Heroic, that's me," she purrs in reply. There's a delicate wink, and then she looks back over to Rhode. "Double dose me too," she'll tell him, even as her eyes sink closed with relaxation. "I can handle it." Of course she can.
Luu joining Jinny on the loveseat gets a look up, a small smile, and a lean, Jinny's head resting on Luu's side, her arms coming up and around the other woman's waist like she might squeeze a teddy bear or a body pillow, holding her for a few moments tightly, giving one final squeeze, kind of staying right where she is, petting the soft fuzz on Luu's left thigh, resting her head against Luu's hip. She's okay. She's okay. "Like a roller coaster, then. Just with one big rise, a peak, and then a fall while you hang on until the ride is done." It really seems that Jinny is trying her best to quantify an unquantifiable experience. She's equating it to her first trip to the Umbra; standing on a precipice and then taking that next step forward into the unknown and either sinking, swimming, walking, or flying, depending on the terrain that they run into.
"I haven't done the whole Ego Death thing before. I mean, sure, I've seen the spirit world more times than probably a full moon, so I'm not entirely..." she shivers faintly, her pupils dilating in the darkened room. "Entirely unaware of some higher states of consciousness. I've just never explored them chemically, even though that's what they are, when you break it all down to nuts and bolts."
"So let's talk a little bit about what, specifically, is going to happen." Rhode burned away their last few moments of sobriety with preparation. "A lot of people come into this with certain expectations that might be dashed. First of all; a completely fabricated hallucination, like... a talking pink elephant? That is so vanishingly rare and special that if you experience it you shouldn't be weirded out, just insanely grateful that we got our money's worth on this glorious batch of weirdy juice." The Cultist explained through a loopy grin.
"Instead, in reality, the essence of a hallucination is a misunderstanding, or misinterpretation. You experience millions of these things in your lifetime. Mishearing someone saying my name as... Raisin, for instance." Jason offered with a gleeful little smirk. "Normally your brain does a lot of the work filtering that stuff and helping you to interpret that as useful information. You say to yourself 'I didn't hear raisin, I heard Jason, I just heard it wrong.' The hallucinations your most likely to experience at this dosage will be like hearing 'raisin' then asking yourself... Why is his name Raisin? Does he have Raisins? Is he going to... wrinkle up and dry up? Is he doing that now?" He squenched up his face and tucked his arms in close to do his best impression of a raisin in the process of being dried.
"Hard audio visual fabrications are very possible, but it's way more likely you'll experience these sorts of snowballing conjectures and feats of raw imagination." The cultist explained. "The most common hallucination anyone experiences is called 'respiration,' for... obvious reasons, but you may feel as if the walls or the ground beneath you is alive and breathing. That might be less jarring for you guys what with... you know, us being Magi and kinda accepting that as a truth anyway." He suggested. "Bucking for second place is synesthesia. Some people are wired for it, some aren't, but you might experience sounds and colors being interchanged. D... A friend, he used to say that light blue chirped at him like a little song bird. For whatever reason, I tend not to get that one." He supplied with a what-can-you-do shrug.
"My number two is actually tracers. That'll be when color persists outside of moving geometric shapes. I'll swipe my hand and paint the air..." What hue was he? He checked. "...White guy, for instance."
Staying at Jinny's side as she gets comfortable, Luu gestures with her thumb to the other room, and notes to Rhode, "I set up some speakers in the other room, I'll leave it up to you what to play on them, should you think that wise. They're big enough to handle a fashion show, so should be able to cover as much or as little as the house as you see fit." Placing her arm down on the other side of Jinny's head, Luu gently presses against the other woman, as her other arm reaches for the joint being passed around. A small single puff is taken, before handing it back; while Luu seems to be in good spirits, she's definitely taking it easy, having no problem taking the scenic route on this one. Relaxing, she listens as Jason gives an explanation of what they might be in store for on this ride.
Lee nods a little as Rhode explains, reclaiming the joint and toking up slow and steady. "Yeah." he says in a tone of agreement. He grins faintly over at Luu at the mention of the House of Dreams, "Yeah, those guys.. they go pretty hard. Gets real weird in there sometimes. The stories I could tell.." he trails off and shrugs, then looks back to Jason with another small nod, "Also like, significance. Those little whirls and weird paths your mind wanders on give a heavy significance to things that it normally wouldn't. Like the raisin thing, it just seems significant and reasonable that his name is Raisin." he says in a tone of agreement. Adding to the man's explanation rather than trying to disagree in any way.
He continues to relax, the joint held loosely in his hand atop his knee, the joint easily plucked away by any curious or interested soul. He adds a moment later, "I'm probably gonna get up and wander around a lot." he says, "I always do. Oh, and if you need to use the bathroom just kinda keep in the back of your mind not to look at the mirror, it messes with your ability to recognize faces as faces, and it gets real uncanny valley real fast, and that can make you spiral if it hits at the wrong moment." said with a faint grin and a mild shrug. Then he goes quiet, looking almost sheepish at having hopped in.
Lorelei's typing has lost its zesty Gen-Z speed and is reduced to slow, clumsy presses on the screen with lots of tap-tap-taps for deleting. She is nice and relaxed thanks to the weed, even if the slower burn of the MDMA and the LSD have yet to take hold. Still, when Rhode talks about auditory hallucinations -- namely calling himself Raisin and describing the misaligned thought train that could follow -- she will let out an amused sniff followed by a rather girlish giggle. "Raisin," she echoes aloud. She's quiet for the rest, not having anything to add beyond her scintillating presence. Type. Type. ... Type.
"I'll drape the mirror." Jason said in a thank-you-for-reminding-me sort of way. They weren't ready for the mirror. They definitely, definitely, weren't ready for two mirrors facing each other. That was some solid horror. Even while he did he was still echoing nods from his prior agreement with Lee. "Misplaced significance is the wildest form of that misinterpretation part I was talking about. You might think someone was trying to give you a message by leaving something somewhere, or that two people are having a secret conversation without you. For the most part, and by that I mean like 99.9," He stressed for Jinny's sake, so as not to alarm her. "Your worldview will reassemble itself as you sober up, so you won't be stuck thinking that... Luu has a secret language based on the order she waters houseplants in or something."
He gave Luu a few nods as he glanced between her and the other room. "Let's start light." He offered as he rose and headed toward the other room. On the way, he stopped to pull down the shower curtain and position it over the mirror, but from the other room he called back; "Dave Brubeck or something modern? Grammatik?"
The existence of an uncanny valley implies that at some point there was an evolutionary reason to be afraid of something that looked human, but wasn't. No, that's not a thought Jinny needs to get going in her head at this moment. Sending the train careening into a ravine just as it got started was not the best thing for anyone's mental state, and if she was ever to go on to one of these trips again with this group, being a thoughtful and well-intentioned passenger was the way to do it. She relaxes, pushing aside the little voice in her head screaming that she's going to go crazy, that she's broken her brain, etc. etc. etc., and just concentrating on the sensations. Letting out a soft sigh, she closes her eyes, pillowed against Luu's hip, the sensation of the softness of Luu's skin beneath her fingers starting to magnify, lingering even after the movement had stopped, like a spring contracting, drawing all the sensations along to the final destination, the signals taking a bit longer to reach the brain and to be processed than she originally thought.
"I don't know what I'm going to do." At least Jinny's voice still sounds right. "I suppose I'm just going to sit here and see what happens. Try and stay mostly dressed and physically inside the four walls of the house. Mentally..." She trails off, giving an almost verbal shrug with a lilt at the end turning the statement into a question into a statement. Good thing she made it a point to wear underwear today!
It was a long road. His hands were getting a little jittery and sparked internally with a sort of electric fire running along his nervous system. His eyes dove in closer and the canyon walls came up around him, dark, black, imposing; they were his choice of dark and fatal nights. "Huh?" His head jerked back slightly as he drew his perceptions out of the groove on the Brubeck vinyl. Did Luu decide? Was it Brubeck? What if it wasn't cool enough? These were imminently cool people, and he had the imminently cool job of guiding them. He felt the pressure of swirling concerns on the base of his spine only to realize it was from squeezing the Brubeck sleeve too hard.
"Flibbity flobbity bop bobbity." Jason complained in a nonsense mumble to himself before he arched his back and did the breakdancing wave move, up from his fingers, down again, and then in a wriggling motion in between. With that he cast off the skein of self doubt. "I went with Grammatik." He announced as he set the Brubeck vinyl aside and queued music from the digital monitor instead.
A spark of suspicion in his eye suggested he was afraid they'd noticed his weird little dance in the other room. The question of whether they had line of sight or not hadn't occurred to him.
Lee is breathing slowly, relaxed on the couch, intermittently puffing on the joint unless its been stolen or smoked into obliteration. He's at peace, even as the weirdness settles over things and they take on a dreamlike quality. The sort of essence that generally follows him around, with his weird Euthanatos Strangeness, but stronger and deeper, and fuller. The Olympic swimming pool version of the inch deep puddle of dreamy essence native to Lee's aura or whatever it is about him.
As Jason has a tiny niggling crisis of cool, Lee is focused on his breathing, in and out, in and out, just sinking into it. The man's return draws him up from his little place and he grins, nodding, "Great choice." a tone full of conviction that would seem a little bit too sincere if they hadn't decided to soak their brains in acid. He sits up slowly, elbows on his knees and leans forward, clearing his throat once or twice and then glancing up and around at the others once he's made the sound. Making sure he didn't gross anyone out or ruin a good part of the song. He's a bit stoned, which synergizes well with the nascent swell of the steady upward roll of the trip, and he takes another deep, slow breath. He doesn't add much more than that for now, his body language a strange mixture of tension and relaxation, the muscles in his back and shoulders shifting now and then before he forces them to relax. Mostly though, he just watches everyone else with a flickering look. It's always a little bit nerve wracking going up with a specific group for the first time.
"ooh," Luu exclaims softly, as the spirit moves her to slide forwards on the loveseat. For most people, there would simply be arms to the loveseat, but Luu manages to find three distinct layers of upholstered cushioned furniture to sit upon. Anything further would get her distinctly into someone else's lap, and while that isn't out of the question for the evening, it's not quite the destination the first tugs of the drug has led her to.
A nod of agreement is given to Lee's comments on Jason's choice, causing Luu's sunglasses to drop from her forehead, right back to the nose. A few quick blinks to that surprise, but really it was meant to happen, so nothing really to be concerned about. Casually she tilts her head around, not really hungry, but still wondering where those raisins people were talking about are.
At some point, Lorelei's typing devolves into a nonsensical typing of letters and emojis, like she's no longer paying attention to the content, just their visual interest. She'll wordlessly drop the device onto her lap and let her head fall backward, eyes closing, while focusing on the intense pound-pound-pound of her heart. She sucks in a breath and lets it out as a shuddery exhale, her weight shifting atop the couch as if struck by an invisible but tactile sensation. When her eyes open, her head is still flung backwards, allowing her the perfect vantage to watch Rhode do his breakdancing wave move back into the room.
Lorelei fuels Rhode's suspicion by saying, "Did anyone else see that? Looked like he was...I don't know..." her heart is pounding, summoning a faint wave of anxiety "Swimming or something. Shit..." Lorelei suddenly rocks away from the back of the couch to rest her elbows on her knees, head lolling forward. It's in her nature to try and control everything, so this sense of disconnect with reality is going to prove difficult. She draws in another deep breath, holds it, and then lets it out with a sigh, one hand now absently caressing over the top of her textured lace skirt. The fabric rolls against her palm as it is drawn up her thigh, then smoothed back down on the descent toward her knee.
"Welcome."
Was he just getting here? It might not have been Jason at all, but a man that looked like him and used his voice and only appeared when they were on acid, but had left nothing changed? No! It -was- him! He was grinning at Luu and Lorelei as they started to begin to digest what was going now going on around him. The motion of him returning to the room cast a smeared patina of hippy pants colors to paint itself across the reflective surfaces and polished floors of the room before he came still and they caught up with him. He let out the breath the house had been holding. "Maybe I was swimming." Rhode suggested impishly as he emptied water from a bottle onto his fingertips and flicked it over Lorelei. It mostly didn't hit her, instead, choosing to suspend itself in the air and sparkle like diamonds until it'd arced away into oblivion. Unlike the others, he coasted back and forth on his feet, unable to stay still. His antsy energy revealed him as their totemic shark, swimming hyped circles around them, fueled by anticipation.
"Just...just let go." Jinny's voice is quiet, almost a sing-song lilt to it, her bones seeming to melt away, her body sliding down to lay against the couch behind Luu, facedown in the cushion when the other woman moved. The pattern there reminds her of the surface of a moon, strewn with craters and valleys and mountains shaped over eons by wind and water and rain that is no longer there. She sighs and closes her eyes, the colors behind them starting to bleed into themselves, the afterimage of what she saw still imprinted on the insides of her eyelids. When she opens them again, she finds herself sitting up, next to Luu, reaching up to pluck at the sunglasses on the other woman's face, pushing them carefully, carefully up the bridge of her nose before leaning back to study herself in the reflection of the glasses for a brief, brief moment. It's her, certainly, but it's not her. She blinks and giggles faintly, turning her head, her pupils almost covering the entirety of her irises, the light trailing behind her as she rests her head on the couch cushion, the entirety of the room seeming to pulse to some unseen heartbeat....or is it hers, rumbling in her ears?
"His arms were moving funny." Jinny responds after a good thirty second delay, calm, despite the chemical wonderland that she's slowly making her way into, feeling hot, then cold, then tingly all over. She scrunches her toes in the carpet through the socks, the sensation sending little shocks of electricity along her nerves, causing a little twitch of her cheekbone..."Does anyone else feel like they're floating...." She looks down, the loveseat beneath her by a good foot and a half...
Lorelei is still leaning forward, elbows on her knees, when Rhode /welcomes/ them. She'll force herself to look up from the delicate intricacies of her lace skirt to fix the Cultist with a thousand yard stare. Well, not *him*, but his pants -- the stripes seeming to scatter in all directions, bleeding from the textile to the floor to the wall.
~Maybe I was swimming~
Lorelei hears his voice sound from everywhere and nowhere, the last word 'swimming' seeming to stretch with unnatural duration to become swiiiiimming. Rhode flicks the water at her, and Lorelei, caught in a suspended state with her dilated eyes fixed and staring, will admire the gorgeous and scintillating sparkle of color that is reflected in that tiny microcosm of life. Hundreds, thousands of organisms existing in that drop -- ignorant and largely unimportant -- not unlike earth. Not unlike them.
Splash! The droplets seem to flick onto her face ages later, summoning an intensely sluggish blink and an almost sensual drag of her hand up along her hot cheek. "I think I'm melting," she announces, low and breathy. Her other hand comes up a second later to caress the other side of her face, dragging in slow motion along her soft skin.
"What, me?" Lee asks, glancing to Lorelei, then to Jinny, "Mine?" a touch of self-consciousness lingering at the edge of his voice, until his brain catches up with what Jason is saying. He blinks and then seems to relax, nodding a few times (a two or three nod becoming like five or six time, getting into the repetition of the motion for a second before catching himself.) "Oh, right." Lee hadn't noticed, sprawled as he'd been, and so focused on his own breathing.
Lee glances over at Lorelei, struck by her final statement to reach over and touch her face with two fingers, a little press and pull away so he can examine them. "Nah." he says, "You're fine." his tone reassuring, or at least intended to be. Then he stretches out his legs like he might just be ready to get up and join Jason in his wandering circle. Or maybe step outside and spark up a different sort of smoke. Or, well, anything. The movement is slow and ponderous, Lee himself doesn't seem to really know where he's about to go, and he's taking that time to consider it.
Scrunching her nose slightly, Luu wiggles the sunglasses as she looks to Jinny, before taking a little hop off the arm of the couch. "I was getting close to finding out," Luu responds to Jinny, and without movement of some kind, she was about to find out if she was indeed able to float, something she might sense, but that she had yet to convince herself of. Getting to her feet, Luu grips the edge of the door frame, before momentarily spinning herself out of view.
Returning moments later, the evening's first costume change is subtle and unannounced, a black tank top now purple. Perhaps there wasn't even a costume change, but colors certainly are different now. Scrunching her forehead slightly, Luu eventually gives a shrug when she still can't find the raisins, not particularly worried about it.
Part of the room was rendering incorrectly, and the texture that should have been applied to the floor had crept up part way on the wall. Jason was standing there, perpendicular to them, halfway up the wall. Comfortable there, and permitted, as long as the wood grain was in the wrong place. "I feel weighed down, honestly." His feet slipped down the wall at the heaviness of his suggestion, and he anchored himself again. "There's so much pushing on us through Time." Jason was looking at the TV. When had he turned it on? He was six inches from David Attenborough mumbling about gazelles, and he was staring hard at a section of African grassland in the corner of the screen.
~Maybe I was swimming.~
He heard his own voice, and his eyes traced up the grass toward the fretful crossing of an alligator infested river by a herd of water buffalo. Jason stared relentlessly.
~Welcome!~ His voice came from the other room. The Cultist furtively checked to see if the others were aware of what was going on, or if, maybe, they'd figured it out first. Whether they had or not, Jason couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't a hallucination; a notion that he shouldn't have been struggling with so early in the experience, if at all.
He didn't catch the fear until he realized that Lorelei reacted to one of the utterances.
And a hallucination was not rightly that if all parties noticed.
She isn't flying, but she has changed points of view, now sitting on the coffee table, looking at the couch where she's still sitting, very nearly pushing the lazy susan of drugs a little off kilter which, almost certainly, would be a party foul of the highest magnitude. Jinny lets out a breath that seems to dance in motes of light and lavender smoke, rising to collect around the chandelier in the center of the room, swirling in a counterclockwise dance with other motes, other twists of smoke that came from the blunt, from other exhalations, from somewhere completely unknown. Twin Jinnys look to Jason, one from the couch, one from the table, each blinking in sync, like they were looking at themselves in a mirror. "we feel strange..." they say, their voice doubled over themselves. "Wewe arare ouout oof balbalance."
While everyone discusses their various states of weightlessness, Lorelei's gaze has drifted to admire the television. Is it actually on? Are there actually alligators about to enjoy a nice nosh on some gazelle? Or is this a shared hallucination? She's watching the approach of the reptilian predators with bright-eyed interest, her mouth open and breathing a little hard. She's still got both hands on either side of her face, making her look like she's recreating that piece of artwork, The Scream.
"It's inevitable," she whispers, referring to the television.
Suddenly, someone is touching her face. Lee's fingers caress against her cheek, ensuring that she is not melting, and the sensation summons a full body shiver. Lorelei lets out a heavy breath, leaning toward the delicious feeling, and when he moves to withdraw them, she will find herself leeeeeaning in an attempt to reclaim them. "I hear drums," she says, half-panting it. And then, "God. That music feels so good."
Unless he fights her, Lorelei will take Lee's hand and place it back on her cheek, her eyes half-lidding as she rub-rubs against it like a child might, an especially soothing lovey. "I've got some...rope...in my car..." she murmurs, her meaning not exactly clear. It's to help with the floating away...probably.
"But they're not always... so lucky." David Attenborough explained. The image slowed down as the gator snapped. And the buffalo's hoof raised, just barely skimming free of the teeth. The hoof came down. And down. And down. The mangled former crocodile thing receded into the water lifeless, sparking a cannibalistic orgy as the would-be predators went for an easier meal.
With a steamy grunt of derision, the Buffalo returned to its stampeding herd where he stood on it's edge, challenging the dangers of the river with its eyes until the herd thinned from enough distance for it to disappear into their midst.
Jason checked faces as he rounded the corner. He was talking to all of them. At least he witnessed himself doing so.
~I think the greatest magic spell ever cast was the one that tricked us into thinking we are separate and discrete things. I think this... magician..~ He used the term with playful silliness as he was speaking to Mortals. Wasn't he? ~...Did us all a great disservice when he drew the first line and made the first Other. That seperation is malicious, and ensures that humanity spends it's time... fucking itself over rather than rising as one.~
Lee is watching the television too from his perch on the larger couch, staring hard at the same thing Jason was staring at. The gazelles leap as crocodiles stab up from the water with vicious intent and Lee blinks, actually leaning back some.
"Hey." Lee says, as if in a delayed, warped answer to the "Welcome.", a grin give to Jason. Wavelengths are strange right now, both sonic and mental, and for a second Lee wonders what the room looks like from Jason's perspective, staring at the man who'd (just now?) greeted them all.
He's distracted by the pull of Lorelei's hand, his own rising up easily, still smelling a little of the smoke from the joint it'd held. He turns to look over at her as she rub-rubs her face against it. He just sort of stares at her, watching the catlike shift of her face.
And then, staring at Lorelei, responding to both Jinny and Rhode together he says, "It's been out of balance." his voice quiet and suddenly, deeply sad. "Everything's always out of balance." eyes on Lorelai before they flicker away around the room. Leave it to the Euthanatos to see the inherent flaws of the universe in the headspace of the trip. There's no playful silliness to him. If they weren't tripping it might just be a sign of his Tradition's propensity toward Quiet.
Pressing a finger against the table, Luu lifts it up to examine, and not quite certain what the white powder is, it still ends up in her nose with a quick sniff. A quick look around is given to the others in various states of swimming-melting-floatingness, and clearly they won't mind if Luu does that again, and so she does. A wiggle of her nose is given, as she walks back in, and glancing at the television, pronounces, "you might be right, but I think there are more dolphins in the swimming ones." Hands on hips, Luu watches the mangled buffalo recede a bit, before deciding, "Yeah, kinda swimming." Leaning to the side, Luu plays the nose game once more, still not quite sure what it is, but thinking she might like it.
~Oh, so /we/'re the first Other?~
Jinny/Jinny look at themselves and rise as one. As they draw closer, they seem to change, one growing larger, the other growing younger, almost like a child. Youth and innocence standing with age and cynicism. Somewhere between these two lies Jinny as she is in the material world; her views, outlooks, thoughts, concepts of reality.
~Of course not. The First Other? How presumptuous. You are the first You. All the facets of the others refract reality to project You. You are the sum total of the Other.~
~I am he as you are he and you are me.~
Jason turned to them, and realized what he was doing. He jabbed his ink smudged thumb into reality, and smeared away the lines that served to divide them.
"And we are all together."
Did he say that, or Lee? It didn't sound like his voice. He squeezed the hands that Luu had placed on their collective hips and felt his own pants and the fabric of Lorelei's skirt. His eyes went wide as he wired them, unintentionally, into a meta entity. He swallowed a gulp of air and balanced himself against the wall. "...That's not acid. This... isn't... acid. Something..." He murmured as he dizzily tried to process -way- too much sensory data while in the volume-to-max setting.
And then he let it slip. He shared something in the communal pool that he hadn't intended; a dirty secret. A wild, blasphemous, truly felt and shamefully hidden secret; true and utter and complete and unconditional Agape, starting in this room, and echoing out into the hills forever.
Lorelei listens to Rhode's Ted Talk on *separate things* and *first lines* while dragging Lee's hand up and down her face. She luxuriates in the skin on skin contact, her eyes half-lidding with reptilian pleasure. "Fuck..." she whispers, maybe with uncomfortable enjoyment. This is *not* the sort of impression one wants to make with new chantrymates, but the MDMA is making everything feel intensely good. Touch. Music. All of it creating a sensory overload that is welcome and appreciated -- except for Rhode's cancerous pants.
"There is no separation," Lorelei tells Rhode with glassy-eyed insistence, "Because even the space between is alive. The void -- it breathes and bleeds too. The rest is just an illusion. Made up so that we can justify why we still feel so...very...alone..."
Lorelei pulls Lee's hand down and flips it over, revealing the criss-cross of his palms. She'll stare down at that while he talks about things being unbalanced, one finger starting to trace against what fortune-tellers would say is the life-line. It shifts while he talks about things being out of balance, seeming to take another path, until, rather suddenly, the Verbena goes stiff and jerks up to her feet. She's staring at the window with an alarmed look, both hands clasped in front of her chest. Whatever she's seeing is obviously distressing.
She said that.Or he did.It’s hard to really tell who is saying what now.Jinny/jinny turns to face the room, the smaller approaching the table to take a slim dab of the white powder on the table, following Luu’s lead, touching it to her tongue and then taking a light sniff.The result for Jinny/jinny is electric, both of their eyes fluttering and reality contracting, for just a moment, to a pinpoint in the middle of an infinite void, the utter silence and cold taking their breath away before the universe rushes back in with a roar, pushing them back into each other, through the others in the room, Jinny somehow maintaining her vertical orientation as she pivots to face the wall, the glass showing the darkened yard outside and something else moving in the periphery.It’s very disorienting, being two selves and then the self again and then having the center of your universe move to where you were looking, the universe trailing behind itself as she seemingly blinks from point to point in the room.Her green silk pajamas and socks with little gray aliens stitched on them flutter in the breeze from the vents in the floor, the woman lifting a hand to rest on Lorelei's shoulder.
~”It's all a matter of perspective, you see.Or, rather, you cannot see.It is difficult to explain to fragments that do not possess the capacity.Like two dimensional beings that can only see in limited ways, you as three dimensional beings can only see what is in your dimension.Anything beyond that simple third dimension is unknown unless.... ~
It was a lot to process.
First, he wasn’t actually sure he could ever snuff one of those artificial divisions he so loathed on command.It couldn’t be that easy, could it?
~It can’t be that simple, can it?~
Oh! So it was.
What do you do with a horrifying new revelation, a new pocket of personal power?It’d been a long time since he’d made such a profound stride.For now he clutched it close to his metaphorical chest lest he accidentally physically assault someone, which he was just now realizing was exactly what he was doing, just at a screaming volume instead of an accidentally let-slip whisper.
Because there was more, and he needed to pay attention.New skeins of knowledge and significance descended while he watched Jinny stutter across the room.Jason was reminded of a old CRT monitor caught on a television camera.In this state, borrowing Jinny’s awareness, he could see the artificial stop-motion matinee for what it really was, and recognize the afterimages seared of her spread colors in between stations she’d actually occupied. Then he burst out laughing, and flopped against a door frame just in time to ride it down to the floor with a dull thud of his butt on the hardwood flooring.
For years he’d subscribed to that theory that the lines between us were artificial, but it’d never seriously occurred to him that if they were a single thing, they had to occupy a single space, and that was just plain easier if the distance between literally everything ever anywhere was an illusion too.
So he laughed, and was enlightened.
Lee is watching Lorelei trace his hand with a distant, distracted sort of look, his earlier sadness seeming to translate into her sudden distress.She leaves, rising up and wandering away, leaving Lee to follow her with his eyes.And then Jinny/jinny is up as well, wandering to the powder with Luu.He rises up as Jason’s mind whirls with this new unfolding of reality, making his way over to the powder as well.He licks his finger and drags it through the remnants, coating it and turning to face the room at large.Then he sticks the finger in his mouth, joining the rest of them in the madness.
His eyes dilate as Jason sinks down with his laugh of enlightenment, the room shifting as the boundaries between them blur – then reform around the whole rather than between individuals.Lorelei can feel Lee’s steady acceptance of the altered state through her fear, Jinny/jinny can feel it too, a simple reassurance that whatever it is outside cannot hurt them.Or at least, that’s what he’s trying to feel, their worry is as infectious as his own stolid acceptance of the fear.And then there’s Luu and Jason – each handling this better than the other three (or four? Or one?), Luu’s patience and Jason’s humor blending all together as Lee stands over near the table, blinking slowly.And then he, too, lets out a sudden sharp laugh, the molly he’d taken slamming home faster than it had any right to (or did it? Who knows how long he was standing there), tied into Jason’s joyous revelation he can’t do anything but laugh as well, the sound alarmed and confused before it settles into the same cadence as Jason’s.
Lee stumbles forward away from the table as he laughs, making his way over to the window where Jinny/jinny and Lorelei are staring out into the darkness.He reaches it and then reaches up, with another barked laugh, and draws the curtain closed, shutting out the darkness and whatever it is that was lurking out there.Then, leaning against the wall, he sinks down too, exhausted and somewhat lost in the whirling stretch of Jason’s spell.
Sitting cross-legged on a chair, big toe digging in behind her knee, it’s hard to remember exactly how many costume changes Luu has had to get back to this present look, but the sunglasses sure seem to be helping the mood. She could obviously count if she wanted to, but it seems to her the different looks of herself forming a circle with her are less about the clothes they wear and more about what they symbolize; those variant aspects of a personality externalized and internalized and externalized, as need be to get her through the day, in the way that she sees fit for her personal brand – something more about the other than the self, but still required for both. It wouldn’t surprise her if those other hers could be used to count the days on a lunar calendar, but she has better ways of doing that anyway, and besides time isn’t seeming that meaningful to her right now anyway; surely there’s still the cyclical, but that might be the sense in which she meant it. Then the internal monolog of Luules stops for a moment, each looking back into the circle of Luules, and light bouncing around their circle to form other hidden shapes, in holographs of other dimensions, which is where Luu finds herself now. She can’t help but laugh, and lean to the side to press her finger against the table, placing more crystal universes up her little nose.
Lorelei is struck with momentary panic as she stares out at the nightscape beyond the window. The darkness stretches on and on, interrupted only by what appear to be small flickers of torchlight moving toward the house – but are actually just the reflections of the living room’s interior. In her mind, she hears the sound of drums – the same primal percussion that played during her Vision, during her Sacrifice– and she is immediately convinced that the approaching ‘torches’ belong to fragments of her past. In that moment, she radiates fear so viscerally that it overwhelms Lee’s empathetic reassurances; she simply ignores them with a vicious mental shrug. It occurs to her that maybe the torches and their mob were always there, were always lurking, and that’s why she always feels so angry and afraid all the damn time.
Or, maybe, it’s because time exists as a circle instead of a straight line; there’s never getting past something, because you’re already on an orbital trajectory back toward it. No, she thinks, not a circle – it’s more of a wagon wheel with spokes. Time circles around and around, framed by the neverending circle, but there *are* lines that criss-cross through it – that’s why you can stand on one side of the wheel and then, easy as anything, venture to the other. But what does that make the wagon? And what does that make the road? Who then should hold the yolk that drives the mighty beasts forward with all of time and fate and humanity on their backs?
~“It's all a matter of perspective, you see.”~
Lorelei’s mind suddenly expands, remembering the importance of dimensional perception. It’s not a circle, not a wagon wheel. “It’s a spiral,” she whispers.
It’s too much. It’s all too much. Lorelei feels tears well up in her eyes, her steely heart suddenly left raw and bloody. In her despondency, she is certain that this will never end – that the torches will never stop following her – until all at once *SCHLICK!* The curtains are drawn closed. Lorelei is left staring with blank incomprehension at the fabric in front of her face. She’ll look over at Lee, startled, and watch as he sinks down to the ground. Lorelei reaches down to touch his head, her fingers caressing over his red-blonde hair as if to ensure he’s real and solid. He is. And that’s when she feels Jinny’s hand resting warm and steady on her shoulder. The weight of it is divine, a physical reminder of where she is. Lorelei tilts her head, caressing her flushed cheek against the back of that steadying hand with childlike affection before simply turning around to embrace her. Lorelei clings to her like two lovers reunited, or like Jinny just saved her from drowning. And then, bubbling up from nowhere and everywhere, she laughs – laughs hard enough that her tears fall, but now with hysterical gaiety. She’ll kiss Jinny’s left cheek soundly – *smooch!* and then the right one – *smooch!*.
When Lorelei draws back, she’s still breathlessly laughing, even as tears continue to leak with scintillating sparkles from the corners of her eyes.
What Jinny sees beyond the panes of the window aren’t monsters stalking forward to claim her as their own, or cultists seeking to carve their tales in her flesh or dark things slinking through the shadows.It’s the city, stretching out across the darkness in a tapestry of light glimmering in the distance, the glow barely hidden by the hills of Laurel Canyon.As she stands there, raptly gazing out the window, another Jinny enters from the hall dressed in blue pajamas, another from the room with the music in violet, while another appears next to Rhode in the door frame in white, and still another behind the chair Luu claimed swaddled in rose.All are watching, turned towards the window and the glow from beyond.To Jinny, it’s a warm glow that slowly builds, energizing her synapses and slowly suffusing her body and soul, starting at her feet and rises to fill her entire being.One hand lifts to rest against the windowpane of cool glass as she turns to face them all.They look to each other and straighten, rising off the floor, floating, their sock-covered toes barely above the polished floor.Then, without a world, they all move as one, the multiple points of view seeking the viewer.All of the multiple Jinnys slowly merge into one whole, drifting through each member of the chantry and lingering for an instant eternity, sharing and gathering viewpoints before moving on.That eternity has reality overlaid on itself, ghost-like, and a shiver goes through them all as matter entangles itself for a scant moment in time, occupying the same space in the third dimension.
As the forms reach Jinny, her outfit changes colors, lightening or darkening depending on what color has reached her first, the combined effects of the narcotics taken setting in completely now.The curtain closes around her hand, a velvet embrace, and she slowly turns to look at Lee, blinking owlishly while she holds Lorelei’s gaze at the same time.The last of her viewpoints finally reaches her through him, falling backwards into Jinny, giving the viewer the unsettling image, for a brief moment, of Jinny looking at each of them at the same time.She lets out a soft, keening cry, her head falling back, the others following suit and, when she straightens, she has changed.
Instead of the woman in Maroon that was there before, instead stands a woman clad in a veritable coat of a thousand colors, glimmering and shifting in the half-light of the room where, even now, colors dance on the ceiling and light seems to be moving at a snail’s pace.The scientific term would be blue-shifting - indicating that it’s moving towards them, a little faster, but it still takes more time than expected for the light to reach the receptors in their eyes.She feels at peace. Blissful, even, letting out another soft exhale of scintillating sparks that rise to dance in motes of light around the ceiling, the spirits of the house, it seems, are coming out to play or, at least, to be more visible to those receptive to such things.
Her cheeks are ruddy, the smile there serene and joyful.The kisses to her cheeks and the laughter and the tears are wonderful.They are truly learning about each other.She lifts her hand to brush the tears away from Lorelei’s cheeks, and the chorus of Jinny speaks, her voice overlaid with itself a dozen times, echoing through infinity.
“Welcome home.”
~They are starting to gain glimmers of understanding.~
