(2530-03-31) House of Cards
Summary: The Monk Droste comes to visit a local rehab center, where Enola happens to be staying.
RL Date: 31-Mar2020
Related: None
skyler droste 

<Harshorn Hills Recovery Center>

Harshorn Hills is a residential home in a nondescript neighborhood in Eavesdown. It has stairs going up to a main door. Just inside, there is a door to the right, a door to the left, and a heavy security door ahead. The security door stands open starting after a certain time each morning, and isn't closed until curfew. It's a different sort of residential center in that it allows people to leave during the day so they can work. However, they're manipulative about it, trying to keep residents there for the first couple of weeks, and stuff. It has a lower success rate than other centers, because people can relapse more easily, but it allows them to still hold jobs. So it's a tradeoff. Inside the security door is a broad recreation room with couches, a large-screen tv, and shelves full of games. A kitchen with dining area, offices, and a bathroom branch off that. Stairs, which rise in front of the security door, lead up to the second floor landing and the bedrooms.


The two doors that branch off the vestibule are labeled "Administrator" and "Conference Room." Both doors stand open and there's a dark-skinned woman sitting behind a desk that labels her as Bianca Valentino.

People are draped across the couches in the rec room with varying degrees of energy, as withdrawal can cause complete exhaustion. Enola sits at card table, by herself, attempting to build a house of cards from a deck. She looks bored by it.

Up the stairs hike the worn velcro-strapped boots of a monk from the Eavesdown Amara. One of her hands is used to lift the hem of her long grey sweatshirt-fabric robe just high enough not to trip up the stairs on it, and on her back she's carrying a massive woven-wicker basket, a round canister of it abut three feet in diameter and rising up a few feet over her head where the top is trying to sit askew. It must be full of stuff rather light, or else she wouldn't be ascending the stairs with such relative ease. The basket is wound about with colorful red straps that include ones that fit over her arms and keep it fit to her. She stands before Ms. Valentino and puts her palms together in front of her, bowing to the woman in greeting.

"Oh, hello," Bianca bounces up from her seat - she has to be perky to keep from being dragged under by her thankless work. Awkwardly, she bows back, then asks, "How are you today? Can I help you?" Was this prearranged or spontaneous? They get people bringing donations, and ministering to the residents, from time to time.

"I'm bringing knit blankets from Eavesdown Amara," a sort of open-door monastery nearby which often enough has some cause or other for which it provides work or aid. "And some books, as well," Droste adds with a smile. "I can also stay for the day if any of your residents are home and would like to sit in meditation. Or if you have any other chores which need to be done." Sometimes a freshly-scrubbed floor can bring much peace of mind.

Bianca says, still in her upbeat way, "Sorry to have to ask this, but do you have any sort of identification? I'm sure you understand we have to be careful about people bringing things in, not that I think you would." In other words, she wants to make sure that Droste is a legitimate monk and not a drug dealer in monk's clothing.

Droste bobbles her head in an easy mark of understanding, then, arcing her back in one direction, then the other, she relieves her armpits of the straps and sets the big basket down onto the vestibule floor. "Of course. I can also unpack everything for you, if you'd like," she opens the lid to the basket and takes the stack of fifteen or so very slim, identical black and red paperback volumes off of the top, setting them on Ms. Valentino's desk. They're not quite scripture, but they're little doodled cartoons with themes of Buddhist scripture and belief expounded in cute and clever ways, as well as some thought experiments and meditation exercises. She'll let Ms. Valentino look through them at leisure while she kneels and opens a zipped pounch in the back of her boot, drawing out her chipped ID card. It's not from the Amara, though. She's only staying there for the time being. But she IS an alliance-certified Chaplain. No rank or actual military ties, but she's been vetted.

"Thank you. Our residents always appreciate a little reading material." Especially when it's illustrated. Bianca examines the identity card and nods. "Again. Thank you. We can never be too careful. I can take care of the blankets if you want to go on in. I can introduce you to those who are still here for the day. You can leave your basket here, if you'd like. It will be safe enough."

Droste gets back on one knee to replace her card where it goes. She is not supposed to be attached to earthly possessions, but an identification card has somehow found itself useful enough to make the cut. When she rises again, she nods beatifically. "You may have the basket, too, if you think you will have use for it. If nothing else, to store blankets, perhaps," she smiles. "I will follow you," she agrees.

"I think I'll introduce you to Enola. How strong of spirit do you feel today?" Bianca grins from ear-to-ear. "She's a pretty interesting kid." She has multiple meanings for interesting. "But she can try the patience of a saint. She's certainly tried mine, 2-or-three-or-100 times." With that, she leads Droste through the open security door and into the rec room, which she scans to see if there's anyone else coherent enough to interact with an outsider. There are a couple of counselors around the place, so she starts by introducing Kate and Jorge, who are friendly and cheerful. "If you have any questions, they should be able to help you out."
Enola, for her part, looks dispassionately at Droste, then tilts her head at her house of cards and adds another card to the top of a precarious tower.

Droste supposes that she will see how strong of spirit she is, and ventures no guess as to same when prompted for one, only maintaining that archaic smile. She nods to Ms. Valentino's last bit of advice and then proceeds to stand and watch Enola and her house of cards. The dispassionate look elicits a bow, but then she is as content as Enola is to watch the cards, to consider their balance and their gravity, and the patience of spirit of the one accumulating the construction.

"Enola," Bianca chirrups. "We have a visitor for Amara Monastery. She'd like to talk to some of the residents and maybe work a little on meditation."
Enola stares up at Bianca like, "What the?"

Bianca says, clearly and simply, like talking to a child, "You could really use some work on your meditative skills and your inner calm. See if you can't entertain her for a bit, won't you?"
Enola stares more at Bianca. Thumb and forefinger together like she might shoot a marble, she reaches out and flicks one of the bottom cards in the tower, sending the whole thing crashing/fluttering/diving to the table, ground, and anywhere else a card might choose to land.

Droste blinks, once, when Ms. Valentino interrupts the silence between them, and lifts a hand in a moment of intervening calm. "It's all well, Ms. Valentino," she tries to intervene in favor of allowing Enola to meditate in her own way. But she lowers her hand again, and soon Enola is proving the ephemeral nature of her structure in its destruction, giving them back to nature and to entropy. She steps to the opposite side of the table and looks to Ms. Valentino with a nod, then to the cards where they have decided to lie. When Ms. Valentino has taken her leave (if she does), she speaks up quietly: "You are under no obligation to entertain me," by way of assurance. "I thought your tower very charming. I think it charming, still," she gestures to the cards. "At rest. No striving."

Bianca nods once to Droste, then goes back to her office. Enola stares at Droste for the span of about 20 heart beats, then begins to gather her cards into a single pile.

Droste once spent two years in silence; twenty heartbeats is a return to a calm home inside of her heart, and she finds herself there, with Enola, though her own outward quiet is mirrored by one internal; how Enola's outward quiet is mirrored within only she may know. Then it is time the cards were gathered. Droste slides along some of the further-flung of the tribe along the table to where Enola can gather them more easily.

"I got no idea why Bianca thinks I wanna talk to a preacher." Enola admits. Maybe Bianca thought she NEEDED to talk to a preacher. "God's a big, fat liar and everybody's all like, 'you need inner calm', but everyone around here's a gorram junkie. You try being calm around a bunch of gorram junkies." One of the junkies grunts a protest from the couch, where he's stretched out trying to sleep."

"You don't have to talk to me if you wouldn't like to," Droste offers the option of returning to silence, which is, to be honest, her favorite medium of interaction. "You're saying very interesting things, though. I would like to hear more, if you would tell me," she places her petition gently amid the cards for gathering up and considering in turn. "May I sit?" she reaches aside for a chair to drag it an inch or two closer to her by way if indicating her intention to use it if granted permission.

Enola shrugs, then nods. "Not my chair. What's so interesting about junkies? Are you, like, a junkie groupie? Is there even such a thing?" Having gathered the cards, Enola taps the deck twice on the table, then begins to shuffle them. It's important to shuffle for a house of cards! But the action is second nature to her, and makes a pleasing sound when, after bringing the two halves of the deck together, she arches her hands the cards make a cascading bridge.

It's a soothing pattern of noise, isn't it? Droste has never long been about games, and she finds the fwip and whoosh of the deck a pleasant novelty while she rests her shin on the chair, then settles in and draws her other boot up to rest atop her opposite knee, knees pointed out sideways and hands resting with loosely curled fingers on the sweatshirt trampoline of her lap. "Is there? There may be," as to the maybe-mythical junkie groupie. "You said you were having trouble keeping calm. Does the card-tower help with that?"

"No," Enola states. "I'm not, and it don't. Mostly I do it because otherwise they make me DO things. They're always like, 'Make a picture!' or 'Here are some glittery things and some wooden sticks so make something cool!' and all of it's stupid. So if I do this, they leave me alone."

"Oh, good. I would hate to think you were uncomfortable," Droste replies. "Do you want me to write you a note excusing you from activities? Sometimes the thing which is best to do is no thing," she advises.

"You can do that?" Enola asks. "Sure. Can you write me one for group, too? Group is the most mindless drooling bunch of people whining about problems. Donna says it's all about getting people together who are all alike, but I ain't like any of these crazy drug addicts. They got more drama than a llama."

"I can write one; whether they will accept it as binding is another matter," Droste smiles at her technicality. "I'm not a therapist, after all." She listens to the woes of going to group, and, on the unusual comparison, "A one-l lama or a two-l llama?" she wonders. "Or is it the elusive three-l lllama?"

"I …. don't know." Enola frowns. She splits the deck and takes up two cards, which she then places face-to-face, so she can balance them on the table top in an inverted V. "There's more than one kind of llama? I thought it was just a funny animal."

"The one-l lama, he's a priest, the two-l llama, he's a beast," Droste recites a little childrens' poem by way of explanation. "But I would bet a silk pajama there isn't any three-l lllama." Silence, then, "May I?" she lifts her hands above the table's edge, each one looking for a stack of cards to draw from the top.

Enola slides half the deck toward Droste. "I never knew that. I know about rain and reign and rein. How there are three of them. They all get spelled different, but I can't tell which is which one." A cloud settles into Enola's eyebrows, making them furrow. "I mean, I probably could, if I ever even cared. There's lots of words that sound the same but are different."

"Nor can anyone else, when you say them out loud," Droste reasons, dividing her allotted half-deck into two halves, as well, and mirroring Enola's build for her on the other half of the table. "There are. A lot. But is it really so important to know?"

"Maybe it is," Enola says. "With words, you can make things. You can put them together and make something huge. But it's a problem when they written down." Again, that annoyed look furrows the brows, like she maybe keeps saying things she doesn't want to. "They just don't seem the same."

Droste lets her upside-down-v stand, placing her palms flat on the table to either side of it for the time being, or at least until Enole decides to build some more. "You don't suppose that if you wrote about the horses' reins, and you used the wrong 'rein,' people would still understand what you had meant?"

"Well, maybe, probably," Enola admits, setting up a second inverted v of cards. "But, what about if you wanted to write something they couldn't tell about, and the words sound the same but get spelled different. Like… I don't, no. And I don't know?" Her grasp of punctuation in written form is sketchy, at best. "I just know it gets you teased, is all."

Droste lifts her own hands to draw a card each from both quarter-decks at her sides and sets up the second v, letting the cards find their support in one another and then letting them stand. "It can be a mystery of the universe. The best things are," she keeps her voice low and even, and, on the note of being teased for mis-spellings, she looks up and across to Enola. "It can. But that speaks much more about the people who tease than it says anything about you. Sometimes the most highly educated have forgotten to become educated in the matters which count."

Enola shrugs, carefully laying a card horizontally across the two trestles she'd just made. "People ask how you get the cards so high, but it's really the beginning that's the hardest. Specially with these cards that are all bent up and stuff. She pauses and looks at what she's built, mentally willing it to remain standing, but some vibration takes it and the tiny structure topples.

Droste is still mirroring Enola's card efforts, all while lending an attentive ear. She rests the cross-card atop the two peaks, but then pushes it over when Enola's falls. "That's how it is with most things, isn't it? Trying to create a foundation to build on— and people don't see, or they won't see, how deep that foundation has been built. It looks like solid ground to them, especially if they were already standing on it."

Enola starts over with the first inverted V, using a different set of cards. She checks to make sure they're relatively flat for leaning them against each other. "How come it feels like you're talkin' about different things when you say that than just a card house? Like you say some words and they're supposed to mean something different."

Droste reliably does the same over on her side of the table, letting the fallen rest where they lie. "It's probably because all is one," she answers, glancing up and across from her work and tipping a crooked smile Enola's way.

"Are you trying to church me? Are you really just godding me in a sneaky way, so I don't notice?" Enola starts on the second trestle. Again, she checks the cards to flatness before she starts, gets a good base, and then eases the supporting card across the top. This time, it holds. "I used to have to go to church, for this one while. The family went every week, Wednesdays and Sundays, and it was all about giving up sinful ways so that God can love you. So I asked, if he's so good and big and great, why don't he just love you so you give up your sinful ways? Wouldn't that way make more sense? I got sent to the hall. I didn't much care, cause then I didn't have to listen to their feihua anymore."

"I would never church nor god you, unless you called for it specifically," Droste pledges. "I am licensed to god, of course, but you and I, we can just have conversations. What if the cards do have some meaning? Does it matter that they came from the cards?"

<FS3> Droste rolls Religion: Good Success. (6 5 8 4 4 7 6)
<OOC> Droste says, "Just seeing whether this particular configuration/message sounds familiar."
<OOC> Droste says, "Like a sect on some planet or something she might know something about? She's studied multiple religions, it's sort of hr job :)"
<Chance> Enola flips a coin: Failure.
<OOC> Enola says, "Not specifically, but definitely something along the evangelical line, that would have bible study on Wednesdays and would call people to repent."

And as to the hall expulsion, "There are are many beliefs as there are people. I'm not sure their sect doctrine, precisely, but I'm sure it stood to reason for them. I'm sorry it hurt you— that's the worst thing a belief can do."

"It didn't hurt me. I just didn't buy it. They were tryin' to sell me a dozen eggs when they only had six in the basket," Enola tells her. "Most everything Donna says is a meaning that you can't see. She talks like that a lot. So I just thought maybe you had something all deep I was supposed to be takin' home with me that I was just missing cause it's true, the first cards are the hardest to put up." She has a third trestle now, and is working on a fourth, for a second set, onto which she can start building another story, should she choose.

<FS3> Droste rolls Reaction+Reaction: Success. (6 3 2 8 3 1)

Droste is endeavoring to keep up, but she's had less practice at this than her table-mate, and so her building begins to lag behind as she spends more time making sure everything is sound. "If there was something you should take home in it, you would have a sense of what it was. Do you?" she wonders, eyes on her work.

Enola, the girl who really has very little empathy, does something. She slows down. Is it instinctive or is she actively allowing Droste the chance to keep time with her building? Who knows. She shakes her head, "Only that there's maybe something there I'm too stupid to get."

Droste falls into rhythm with Enola once more when she slows down and allows her the chance to do so, becoming her mirror image once more. "Not too stupid. Just something you haven't thought of before. Everyone has things they've never thought of before. You talk to me, then— about the cards. And not about the cards. What does it mean?"

<FS3> Enola rolls Magic Tricks: Success. (2 8 1 3)

Enola shrugs again and tells her, "I wouldn't worry too much about it; I don't get half of what Donna's trying to get me to understand, neither. It never seems to matter all that much. But cards can be tricky, all by themselves, without you try to give them more meaning than that they printed with. Like this guy, he's just a two of clubs. You see him, all boring and worth next to nothing, but then suddenly.. you look again, and realize you didn't see what he was all about." She flips the card so only the 2's back is showing, then turns him over again and it's an ace of hearts.

Droste sits back slightly; at least she stops building and sits up straight away from the cards as not to jostle them on accident while listening to Enola's story. But when the two becomes an ace, she opens her mouth and takes in a surprised and delighted breath of air. "I will take that story home with me," she pledges. "It's a wonderful one. And meaningful."

"Oh," Enola says, like it's an afterthought to their previous conversation. "I learned one other very important thing from the Church of The Holy Light. It's something you ought to know if you're going to be hanging in churches, and that's that everyone gets all bent outta shape if you say, "fuck" in the church. You really wanna cause trouble for some reason, just walk right up to the preacher guy and say like you mean it, "God is a fucker." It'll get you slapped just about every time, if not worse."

Droste settles back into her calm and quiet archaic smile. "I will remember that, and take it with me, too," she promises, with a slightly separate timbre to her voice.

A door opens off the side of the rec room. Out of it comes a very tall kid, about Enola's age, who slumps into a chair in front of the television, his long legs snaking out to rest on the coffee table. Next, poking his head through that same door, is a middle-aged man, with greying hair and wire-rim glasses. "Enola? Your turn."
Enola's all, "Hey, I'm busy, here."
He grins, "Yeah. It's cute you think it works that way. Come on. Make a move, before I decide to start asking you nosy questions about your potty training experience."
Enola tells Droste, "That would be the therapist. Maybe I'll see what happens if you say, "fuck" in therapy." Like she hasn't already tried that one! She gives a faint, mischievous grin to Droste. "You can keep the cards." They aren't hers, anyhow. They belong to the center. "Later."

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