2014.08.04.Brody.Encounters.Jaden
| Brody Encounters Jaden | |
|---|---|
| Brody and Jaden are introduced to each other on a dark and stormy night at Surfer's Cove. | |
| IC Date | August 04, 2014 |
| IC Time | 2:00 A.M. |
| Players | Jaden and Brody |
| Location | Surfer's Cove |
| Prp/Tp | None |
| Spheres | Wraith and Demon |
Surfer's Cove
Nestled between mossy, craggy cliffs and overlooked by gaudy, palatial estates, Surfer’s Cove has become an esoteric beach spot almost exclusively known and visited by Prospect’s close surfing community. The shoals here provide a tall sandbar that can build up truly massive, terrifying waves, ones that easily rival better known places in California, such as Half Moon Bay’s Mavericks, keeping this location a well guarded secret. Many board-riders have lost their lives here, youths crushed by the merciless weight of the ocean, each having lacked the skill necessary to tackle the tunnels that closed in on them. A few have also succumbed to the lurking wildlife beneath the waves: large sharks known to hunt close to the coast in these parts, where barking and diving sea lions, their prey, have formed small colonies on jagged rocks thrust out of the cold Pacific waters. During warm, summer days seagulls call noisily in the cerulean sky and the tide laps hungrily close to shore, while at nights the ocean withdraws shyly to nearly a half a mile out, leaving behind pockmarking pools, mostly in buried, weathered boulders, that swim with sea-life: cucumbers, starfish, anemones, urchins, crabs, barnacles, and kelp. Visible all along the beach, dug shallow at scattered intervals, are pits caked in soot, places where campfires briefly burned wildly, popping and crackling, warming surfers as they told their tales and cooked their meals, while ghosts rumored to haunt these shores watched them begrudgingly.
It's late, the grinning moon low on the horizon, the stars twinkling in the sky, like salt in the darkness, those gleaming bright enough to pierce the city's light pollution. Typically on a night such as this, when the cool air blows off the ocean's waves, surfers line the foggy shores of this crescent-shaped cove, burning bonfires and guzzling beer to the noisy laughter of their tales. But, tonight, a greater darkness seems cast on the beach, a preternatural cold, and there exists amidst it only a single roaring pit of kindle, a shadow laying beside it.
The weather is already foreboding, but despite a clear sky, there are already thunderheads moving in with an unusual rapidity to shield the stars and moon from vision. This casts its own additional darkness over the landscape. In short order, a slow drizzle that turns into a light rainshower pelts the land, almost a harbinger to the figure who is picking his way slowly across the beach. Jaden's vision is only human, slowing his progress substantially across the wet sand where the water laps, transitioning from dry earth to the first few feet of ocean tide. There's a pause here and there where he studies whatever lies beneath his feet. Although it isn't the fire that draws him, his slow roaming of the water's edge draws him closer, much of his person still nothing more than a human-shape in the night air, moving closer.
The silhouette caught in firelight shifts, stirs as the weather changes, as clouds drift in from the sea, threatening thunder and lightning, offering the coast a steady peppering of soft rain. Rising up to sit indian-style, its shape looks human, youthful, athletic, male...his exposed skin glistening with a cold sweat in the dancing flames. Leaning closer into the light, ice-blue eyes tinted red, looking out from a chiseled face, peer watchful at the encroaching unknown: Jaden's shadowy figure. They observe him with a hazy wonder and capricious curiosity. As more of the young man is revealed, it can be easily seen that he wears a sanguine tank-top with 'Kappa Alpha Pi' in gold print across it, and midnight-black swim trunks with UC Prospect's mascot printed on the side.
If Jaden takes any notice of the young man sitting near the fire, or even the dancing flames themselves, there's no indication on his face. The closer he draws, the more visible he becomes in the somewhat dimming flames, spattered with rainwater as they no doubt are. Jaden's short, dark hair is already wet, his visible skin slick with rain, his clothing (a loose cotton button-down left open over a tee, and jeans rolled up over his ankles) growing damper with each passing moment spent under the rain. His eyes, which are naturally light colored but as yet undefined given the darkness, are distant, distracted. The potent emotion of yearning, of homesickness, rolls over Brody sharply as if being overturned by a wave and left to flounder in the shallows with the threat to be pulled under, dragged out into deeper waters. At that moment, Jaden's eyes clear, and something in him is provoked to a frown, slight but visible. Previously, his attention had been turned away, gaze resting out over the dark ocean as if fixed there, but something wrenches him from his reverie abruptly, and Jaden's eyes slide over his surroundings, searching.
As the drizzle thickens, shuttering the fire in front of him, the lone surfer rises to his feet to meet the close by man. He's tall and stout, but his shadowed, cerulean eyes are strangely glazed, mirrors lost in the bonfire, as if at moments pulled away by the dark sea's tugging riptide. "Hey, brah." Cody greets Jaden, speaking only at a whisper, his gaze finally drifting over the stranger whose heart betrays his longing and bleeds sorrow, "Yah, lookin' for something?"
It's the voice morso than the being that draws Jaden's attention most sharply, the rise and fall of pitch, the inflection in the timbre of Brody's voice as he speaks, and the subtle nuances as one sound becomes another. There's no smile, no immediate recognition or understanding as one might another human being. The tall, athletically built man whose clothing clings to him from the water sluicing over him simply peers at Brody with a striking intensity, his own sea green eyes piercing Brody as if to see through him, puzzling out the man's simple inquiry. There shouldn't be so much consideration for such a casual greeting, and yet, Jaden is pulled a halt and there's something in his features that practically flees. "No?" The single word is uttered in part confusion, Jaden's dark brows knitting together. "No," he clarifies more firmly. "Once lost, it is very difficult to find, if not impossible. Never again. Why are you here?" Despite the stilted speech as he the man hasn't spoken in some time, Jaden's voice is rich, deep, and warm, a naturally attractive, masculine pitch pleasing to the ears regardless of listener.
The surfer throws his head and shoulders back for a second, soaking himself in the steady drizzle, a quirky smile cracked across his lips. "Woo'ah!" he shouts out excitedly into the darkness as he tugs off his shirt, his voice echoing off the high cliffs and fading into the rancor of the stormy seas. "Dude, I'm enjoyin' life." he quips back at Jaden, with a toothy grin, his gaze twinkling bright and wild, brought back to the present by attendance of an audience. "Brah, you can find whatever you want when your dreams." he says with a stoner's slur, "Like, nothing is lost forever. Because your memories, man, it gives you a way to always have it with you."
The surfer throws his head and shoulders back for a second, soaking himself in the steady drizzle, a quirky smile cracked across his lips. "Woo'ah!" he shouts out excitedly into the darkness as he tugs off his shirt, his voice echoing off the high cliffs and fading into the rancor of the stormy seas. "Dude, I'm enjoyin' life." he quips back at Jaden, with a toothy grin, his gaze twinkling bright and wild, brought back to the present by attendance of an audience. "Brah, you can find whatever you want when you dream." he says with a stoner's slur, "Like, nothing is lost, forever. Because your memories, man, it gives you a way to always have it with you."
Although Jaden appears somewhere in his mid to late twenties, something hangs over him, some ancient pall that casts an age upon him that his physical body doesn't reflect. His eyes study Brody freely, curiously in a manner that might be considered awkward or shameful in this present age, the younger man's energy lessening the frown upon his lips. Something in Brody's words give him pause, and then a small, almost regretful shake of his head. "If you always live in the past and fixate on what was, how can you exist in the present and move towards the future?" The man reaches up, presses dark locks of hair back from his brow where they're plastered. The rain steadily intensifies, threatening to come down in a torrent fit to soak the area through. "You remind me of someone. What is your name?"
Cody Matera reaches a hand out at the fizzling fire amidst the constant and building rainfall, almost hypnotized by the crackling and flickering flames. "I'm Brody, brah." he tells the solemn man wistfully, his right hand's thumb and pinky finger extending to make a 'hang loose' gesture, "And, that's what dreams are for, dude. They let yah be in the past and future...somewhere other than the present. Yah." The soggy shirt in his left hand is tossed over his shoulder, the water-weighted fabric thwacking against his wide back's bare flesh.
"We who are lesser cannot know the future," corrects solemnly, voice carrying easily through the burgeoning storm, yet Jaden has yet to truly raise his voice. His tone is normal, almost affable, yet still somehow removed, distant. "Why would you not wish to be in the present? You exist always in the present, never the past, and never the future. Every moment in which you exist is present for you. Why escape it? Why even desire to escape it?" Jaden draws closer to the guttering flames, more details of his person growing visible the closer to light he comes. His features are handsome, but not strictly Anglo-Saxon, almost sharply defined, a fitting frame for eyes laden with some inner, indescribable turmoil far too muddled to discern any one given emotion.
The surfer studies the fearsome stranger for a long moment, his face drenched by the steady rainfall, rivulets of water coursing down his tanned flesh, some like tears shed from his icy-blue eyes. Within his fuzzy gaze there lingers the buried hint of something somber, reflected deeply within their depths, a longing melancholy that the Fallen perhaps recognizes, garnered by decades of deprivation, of want. "There's something to memory, brah, and memory is always a part of the past. Dreams let you revisit it, even if you can't physically do so again. Dreams let you re-experience what's lost. And the future? Dude, like, I knew someone who could know the future. I mean, like, it wasn't with certainty, no, but they proved to me that they could see its shadows." Cody smiles toothily, even while pummeled by the growing storm, "That means there's gotta be something to Fate."
That stranger's sea foam colored gaze sweeps over Brody, or at least the body he inhabits, and studies him closely. That ache is well reflected, but what is decades in the face of millennia? Nothing entirely softens within him, but there's a certain empathy exchanged, a certain understanding. "Fate? Yes, and no. There are many paths, many futures, each changing and becoming something else with each passing moment. This conversation changes history, as will my leaving, or your leaving. Whatever we do, whatever they do, whatever anyone does makes a mark, a mark that splits possibility into infinite realities." And then Jaden's eyes harden, sharpen, and he peers at Brody with an impassivity not unlike crashing waves in the depths of a storm, and equally understandable. "You knew someone who could tell parts of the future?" There's no disbelief in the man's voice, a timbre of warm, yet rough-edged silk, only concern. The rain means little to Jaden, he notices it not, nor the way that it clings to his clothes, soaks him nearly to the bone.
The fire sputters, and the inferno consuming the driftwood fights heartily to stay alive amidst the sudden downpour, its fading embers struggling to provide warmth to the half-naked surfer standing before the hearth. The flames dance in his eyes, like tendrils of light groping for hidden shadows, constantly drawing the attention of the entity lurking within, who is ever awed by all the sensations that assault him. It's noticeable too, how often his gaze seems to saccade, from Jaden to the bonfire to the silhouette of weeping clouds above. Either the surfer has a severe case of ADD or trouble focusing on anything for very long, all of it pulling on him. Pushing back his sopping, spiky hair, he grins a pearly-white smile at the brooding stranger. Dread is something difficult to summon in the young man, who is either filled with reckless bravado or has experienced enough strangeness to be so far unmoved even by the drenched and intimidating man before him. "Yah, brah. Be surprised at the crazy shit that I've seen." he nearly whispers while a palm is extended to feel the fading heat, its fleeing comfort, "Fuck, we haven't had a bodacious storm like this in ages. Like, it's refreshin'."
"I wouldn't," Jaden remarks, although his voice is distant, as if suddenly lost in thought. Unlike the surfer, the tall, broad shouldered 'scientist' is focused, intensely so. His attention, whenever it shifts, is pointed and deliberate, lingering as if drinking in the details of whatever it is that his eyes land upon. "Oh?" Beat. "They used to be much more common than they are now. Man toils and the world suffers for it. Tell me, this person you knew who knew anything about the future--how did they do it? Who were they?" There's no subtlety, and Jaden steps closer, bare feet treading over the wet sand without concern, entering the stifled light of the dying fire.
For a moment hesitancy befalls the surfer, as Jaden seems more curious than skeptical at the revelation that he knew someone who could glimpse the shadows of Fate. Unlike before, he seems hesitant to offer additional information, and he grows quiet for the moment, the rain continuously pelting him while his gaze falls on the dying fire, becoming lost in its bluish, smoldering embers as the light rapidly fades out, welcoming the dark. "He was a mentor of mine." Cody says softly, "He's gone now and he never told me or taught me how he could do it. He just...could."
"I see." There's something frustrated about the way the man speaks, an impatience that an adult would affect when talking to a child. Being that he's already soaked, Jaden appears to think little of sinking into the water-soaked sand next to the fire, eyes still affixed to Brody. This close, his eyes slide across the slick, exposed flesh more readily, but Jaden's expression is guarded, almost aloof no matter how admiring his glance is. "The future can't be trusted, because we can't truly know it. All that we can do is to move forward with knowledge of the present, trusting ourselves to make the proper choices."
Cody Matera comes over to sit beside Jaden, the fire's all but out at this point, the blackness of the night swallowing the pair, only a ghostly glow of the sizzling, smoldering embers in the hearth shedding any light on the lonely beach. A hand is placed on his shoulder, and a sidelong smirk is offered, though it's barely visible in the cloud-covered night and amidst the flurry of rainfall. "Brah..." he says, "Yah got me all turned upside down. Just who are yah? Yah some egghead? Some deep philosopher or somethin'?" The whites of the surfer's eyes, and those baby blues, still somehow seem to penetrate the pervasive darkness, their sheen faintly visible as they try to perceive the Fallen beside him.
Cody Matera comes over to sit beside Jaden, the fire's all but out at this point, the blackness of the night swallowing the pair, only a ghostly glow of the sizzling, smoldering embers in the hearth shedding any light on the lonely beach. A hand is placed on his shoulder, and a sidelong smirk is offered, though it's barely visible in the cloud-covered night and amidst the flurry of rainfall. "Brah..." he says, "Yah got me all turned upside down. Just who are yah? Yah some egghead? Some deep philosopher or somethin'?" The whites of the surfer's eyes, and those baby blues, still somehow seem to penetrate the pervasive darkness, their sheen faintly visible as they try to perceive the Fallen beside him.
Brody's hand falls upon a shoulder that's solid, sleek muscle beneath the drenched, flimsy cotton of his light-weight button-down. There's no resistance, no outward acceptance of the gesture, because Jaden's eyes are lifted skyward, fixed upon the heavens above still blotted out beneath dark gray thunderheads that appear black without the backdrop of a sun blazing down upon them. "No, I am no philosopher. Philosophers are men who have no answers, and many questions, struggling to discover truths of the world that others have known since the birth of time. I'm a..." Jaden's voice trails, and there's a fleeting tension that grips him, tightening the muscle beneath Cody's grasp. "Scientist. Yes, a scientist. A marine biologist."
"Marine biologist, huh?" Cody repeats with his surfer's twang, turning his own gaze up to the weeping heavens, to stare at the vast blanket of endless darkness, the umbrella of clouds that coat the firmament like some ephemeral quilt, dousing all starlight. Whatever Jaden sees there, the young man beside him clearly does not. His sight _does_ penetrate across the Shroud, into the realm of the Dead, ever watchful of the Tempest that rages beyond the inky waters off the shore, of the shadows that seem to lurk there, that haunt it, the fallen consumed by Oblivion's devouring touch. "You got a name?" he finally asks the man, his touch unrelenting, as if longing for the tactile sensation of flesh against flesh.
"Doctor Bishop." There's a twitch at the corner of Jaden's mouth with unabashed amusement, but it's a sardonic amusement as if there's some joke that Brody isn't party to. "Jaden Bishop. Marine biologist, though I very rarely devote myself to it. I'm having what you might call a mid-life crisis. I'm told I'm too young for such things. The body does not reflect the soul, always. I'm an old soul." The musing smile grows, and Jaden lifts a hand, fingertips trailing over the back of Brody's wrist as if Brody might not be the only one stirred by simple sensation. "The storm will grow worse soon. It always does."
"You don't happen to be a professor at UCP?" Cody asks after a long moment of silence, as if the surfer were carried away by his thoughts. Jaden's touch is electric, and though the hand spasms under his caress, as if unaccustomed to the sensation, it doesn't retract. The surfer's baby blues return to look at the marine biologist, an open palm raised to wipe away the water running down his face, blurring his vision. "Yah, brah. Best for me to get out'a the rain, I guess. Like, I wouldn't want to catch a cold or nothing. Gotta keep myself in decent condition, or I won't be hittin' the waves when it stops. My bike's just over there, parked on the side of the road. You need a lift, brah?" he asks the thoroughly drenched man as he slowly begins rising to his feet.
"No, I don't teach at the university. I don't really do anything productive these days. I walk along the beach, look out over the water, go swimming. That's my life." And yet, for all the world, Jaden holds no regret--there's not an ounce of guilt or shame over that fact, only a sense of exultation at the freedom, the privilege. Reaching upward with a free hand, Jaden rakes wet, dark hair back from his olive-skinned brow as he pulls himself to his feet. "That's a myth, by the way. You won't grow sick from the cold, or the rain, directly. Rain is..." A sigh escapes him, one of relief, wistful, relaxed. And then like that, something comes over Jaden, a thunderous agitation. "Yes. Yes, I could." The rain is less gentle now, nearly sluicing the both of them with cold water, pelting harshly down as Jaden trails quietly in Brody's wake.
