Owner	Pose
Jonathan Sims	Now that he's back in the real world, not on vacation or walkabout, Jonathan Sims is taking care of some business. Billy Kaplan is one such piece of business; the boy got a card with a phone number on it during a party after the Pride Parade, and then Jon promptly dropped off the face of the Earth. Quite literally, in fact. For ten days there he wasn't even /on/ Earth. But he's finally responding to texts again, and sets up a meeting at a community garden in Greenwich Village, during the afternoon when there's plenty of sun.     The garden itself is part of a park, one of New York's multiple green spaces, situated to get the best light it can manage in the shadows of the city's taller buildings. There's evidence of damage still being repaired, months after the angelic invasion and siege. Not that the angels hit the place deliberately, but there was a lot of collateral damage, and a community garden is hardly top priority for rebuilding. The entry arch is still cracked, some of the paving stones missing or broken. The focus in rebuilding has been on the garden beds and the plants.     The Archivist can be found, whenever Billy makes it over, kneeling among pepper plants, the fruits slowly ripening in the sun. He's wearing shorts and a t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, as much of his brown skin exposed to the sun as possible. He doesn't /look/ like a magical pracitioner--with rainbow-dyed hair, black-and-red nail polish, and a t-shirt for some obscure indie band, he looks like any of the other volunteers around here. Queer, mid-30's, willing to get dirt under those manicured nails.
Billy Kaplan	It all depends, of course, on one's own mental image of a magic practitioner. Upon discovering his abilities, Billy spent a lot of time in bookstores that often wafted with the scent of patchouli, and where the light was refracted by the actin of a thousand crystals. Many self-professed practitioners there looked not too far from how Jon looked. Perhaps a little more tie-dye, but not too much. "Doctor Sims!" Billy calls out as he approaches, wearing a white T-shirt, black shorts and sneakers, and a messenger back slung over his shoulder. He isn't particularly rainbowy himself today, except for the pride bracelet around his right wrist. But appearances can be deceiving- Billy Kaplan is nothing if not a rainbow waiting to happen. "Sorry I'm a little late, I got held up by my mother asking me to get something on the way back..." he stops, peering at the plants, "Oh, you're gardening!" Billy is not technically a green thumb. He has wanted to be, multiple times, but he has had an awful luck of it... so much so that at one point he tried to cheat by using magic to keep his project plant alive. The result of that is that now he has a much healthier respect for Morticia Addams for being able to handle Cleopatra so well. Eventually the spell wore off, but he had one hell of a time explaining how those grass stains ended up on his bedroom ceiling to his mother.
Jonathan Sims	Jon straightens up from the bed, dusting off his hands and smiling. "That's alright, I was going to be here most of the afternoon. Good to see you again, Billy. And, ahh, 'Jon' is fine. I haven't been 'Doctor Sims' for--" He stops. Pause. Clears his throat. "Well, okay, actually for a few months, but it /feels/ like longer."     He gestures toward the garden. "I figured we could do some work while we talk. I've been volunteering here... oh, since I moved to New York? So about thirteen years now?" A pause, and a blink. "Good lord, has it been that long?" He shakes himself. "Anyway, they got hit hard by some debris that fell off a building during the angelic invasion. I managed to get the supplies covered with some reparation funds, but no amount of money can really substitute for people getting in here and getting their hands dirty."     He picks up a pair of gardening gloves set off to one side, and says, "Come help me plant some carrots? They're pretty hard to mess up." A pause. "So what do you know about magic so far, hmm?"
Billy Kaplan	The young man blinks for a moment, and then he scampers to grab the gloves and set himself to the task of grabbing carrots, "Right, carrots- I quite like..." he trails off for a moment, being given another thing to focus on, and thus his original phrase going by the wayside. Billy may not be good with most plants, but he does like the contact with the earth, being surrounded by nature. It's a comfort. "Er... do you mean... like... what it /is/ or... how I go about it?" He gives a little nervous smile, "I think I might need a little more direction with the question, otherwise I am prone to... well. Ramble."
Jonathan Sims	"Rambling's perfectly acceptable," Jon says with a grin. "Whether it's about carrots or magic. I'm curious how you go about it, of course--but I'm also curious how you found out you have it, without having anyone to help you learn. What you already know. Things like that."     There's a whole row of little planters with tiny green stalks, carrots already seeded and grown in a greenhouse and ready for transplating into the garden beds. Jon grabs some of them as well and takes them over to a bed that's already been prepared for planting. "I could just start in telling you what magic is, how it works, etcetera--but if you already know the basics, that'll be a waste of both of our time. And magic is deeply personal at any rate, so it's good to know where you are."
Billy Kaplan	"It's kinda- so... I first found out I could do stuff when I... I stood up to a bully at school." He is careful, helping transport the planters, and he takes several good, long looks at the pre-prepared beds, almost as if planting the carrots even slightly wrong might cause them to explode. Considering his brief excursion into horticultural magic, perhaps that is something he has seen. "I almost killed him, without meaning to. So that's when I decided I'd... try to find a way to..." he gestures, the rest of the sentence falling off into the implicit. "More and more, it's like I'm standing in a spot, and there's something I don't like about that spot, and it isn't right. And sometimes I know what would make it right, or how I'd change it to make it right..." he puffs out his cheeks, and then lets huff of air out, trying to put words around things that usually don't have them, "So then I try to convince myself that I'm actually already in the place where the change has happened... does this- does this make any sense? Because for me, it's not me changing places from one to the other, but I'm sort of... changing the places but I'm staying exactly where I was..."
Jonathan Sims	Jon considers that as he counts carrot planters, making sure they're all there. Nodding in satisfaction, he hands Billy a trowel. "Dig a hole just a little bit bigger than one of the planters. We're going to put them, soil and all, into the holes and then gives them some food and water."     He takes his own trowel and starts digging a hole in one of the rows of the bed. "Well... I tend to say that magic is a means of enacting one's will upon the world. And magic isn't really unique to people like you and me--any technological invention has, really, been a kind of magic. Looking at the world, seeing a problem, and coming up with a way to fix that problem. The flashy sort of magic just... well. Is flashier. And more direct." They grin over their shoulder at Billy.     "This garden, for instance--I /could/ just wave my hand and summon up a bunch of constructs to plant everything. Or, hell, I could just summon up a bunch of carrots, and bob's your uncle--harvest done! But it undercuts some of the point. And it's awfully tiring. And then you get used to doing everything with magic, and, mmm... that's generally not a good way to go about things."     He eyes Billy for a moment. "The way you describe it, though, is... interesting. So what you're saying is--if you were going to summon a bunch of carrots, it wouldn't be so much that you'd be summoning carrots, as that you feel like we ought to already have fully-grown carrots, and then you just... transport yourself to the point where the carrots already exist?"
Billy Kaplan	"Right, like the third Clarke law... I guess you could call magic something like that. But- I don't know. Sometimes, when a spell goes exactly the way I want it to- and that's not often- I get a sense of..." he begins to dig with his trowel, cleaving here and there to underline a word, "Completeness? It's strange, but it's like a connection that's full of everything. For a very brief moment, it feels like I'm in everything and everything is in me. And then I try to really /look/ at that feeling... and it disappears and I can't call it back. All that's left is the words around the feeling, but I can't recall what it *feels* like." He pauses in his digging to look up at Jon, "And I sometimes get the feeling that if I only managed to recall that, I'd know.. a lot. Something important. But it never stays. And I've never had a feeling like /that/ when using my printer." He considers Jon's words carefully, his digging slowing down, as if the trowel were his focus, carefully cleaving at a concept. "I... don't know if 'transport' is the right word. At least, not myself. I don't go anywhere, and I don't go to any points. It's..." he bites his lip. "Like you're on the wrong subway train, but then you manage to make it so that you've /always/ been on the right train all of a sudden, and you are. But the funny thing is that everybody remembers you weren't, even you. Until you were..." He smiles a little, "This isn't making much sense..."
Jonathan Sims	"So..." Jon considers for a long moment. "So the way my magic actually works--I think up a concept on the Astral Plane and channel the Power Cosmic to bring that concept into reality. The concept--carrots, a door to a loved one, my own body--already existed. I'm just... putting it in place here." As if to demonstrate, he points at a spot on the border of the garden bed, and abruptly there is a bottle of water sitting there. It's clearly magical to anyone who can sense such things, made of the stuff of the Astral Plane. But it's also a bottle of water in every respect that a bottle of water ought to be.     "On some level, everything is made up of the same stuff, what some call the Light of Creation. The same energy, channeled into different forms. Homo magi like me, we have a fairly easy time doing so. I saw the archangels alter reality as easily as you or me would order a coffee. There's different approaches, but it's all doing the same thing--applying our will to change reality."     He hums softly to himself. "Here, do me a favor? Do some magic, let me see what it looks like. Nothing too big. Maybe your own bottle of water." He grins. "Gardening's thirsty work. You'll be glad of it by the time we're done."
Billy Kaplan	And he is being called to the front of the class for a demonstration. This makes his heart skip a little beat and his adrenaline to go up- he is not bad at tests, necessarily, but he always has that slight undercurrent of uncertainty in regards to his powers. They are hard to control. They are hard to predict. Except for the lightning. He needs to establish control- but how can you grab a pan if you don't know where the handle is? Billy thinks for a moment, realizing he has an opportunity here to impress the teacher. Should he be very specific and get points for technique- or, since he has recently just re-read The Last Unicorn for the umpteenth time, decide to pull a Schmendrick and let the magic work what it will with his will? Schmendrick it is. He concentrates for a moment, and then he opens his mouth, fully focusing the intent of his words as he speaks: "QuenchMyThirstQuenchMyThirstQuenchMyThirst..." And there is that roiling, shifting sensation as reality is re-arranged and the magic chooses its course- And there, before them, instead of a water bottle, there is a young man of about Billy's age, or slightly older. A jogger he had passed on the way here, bare-chested and glistening skin, smoldering brown eyes and untamed, wild black hair, and red running shorts with some logo or another on them. The young man's surprise is nowhere near as large as Billy's absolute embarrassment ,as he goes bright red and his hands come up to cover his mouth. "Oh no-" For someone who read that book so much, Billy sure seems to forget how many times it took Schmendrick to actually get it right at the end.
Jonathan Sims	Jon just watches this calmly. There's no real passing or failing to this test--it's an entrance exam, not a final. And Jon's not likely to burden Billy with the expectations of academia, anyway. That sounds boring, and annoying.     He quirks a brow at Billy's choice of words--and then guffaws at the man who appears. He covers his mouth, trying not to embarass Billy any further, but, well--the sparkle in his eye, and the chuckles that keep erupting, show otherwise. Still, he clears his throat and stands, giving the jogger an apologetic grin.     "I asked my student here to perform a spell, and I'm afraid he didn't target it very well." Understatement of the week, at least. "Terribly sorry about that. You'll find the exit to the garden over that way." He points down the rows. "If you'd like, Debra's handing out some of the excess produce. Just tell her Jon sent you."     He manages to keep his laughter under control, mostly, but it's going to explode sooner or later.
Billy Kaplan	Billy Kaplan might just be one of those weird creatures from Pan's Labyrinth who can only interact with the world if their hands are pressed up to their faces in lieu of eyes and other assorted things, because his hands now cover his entire face, and they stay there through the puzzled stares of the jogger, and then through Jon's explanation, and the eventual departure of the young man who isn't /as/ outraged as one would imagine by getting teleported randomly against his will... but angels invaded this city a few months back. People here Had Seen Some Shit even before that happened. Since then? Very little seems to faze them. When he is finally gone, Billy lowers his hands just enough so that he can peek very, very lightly over his fingertips. "Ohmygod."
Jonathan Sims	Jon is just as much a New Yorker as the jogger seems to be--Shit Happens, Yaknow? Hence his fairly casual statement about magic. He sends the young man off with a wave and a grin, and then can't hold it in any longer--he doubles over laughing for a moment.     "Sorry," he gasps. "Sorry, that's just--" He's embarassing the poor boy further. He does his best to get hold of himself, clearing his throat and sitting back down. "Ahem. That's--well." His eyes sparkle. "Clearly that shows the importance of intent, hmm? Rather than creating a water bottle, you--teleported in a man. Which is rather impressively, really. /I/ can't do that."     A pause. A chuckle, that he manages to hold in. "I am /never/ asking you to make it rain." He has to stop, to laugh at his own joke for a moment.     They shake their head. "Alright. Sorry. It's alright, things happen. I once tried to impress my friends with the ghost of JRR Tolkien--he's buried in my hometown--and a stray memory of watching Dawn of the Dead the week before conjured a zombie instead. Fortunately the facsimile of one and not the /actual/ dead body of Professor Tolkien, but... well. Magic can be unpredictable if you're not certain in yourself." He peers at Billy over the top of his glasses for a moment, raising a brow. His hair's not grey enough to be Gandalf, but it's a very Gandalf-esque expression, complete with that half-smile.     "So... why don't you tell me how that felt?"
Billy Kaplan	The young man maintains a beet-red coloration through all of Jon's explanation, and it is hard to tell if he is actually listening or if he's just enmeshed in his self-contained misery, but his eyes widen, showing he is paying attention. "You summoned a ... zombie Tolkien? Oh wow. That's.... kind of bad-ass, I'm not going to lie. And... also kind of crazy." You can tell he is clearly thinking, 'could I do that?'"Can you imagine what he might have said if he knew? Maybe we could ask..." he stops himself. No, Billy, that is not a good idea. Not a good idea at all. Instead, focus on the question that has been asked. "Well... it felt... to be frank, it felt a little out of control. I guess... I was so preoccupied with doing something good that I didn't put a lot of thought into /how/ I was going to do... what I wanted to do" He clears his throat, "And it felt like it got away from me..."
Jonathan Sims	"I created an image of a zombie Tolkien," Jon corrects Billy with a smile. "I wouldn't suggest trying to summon the real thing. The dead get cranky when you call them back without the proper rites and rituals." Naturally an Egyptian avatar isn't going to have an /inherent/ problem with necromancy. The real problem is nonconsensual necromancy, didn't you know?     They chew on their lip for a moment, considering, then pick up the bottle of water and open it to take a sip. After a moment, they focus on their left hand and conjure up another bottle of water, which they hand over. "Water's easy for me," they say with a smile. "I tend to think in elemental terms, and water is my element. Emotions, mysticism, cradle of life, the slow carving of a canyon by a river. That sort of thing. Hidden depths."     He tilts his head to consider Billy. "But what you're doing feels more... hmm... instinctual than what I do? More chaotic. I can override my deeper intentions with my will most of the time, but for you that may not actually be possible." A pause. "And experience tells me that you /might/ have to live with a certain element of... randomness in your magic." A smirk. "Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, but, ahh--sort of like a sorceror's wild magic die? If you... well. If you've ever played Dungeons and Dragons." He blinks, suddenly; that reference might be /entirely/ lost. Oops.     Then he grins suddenly. "Okay, so, you're worried about doing something good, something impressive, and you... actually /did/ do something impressive. Your magic did what you wanted it to do--most of the teleporters I know can't just teleport people like that without any issues. So it /sounds/ like maybe it's getting to what you want at your core instead of what you're rationally trying to get at. Here," he taps his chest, "instead of here." He taps his forehead. "Does that make sense?"
Billy Kaplan	Billy rubs the back of his head and nods, listening very carefully as the blush finally fades away. "So what you're saying is that... if I am not careful enough, I run the risk of pulling an effect from the Wild Magic table? That's- I mean, that's not something I /want/." The young mage's apprentice says, shuffling his feet a little "When my powers first manifested, I accidentally almost fried a bully..." he frowns. "Which, I guess, in /intention/ I wanted. I mean, to stop him from hurting me. To teach him a lesson. But it manifested... without filters. I guess?" "You are saying that my element is... surprise?" he taps his chin, "Is there any way to... find a way to make sure this," head, "and this," heart, "work together? Because... if I'm going to help people, I can't just go and..." he waves his hands, "be Captain Random."
Jonathan Sims	"Any magus whose heart and head aren't working together runs the risk of turning down a darker path. I know precisely what you mean. I, ahh... I killed a man, in anger, with my magic." Jon's eyes go distant for a moment, his tone grows sad. "He was trying to kill me, and he'd just hurt me, but it wasn't what I /consciously/ wanted. I hadn't dealt with some trauma, hadn't admitted how much it was still bothering me. We have an incredible amount of power at our hands, and we have to make sure we use it wisely, and well."     He glances to Billy. "I would say that for you the need is more /acute/ than with others, but it's still the same sort of thing. Getting to know yourself and your emotions. Meditation, practice, focus. A framework of belief helps, guiding principles that you can ensure are at your core."     A pause, as he kneels back down at start digging holes again. "What are your religious beliefs, if any? I won't judge, trust me--I used to be Anglican, myself, and now I worship the gods of Ancient Egypt, but I'm rather, ahh, ecumenical."
Billy Kaplan	"Guiding principles," Billy muses, and smiles, "Well, we're Jewish. I actually have been reading a lot. You know, trying to..." he tilts his head this way and that, "... compare and contrast different things. Some books about Kabbalah, but to be honest I haven't stuck with one thing or another exactly..." he hmms. "Probably because I still feel like I've been exploring. It's strange to realize that I've never really thought of it from the angle of faith..." he goes quiet for a second, "I haven't exactly parsed how the existence of other gods gels with what I've grown up. On some level, I guess I haven't thought about it too much /deliberately/, you know?" His blue eyes widen a little, "You don't think that that might be part of the disconnect..."
Jonathan Sims	"It could be," Jon says, looking up to regard Billy curiously. "I know how /I/ reconcile everything, but that comes from my point of view and my experience. I, ahh--" He clears his throat. "I died, once, and met what you might call... God. It took me a while, including a trip through Hell, to reconcile that fact with serving the gods of Kemet. For me, it was the concept of love, and compassion. That Ma'at--the goddess I serve--is at her core a goddess of love and compassion, because you need compassion to create a community, to bring order, to have justice. So I believe that Ma'at is merely expressing a universal concept... which is what my ancestors believed, too. Akhenaten tried to turn things monotheistic, after all." He grins.     "At any rate... that might be a good place to start, yes. You don't have to land where I am. Perhaps you'll come to find--and maybe you'll even be right--that the deities I serve are no more than angels. Or maybe that there /is/ no universal Godhead and whatever I met was a fever dream." They smirk.     Then they gesture to the garden bed. "I certainly understand the concept of 'tikkun olam,' however. That one is responsible to try to repair and improve the world. But... well... if magic is an expression of our will channeling divine energy, then you've got to have a clear idea of what the divine /is/ to do that, yes?"
Billy Kaplan	"... there is no universal Godhead," Billy muses, and glances over at Jon, "If that were the case, then... wouldn't the Universe be something closer to the Celestial Hierarchy. Endless divine bureaucracy-" Billy seems to consider this for a second, and says "You know..." He looks at the flower bed, and nods, "There are a lot of... I guess, concepts of what divine is. A lot of people don't even know what their will is..." he trails off, and then a thought seems to come to him. "Say, speaking of will... I was meaning to ask you! Suppose that... well, let's say you want to find out if you are related to someone. Like... they might be your brother. /Somehow/." He raises his hands, "How... would you go about making a spell that would tell you for sure?"
Jonathan Sims	"I wouldn't," Jon replies, with a smirk. "I'd get a sample of their blood and have someone run a DNA test. One of the most important lessons to learn about magic is when /not/ to use it, when it's the wrong tool for the job."     He hums softly. "But... supposing I couldn't get a blood sample, or even if I could get a sample of blood or tissue... I couldn't pay for a DNA test from a reputable lab, because I am, for instance, a 20-year-old student..." A glance at Billy, and a grin. "I would get a sample of /something/. Hair, blood, skin. And then I'd do a, hmm, a sort of magical resonance test? It's quite possible to track people using the blood of a family member--that's how we found my daughter, when she'd been kidnapped. /I/ might specifically place the two samples in a circle inscribed with hieroglyphs, and ask the gods whether the two samples are related. Hathor or Isis, probably. One of the Mother goddess types. Or I might examine them very /very/ closely with my Sight, to see if there's a resonance. Perhaps both."     He sits back a bit, and says, "The way I look at the world... there's a rhythm to life, and communities. There's a resonance to people's auras. People who are related, by blood or by choice, they harmonize easily. I suspect I'd see myself and my husband and my girlfriend as related in a similar way. As family, as part of a group resonating in tune."
Billy Kaplan	"Or-" he adds, "If one of the people involved doesn't want their DNA collected..." he shrugs, "Hypothetically speaking." Billy thinks on this for a moment. Hair samples. Resonances. A god, or gods, something that focuses the intention of the question, the channel of will. Symbols, perhaps- famous brothers. Famous... twins? Castor and Pollux? Ideas were coming to him, informed by Jon's guidance. The interconnectedness of rhythms and energy, of lives and the marks that those lives left on other lives. Could it be so easily traceable? It was mind-boggling to contemplate. And in all things, the will set the tone and the pace. He holds out a hand and focuses. "IWantWaterIWantWa-" and he stops himself, before that rippe can begin. So focused on the 'what', and so careless about the 'how'. He begins again."BottleOfWaterBottleOfWaterBottleOfWater-" And it is exactly what he asks for: a large bottle of water, its cold surface dotter with condensation in contrast with the warm day. The young sorcerer grins and glances over at Jon, and holds the water bottle up. And, internally, he is grateful that it did not end up with another half-naked man showing up out of nowhere. And he also realizes he never expected to think /that/, at all.
Jonathan Sims	Jon grins broadly. "Excellent!" The other bottle he'd offered disappears with a flick of a glance, and Jon nods firmly. "Precisely what you asked for. Congratulations." He looks legitimately happy, proud even, that Billy managed to get the spell precisely right.     "Now c'mon and help me plant these carrots. They're not going to plant themselves." A pause. "And we're not going to /make/ them plant themselves. It's far, far better to plant them properly, and there's nothing wrong with getting some dirt on your hands." He grins at Billy.