482/And One More For Luck

And One More For Luck
Date of Scene:	13 March 2020
Location:	Sanctum Santorum
Synopsis:	Doctor Strange heaps more responsibility on himself, but doesn't get to do it alone.
Cast of Characters:	Stephen Strange, Clea

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Stephen Strange has posed:
    Another late night and the sky is not only dark but over cast, the moon obscured by the thick clouds that promise a possible last snowfall yet, they keep the skies pregnant with anticipation. The Brownstones in Greenwich are equally quiet with more and more lights turning off as it nears the witching hour, and yet the one specific house with the ornate window set in the roof has its tenant on the roof, his feet dangling over the side as he looks up.

    From his vantage point on the Sanctum, the sky is perfectly clear, the stars refuse to be obscured by the light polution or even clouds. Magic, it's a hell of a thing. Stephen sits here to himself, hands behind his head as he gazes calmly through the growing storms.

Clea has posed:
A possible snowfall into March, how the stircrazy residents longing for spring must be rolling in their beds. Too early to put away the heavy coats and store the half-filled bag of icemelt, and unwise to start buying up bulbs or spring flowers from the nurseries hoping a few people are brave enough to think about decorating. Less of that around Greenwich Village, which isn't famed for window boxes. Still, those tiny little green parks the size of a car door sprinkled here and there might have the first signs of buds and movement in the soil where brave crocuses try to rear their heads. Not with the sun down of course, but still the warming fingers sink deep into the earth. Frost is bound to break.

All to say it explains perhaps why Clea is walking barefoot around one of those smaller gardens on the other side of Bleecker Street, a block away. She is not entirely hard to spot, partly obscured by buildings ringed around her. Some things will always stand out, the tiniest inkling of magic radiating out for Stephen to detect if so inclined. Not intentional, but she weaves the lightest of blessings on the soil to improve its quality just a bit. To keep the ground ready for flowers and grass. Something others can appreciate. Dancing means to cast it.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Subtle, but not unnoticeable, a walkway that Clea could possibly slip through unawares would bring her up onto the roof next to Stephen and the wizard sits up, his head and eyes turned in the direction of the ivory hair woman who was once his secret classmate. Stephen pats the roof next to him as he sits up slightly and allows his legs to dangle at the knee against the roof of the magic house.

    "Wont you join me Clea, you left in such a hurry I was worried you actually might have been a dream I was having, despite your arguments against it." The wizard invites pleasantly.

Clea has posed:
Clea pirouettes in a slow rotation, as though she waltzes with her own shadow. Not exactly that, but she has to carefully pluck at a few strands of gossamer energy that she lays on the cool, dark earth. The sparks tumble in and lie like pixie dust to her eyes, giving a prompt reason to smile at her own subtle handiwork. Two more turns sunwise brings her back to the bench where she gently lay her ankle-high boots, which must be reclaimed. In doing so, she crosses right over the moonbridge extended to her. Quiet surprise blossoms, colouring her cheeks mildly, but she has nothing to say to the street with traffic bisecting the path. Not much protection from prying eyes awaits her once she steps out from under a tree, but making the most of it, she hastily takes the walkway two or three steps at a time. No fear of falling here; not when she can float perfectly in place. So does the new arrival follow the invisible path all the way to the mansion where a man enjoying its rooftop views is certainly not the most startling appearance.

There is always the glory of the window of the Vishanti, considered an architectural oddity by the neighbours no doubt. Her coat blows around a little as she approaches Stephen, hands out. A bit of dirt is dusted away. "Who better to distinguish between illusion and reality than the Sorcerer Supreme?" she greets him. "I certainly think I am me, but that is far away from certainty. Wouldn't a dream say it?" He soon enough has a guest seated beside him, putting her boots aside.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "You have a point, but, using certain spells within my own house felt rather, distasteful." The wizard smirks as he has yet to remove his eyes from Clea and yet eventually he must. Then he again rolls against the top of the room leaning backwards until he is flat against the tiles and laces his fingers as best he can behind his head as an impromptu pillow.

    "Most would say they think they are themselves, dream or reality as either way, they wouldn't know a difference." Strange muses softly to the infinite cosmos above and the infinite well of possibilities beside and looses words.

Clea has posed:
She closes her eyes for a moment, basking in the familiar waves of the warding and that chill asp-bite of the cold. "I was not enspelled. It could seem so. Things have changed since I left, haven't they?" The first nudge of the white elephant in the vicinity, one the size of a skyscraper, requires a bit of boldness to approach instead. Her shoes are set aside, letting her bare feet dangle over the side of the building like Strange himself demonstrates being perfectly acceptable. Toes scrunch and straighten, giving a bit of movement where she could otherwise be still. "Dreams can feel more real than not. Different for us, where they hold a different peril of walking right out of our bodies. I would think you can tell. One or two tells to be sure."

Clea straightens out her arm and sketches a careful, simple mandala of triangles overlapping one another. For a spell effect, that's just about all it does, flashing a few sparkling embers as it holds a pattern. Definitely magic. "Forgive me for not being better in touch. Time runs asynchronous to here, and when I stepped out, the years slid further than I expected."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "Such is life." Stephen remarks idly, not really thinking about his words as delicately as he usually does, but in a more relaxed state he doesn't have to worry in this moment, so he wont. "Though yes, things have changed, the man who was beside me last night is capable of such feets though he think it not magic." Stephen muses and then passes the subject with a note of silence before he looks back to Clea and could almost get lost in her eyes.

    "Years have gone by and yet, you appear to have not aged a day since the last time I saw you." Stephen says with a lift of his eyebrow, not a feat uncommon, but still a feat worth noting and even complimenting.

Clea has posed:
"An oneiromancer?" Clea supplies a term quietly, unwilling to broach too loud a verbal volume. "I regret not making proper introductions, though it was hardly an appropriate time. He came to you with a purpose, had I to guess?" Her heel rolls back and forth, feeling the texture of tile and brick with equal ease. The scrape of skin has little chance of breaking too deep to bleed. The loose fall of her naturally wavy hair has been pulled back using a simple elastic. Nothing stands out as wholly otherworldly at a simple examination, though closer scrutiny might cause it all to break down. Surely he can see the feverish light around her, if he looks. The sight of a mage always picks up something in relation to her. Not many beings in the world are composed of living energy for the most part.

The white-haired woman laughs, waving her hand at him. "Now you are flattering me. You do remember who is the older of us, don't you?" By appearances, that's an easy answer. By facts, another matter. "For the first time, I feel slightly more grown up. Responsibility has a way of doing it. An uphill struggle to be taken seriously yet."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "I always flattered you, or, I think I should have." Stephen chides as he looks still to Clea, aware of her sort of mystical glow but not concerned by it, as it's not something he's learned over time by studying under the Ancient One. "You look like you've carried a lot more weight than last time we met, but you still look quite wonderful." No follow up thought to sully the idea that Stephen's eyes are in agreement with Clea's near infectuous smile, nearly infectuous enough to get Stephen himself to crack a smirk towards the pale haired faltinian.

Clea has posed:
Clea shakes her head, the burning aura infused by the very vessel of what her people truly are. It is not something the Ancient One has ever seen. She did not leave after that death with the markings on her aura. "Am I heavier?" The question is a loaded one but full of a tease. "I thought I looked quite good for someone hiding from your archenemy. One of them." Her hands clasp, fitted in her lap. No follow-up to sully the compliment. Such would be unkind. "You look well. Better than one could imagine. You're under this mantle of great weight and yet it hardly impacts you. Has it transformed you better than I have seen?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "I appreciate the compliment Clea." Stephen remarks before he looks closer at Clea and her face, "You don't appear heavier, though we both know the kind of stress you were under." Strange says with a shrug of his shoulders against the roof. "As far as the title of supreme, I think it might have changed me, but it is still a burden that I carry, alone, every day." Stephen says, trailing off as he looks away from Clea and back out to the blackness of space above New York. A blackness no one has seen for several decades, but here for them alone it is available.

Clea has posed:
"Not alone." Clea holds up her hand, as though to catch a star. "The man who stands on the mountaintop might see only sky and clouds. Others can gather below the very peak, Stephen. How easy to make the mistake because we become separated from what lies beneath. I have done it myself." She crosses her ankles, the position relaxed and almost demure. "Your stars are so beautiful here. Look at the sky." Okay, so it's rather overcast and hard to see through the halo of light without refining vision, but they are there. A blackness of space, perfect and refined. "They burn like lamps in the dark. How much I missed them while I was away. But they remain, mostly unchanged."

Her finger runs along the collar of the shirt, back and forth, where a necklace would lie. Turning her head to him, she gives a reserved hint of a smile. She hesitates; there is doubt and uncertainty dancing around. Pushing forward to break through the thin barrier, she looks away to the sky safely again. "Your burden is my burden too. Not quite the same, of course. I'm not responsible for here, but the Dark Dimension and all its people now. These." Her hand touches her hair. There's fire there, to see, if he focuses. Intense, wild fire. The Flames of Faltine belong not to her uncle, but to her. "I have the same title of you over there."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "Your uncle, and I'm certain others will come for you, or at least try and take your position while you rest here and ruminate with a foolish human." Stephen says, looking to Clea, seeing not only the mystical fires in her hair and being, but the fires that burn her ambitions and her drive. "Yet, I am here to serve. If you need anything Clea, anything. Don't be afraid to ask me." Stephen says with a soft yawn as he rolls back to observe the skies once again for the call of slumber begins to wash across the sorcerer. "You and your realm still fall under my perview." Either by decree of the Vishanti or by his own determination chosen here and now isn't clear but the results are the same.