Tempus Fugit

[Lucien Anders] Friday morning. Very, very early Friday morning. In fact, when Israel left the house to walk Atticus it wasn't even dawn yet. Normally Solomon is the fanatic about his pre-dawn runs, but of late the diminutive blind woman as seemed highly distracted... not so much withdrawn as centered; focused on something mulling and roiling her mind, some sense of foreboding that she couldn't quite place a name to. One would thing the presence of this Sending in Chicago and all the events occasioned by it so far would be enough but this seemed different... an enigmas teasing and mocking just out of her considerable intelligence and intuitively perceptive reach.

So with promises to Solomon that she wouldn't go farther than Gompers Park [which is located a little less than a mile away from their home in West Rogers Park, to the Southwest] and would be back in time for when Molly and Nathan arrived, she'd headed out with a frisky and eager Atticus in tow.

The first light of dawns cresting was just filtering itself through the windows of the breakfast nook - Eastward facing to catch the best of the morning sun - when Solomon felt the distinctive [stomach plunging] break in his Consecrated connection to his cabalmate, partner, fiance. No warning, no outcry from Israel or anything of the like... just that hollow, empty feeling as if some part of himself was suddenly entirely out of his reach.

[Molly Quincannon] It's first thing in the morning. Molly's not had a terrible lot of sleep, but it's her own stupid fault, really. (Video game launches. What're you gonna do?) But she still turns up around about sunup - which at least is relatively late this time of year, nearly 6am - with grogginess and muffins and general sleepy good cheer. Yes, that's about to be shattered like a pane of spun sugar being hit with a mallet, but at least her morning starts off well.

[Solomon Ward] By sun up, Solomon's typical day is hours into a routine.

He's already awakened ahead of Israel and gone to run, despite the cold and the dark. It's easier to do in the morning, the predawn, though it requires discipline. Dedication. Traffic, which never truly dies in a city, thins out to levels acceptable for exercise, so that not every cross walk and intersection become an exercise in Frogger style reflexes.

Nathan got dragged along, of course. He never physically trained the man on Sunday, and Saturday was optional. Any other day, even the unplanned and unscheduled, was fair game... .
One day he'll learn that there is no pattern, and simply accept that the fact he will be doing this on his own, even if the doorbell never rings, so to speak... .
Cardio. Running. Push ups. Dips on a park bench. The man's health, while not five star athlete, is nearly insufferable some days.

So by the time the connection he shares to Israel simply... snaps... the day had well and truly begun. A shower, a shave. Slacks, shoes, shirt. The smell of Old Spice and Aqua Velva... because ladies love men that smell kinda like grandpa (pre retirement home smell, that is).

Little known fact. Solomon bakes. His own bread, by hand, every day.

Which is why the stern and shocked and wary and even angry expression that flits across his scarred face is fit for murder. There are very, very few things that could cause this to happen.

Death is one of them.

Its all sort of depeleted by the fact he hasn't put on his vest or jacket yet, and in his shirt sleeves, is fit with a an apron. Thats dusted with flower. The cannon in his left hand (how'd that get there..) doesn't fit the image, or maybe the apron doesn't fit the revolver. A speed loader is thrust into a pocket. He's already stalking to the door with his keys in hand, not quite running.

"Some things wrong" .. words equal time. He doesn't waste either explaining.

[Nathan Spriggs] The weather tonight is dreary to say the least, there's a thick mat of clouds blocking the sunlight now as they cast shadows down upon the streets and pedestrians on it. The cloud coverage seems to have sneaked upon the city in the aftermath of their exhausting run, somewhere in between Solomon dressing in the Prison Dream outfit and Nathan's own retreat into the shower to clean away the sweat and dirt from yet another day of torture ('training').

He's barely getting his left foot onto the last step when he hears Solomon's words and the sudden shift in demeanor. Though maybe it's fortunate that he doesn't actually see the expression of cold-hard murder upon his face or the tension of it all might be lost by the contrasts in appearance. Maybe not though, Solomon was a scary fucker. No one denied that much.

[Molly Quincannon] So she rings the doorbell, and it's barely even started 'ding-dong'-ing when Solomon barges out in shirtsleeves and flour-dusted apron, waving a gun and talking to himself, and with Nathan (one assumes) following after him. There's maybe a split-second of bemused blinking as her brain revs into a different gear than 'just woke up', and even as she turns around and follows them (not so much thinking about it as going on auto-pilot; things are suddenly confusing, people with answers are going that-a-way, she is following, quod erat demonstrandum), she blurts, "What?" Not in the sense of "WTF?" - in the sense of 'what thing's wrong? What's going on?' But Molly's not wasting words either. And yes, she sounds worried. This ain't right.

[Solomon Ward] Solomon's car is a classic. By classic, we mean old. Heavy doors, solid steel chassis, grand-fathered GPA emission law battlewagon on four inflatable wheels. It is, in most likelihood, his only and most cherished of worldly possessions. Its one of the few things one might be able to refer to as a hobby.

It also means it is cold, and takes time to warm up. While he goose fleshes on physical instinct, if he hadn't already due to sheer nerves, he doesn't waste time trying to warm up the car or defrost it. The engine is cranked up (and the way it revs, the engine is not old), sets the heater, and hastily scrapes ice off the front windshield only.

Thirty seconds are spent inventorying the popped trunk to make sure the basics are in place.
The BIG Black Bag and all its assorted tools of his work, and Works.

If they're not in the car by then, then they get left behind.

"My connection to Israel just severed. She was a little ways from here, the park I believe. I can trace to where she was last, but... " he doesn't go through the list of what might cause this sort of thing. Time... maybe. Death, absolutely. Where she in the umbra, he should be able to feel her even then. Space? Inconsequential.

Regardless, the man is brooding, mulling over as many possibilities and variables that exist as he drives. It isn't quite wreckless.

[Nathan Spriggs] There's a hard to quantify element in these scenarios, where Nathan who's not good with intimately dealing with people also isn't used to disappearance or dread of death or any other likely scenario. Only one very short word truly describes the complex mix of emotions he's feeling. From concern to frustration over powerless to anger...

"Shit."

Then he lets Solomon to his mental plans and brooding, time spent making choices of his own. Connecting dots.

[Molly Quincannon] There is curiosity about the car, of course - Molly is a bit of an enthusiast about such things and could probably talk to Solomon about classic car restoration for days on end. (He might, in fact, appreciate the work she put into her own classic, now that it isn't bright TARDIS blue anymore.) But the BIG black bag is checked and so Molly's very definitely in the car and quiet when Solomon makes his statement.

She says nothing. She's felt the Consecration, knows how long it's been there between them ... and exactly what the severing of it could mean. She doesn't even have so much as a squeak of profanity in her. She just looks horrified, and then determined overlaying horrified and terrified and trying-to-beat-back-hopefully-premature-grief like a sheet of coloured plastic wrap. She says nothing. She doesn't reach out to touch Solomon's shoulder. She just sits, quietly, and tries to guide her brain into sensible, non-panicky channels over the course of the drive.

[Lucien Anders] It is a day for bad mornings.

For Atlas and Israel it had started well enough, all things considered: Atlas out fishing in a river he knew had few fish during the summer but thought perhaps might afford better results in the winter [apparently there where intense calculations involved]. Israel walking Atticus, as already stated.

For Addie and Wren the day wasn't so much beginning as ending: Addie making her way home from a late night shift and Wren from a late night party.

With the coming of dawn the beginnings and endings of their respective days had not gone so well.

Lucien Anders did not follow anything really resembling a normal daily or nightly routine. There wasn't time for much normalcy and, really, he tended to avoid it as a rule. Most equate the Euthanatos to assassins, necromancers and vigilantes and little more. Most failed to understand the elements of healing and study and arcane academia that went on in many circles. The understanding that the Wheel and Fate and Entropy were about more than simply the end of anyone living creatures current life span. So Lucien Anders lived a life in many ways devoted to Fate, to probability and random chance and happenstance and chaos theory.

But a shit morning is a shit morning and Lucien was having one as well. This becomes all too clear as Solomon leads Nathan and Molly to where he can tell was the last place Israel's Pattern [his own in some ways] was last sensible. They do not find him in a flurry of activity and perhaps that looks bad in a way [shouldn't you be DOING something after what just happened?!]. No, he's sitting on log on a muddy riverbank, smoking with his face towards the rising sun and the slow-moving waters. Looking haggard as hell - more so than usual - his thinning, lank hair awry in cowlicks and flatness. Dressed in little more than boxer shorts adorned with illustrations of fuzzy dice and lip-stick stains; a rather garish green robe handing open and unlaced combat boots with no sign of socks.

Atticus is laying with his head on one of Lucien's thighs, whimpering pathetically until he scents Solomon and Molly [he knows Nathan, too, but Nathan has taken no liking to the pup] and races for them with bawing, brawing yowls of something between glee, salvation and misery.

...not a few yards away from Lucien are two children, laid out on makeshift beds of pine boughs and blankets, near a fire, only their heads visible but their small chests rising and falling steadily and the sounds of mouth-breathing in what appears to be very deep sleep states. It's hard to tell their gender with only the heads showing.. they are both young. Very, very young.

Lucien stirs as they arrive... looks over his shoulder to them, unsurprised. Maybe he just figured the local mages had ways of letting each other know when things went to shit. More likely he'd sensed the Consecration between Israel and Solomon a little over a week ago after events at Hubbard Park.

He knows something about Consecration, you might say.

If his expression gives away anything it's frustration, regret... and the kind of self-bracing doctors must grow accustomed to when they have to break the worst kind of news to the next-of-kin of at-risk or dead patients.

Rising with the slowness closer to his true age than his late-middle-aged appearance he watches them as they push through shrubbery and tree-line to the river bank and his words are simple, gruff, hoarse, tense. "She's gone. She and three others. Two other women. One man."

[Solomon Ward] "Define, gone"

Rough voiced, and more so than simply his scarred larynx. He'd driven here by the most direct route, and while he didn't run, (because running attracts attention and he's only halfheartedly trying to hide the gun that he has tucked on his person, now concealed by the apron he's thrown over one shoulder the one might an unworn coat), the man's pace had been brisk.

'Shes gone' was a rather poor choice of words when one really thinks about it, and whom the man is speaking to. Maybe he judged Solomon's personality fair enough to know he wouldn't kill the messenger; maybe the man isn't half as psychotic as people make him out to be. Either one doesn't remove the nearly palpable level of violence that seethes in the scar faced man's voice and body language.

"Who, exactly, and to where".

[Molly Quincannon] Normally, Molly would ask questions right about now. However, there are easier ways to get answers to the basics, to things this man might not know - for instance, 'who are the others?' They can't be anyone he knows, or he'd have given at least some kind of name, even if a nickname ... but if they were working with Israel, they might be people they know. Prime might help to figure out some of the 'what do you mean, gone?', too - if Lucian Anders is involved, then it's likely something to do with that Sending, and with that level of power ... well. If it can wall off an Avatar, why couldn't it cut off a Consecration somehow without killing one of the Consecrated parties? So all she says is, "Let me get a visual; you can fill in the blanks later, Lucien." This as she gives Lucian a look that's at once very old-and-tired and very young-and-pleading - let it not be irrevocable; let her not be forever-gone... and then she sits down on the ground heedless of mud and pulls out her laptop. She takes a moment to give Atticus a reassuring scritch behind the ears, but within seconds, her fingertips are machine-gunning the keys. She's going to look back and find out just who's gone where and how.

Israel would hate it if they forgot the plights of others in their worry over her, after all. It's not the sort of thing she'd do.

[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan's pulse is up in the sky right now, heart beating like no tomorrow and he isn't sure why. Whether it's concern, anger or something else, but 3 people have gone and it's not yet Israel... Yet right now, she's the only one that matters as far as he's concerned. There's little importance in 3 unknown faces when such an important known one was lost.

No, he wasn't such a nice person. Certainly not selfless.

But right now, hands tightly wound into fists with such strength that his nails almost bite into the skin, he's more worried about what he CAN affect: Solomon. He's known him long enough to understand his thought process to an extent, and know his temper in the bad times. With a quiet half-step, he edges in a little closer to the man. A prime position to move and prevent any mistakes they'll regret in the long run.

Potentially including not shooting this man if circumstance proved it necessary.

[Lucien Anders] Lucien doesn't seem to be overtly anticipating an immediate attack from Solomon but there's no doubt that it's Solomon he's watching the most closely, with Nathan a close second. And there's no doubt that there's a fine tension of alertness through him - wariness - for all of his haggardness and rather ridiculous looking state.

Beyond that there is simply a moment where he appears to want to be anywhere but here, dealing with anything but this. Not because he is callous. Not because he's a rat and rats like to flee immediately to the shadows. Not because he feels this beneath his time and attention. He understands this too well. And knows just about how fucking little anything he has to say will ultimately ease the edge of the Chorister before him and, to some extent, the no-Tradition-given cabalmate. [he has no idea that Molly is soon to discover that her own cabalmate is missing or how close she is to Israel herself]

Then it's just getting to the facts at hand. "Gone, Singer. I don't know exactly to where. I think she's alive. I think they were corporeally removed to what amounts to a Pocket Dream Realm. But that's just my best guess." He won't lie at least, "I didn't get here fast enough to stop it -- I only just got confirmation that this could be a possibility about four hours ago and by the time I was able to find the most likely fate-lines I got here to late to save anyone but the pups there."

His eyes slip to Molly: She'll soon be seeing the group of clean-shaven, black robbed men and women who brought the children here, tied them up in the river, chanted and swayed incense and fled just as Atlas and the others were trying to get to the scene.

"The children were intended as the sacrifice. I'm just about fuckin' sure this is how the Sending has been sustaining herself while disconnected from the Shadow. She pulls them in to something like a Demense tied to her and..." Hesitation. A grimace. Fuck this shit. "Do you know about the increased rate of Disembodiment, Ward? After the Maelstrom swept?"

[Solomon Ward] There's a less than subtle sound before Solomon speaks. A heavy metallic click that signifies a hammer cocking, or decocking. For a long moment Solomon just watches the man, a glance spared towards Molly's immediate action, to the fact that two young children were involved and are ..resting..

Then a blinks and nods slightly to Nathan. I'm not going to do any thing stupid.

"Yes. Spiritual Realms are no longer the haven they once were, even if you could reach them. Disembodiment is avoidable, for a time , with the right knowledge, but not visiting reality is no longer an option."

He can guess where this is going. He understands how spirits operate, where they draw their definition of existence, the fabric of what defines and empowers them. Power, quintessence, the stuff of Creation. The stuff of the cosmos. They all require it, they all draw it in their own prescribed ways... so how does a spiritual construct, a singularly unique entity, empower itself?

"She's a God damned Thaumivore. You have to be fucking kidding me. How the fuck do you manage to combat a Thaumivore who nullifies magic, Mr. Anders? Aside from researching her bans and definitions and playing against her integral weaknesses...."

Which is entirely possible. And time consuming. Now it's a race, versus the disembodiment of Israel, and all of those with her.. and all of those before her.

[Molly Quincannon] Molly's listening ... to a point. None of what's being said is consciously registering, mind you - and that's probably a blessing, frankly, because it would throw her off her stride something chronic and she's just getting to the 'need-to-know' stuff ... like who else was with Israel at the time. The benefits of pure and simple concentration - she can save whatever frantic emotional flailing she's going to do over that entire concept for when she knows exactly how bad, and for how many, the flailing will be.

[Lucien Anders] Avoidable for a time, with the right knowledge...
At that Anders winces slightly. Once upon a time Lucien Anders could play the best of them. His expressions revealed only what he wanted them to. A little over a decade ago Lucien Anders was, for all intents and purposes, rocked to the core. That he did not spiral into some nasty form of Quiet and wreck down ruin or evil or both on any and all around him is, perhaps, the one testimony to the strength and capability he once possessed. Here and now he's left his self-imposed exile to deal with a matter that, for him, is personal and he still has a plethora of knowledge and skill... but it's all rough and raw now, like things exposed after a quick, vicious scrubbing after years lying largely dormant.

So he winces and his trepidation is a visible thing. "Did she have that kind of knowledge? Did most any of you here in the city? There's a pattern here - it's what I only recently put together myself with the help of some... allies. No one has been able to penetrate this bitches Realm but the disappearances were happening once every two months or so... the last three incidences have been once a month... this here and now... it's only been three weeks since the last abduction."

It's a race alright.
It's a fucking all-out sprint.

Sitting back down on the log with creaking weariness he scrubs his face.. digs in the pocket of his open robe for a rumpled up back of Pall Malls. "Just as you say, Ward. But you're in luck there... I've been doing the research for months now. Now it's just getting all the pieces. And like I told Mary Maudlin there," nodding his head towards Molly, "I can't go after it myself. With this bitches tie to me there's too high a chance she can track me and ruin everything. Best if I don't even know exactly what you all do with the information I give you. That sounds like I'm trying to be a wise enigmatic master twat, but that's not my schtick. If I could I'd do it myself and have done with." Edged and tense his voice... just like Solomon and Nathan and Molly herself, Anders would feel much more at ease if he was directly involved in each facet of every plan. To force himself to stand aside and do little more than nudge is... difficult, to say the least.

Exhaling a plume of smoke through his nose, "Gave Mary Maudlin her lead to follow. You two," to Solomon and Nathan, now. "Are tied to something else. There's a man he's hunting," looking to Nathan now, "Guilty of patricide this guy. One of the Sendings early victims in the city. Daddy was a collector as well as a dealer and he'd come across some arcane objects: Mostly trickets, things to spruce up his luck. But something he had and the kid stole... it'll lead you both to someplace up North where one of the items we need is located." A beat, a twist of his lips and he looks to Solomon, pointing a blunt finger in his direction. "Pretty Boy will be the one to figure out where you need to go. But you'll be the one who knows what it is we need once you get there."

[Solomon Ward] "She knows. I taught her... the only problem is that is academic for her. I was never one to fiddle-fuck with the other worlds. Every thing that required attention was always right here... "

Fucking Masters. Fucking Masters and their God damn pocket Realms and closeted realities and stupid fucking plots that got every one killed, the good with the bad. Fuck the guys that practiced leadership from the rear echelon in the safety of their private make believe kingdoms and sent their students to fight wars by proxy and then left those students alone and bereft...

... and then sent this sort of shit to try and contact them again.

"Masters of fucking reality..." clipped, curt and under his breath. Likely in his stream of conscious, he isn't aware that he said it aloud.

"You're talking about the man that struck his father down with lightening."
A pause... "Nathan...do me a favor. Go start the car and bring it around as subtly as you can. We'll get the kids in the back seat and get them some where safe".

The Arch Bishop. He has no clue what to tell the man, but the diocese can handle two small children, and legitimately as well.

Finally, too Molly... he knew she was working some sort of hoodoo... he just didn't understand what a lap top was supposed to tell her. This wasn't exactly on Tube-yourself or Face Stream or MyBook or TwtterSpace yet... . There were no spoken Keys, no meditative trances he could so. No Words of power, no Enochian, no Latin, and any and all mathematics and relevant correspondences involved would be in some thing he didn't understand, like C+- divided by what ever the hell computers are coded in these days.

So, not understanding exactly what she planned to do with a lap too in the mud, it's taking far too long... . "Well?"

[Molly Quincannon] Molly winces and slaps her laptop shut. Hard. Then she shoves it off her lap and puts her head in her hands. No, she will not be going into what fuzzy details she got about exactly how Israel and the others got 'abducted'. Bad enough she saw it, and he's freaked the hell out enough as it is, even if it is mostly manifesting as anger right now. And worse still that the list of 'who else' is... "She got Atlas, Solomon. Atlas ... and Wren ... and a teenage not-a-mage-but-still-something named Addie. A friend of a friend. Nathan knows her, from what Ellie's told me." She shakes her head. "Doesn't matter the hows and whys; just..." Wren is her friend. This Addie person is the friend of a friend, which'll bring its own upsets. And Atlas is her friend and last remaining cabalmate. And Israel is one of her best friends. Across the board, this is not good for a Cultist's emotional state.

Still, she doesn't swear. Doesn't flail. She just takes a deep breath and says, "Yes. Yes, I have my lead. And I also have a lot of work to do, and more people to poke with pointy sticks until answers come out. Tempus fugit, right?" Then, as the car gets mentioned, she asks, "Can you drop me off a couple of miles that-a-way?" She points down the river a ways. She doesn't say why, and certainly does nothing to dispel the vague, but Solomon probably knows - she wants to go 'home', as it were. To do what needs doing on the Lafette and then get to work on this lead of hers.

[Lucien Anders] Lucien isn't really a man to exude waves of compassion and sympathy, to say the least. What he can manage is a kind of grunting nod to Solomon's half-uttered diatribe on Masters, taking no offense to it. Another place and another time he might go on his own at-length and very knowledgeable rant about any number of failings of the people who thought themselves demi-gods.

He doesn't. Instead he just looks a little relieved when Solomon talks about handling the kids. "Orphans, both of them. Got hijacked from a local place. Between you and me, Singer, I say find a way to get them a home. That's part of what you Choristers do, ain't it?" He shrugs, "I know a few of my ilk who are fine parents but we've don't got the same focus and set up you all have. But after they went through tonight they could use... more. More than what they'll find if they go back to dormitory rooms and minimum-fuckin' State hand outs."

Standing again he crushes out the smoke, already moving for another. "Let me know when you get it. S'all I ask. When it comes down to wrenching this bloody cunt of a Construct outta the Wheel I'll be able to help. Oh..."

Here he points towards the fire -- a bit away from it is Israel's satchel, where she keeps mobile-Foci, tools and Charms as well Solomon, Nate and Molly know. "--she was an Artificer, huh?" He grimaces, "Coulda used another one right about now."

[Solomon Ward] "Where do you think she learned it" grunting slightly, though he did move to pick up her satchel and throw it over his shoulder. It also made a handier place to put the gun.

There was a brief nod to Molly, though whether or not it involved the nature of who else was taken, oer her desire destination, he didn't comment on. never the less the man likes Atlas, as much as Solomon likes any one not immediately close to himself. Molly should know, above all others in this city, that Solomon doesn't simply leave people... hanging, regardless of affiliation or belief.

Morally unconscionable was the term he had used.

"Priorities, Anders. The Church will line it up. Right now I have to find that fool gun runner's son and your great detective scavenger hunt, dismantle a cult from the floor up, and put alot of stock into a strangers words.

Don't get me wrong, you've been more forthcoming then the last sets, but all the same. Old habits. You understand."

When Nathan brings the car around and pops open the back door quickly, Solomon carefully lifts one of the small children into the back seat. Likely one will end up using Molly's thigh as a pillow in order to fit them both.

Hasty glances are spared to make sure in the predawn gloom that there aren't a million and one witnesses to all of the strangeness. It would be ugly if his looked like a kidnapping.

"Also, stop using the past tense to describe my fiance and the others. Its irritating. You ready, Molly?"

[Solomon Ward] [er...]

[Molly Quincannon] .............And she'd been doing so well up until this point. Calm in a crisis does not fit Molly. Sure, she'll get the job done when she's got the bit in her teeth, and she's a terrier for information - she'll chase and she'll grab and she'll shake and she will not let go until she's wrung it dry... But she is not calm. She is Frantic. Always. And it only takes one word to bring it all out.

She stands up, ignoring her usually very well-treated laptop still lying on the muddy ground for the moment, and steps up to Lucien. "Just to emphasise what Mr Ward said so politely? Drop this 'was' bullshit. Right now. She is an Artificer, if that's your word. They. Still. Are. We're not done yet ... and neither are they. We are getting. Them out. Alive, do you understand?" It's not quite anger. It's sheer (frantic) brutal determination. She is a Will-Worker. Her Will is that Israel, Atlas, Wren and this Addie-Artificer be saved, that they act in time. 'Mary Maudlin' will see that end or die trying.

Then, perhaps incongruously, she touches him on the arm and gives a strained, wan but fond sort of smile. "Have faith. In yourself and in us, if not in anything deific, okay? We'll do this." It's as much for Solomon as it is for Lucien, really, that last sentence.

Only then does she retrieve her laptop from its patch of mud and nod to Solomon. "Ready. Let's do this thing." And, unless there's anything else from Lucien, she's off and after Solomon. She's got a lot of work to do.

[Lucien Anders] "Yeh, I understand." A simple and to-the-point response but its spoken with gravely emphasis. That and, well, Anders doesn't doubt his own damn word...
...so now it's time to step back and let the Wheel turn after tweaking a few spokes in the process.

Waiting to see how it pans out. Trusting in strangers to do what must be done without him being there to make sure of it...
...yeah. He understands.

At Solomon's last words he grimaces; lifts a hand - like apology or surrender. "You're right, sorr--"

Then Molly is rounding on him full of far more emotion and open zeal and Will and alive and rather than be offended or rush to counter her or defend himself or fall over apologizing, Anders just lets out a slow breath, closes his eyes in the face of the tirade and nods. "May it be so."

She touches his arm -- his eyes open - they really are a lovely shade of blue for all that they protrude like gold fish eyes - and he reaches up a hand to brush back a long wavy lock of hair; almost an absent gesture, something half forgotten [or that he wills himself to forget] and not done in a long time.

And that's all. He watches them go... and resumes a mental conversation with a very large ephemeral crow.