(Untitled)

[kassandraloxias]

Kassandra is reading. Her selections for today: the omnibus When We Were Very Young And Now We Are Six, and Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

The same piece of parchment she's carried about for a while, with its small sketch of an infinite city, is beside her.

Comments

[vs_nuggan]

Nearby, a young woman reading to a baby gives her a smile.

Her book of choice today is Where's my cow.

[samael_diablo]

Her piece of parchment is abruptly covered with a much larger one.

Lucifer looks pleased, vibrant, as he sits down opposite her.

"I have some good news, Aurora."

[kassandraloxias]

"My lord Morningstar." She pushes her books out of the way and leans forward to see.

Her head inclines, the long untended hair curling out over the parchment.

"What is here? Have you been to Delphi and taken an oracle in the smoke?

...My lord, tell me what to see."

[samael_diablo]

It's a diagram. Large, messy, annotated. Lucifer folds back the edges so that she can inspect it.

"We have a map. And I think we may have a means, or several means, of reaching the City. Though I'm still hammering out details."

[kassandraloxias]

She eyes the writing and symbols, and maybe her mind races along the connections to the larger picture, and maybe it gets caught up halfway. She looks sharply at him.

"I have two questions. Only two."

[shall_go_free]

Xas attention is caught, at first, by the books.

"Your choice of reading material is quite--"

and then he sees the city. It isn't really familiar, but there is something

"--interesting."

[kassandraloxias]

Kassandra stands. She bows, politely.

"My lord, I am Kassandra. Once I was more, and now I am less. Are you, then, a friend of my lord Morningstar?"

[shall_go_free]

"Time has a way of doing that."

He blinks, blue eyes wide and startled.

"I--"

"Perhaps. Elsewhere. I'm Xas. Why do you ask?"

[kassandraloxias]

"He suffers the company of few."

She smiles, in perhaps a fond way.

"You recognised the city, as he drew it for me there. So I thought you might know him, or the work of his hands."

She does not know what to make of this stranger.

"You are one of their kind, are you not? The lords who sit at the gods' feet, like my lord Crowley and my lord Aziraphael."