"I'll Walk Zane"

[Enid Geraint] I'll walk Zane, she'd said sometime early this morning, and managed to rustle up something workout appropriate, that quite possibly involved borrowing sweats and a long sleeved t-shirt of Ashley's. This, of course, was less than ideal but one can only imagine that since that Enid hasn't been on a workout in at least the time she's been back (and likely for several days before, but she's not talking about that, no siree bob, not even thinking about it if she can help it), the once-team captain is going a bit stir crazy. And there's not enough room for her to properly stretch in the apartment - or rather there is, but she is making herself as small and unobtrusive as she can.

The girl barely speaks, let alone takes up the space required for proper stretching.

The apartment has smelled like baking almost constantly for the past two days - of cookies, of bread, of cakes, of recipes picked up while she was in China with some of the seasonings substituted for the closest American approximation. She doesn't care where all this food goes, really; it's the act of producing it, and going through all the steps involved, that matter. She finds this soothing. Mostly. Except on the odd occasion she can be found crying as she kneads some dough or similar - this was Mama and Enid time once, baking was.

In any case, Zane got significantly more exercise than he's used to at one time - at a far quicker pace - this morning, and is tired. And now, post-shower and more baking, Enid is again curled up in the chair she most often occupies, working obsessively on her paper. It's something to focus on, something that distracts.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley enjoys her walks with Zane: she can't keep up Enid's pace, can't jog or run with the shepherd, but usually their walks go for several miles. It's thinking time for Ashley, time when she watches people and scenery and comments on them to the dog. But Enid needs to get out of the house, and she recognizes this.

Unfortunately Enid finds that any pants of Ashley's don't fit her: they hang above her ankles, as Ashley is small enough to have to buy short sizes. There are several pairs of new clothes among the ones that Ashley bought for Enid and Austin both, though, and those the girl finds to be appropriately sized.

Right now Zane is lying sprawled on his side in the middle of the floor, and Ashley emerges from her study. Noting Enid there in her chair, Ashley walks up and leans over the back. "Hey, kiddo," she says. "No more baking, all right? I'm running out of flour, and there's no way we can eat all of it."

A short pause. Ash herself does not look well rested (she hasn't, in the past month and a half) and Enid could hear, late into the night, her arguing with someone over the phone, behind the closed door of her bedroom. She casts an eye over the paper Enid is writing before saing, "How are you feeling? Do you want to talk?"

[Enid Geraint] "I'm fine," she answers automatically, as most people do when asked how they're feeling - but she isn't, not really. She's starting to get some appetite back, so there's that, at least; but that, too, has its drawbacks. She's a healthy, active teenager and under normal circumstances, has the appetite of one. Ashley's seen the girl eat, knows how she can put away fairly amazing amounts in one sitting and then be hungry again a scant few hours later. It's the running, of course. Do you want to talk, though, gets a face pulled, gets knees drawn up closer to her chest, gets her shrinking into the cushions of the chair. If she could disappear into them, she would.

"There's . . . nothing to talk about." Which is patently untrue. She's mourning a lot of things. She's trying to reconcile the family-that-is (or was) with what she thought she had. There's been another death (almost three) near her, perhaps at least in part because of her. And Austin's gone, and her mobile is still . . . "My cell was in my jacket. In Uncle Zeke's office." People should probably be warned, she figures, just in case - and it's very carefully pragmatic, that.

[Ashley McGowen] "There's a lot to talk about, Enid. Put the paper away." This verges on being an order: Ashley's voice is firm, brusque as she takes the chair across from Enid and sits down, leaning slightly forward with her elbows on knees. "When we're done, write down for me whose phone numbers you and I'll warn them."

Carmichael might come in handy after all. Jon too.

"You don't have to tell me how you feel about it, unless you want to. But we have to make plans for what you're going to do now. Bad things happen and you have to pick yourself up and keep going."

[Enid Geraint] Her jaw tightens when she's told to set her paper aside, and for a moment it seems that she might argue, might continue working. But she's not enough back to herself for that, yet, and the paper gets set aside despite that flicker, despite the want (need) to continue working.

"I'll need to get at my money," she says, forcing herself to stick to practicality, at least for now. "And find an apartment or something, I suppose. I don't . . . they'll look for me at Daddy's, Uncle Zeke said. I don't want anything to happen to him." It's bad enough to think of bad things happening to Zeke, who shot Austin, who . . . but no. Not. Thinking. About. That. "And a job. Or start applying for those scholarships and grants I was offered." Because she has the money to pay for school, what she'd have needed to given her father's status as employee. But she hadn't anticipated needing to pay rent at the same time. And never mind that her school plans may well be down the tubes now; that's something she hasn't thought of yet.

[Ashley McGowen] "Another Hermetic came to town while you were gone," Ashley tells Enid, when the girl has finished explaining her plans. She's pleased that Enid is thinking this through, but does not praise her yet. "His name is Solomon. He's about your age, and he has a very large house in his inheritance. I'll invite him here soon and we'll see about you staying with him."

A pause. "As for your money, I'll put you in contact with Jonathan Kincade. He's a Virtual Adept. I want you to ask him if he'll help you."

What her tone says is this: she will give Enid the tools, but the girl will have to begin doing this on her own, getting herself back on her feet. "You may not be able to attend college," she says, (as though she has read Enid's thoughts) because she wants to discuss this as well.

[Enid Geraint] "Of course I'm going to college," she says, and there's bristling with it, a bit of temper; low on will, she's a particularly adorable kitten, spitting and hissing in response to something she doesn't like. "I graduated in the top ten in my class. Half of my tuition," which doesn't include books, or room and board, "is paid for. I already have admissions appointments to get the classes I need." Because, of course, Enid is On the Right Path. She has been, as long as Ashley's known her - even in the wake of a traumatic, tragic Awakening, Enid had been focused, had known where she was going and what she was doing. In some ways, at some times, this knowledge keeps her going.

"You trust him, this Mr. Kincade?" Enid doesn't know who to trust, and thus doesn't trust anyone. But she trusts Ashley and Austin more than most, at least at the moment.

[Ashley McGowen] "I graduated in the top ten of mine, and I couldn't finish my first semester after I woke up," Ashley tells Enid, voice mild in spite of the flash of temper from the girl. "But it's good that you're willing to figure out what you have to do to go anyway, if it's important to you.

"I trust him insofar as we can trust anyone. Which means, ask him for a favor and prepare for the worst if it happens," Ashley tells Enid.

[Enid Geraint] It feels placating, but Enid is overly sensitive; she eyes Ashley suspciously, briefly, and then looks away, back to the paper she isn't working on at the moment. She doesn't pick it up, has been told no, but there's a clear desire to do so. And she doesn't argue further, just lets the words settle in. Ashley hadn't been able to finish her first semester after she Awakened. Enid . . . still has to try.

"Alright, then." It will do, the tone says, though she doesn't have any choice even if it wouldn't. "And this Solomon?"

[Ashley McGowen] "He's a Disciple, like I am. He Awoke really early," Ashley says. And though she knows the circumstances under which this happened, she does not explain them; that's for Solomon to do, if he decides he wants Enid to know. They are Adepts within the Order of Hermes and she is an apprentice. "Solomon is about as close to trustworthy as you'll get right now. And I think you'll like him, besides."

She clearly does, judging by the light tone she uses there. "You don't have to move there, assuming he's all right with it. But it would be convenient if you did. He's knowledgeable and he and I both can heavily ward the house."

[Enid Geraint] ".....you said he's around my age, didn't you?"

Her brow furrows, and it's not difficult to imagine the thoughts in her head - less so when she eyes her paper, squirms a bit. She's recently been the captain of a team, and took the time to write a fully annotated research paper while on vacation; it's safe to assume she's at least a little on the competitive side. The thought of someone close to her age and yet so far ahead of her is a displeasing one; her brow furrows, and she doesn't like him already. Enid Geraint does not do 'behind'. Not if she can help it.

"Anyway, I suppose it won't hurt anything to meet him."

[Ashley McGowen] "Yes. Seventeen or eighteen, I think, but I've never asked him." She watches that squirm, notes it, but hasn't really taken into account what it means: that Enid is feeling threatened, that she is upset that she is much farther behind than Solomon. The only reason she mentioned his age was that she hoped Enid might be able to make a friend, someone who understands her trials and can sympathize in a way that Ashley can't.

"It won't hurt, and you should make an effort to get to know your Tradition mates regardless," she tells Enid. "They're usually automatic allies, wherever you are. You already have something in common. So, be polite and give him the respect you would give to me. He probably has things he can teach you."

[Enid Geraint] Enid may well make that friend, in the long run; she's relatively personable and friendly, most of the time. Right now, however . . . yes, threatened is a good word. Jealous is another. Give him the respect you would me, has her lips thinning, displeased, but it's brief. Enid is the sort of girl who does that anyway, but to have a kid her age presented as her superior? That's irksome.

Never mind that it may well be so in other situations, in the future.

There are other bothersome things about this too, but she's not speaking of those (or thinking of them) any more than she is of the less pleasant parts of her recent vacation. "I'll make the effort," she finally says, tending a little towards the sullen, suddenly.

[Ashley McGowen] I'll make the effort, Enid says, sullen, and ever so briefly Ashley's eyes roll heavenward. She dealt last night with a sullen teenager stomping out of her apartment, she was hit in the face with a book by an angry shouting teenager earlier this week. She's had enough of them for now.

For a moment there's silence. Just long enough for Enid to think about going back to her paper, and then Ashley begins to talk again. "I went to a conservatory in New York to play the violin when I was old enough to go to college," she tells Enid. "I was...well, a prodigy, for lack of a better word. I could sight read some really complicated stuff. Bach, when I was about eleven. Handel, on the piano." She does not have to say how much she loved music: it's all there, in her voice, in barely suppressed longing.

"Anyway. About three weeks after I got there I was in a bicycle accident and I hit my head - " and here she taps the slightly raised mound of scar tissue, the one just past her left temple, vanishing beneath her hair - "and lost about five percent of my brain. And my ear and eye. I don't remember a lot about the actual diagnosis or what they explained to me because I couldn't understand it at the time, but there were a lot of things I wasn't supposed to have been able to do anymore. Loss of intelligence, personality. I refused to accept that. I Willed myself Awake and fixed it."

She lets that sink in, glances up toward the teenager, her apprentice, and meets her eyes. "I'm telling you this because I want you to understand that you're not the only person that's suffered like this, and you can let it strengthen you. We give things up, when we Awaken. We sacrifice things."

[Enid Geraint] Enid listens - for all her momentary sullen, for everything else, that can be said. Enid is very good at listening, and she learns and pieces things together quickly, with an ease that not many evidence. She is not a prodigy, perhaps, but she has great potential as an academic, an intellectual. There is sympathy in the younger girl's eyes as Ashley speaks of the accident and its outcome, but not pity - never that. Enid doesn't have the experience to offer true empathy either, but there's a slight softening around the edges, a bit of relaxing (if it can be called that, as goodness knows she's been wound tightly since her return).

"A year ago," Enid says quietly, calmly (but not really, oh, that's an even voice but not truly calm), and her eyes break away as she speaks, come to rest on her fingers fussing with some imagined bit of fluff, "I would have said I'd never take a human life. Did say so, in fact, when Mama was testing me with ethical questions, complete with full explanation and citation." And never mind the irony in that, it having been her mother quizzing her in ethics.

Since then, Enid, herself, has killed two people - as unwittingly as it had been, she'd Willed it, and it happened. That doesn't get brought up, not exactly.

"It's not the same, I know. But I . . . I can't . . ." There's a crack in her voice and her head shakes just enough to loosen her hair from behind her ears, to allow it to fall forward and hide her face. She's sacrificing her, that younger self. Enid is not that younger girl any longer; she's gone, lost. "I know we sacrifice things. And not just on Awakening, though I'm gathering that's one of the bigger ones. But . . . not everything?" There wants to be a 'please' there - it's not spoken, but lingers.

[Ashley McGowen] "Life is a process of losing yourself, losing things, and rebuilding," Ashley tells Enid. These are the gentlest tones she has used, in her history with the girl: she knows these are truths that are difficult to accept.

"I can't tell you what you'll lose or how much. Just that it's going to happen, and you can either wallow in self pity or you can let it shape you into something better. You have the choice to become the person you Will yourself to be no matter what happens to you, and there's a cost for anything worth having."

[Enid Geraint] "I don't pity myself." That's firm - firmer than anything else she's said in the past couple days, firm enough that it surprises her momentarily. But it's true, she doesn't. She's overwhelmed sometimes, but when she is, she does what she can to get past it, to move on. "I . . . I don't know. I worry about . . . you know. Bryan and Val's families. And Daddy. And Austin. And . . ." There's hesitation, a sigh, and she's still hiding behind that long, thick hair. "And Mama and Uncle Zeke and Aunt Pete and even Uncle Dan."

They'd done bad things, obviously - to her, to her boyfriend. It's been two days. This hasn't completely sunk in yet; on many levels, she's still in shock, still in denial.

"But I don't pity myself. Things happened, and I did things. I'll learn from them where I can, and pay for them where I must."

[Ashley McGowen] "Don't worry so much that it holds you back." Ashley listens to the rest of what the girl says, and then she nods. Slowly. "That's a mature thing to say. I'm going to be hard on you with this, Enid. Because you can't retreat into yourself - " and here she glances toward the paper - "for very long. We don't know when you might be called upon to have it together."

A short pause. Then, "You should choose your Craft Name within the next few days. I think it's time."

[Enid Geraint] Don't worry so much that it holds you back. ".....I'm trying not to." But it's hard to tell if she's succeeded or not. That it's a mature thing to say gets a hint of smile, but like most else, that's hidden behind her hair. Retreating . . . she swallows, hard, shrugs.

"I've been home - except not - for two days. I haven't seen my dad, might not be able to. One of my uncles is dead, another shot my boyfriend, and a third . . . poked at my head. He took something. Not a memory or anything like that, I was pretty sure already and you checked. But some bit of me." Her voice is a little quieter with each item, and she sounds like she's talking about someone else - a book she's read, a show she's watched. "How long is too long?"

And then the Craft Name - this gets a nod. She's been thinking about it for a while, but she understands that now is the time to start doing so with purpose, rather than just speculation.

[Ashley McGowen] "It'll be a long time before it stops hurting you," Ashley says. "It might always. The point is not to let it keep you from doing what you have to do, engaging the world and growing. I think right now, it's time for you to try to begin piecing yourself back together. It's not going to happen all at once, and I don't expect it to. But I want to see you trying, Enid."

[Enid Geraint] "Alright." She's not sure how to go about that, really, but she's never been one not to try, not to do what she can to get back on her feet. After broken bones, after illnesses, after anything - she gets back up, as soon as she can. And then, because she remembers, "Kage, Wharil, Emily, Austin - but I think they might have his phone too - you. I think that's . . . no, also Corran and his sister, but I haven't seen them in ages. I think that's everyone in my phone."

[Ashley McGowen] "We'll tell them. I know someone who I think can help secure their phones," Ashley says, and then she rises out of her chair. Then she glances ruefully toward their kitchen. "You can offer them bread and cookies for their trouble."

[Enid Geraint] "You should eat some too," she says - fretful, and never mind that she's also likely lost a bit of weight. "You're getting too skinny. But yes, giving some away is good." It's with a shrug, and she certainly doesn't stop . . . no, that's not quite true. She uncurls, stretches (because but for her run, she's spent most of the day curled up just like that, taking up as little room as possible) and moves to the shorter Hermetic. It's only a moment, but it's a hug.

"Thank you." And then she's back in her chair, pulling her paper and the latest book she's using back into her lap.