Owner	Pose
Sinister	In the beginning there was Darkness. From that Darkness, there came light, moving over the deeps. (Hello? Can anyone hear me in here? I'm watching the live action replay.) An Age. The sons of Adam, the Daughters of Eve. The first wife, coming to find a deal, a safe haven for her children; mother of monsters. All a jumbled mess. (How do I work this thing? It's not like tuning in a radio. Blast it, I've been walking around in here for hours and they're all interconnected corridors. I think I've bled a little too much in both ways... mind to mind. There's going to be a desert soon and...) Well, HAH! No there isn't. There's going to be a lot of cross-roads, pleasant smiles, witchy women and witchy men, rituals, all of which are really mostly about the dramatics and could probably have been accomplished with a drawing of a symbol and a hello. <<Enough of this. This was my fault, I pushed and the floodgates opened and I've been in every damned moment and every elation since then. But I'm trying to find.... aha. Here we are. By the by, we're contemplating the insides of our eyelids a little too deeply, I think. Exhaustion takes its toll sometimes. My fine feathered friend, your companion presents...>>     Life started in the ocean. Why it has a fascination that goes a little beyond for some, hasn't been clear before. Perhaps it will be now. The station was a memory ago, piling in at a young age at Waterloo and taking the second class carriages for weekending in Southampton or Portsmouth. Wittering Sands. Away from the responsibilities of an Admiral's household, looking the part, expected to excel. You can run on the white sands for a time and look in rock pools, find crabs, imagine that the entire ocean could hold the answers to all imaginings, with Captain Nemo on the Nautilus, shining leagues beneath the sea! Little boys, adventures in another lifetime. When you had seen the ladies and gentlemen in their sunday best, strolling across Greenwich commons and were struck by how clean, neat, fine, tidy, elegant it all looked. Life was always messy though and in those little rock pools, you could sometimes find entire worlds, looking down on a microcosm from the macro without and it felt a little like having control over something... way, way bigger than you could ever imagine. We all cope somehow, that structure of coping begins... somewhere. Nathaniel Essex sits upon a cluster of rocks just above the usual high tide, arms around his knees. He looks human though, in this place. Memory? A stroll deep inside the psyche, perhaps. Younger. Fresh of face. Before Oxford? Before the Royal Society. Perhaps eighteen years of age. "Oh, I do like to be beside the sea-side, oh, I do like to be beside the sea! Oh, I do like to stroll along the prom prom prom, where the brass bands play tiddly om pom pom..." He quiets. "That was afterwards, I think. Are you there? Here? Where I am?"
Lucifer	He was there in the beginning. Tempted the wife. Caused humanity to gain wisdom, revelation...and lose the glory that had been gifted to them. Wasn't his fault, really. Stupidity for the masses wouldn't have developed mankind into what it's become today. Ah but to be there for the first, and to be waiting for the last. Lifetimes come and go while the waiting game is played. Contemplating the inside of eyelids can have a price on occasion. This moment is no different, coming into the setting given by the mind that has...wandered? Remembered? Lucifer isn't really sure which. He stands at the back of that rock cluster, watching Sinister for a moment. A tilt of his head to perhaps determine just where this all might be. Yet it's likely that it doesn't matter where or when, but why and what. Steps take him forward, onto the rocks themselves, until he stands just behind and - of course in this moment - towers above the sitting man. Noting the younger face that still looks mostly human. Listening to the words offered. "I might just be here. There. Anywhere. So long as I am with you. Though I wonder on the where and when...I do more so contemplate on the what and why." He offers, shifting gaze out over sea that goes far beyond the horizon. "Contemplating much?"
Sinister	"Of course you do. TIming is less important as long as at the critical moments, it is right for this or that. But what and why, are more profound questions. When and where is objective. What and why is subjective. You are definitely a being of the subjective, my beloved. It is perhaps your raison d'etre, to be in those tiny details of the What. The Why. The black mirror that reflects only that which is deep inside." Nathaniel looks along the beach a long moment, not looking around, before he points off into the distance. "Chichester is that'a'way. Not too far from here, there's the roman villa of Fishbourne. One of the best preserved ruins outside of rome itself and that was absolutely and utterly happenstance. Someone's home, abandoned when the empire fell, the locals stole the rocks above, left the foundations. They did it to the stone circles too, to build their churches. The Witches of Rollright escaped mostly, but Avebury is pretty much the church now and a whole lot of the ... I'm diverting. Maybe not though," he pauses. Looking back, there's that freshness of face that remains here, too. "This is summertime, I think. Just before I was due to start in Oxford, I spent one last summer on my own, which was rather gauche but my parents indulged me." He gestures off along the sands, which thanks to a very flat topology and a very even curve of the land and ocean, /seem/ to go on for forever. "It all seemed like one could walk to the horizon and beyond, to the great unknown, unaware what was over the dune. You could walk on a cloudy day and not encounter anyone else, track your own footsteps for a mile and more, trailing behind. It was all... bigger than I was and I didn't know where I stood in all of it. The ocean was vast and it still is. It calls to me. A time before the what and the why of now."
Lucifer	This once again a time where Lucifer is listening to all that Sinister says before making any commentary. He follows where the man gestures and then comes back around to look out to sea again. Taking in whats said about roman homes and those who stole the rocks of. "Well at least they were nice enough to leave the bones. Some people don't even leave those." He offers. There's no comment just yet about 'black mirror', he's sort of saving that one. "Are you diverting? Or just remembering? It's a lovely spot, this place. The view goes for miles and gives you a real sense of anything and everything being out there in the beyond." "This ocean calls to you even now? Or you're remembering how it called to you then?" Trying to sort of get an idea of which circle Sinister is keeping himself in. Sometimes it's hard to keep up when the man changes paths so fluidly, making no difference in the conversation except the topic on which it rests. "Alright. Black mirror. When you look at it... what do you see? Honestly."
Sinister	"Oh, clever boy. Maybe I'm getting to that," Sinister replies, smiling but he does so in a fond manner. "Are you going to sit above me like that all through this, or will you take a seat by my side?" He asks this, patting the rock on his right hand. "This spot was always about potential and the memory-- well, the sea invokes the same kind of peacefulness. The sea is the same sea, you see. It makes a connection. Aren't we a delicious puzzle, Samael? Like the folds of a pretty origami flower, you can open it up, open, open, open, it all unravels but like a matroshka there's always another little nugget inside the next and the next." He points to the ground beneath his feet, between his knees. "At this point, at this moment, I wasn't yet on a path. I /could/ have been anything. I could have changed everything. Turned left, instead of right. Caught a ferry in southampton and found myself in foreign fields. I could have been a very different man." There's a laugh there, looking up as a ray of sunshine pierces through the cloud and makes the seashore seem otherworldly, for a moment or two. Fuels the imagination. "What do I see in the Mirror? A life condensed. I feel as if sometimes, I've lived many men's lifetimes in a relatively short period. I wonder, occasionally, if I did so out of a desire to /reach/ that horizon." He gestures off to the infinity loop that is the curve of land and sea and sky. "If I succeeded in differentiating myself from that life that was pre-structured for me. I wonder how much it was that I rebelled. And in this moment here..." he gestures around "...whether it is a fundament of myself, to reach beyond that which I can know. Do I overreach? I can never reach that horizon and bring it to this spot, right here." Another gesture at his feet "Though it seems anathema not to try. Sometimes, it's very scary." He looks at Lucifer then. "We," gesture between the two of them "...are very scary. We are that event horizon. Will I be spagettified, somehow, or will I discover something I never knew could be?"
Lucifer	Lucifer shifts to take that seat offered on the right side of Nathaniel, and again he listens. To all of it. The bit about the oragami flower makes him smile and he looks to the horizon that never moves towards them. In fact, somehow, he feels as though it's drifting further away. When Nathaniel speaks of not being on a path in this moment back when, how he could have chosen anything and yet stayed a course that could very well have just been predestined for him to travel, Lucifer smirks. Even within the mind, somehow he still has his cigarettes. Or maybe he just believes he does and pulls them from a pocket any how. One taken for himself, the pack is proffered to his companion and then he sparks hellfire to light ends and draw in a breath of flame to yield an exhale of smoke. The ray of sunshine catches him for a moment and he tilts his head, almost contemplating it, and then he glances to his companion once more. Once all is said and done, he finally speaks... "We are very scary. Both together and individually. Perhaps you have lived the lives of many men, but then again, you've also lived through many lifetimes. You ebbed and flowed as time dictated you to, fluidly and without many qualms." He offers, smokes, exhales. "Have you not already discovered something you never knew you could be? I do not think you're on a path to be spagettified, unless of course some how the stars command a black hole to devour us sometime in the near future." It, of course, could happen at some point. "We can always think of the things we could have done, but what worth is that in the end? To think on what could have been? Such things are torturous to the mind - and I know you know that." Inhale. Exhale. "So what is this, really, Nathaniel dear? Are we having a crisis of conscious? We're embarking on something that has never been done before, and being asked to pay in spades for it. I think that's something enough. And no matter what could have been, it isn't. For it's this and not that. It will never be that. It will always be this."
Sinister	Sinister of course, takes the cigarette. A sense of self, of being, of who you tend to be in the overall, embodies cigarettes in memory. He sniffs the cylinder of it, before setting it to his lips and leaning in to the hellfire to let it catch. He smokes in companionable silence for a little while. "If you do not contemplate what could have been, what might have gone a different way, you do not learn from your mistakes and your triumphs. Some things might hurt-- nostalgia literally means, the pain of the past. Nostum-algia. But human kind by and large, like to reminisce on what was, even if it isn't now. It's actively a precious few that consider and analyze their experiences, to prepare and improve upon their futures." One eyebrow lifts in challenge of that. Touche. Riposte! "I don't have a conscience that I'm aware of," he lies, but he does so with a little knowing smile. "But no, it isn't that. It's the ratification of experience and knowing that this point here..." he nods to the sea "...and where we're at, have similarities. I suppose I'm looking at this, to see if it can give me any helpful clues. You and I are very, very similar and yet very mind-bogglingly different. You reach down. I reach up. Somehow we met in the middle. But..." he chuckles, looking at the water, then back to the archangel's eyes "...by the seaside we have common ground."
Lucifer	"Fewer still will then contemplate that perchance in some other universe there exists a them that took the other path. Made the other choice. Or didn't as it were. It is, all of it, still a torture of the mind. Perhaps, since it is a sort of human thing to do, that is why I don't understand the meaning of doing it." Lucifer concedes, for the moment, as sometimes he simply cannot argue with the logic of Sinister. "So it's all come full circle. Here we are, at the edge again. Embarking into lands unknown. Should we? Perhaps not. Are we? Absolutely. Why? Because fuck the rest of them. And not in a good way. Like it's been said... I did not know this is what I wanted until I realized it was actually something I could have." A smirk then. "Meeting in the middle is fine. Common ground, even if we are different people. I think that's what keeps us strong together. For many different reasons." He leans over then, kisses Sinister's head. "Shall we ride to the horizon together then?"
Sinister	"Oh, don't get me started on string theory. You know there was a brief but rather obnoxious notion that the hadron collider was going to cause a quantum singularity that destroyed all life on earth and perhaps even the entire galaxy. But of course, at the very same time, it actually did. But nobody noticed here, because it didn't. I do love theoretical physics on the odd occasion," Infallible logic intact, Sinister grins, then listens himself to the reply that's given, his face relaxing to a peaceful point at the kiss to his crown. No, he wouldn't change anything, pre-destined or chaos theory in action, it matters very little to him. "I want to sample the delicacies, collect useful little souvenirs and store them for a rainy day. Once upon a time, I'd get useless little nick-nacks when on holiday. At a certain age, I only ever wanted trinkets I could use." And use he did, time and time again. Glancing off to the left, a little tableau on the sands flits into existence, of Sinister in a labcoat, looking like a human being, gesturing at a large tank of liquid and seemingly in silent bargaining with Remy Le Beau. A jam-jar sized portion of liquid is taken after a hateful kind of look from the cajun and it makes Sinister himself in this memory, laugh heartily. "Aaahhhh, me. Yes. Lets." He stands, proffering his hand open palm to Lucifer as that little vignette freezeframes, held in perpetuity as frozen statues. "We might even be able to rent a donkey to do so. THey used to have donkey rides at Wittering." He winks, but we all know that they will not be riding off on a tiny burro.
Lucifer	"So then lets. Go get some tiny knick knacks. The cottage could use them. I bet your lab could too." Lucifer says this with a smile, glancing over to the side at the inserted memory of Sinister and a certain cajun thief. "Ah. The mutant. I've met a few of them over the course of time..." He offers this much and then shakes his head. "He doesn't look happy..." But then it fades and they're speaking of horizons. He shifts to stand, and upon standing seems to consider. "Ah, perhaps not a burro, my love. Perhaps, for ourselves, we shall fly to the horizon of our lives and beyond...together." A pause, for effect of course. Only Lucifer - upon a standing Sinister - takes cheeks in hands. Gives a kiss. "Let us fly."