[Manus Celer Dei] Dana left a while ago and Ashley is still sitting at the shore, her toes buried in the sticky silt at the bottom of the pond. It's not cooling at all: the air is as warm and thick as bathwater, enough to make her already feel half a fish (or a sea serpent). The cuffs of her jeans have been rolled up to just below the knee, and around the orange tanktop she's wearing her skin is turning a light pink beneath its coat of freckles and scars. She should probably move into the shade; she hasn't yet.
Zane came over to join her some time ago. He's good at that, sitting quietly and keeping her company, for all that he can be rambunctious sometimes. They look like a painting, the two of them. He sits next to her, gazing out over the lake even though his dog eyes likely can't see very much at all, and she's slightly leaned into him. They're probably roughly the same weight, the Hermetic and the dog.
There's life being lived back at the picnic. Her ex-boyfriend/whatever they were is walking off with Jarod's little sister, her father and her father's companion have made themselves comfortable (as much as a pair of Akashics can) among the other guests. It feels wrong, to Ashley. Her worlds are colliding, and she didn't expect to run into Jarod here of all places. She didn't expect Chicago to come and haunt her here at the Home of homes, the place to which she has always retreated when wounded and grieving the most.
Justine has been casting glances over toward the younger woman by the water, and she's beginning to look as though she might get up to go over. That is, until she notices Jarod's daughter starting in that direction. If it is Jarod's daughter; she might well be a niece, as she resembles either of Jarod's sisters almost as much, and from what she knows of him Justine can't imagine him having a child. Still - whatever company is headed over, Justine seems content to settle down there again with Adam and the other women she's been chatting with.
After a little while longer of sitting there, Ashley takes to finding little rocks that are embedded in the shoreline. They go sailing and jumping across the surface, just barely breaking the surface tension, until they sink into the depths. Who knows how many years are going to pass before they come up above the water again.
Once there aren't any rocks within easy reaching distance, Ashley wipes her hand, grimy and wet by now, on the grass, then looks at her palm and dips her hand into the water to cleanse it instead. It's the manner of someone who is alone in spite of a party happening two hundred feet away on the grounds, the sort of isolation Ashley is used to even if other human beings are close by. Then she shakes away whatever droplets are left clinging to her hand and it comes to rest again in her lap.
[Flock of Nightingales] "Is it okay if Finnick says hi to Zane?"
Those are the words that Ilana used to greet Ashley as she drew up beside her by the water, still carrying the puppy in her arms. Finnick had grown still now, but the alert perk of his ears and the way that his eyes remained trained on Zane suggested that he wasn't so much tired as he was trying to decide how he felt about the new stimulus he was being presented with. When Ashley turned to look at her, Ilana smiled hesitantly and knelt down in the grass, not caring overly much if she got any dirt on her bare knees. Someone must have done her hair up at some point while she'd been eating, because it was pleated back into two french braids that curved down her head and joined together at her neck. A pretty look on her. (And no doubt it made the heat more tolerable.) Her own fair skin had not yet begun to turn color in the sun, but sooner or later it probably would.
She kept a hold on Finnick securely until Ashley gave her permission to release him, at which point she set the 14 week old puppy down and watched as he trotted over to give Zane a curious inspection. Initially cautious, the pup sniffed the air and looked up at Zane as if trying to decide if he was a danger or a plaything, but soon he grew bolder and began poking his nose into the much larger German Shepherd's fur, breathing in the scent of him. Then he gave one brief, subtle wag of his tail and looked up into Zane's eyes.
"Arrooo!" he said.
[Manus Celer Dei] Ashley has never had a problem with Zane and other dogs. Shepherds can be a touch unpredictable at times: they're often territorial and guarded, overprotective of the people they keep charge of. Zane has never been that way, and Ashley's manner of establishing dominance in a nonverbal, indisputable manner has made her an ideal dog owner, but she still watches him whenever he's meeting new animals. Dogs will surprise you from time to time.
"It's okay," she says, with a look up at the girl and a brief lightening of her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth. Not quite a smile, but it's as though weights that had been hanging there have been unhooked and drawn away. She doesn't seem put off by the lack of a real greeting or niceties - this, after all, is Ashley. Perhaps part of the reason she so often gets along with people Ilana's age is that they often speak to her on her terms, in blunter language than most adults would, and there's often something refreshingly uncomplicated about their manner.
Zane, for his part, seems delighted with the smaller creature - who he has definitely assumed is a playmate. His ears perk up to form sharp, enormous triangles on top of his narrow head and he begins wagging his tail as Finnick moves over to investigate. He leans over to sniff him, and that done, sweeps into a bow, swatting a paw at the much younger dog and letting out a sharp yip once.
Ashley, who has the look of the charmed and is trying very hard not to, eyes Finnick for a few moments and then carefully extends a hand toward him, instinctively sensing that it's best not to overwhelm him. "I'm surprised Jarod got you a dog," she tells Ilana. "He never seemed like he liked Zane very much."
[Flock of Nightingales] Finnick had a misleadingly reserved character for a puppy. It tended to give people the impression that he was shy or nervous, but he was neither of these things. A more apt summation might have been that he, like both of his owners, tended to be aloof. He also had a bit of a... well, finicky streak, which made his name all the more apt even if that wasn't what Ilana'd had in mind when she'd given it to him.
In time, he might grow to be a bit distrustful of strangers, as was common among his breed. But for now, he still had a lot of his puppy-ish naivete and exuberance. And there was a certain boldness to him, as well - not revealed until he had his mind set to doing something. Zane invited him to play, and he stood straight and alert and uttered another one of those adorable little shiba-yodels before rolling back onto his hind legs and pouncing on the Shepherd's head, making a concerted grab for one of Zane's huge ears with his delicate jaws. (Because clearly when one encounters an animal more then five times one's size, one must chew on its ears.)
Ilana watched the two of them with rapt attention, a hint of nervous anxiety present in the way that she held herself. This wasn't unexpected. Finnick was her baby, and Zane was... rather a lot bigger than he was. But if the older dog didn't show any signs of aggression or excessive carelessness, then she'd relax her spine and allow some of her focus to drift back to Ashley, who'd asked her a question. Ilana considered her response for a moment.
"He just doesn't really like dogs. Or... pets. Except fish. But he's okay with Finnick. Dad's not so bad, sometimes."
(Which was probably a daughter's equivalent of high praise.)
[Manus Celer Dei] Zane seems to be the opposite of aggressive: Finnick pounces on his head and his sharp puppy teeth sink into Zane's ear, and Zane responds by rolling over onto his back and pawing at the puppy instead, and occasionally making a wave of his head he mouths one of Finnick's legs. Unlike the resemblance between Finnick and Ilana, there seems to be very little between Ashley and Zane.
Ashley seems relaxed, but then again, her dog is not the one whose life could be snuffed out in a single burst of aggression, ended between a pair of jaws locked as tightly as a beartrap. She's watching the two with a hint of a smile on her face, and after a few seconds she reaches out and gently ruffles a hand through the fur on Zane's stomach. He makes a few halfhearted kicks of his back legs, trying to both ward her off and pay attention to the puppy, but it seems as though this is too much multitasking for his brain to handle.
Ashley looks up at Ilana at what she says, soaking it in. The use of the word doesn't escape her, and even if she might have a difficult time with emotions at times, neither does its import: she never got around to calling her stepfather Dad. Even at eighteen, when she'd known him for half of her life, she adamantly refused. It's different with Ilana of course, but Ashley tends to be much more successful at empathizing if she has a line she can draw, some ground where things seem level.
"Most of the time," Ashley agrees, and there's some gentle amusement there, however wry. There's a brief hesitation. "I'm glad you're both doing okay. I thought about you after I left."
[Flock of Nightingales] Unlike her dog, Ilana wasn't usually given to boldness. She was a more tentative creature (albeit, strong-willed) and usually only displayed that kind of focused courage when she was feeling particularly stubborn or passionate. She'd wanted to ask Ashley what had happened to her, and if she was okay, but these things seemed very serious and adult, and for all that she liked the Hermetic, she didn't yet know her very well.
The girl was quiet for a time. She watched the dogs play, then looked at the grass while her fingers twined into the small blades and pulled some of them free from the soil. "I was worried about you," she finally admitted. "But Dad said you were okay. Do you live here now?"
She kept her eyes on the ground while she spoke, but when she was done, they rose up and fixed on Ashley's face, watching with measured curiosity. Ilana had beautiful eyes. Large and pale grey and just exotic enough to hint at her mixed ancestry.
[Manus Celer Dei] The two of them share certain mannerisms. Ilana is shy and Ashley can appreciate that: she wasn't altogether unlike her, when she was her age, though she'd had eyes mainly for music rather than the world and the people around her. She has never been adept with people, even back when she was able to understand them better, when it wasn't so difficult for her to imagine what was going on behind an expressionless face. Her mother and stepfather sent her to see a psychologist or two, though whatever they found - if they found anything at all, fabricated or not - has always been lost on her. She moved to Boston, and her father would never have dreamed of sending her to anyone. Least of all anyone that might even be vaguely affiliated with the Technocracy or its brand of magic.
She, too, frees a grass blade from its sheathe and then she rolls it between her finger tips, eying it. "Only kind of," she says, still with that trace of wry amusement. "My dad lives here so I came back to his house for a little while, and my friend Kage and I have an apartment here now. But I think we're going to come back to Chicago."
A pause, because these things are indeed very serious and adult. Ashley isn't sure how to explain why she left to Ilana. She doesn't know how much Jarod has told her about magic and their world, and even if Ashley doesn't believe in hiding the truth from anyone who is able to ask, she doesn't put it out there blatantly either. And Ilana seems very young, for all that Ashley talks to her like a young adult most of the time. Too young to know about brutal politics and the world's real monsters, about the kind of brokenness that becomes you and people you love bleeding their lives out on the lawn.
She'll know soon enough. She doesn't need to know right now.
"I had to get away for a little while. But Chicago is my home now."
[Flock of Nightingales] There were many things that Ilana didn't know about the world - especially the Awakened world. Jarod kept these things from her, as parents always tried to keep the darker aspects of the world from their children. Some minds (perhaps Ashley among them) believed that hardship and struggle made people stronger; that it encouraged growth. Jarod, having been through a great deal of hardship in his own childhood (if perhaps not the kind that many other children experienced,) did not have any great desire to expose his own child to a similar life and see her age prematurely as he had.
But there was really only so much that he could do, in that regard. Because Ilana did know about loss, and the ability of life to take away, without warning and without just cause, those things that were most treasured: Home. Family. Love. She understood the kind of hollow loneliness that Ashley had known at times in her life.
And she had, before anyone even had a chance to know her, become something a little older than her years after all.
So it may have surprised Ashley when the girl widened her eyes a bit and shook her head at this response. "But... Dad said... it's not safe. He said people were trying to hurt you. I don't want you to get hurt. I don't want Zane to get hurt." And then, because she seemed to realize that she was overstepping her bounds in some way, she glanced down at the grass again and glowered at it anxiously.
Finnick and Zane were oblivious to these things, and continued their game of gentle (on Zane's part) and not-so-gentle (on Finnick's part) roughhousing without concern. They made for an adorable picture, but Ilana was too distracted now to pay them much notice. When she looked up again she said, "Dad and I left for awhile. We're in Madison now. It's nice there. It's nice here too."
[Manus Celer Dei] It doesn't surprise Ashley, not entirely. She doesn't know Ilana very well but she's gathered that the girl is insightful. Moreover, something happened to Ilana's mother; Ashley knows next to nothing about the woman, whoever she was, but she knows that Jarod left for a little while to pick Ilana up in Toronto. She knows that no mention has been made of her since then, except for a brief slip or two on Jarod's part.
When a year passed since the death of her own mother, Ashley quietly marked the day and wept because the world had changed as little as she had feared it would. Seeing her mother at Christmas meant visiting a tombstone, an awkward nod to her stepbrother and his wife while they stood a few feet away. He had been closer to Eileen Connelly than she had, by a fair margin. Ashley doesn't know if that's how it is for Ilana, or was, but she knows that even absences don't go unnoticed.
Nevertheless, even if it doesn't totally surprise her she's still perhaps a little touched by Ilana's reaction. A smile pulls at the corner of her mouth and she says, "It's not really safe for me anywhere. Trying to stay safe doesn't mean that bad things don't happen." She doesn't reassure Ilana that she doesn't get hurt; she doesn't know whether she will or won't. She'll be turning thirty in a few months and that's much older than she ever expected to get.
There's mention of Madison, and Ashley's blue eyes flick up to the girl, momentarily curious. "What's in Madison?"
[Flock of Nightingales] Until a year and a half ago, the only parents that Ilana knew were her adoptive ones. They might not have been blood kin, but they were her mother and her father - and always would be. That she had gradually come to accept Jarod as a father as well did not so much indicate a replacement as an addition. Apparently her heart had room in it for two fathers. She hadn't thought it would, back when they'd first met.
There was a fascination with the idea of her biological mother, who seemed a kind of mythological figure to her, but though she felt the absence of a person who she desperately wanted to know and never would, it was not the same as what she felt for her real parents. If you asked Ilana about her mother, she would not think of Rada Petrova, beautiful and mysterious Russian photographer and powerful Willworker, she would think of Claudia Knight, middle-aged Canadian librarian, who attended church service every Sunday and liked to paint and catalog pictures of birds and wildflowers... and who always smelled a bit like vanilla.
She missed Toronto, but she was glad that she didn't live there now. It was too full of ghosts.
Ashley's reassurance didn't do much to alleviate her concern. She just looked a little sad and said, "...I know."
And then, the question of Madison, which seemed to gradually draw her out of her shell again. "Our summer house. And... magic things. And a lot of trees and parks." She paused and glanced back over her shoulder. "And Gale. He's kindof annoying."
[Manus Celer Dei] Ashley hadn't intended to alleviate the girl's concerns: what she'd intended to do was put things in such a way that Ilana could accept things as they are. It's not safe for her in Chicago, or anywhere; anywhere she goes Ashley will be hunted. Anywhere she goes, now, traces of Hunger will alert someone to her presence and she might lose another home or two before it's all said and done. This is the reality of her life now. This is another surcharge lumped on top of the rest, the cost of being what she is.
So that sad little look of Ilana's gets mirrored for a moment, and maybe it's for the best that Ilana shakes them both out of their shells. Ashley looks up at her as she talks about Madison and what's there. And Gale. "He doesn't seem that bad," she says, with a look in his direction (and Jarod's.) Perhaps she's remembering how she'd watched Jarod chasing him earlier, and that it had struck her that she'd never seen him do that with anyone before - then again, she hasn't really seen him with all that many people.
Ashley moves over away from the dogs a little, an unspoken invitation for Ilana to sit down if she wants to in that empty span of grass. She doesn't really know what to say about Gale though; things about the kid's presence just don't sit well with her, and they aren't particularly hard to guess at. "What makes him so annoying?"
She plucks at a few more blades of grass, weaving them together on impulse. Three strands wrap around each other and intertwine, all the way around, and when she runs out of space with one she weaves another in. It seems primarily to be something to keep her hands occupied. That seems to be how Ashley feels comfortable - finding small ways to shape her environment.
[Flock of Nightingales] Ashley scooted over a little, and Ilana finally uncurled her legs from beneath her and shifted to sit down properly next to the small woman, crossing her legs as she got comfortable in the grass. Finnick seemed to be getting a little tuckered out (or perhaps he'd merely sensed his owner's change in mood - he could be rather perceptive about those things) because he finally relented on chewing up poor Zane's ears and nipping at the larger dog's neck to trot over and flop down in Ilana's lap, stretching his paws over one of her thighs and resting his head atop them as he rolled his eyes to look up at her with that kind of softly loving canine expression that any dog owner was well familiar with. She looked down at him and began to run the tips of her fingers along the edges of his ears, massaging them expertly until he closed his eyes and let out a contented sigh.
"He's... not that bad, I guess," she agreed. "I mean, he's nice. Just... he's around all the time, and he moves things around and leaves dishes on the table and stuff. And he has really loud, obnoxious friends. And I think he wants to steal Finnick."
[Manus Celer Dei] Zane, unused to other dogs, much less energetic puppies, also seems a bit tired at this point. He hasn't gone over to Ashley to try to force himself into her lap - one would imagine she must have trained any tendency toward this out of him, taking both his size and hers into account - and so instead he lolls in the grass, still on his back with his front paws folded across his chest and his head drooping to one side. Ashley casts an amused glance in his direction, reaching out to pat his stomach once.
"I don't think he'd steal Finnick," Ashley says, with a look at the puppy. Of course, she doesn't know Gale very well, but most adults - even if Gale barely seems to be one - wouldn't take a puppy from an eleven year old girl.
There's a glance back at the party again, but this time it's for Jim and the woman who seems to be accompanying him. She can't be much older than Gale or Maia, certainly not Ashley's age. "My dad has someone over all the time and she kept rearranging everything. She likes incense. I thought I walked into a new age shop in a college town when I first came back home." Of course, the other woman's presence makes Ashley uncomfortable for a variety of reasons - some things are just easier to latch onto than others. Easier to articulate, particularly if one isn't especially given to introspection. It's likely that it's that way for Ilana as well.
[Flock of Nightingales] Ilana's assessment of the young apprentice was something of an exaggeration, as kids were wont to do. In truth, she had much less reason to be uncomfortable than Ashley did with her father's new girlfriend. Gale didn't rearrange the furniture (Jarod would have bitten his head off if he'd tried, though it had never crossed the boy's mind to do so.) He didn't treat their house as if it were his own. He didn't try to insinuate himself purposefully into Ilana's life any more than the sheer fact of his regular presence dictated. And while he was certainly much younger than her father, the two of them were not dating. Even if they had been, Gale was still a good nine years older than Ilana herself, and she was starting to get used to the fact that her father was younger than most people's dads anyway (and thus tended to hang around with younger people.)
In reality, this was probably more an issue of possessiveness and distrust of change than it was of incompatibility. All of which made sense, given Ilana's background. She didn't like that her father was spending all this time with someone who wasn't her - and no, it didn't help that the person in question was young enough to set off feelings of competition between them. And she didn't like having strangers in her living space. Especially not there - in that house. The house that was supposed to be just hers and her father's and Finnick's. So she found things to hate; to try and justify her feelings.
Maybe Ashley would understand that. Maybe she wouldn't. Ilana seemed to understand Ashley's own frustration though, because she wrinkled her nose in distaste - an expression of empathy. "I don't like incense. It smells like someone set some perfume on fire." After a pause, she asked, "Are your parents divorced?"
[Manus Celer Dei] The truth is, Ashley finds it difficult to find things to hate about most people. She often finds room to disagree with them on certain points - many of Chicago's magi have run afoul either of her temper or of her love of argument, and in Boston she was referred to as Bran's attack dog more than once - but it rarely engenders a serious dislike. Or a grudge, for that matter. Ashley simply doesn't waste time on active dislike (and if she does, there's a good reason.)
She has no reason to dislike Gale. From her perspective she has plenty of reasons to be uncomfortable and unhappy with his presence, but those are entirely different things, after all. She casts one last thoughtful look toward the apprentice and the elder Verbena, then back toward Ilana.
"They divorced when I was eight," Ashley says. "My mom got remarried a couple of years after that, but she just died last year. I don't know my stepdad very well." Ashley pauses, her gaze trailing once more toward her father. "My mom and dad weren't very good for each other. They fought a lot." Insofar as Jim Novotny can fight with anyone - which, one suspects, might be worse than a yelling match in some ways.
[Flock of Nightingales] Ashley explained about her parents, and Ilana listened and nodded. When the Hermetic spoke of her mother dying, the girl seemed to grow sad, but it was a quiet kind of sadness, not threatening to overflow into tears or anything so dramatic. When Ashley finished talking, Ilana was quiet for a slow stretch of time, looking out at the water as her hand atop Finnick's head stilled.
"I'm sorry about your mom. My parents died too." She didn't say my mother died. She said: parents. Plural. So one would assume... her adoptive family. This much Jarod had told Ashley once before, so it wasn't likely to be a surprise.
"They were married though. They didn't fight much." What Ilana didn't say was that part of the reason that her adoptive parents rarely fought was because they didn't really talk to each other much. But she'd been all of nine years old when they'd died, and this was the kind of adult understanding that children often had a hard time formulating into words.
"My other mom died too. My real mom. I never met her though."
[Manus Celer Dei] Ashley remembers Jarod telling her about Ilana's adoptive parents. A long time ago it seems like, now, when she'd invited him over after they'd made their apologies and he'd delivered his Christmas present. It hadn't been much, but then again, Jarod is rarely given to speaking about himself in anything but little snatches. Perhaps it was the kind of thing they were never going to learn to trust each other with. Maybe it's the kind of thing they're afraid to.
"Jarod told me," she says, and now is when she pulls Zane over toward her, gently seizing the dog beneath his forelegs and dragging him so that his head drops, heavily, into her lap. There's not even a little protest from him. Amused, Ashley gently strokes his oversized ears, running them between her fingertips like thick pieces of silk. "About how you came to live with him, that is. And I kind of figured about your real mom. He just hasn't talked about her a whole lot."
Ashley doesn't even know whether Ilana knows much at all. There's a certain curiosity with which she can't help but treat the matter - Hunger is so threaded into Ashley's being that she is never without it - but it lacks aggression.
She hesitates a moment, working her fingers into the thick fur around Zane's neck. "I didn't know my mom very well when she died. We haven't really talked since..." There's another pause here, but it's brief because Ilana mentioned magic on her own, because even if what Jarod has told her may or may not be limited she has figured it out. "Since I woke up. She never really figured things out."
[Flock of Nightingales] There were a couple of things about what Ashley had just said to her that caused Ilana to look over at her with a kind of quiet watchfulness. As if she were attempting to divine certain qualities of the woman's character. (And actually, for a moment there she looked rather a lot like her father - the way that he always observed people with a predator's incisive gaze, without revealing anything of himself in return.) The expression was almost a little cold.
Jarod had told her. She'd kind of figured. As if these things were ordinary events - parents dying.
She didn't know her mom very well.
Ilana frowned a bit. "That's sad." Her tone wasn't condescending. It was a natural response - a child stating, simply and honestly, that she thought something was sad. "My mom was Awake." (She did know the word, as it turned out.) "Dad said she was... um... Eu... Euthantos?" She didn't quite get the word right, but it was close enough that Ashley would know what she'd meant. "So I guess I could have talked to her about that stuff. If she was around. Grandpa and Lauren don't know. I wouldn't talk to them anyway."
[Manus Celer Dei] Whatever vigilance passes through Ilana's demeanor all of a sudden, it is lost on Ashley. If she's said anything to put the girl off or to make her feel as though she's a lesser - something other people talk about, a secret, a tragedy - she doesn't particularly seem aware of it. Those often aren't things Ashley takes into account when she speaks with most people, though perhaps if someone were to point it out later on she might feel regretful. However briefly. Then again, she might not. It might not matter at all.
"A lot of people don't know," Ashley says, soaking in what Ilana offers forth. And perhaps she's trying, actively now, not to ask questions. Not too ask too many questions, at the very least. There's a sense here that they wouldn't be appropriate things to ask a child. "It changes a lot of things, once you know."
Or maybe Ashley knew because a lot of things changed. They're so irrevocably tied together at this point. If she were more capable of imagining herself as Ilana, she might realize how isolated the girl probably feels, at times. Awakened life is isolating for an adult among other adults; there are few children with knowledge of the Awakened world. And very few people Ilana can talk with about it at all.
"You'll meet other Euthanatos eventually who you can talk to about that stuff," she offers, perhaps out of a sense that it might be one of the things Ilana has to latch onto, as far as Rada goes.
[Flock of Nightingales] "Does it?" She seemed to consider this idea, that knowing - that being Awake or at least understanding the possibility of it and what it meant - changed things. It probably did. In some ways, she could understand what Ashley meant. No, there weren't many people who she could talk to about magic (she didn't think of it as Willworking - she was eleven, magic just held so much more fascination, as a word.) But there was her father, and Dana, and... Gale. And there were the people at the chantry in Madison. Often it felt more to her like a secret club than a kind of loneliness. She loved knowing things that other people did not. Having a few people to share it with was all she really needed or wanted. (Then again, if she herself Awoke, that might very well change.)
"I don't know. It's not so strange. I always believed in magic." (Kids often do. Especially lonely ones.) She chewed on her lower lip as her eyes fell to Finnick, who was beginning to drift off into puppy slumber. "Dad doesn't want me to meet them. He says they're dangerous. But then, my mom wasn't, right? I mean... he loved her, so... she must have been nice. Maybe it's just some of them." She paused and glanced up. "What, um... I mean, you're in a Tradition, right? But not ours."
[Manus Celer Dei] There was a time when Ashley saw Awakening as a secret club. Much of the Order of Hermes does, in its way: they have an elite membership, a group of people who belong there because they have risen above the rest. It's one of the Order's redeeming qualities, that sense of family that it seems to have. It would be safe to say that she doesn't, now, precisely - or she's just started to understand that being part of a secret club doesn't shine a light into the darkness, doesn't polish away the grit and grime of reality.
When Ilana speaks of her mother, that Jarod loved her, Ashley just looks over at Ilana and her brow furrows for a moment, and she seems honestly lost for words. She doesn't know Ilana's mother, and even if she did, she herself is as much proof as anything that Jarod's affections can apparently be extended to monsters. She doesn't say any of that though. So she doesn't say anything.
She chooses, instead, to focus on the easier to answer of the questions. There's a wry quirk of her mouth. "I'm in two," she says. "Yours and the Order of Hermes. But I've been in the Order a lot longer."
[Flock of Nightingales] Jarod had actually never told his daughter that he'd been helping to teach Ashley to sense and manipulate Life patterns. Perhaps Ashley would be surprised to know that. Perhaps she'd be upset. Perhaps not. Either way, it was clear from the look of surprise on the girl's face that she didn't know about Ashley joining the Verbena. This revelation wasn't greeted with suspicion though - she was much too young to understand inter-Tradition hostilities. Instead, she smiled. It was a light smile, perhaps a little tentative (she still wasn't certain whether to like Ashley or not) but not lacking in honesty. "Oh. I didn't know you could do that. That's pretty cool."
She didn't know that the revelation about Jarod's feelings for her biological mother might have been surprising or upsetting for Ashley. If she really thought about it, she might realize later that this wasn't something her dad would have wanted her to talk about. Ilana could be sensitive to these kinds of things. But she was still in many ways very much a child, and children often said things without fully realizing that they'd said them. (Even quiet, secretive children.) Nor did she realize that Ashley thought of herself as a monster. If she had, she would have thought that this was very sad.
That her own mother might have been a dangerous person, capable of cold brutality, did not even cross her mind. This seemed anathema to her, because good people did not do those things, and her father would not love someone who wasn't a good person. In time, one would imagine that she'd come to understand that life was more complicated than that. (That, in fact, her own father was considered by some to be a dangerous person. As was Ashley.)
And then... she asked something that only a child would think to ask. "Which one do you like better?"
[Manus Celer Dei] There's no surprise that seems to register; while Ilana knows more about the Awakened world than Ashley expected her to - she knew nothing until after she had already Awakened, in spite of her own father's Awakened state - the nuances of each Tradition aren't something she expects Ilana to understand. If she does, it's likely in the way that children understand different religions: Christians wear crosses and have Christmas, Jews have menorahs and bar mitzvahs, and on and on. They are defined by their ritual, not by their philosophy.
So no. She doesn't expect Ilana to know about Life magic. She doesn't expect her to know that Ashley was being tutored in it. And she avoids any overly technical explanation of what the Order of Hermes is and how it relates to the Verbena. There's time enough for all of that, but it isn't now.
There is surprise, however, at Ilana's question, and more than a little amusement (not of the unkind variety.) "I like both," she says. "They're both good for different things." A beat. "Sometimes I like the Verbena better," she admits. "The other people are easier to deal with. Not as uptight." Though, of course, they have their issues - but by and large she's found them easier to get along with than other Hermetics, these days.
Whether that's because she has more in common with them or because other Hermetics tend to be as insufferably willful and egocentric as she is - well, that can be left unsaid.
[Flock of Nightingales] Ilana considered Ashley's response and nodded thoughtfully. Ashley herself was the only Hermetic she'd ever talked to, so she didn't have much to go on in regards to forming a judgment. There were a couple of others that she'd met, briefly, but they hadn't even acknowledged her existence beyond a brief nod in her general direction. They hadn't liked her Dad. She could tell. (Not that this was unusual. A lot of people didn't like her Dad. He seemed to engender rather divisive responses.)
"I like the Verbena. But... I dunno. Dreamspeakers seem pretty cool, too. All that stuff with spirits." She smiled. Ilana looked as though she was about to say something else, but the sound of approaching footsteps caused her to grow quiet once more, and she looked over her shoulder to watch as a large handful of their group began to spread out on the grass and toss a white frisbee around. The footsteps belonged to Dana, who was jogging toward them with a warm smile on her face and now waved in Ilana's direction. "'Lana, come play with us!"
She seemed to consider this a moment, looking down at the sleeping puppy in her lap. There was hesitation there.
"I know you're hiding from me over there!" came the distant sound of Jarod's voice as he called out to his daughter. (It might have been that he was talking to Ashley as well, but if so he didn't make that obvious.) He laughed. Ilana rolled her eyes in the expected daughter-like fashion, but Dana's sweetly cajoling smile seemed to be doing the trick. After a moment, she glanced at Ashley and asked, "would it be okay if I left Finnick here? He'd like it better, I think."
When Ashley agreed to this request, she smiled and carefully lifted the groggy puppy out of her lap, setting him down in Ashley's instead. He yawned and made himself comfortable without complaint. Then Ilana was jogging over to join the group of frisbee players, leaving Ashley alone with two sleepy dogs for company.
[Manus Celer Dei] The only Dreamspeaker Ashley has ever really known is Gregor. She's met a couple. They were all crazy, unhinged, unstable. She's probably going to make that association until she meets one that defies the image she's formed of the Tradition, though the Verbena are often on good terms with them. If only because other Traditions are made uncomfortable by them so often. So all she can do is give Ilana a bemused smile for a moment.
There are voices that are coming to the two of them, though Ashley has difficulty hearing them for a moment, or where they're coming from. She's been sitting with her deaf ear toward the rest of the party (the better to keep it directed out to the rest of the world). But she can hear Dana calling Ilana and she can hear Jarod calling for her too (or for both of them.) She gives Ilana a gentle nudge with her shoulder. It's not difficult to do; they're the same height.
"I'll keep Finnick for a little while," she promises, helping Ilana to settle the puppy into her lap. She curves one arm around him and lets the fingers of her other hand scruff gently through his fur. There aren't going to be any complaints from her either.
Ashley doesn't say goodbye, even though there's a chance she might not talk to the girl again after this. Not in Boston at least, and possibly not ever; things change, and there's still so much uncertainty. Her eyes trail back to the gathering of frisbee players, weighed down with a pensive sort of quiet, as Jim's companion and Adam and Bran join everyone else. She strokes the hair around Finnick's ears and muzzle, feeling the shifts of the tiny life pattern underneath her hand, and then she settles her shoulders back as if against some invisible tree and closes her eyes.
Justine sits down next to her a few minutes later, dropping down next to her and Zane in the grass. A little smile had appeared on her face when she saw Ashley with the dogs, and it's still slow to fade.
"Not playing?" Ashley asks her, popping open her good eye and casting a glance at Justine out of its corner.
"No," Justine says, and edges a little closer to Ashley, enough that their knees touch and they're in one another's space, as if for a little while the younger woman could be fed by her radiance. "Just imagine if someone hit me in the face with the frisbee or something."
There's a quiet, wry laughter between the two of them that follows - a private joke. Then silence blossoms out between them, something shared.
