we're lying on the moon [charlie, nick, rosie]

[signed_sabrina]

After the party mostly wraps up, the night's hardly over.

The moon might not be full, but there's enough of a moon for their purposes, and Sabrina's located a clearing-- familiar at least to Charlie as somewhere she's taken him before-- for some moon-bathing. A fire doesn't seem quite right, but it's chilly enough that she's set up a charm to make the clearing much more like a late spring, early summer night. Just warm enough to strip down, and just cool enough that pressing up against another warm body feels good, she thinks.

A leather jacket over her dress, and her heels swapped out for something more comfortable, Sabrina lights up the lantern-- this one an orb of light not unlike the moon itself.

"Ready?" she asks, beaming at her people, as they stand at the edge of the woods, the clearing within and a basket at her feet. "Don't worry about the weather. I've got it handled. I mean, where we're going, not all the weather."

That was just a one time thing, she swears.

Comments

[awickedtime]

"Ready to help with that if necessary," says Nick, still dressed in the outfit that he'd worn to the party, only now he'd unknotted his tie, his hands in the pocket of his jacket. He walks close to Rosie, bumping her gently with his shoulder.

"Ready for your first real ritual, Wilson?"

[forthsofar]

"As I'll ever be," she says, still wrapped in her winter coat as they walk through the woods. When they reach the clearing, she'll take it off--along with quite a bit else, according to the explanation she got from Sabrina during their shopping trip a few days ago--but she's not about to freeze before they even get there. Smiling at the gentle contact of Nick's shoulder against hers, she glances towards Charlie and Sabrina, the moon and lantern light setting a more mystical cast to their features.

"Is it strange that I'm excited? Even though it won't do the same thing for me as it will for you and Sabrina?"

[teenagerenegade]

"If it's strange that you're excited then it's strange for me too," says Charlie, shifting so that he can catch Rosie's hand in his, threading their fingers together. "I...don't really know what to expect from all this, honestly..."

[signed_sabrina]

Sabrina's quiet for a moment, just watching them with that look in her eyes that usually signals getting an armful or a lapful of affectionate witch.

"It gives us a boost," she acknowledges, "but we get just as much of a boost by being with you. Lupercalia might have been about lust, but we've all got something stronger than that. And..."

She glances towards the woods, the light of the lantern catching a hint of pink in her cheeks. "I'm looking forward to magic that's not using the, um, diabolical in me."

[awickedtime]

"That's true," says Nick, squeezing her hand, loving the way the four of them are linked by hands and hearts and everything that counts. "We'll get a boost from it, and it's...so good that you two are here to share it. It matters so much."

[forthsofar]

Rosie leans into Nick, feeling Charlie's hand warm in hers as she watches the dancing lantern light catch in Sabrina's hair, and for a moment her heart is so full of love that she can hardly breathe. "No place else we'd want to be," she murmurs, stepping carefully over a fallen branch in the path. "Tonight or any other night."

[teenagerenegade]

"That's true, too," says Charlie, though he can't ignore the slightest shiver of anticipation, almost nerves, at the thought of what they're about to be. Day to day life with Nick and Sabrina doesn't have that much witchiness in it. Tonight might be an exception.

[signed_sabrina]

Even half a year ago, she thinks she might have been nervous about this, about this part of her being something to really share. But her mortals, and her warlock, are entirely too extraordinary for her to deny this to herself.

So she kisses them, each of them, soundly, and starts off through the woods. Her feet would find the path even without magic, and she's chosen one that's winding and easy, but not without glimpses of a bubbling stream or particularly bent and gnarled tree, some night-blooming flowers that can't be natural.

She can feel the call of magic, and tonight, Night doesn't seem like a stark, black and white and bloody affair. It's deep and calm, the velvety dark shot through with silver moonlight.

[awickedtime]

Anticipation shivers through Nick, in his shoulders and his spine and the palms of his hands. He stays close to them both, to the girls that he loves, to the mortal boy that loves them as they work their way through the woods.

"Almost feels like home," he says, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. No-one's going to be hunted through these trees, not tonight, but the air thrums with magic and possibility both .

[forthsofar]

She hasn't spent much time in the woods outside Darrow, but even if she had, Rosie doesn't think she'd be able to find this path again. It's too singular, meant only for the four of them and only for tonight. She focuses on each new reveal in the bend of the path, on the warmth of the people around her as they make their way further and further into the trees, accepting it all as its own bit of magic before the ritual itself starts in earnest.

[teenagerenegade]

Charlie loves the woods. He loves being out of the city, away from the noise and the light. It's not something that he's got that much experience of, growing up in a gated community, as he has, but it's one of the many, many things that's different about his life now that he's in Darrow.

He can almost feel the magic shivering in the air, when he waits, and he listens for it.

[signed_sabrina]

Sabrina takes her time in letting the path unfurl before her, though her feet do not hesitate on the path. The rising energy the walk's creating pulls deliciously at her, that energy so easily raised between them.

When they come to a stop, it's a clearing that happens to be in almost a perfect circle, sloping upwards slightly in a very gentle hill. There's plenty of room, but the spot still seems close and intimate. Sabrina moves to set the lantern at the top of the little hill, where a soft, starry themed blanket has been laid out.

She turns to face the others, and her smile is a little shy. "So, moonbathing. It's... maybe a bit cool still, but I thought that would work for our purposes. I brought some anointing oil, and though I have the traditional bits too, since they really are connected to what the Romans did."

[awickedtime]

It's a much more familiar ritual to Nick than it is to Charlie and Rosie, so Nick stands back and he lets her explain it to them, his hands hanging loosely at his side.

"Doesn't have to have anything to do with the Dark Lord at all," he says. "It can be just something for the four of us."

[forthsofar]

Rosie listens quietly to Sabrina's explanation, Nick's reassurances, all of it only confirming how right the choice--all of her choices, everything that's led her here--is. How much she wants to be here, doing exactly this with all of them. "Then it'll be ours," she says. "Not anyone, or anything, else's."

Rosie looks from Sabrina to Nick and back again, glancing over at Charlie too, as he stands there next to her. "I'm ready."