The Rising - Ennead 2

Scene 15.1 - Grim Tidings and New Surprises

There's something intimate about pulling out a TrueAlloy* the old way. You'll never really understand it if you're not an Alchemyst, or at least an Alchemyst's acolyte.

Hand drawing is unlike the new ways, with fancy constructs, cells and control boards. Handmade alloys enjoy human contact, all the way through. You have to commune with an element, listen to its nature and then gently coax it to change. No mass-made alloy can compare to the unique character of a hand drawn one. Hand drawing is a process as beautiful as art itself

Hand drawing an alloy is also a fucking pain in the arse. It's slow, laborious and prone to failure... especially when you don't have the kind of facility your mentor does. Jay is so done with being mediocre. But what can she do? Change is sometimes as easy as flipping a mountain.

Jayran Iravani-Rodriquez is no mountain flipper. Her dark curly hair is hacked off in an asymmetric. choppy bob. Her hazel eyes are fringed by dark lashes and her lush brows have a tendency to wrinkle into a rather hideous scowl.

Her tall, lean form is all bones with knobbly ends with a conspicuous paucity of curves on her chest or rump. She wishes she had more of those – the curves. Same as she wishes for a lot of things, a different life, paler skin... better society facility*. Jay also wishes for her practice time to be done already.

She glances at the antique, yellowed face of the clock that marks the minutes to freedom. It's barely moved. Clocks can be that way. In my opinion, they're mean little pricks sometimes.

The work-room, hidden underneath the pavement of Greenwich Village in New York, is hot, stifling, stiff and stale. A broken air conditioning unit will do that (with the aid of a stingy alchemyst couple that pretend it's not a big deal). In the meanwhile, Jay continues to sweat it out, whilst she coaxes a hunk of base iron into more useful BlackIron*.

The BlackIron is just about as compliant as a river is still. Spirals of wild, natural, leylines spring into life where our subject's palms make contact. The transformation lines creep forward like vines, moving slower and slower.... and slower.... and snap back to their source. The iron has rejected the transformation once again.

"Fuck this shit!" Jay curses.

It's in the nature of pig iron to refuse to respond to curses. It's not due to any sort of shame. I suppose there's a measure of pigheadedness to it. As an added measure of irritation, our Jay gives a few curses and throws a punch at the half ton slab.

Her ability has gone out of sync, her fist flares up and sinks into the iron. She grunts and pulls it back out. It gives way and then promptly becomes as stubborn as ever when she tries the transmutation once more.

It doesn't work.

After one more round of exuberant cursing, Jay gives up and picks up her knapsack. The iron can wait, she can't. At least not anymore. She gives a cursory glance at the mirror... okay, perhaps more than a glance.

She jams on her Yankees cap, and then pauses to adjust it, just a bit. Lipstick? - A smidge, nothing too obvious. Her grey Weston Girl's School blazer and white blouse are matched with a creased pair of slacks - because Jay is the kind of girl who really doesn't have a fuck to spare for pleated private school skirts. Finish all that off with a pair of sick J's (because why would we waste the pun, right?), and our girl is good to go.

....

She gets off the bus and cracks her pinky before she walks the final mile. Her destination is a couple of blocks away - a cafe. It's not as if she's in a rush, but Jay picks up her pace - anticipation.

Jay wears a casually dour look, as if it ain't a big deal. But it is. It is a little big deal. Hating herself for a singular lack of facility can wait for now.

Born and bred a New Yorker, Jay moves on autopilot. She's weaving through the crowds, a reed floating through the chaos of white water. A light drizzle begins to fall. No biggie, it'll pass.

At a red traffic robot, she takes advantage of the pause to shove on a pair of gradient tinted Aviators. They're not for the absent sun. They put up a wall between herself and elements of the city that pay too much attention. Perhaps, the glasses are also for her vanity, just a little bit - the bags under her eyes are prominent this evening.

The little cafe is quaint. Intentionally quaint. It's attempting to make some kind of new but authentic statement. Masquerading as 'classic, it's just an attempt at doing what the sun has seen a hundred times already.

The lights glow from within little glass jars. Reclaimed wood is in abundance, and the waitresses wear black shirts with eastern mandala and henna patterns - some of which are remarkably close to mirroring leyline syntax. There is a jarring-note to aesthetic of the rebranded bar. Not that I'd notice it, but our Jay is an innate aesthete.

I digress. Jay takes a seat and makes a quick scan of the cafe, before taking her time to order something. She wouldn't like admitting it to herself, but she was looking forward to this moment. Perhaps she wouldn't mention it to us, but her actions betray more than a thousand words.

... Turns out all her preparations were pointless. The person she was hoping for doesn't show up at the cafe. At first she hopes. And then she waits. And then she worries and then she's mad. And then she goes back to worrying again.

Finally it's almost eight pm. She's on her third coffee and her thirteenth text. The coffee is hella expensive, and it's not really the best she's ever had. Jay was just hoping that perhaps... was she being stupid? Right now she feels that way. What was she thinking, that perhaps something good could happen? My, oh my, it seems that if karma is a bitch, then fate is karma's boss.

The last gaggle of scarecrows in suspenders and bohemian scarves giggle their way out of the cozy little bar. The crowd is growing, and the menus are changing. Faith, the person our Jay is waiting for, is a no-show.

Eventually, Jay pays for her bill. She skips the tip, not because she's barbaric, but because ... okay. Perhaps she is pissed. As she walks out, she tugs down on the bill of her cap, as if to reassure herself of its presence. A mental sending from her mother reminds her that she has to home for an evening prep session, so she sighs and consigns herself to fate.

Fate is wearing a pair of dark shades today as well. I wouldn't be hasty. This might not be menacing foreboding - but perhaps it is. You see, outside her field of vision, when Jay moves, someone else does too. She's being followed. It's a man in a dark overcoat with an unmarked baseball cap shading his face.

Footnotes

TrueAlloy is another name for Alchemycal Alloys. BlackIron is one of these alloys. Alloys are discussed further in the companion volume to The Rising. This book (Society; The World Behind the Veil) is online and is worth taking a peek at, if you don't mind massive spoilers.

Facility isa measure of how well a person can naturally grasp Society ability. Again, moredetails of that are in the companion volume. 

Writer's Note

Thanks for the wait. The Rising continues, unabated!

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