the library (again)

Jason Malone

Wed 07:55PM CST
~Jeep parked in the lot, Jason sat in the library, quietly reading. Black soulless eyes exposed in the safety of the elysium, his usual mirrored shades sat beside him on a table. Dressed casual, as always, he casually read through the story of Paolo and Francesca.~

~He sat reclined back, elbows resting on the arm of the chair, the book up before his face, shielding his view of the room. His legs were stretched out, legs crossed at the ankle, obviously fully relaxed.~

Marie-Hélène

Wed 08:19PM CST
There are often footsteps in the hall. The Estate is large, requires a staff of some size to keep it functioning, both to keep the fine wooden floors rich and clean and to keep the more sophisticated security systems running smoothly. But perhaps one can differentiate the reluctant footsteps of a bored functionary, some underservant, some fucking blood-addict, from the footsteps of a more self-important guard, from the footsteps of an even more self-important Kindred. Perhaps not: reading, one tends to drown out the rest of the world. The floorboards' groan is closed now, a subtle if wrenching sound as the tongue and groove flooring expands and settles beneath the hint of added weight.

If Jason looks up, he will see her, dressed down again - as usual - her pale hair wrapped into a complex, wild - oh, it can only be called a structure - that would be better kept to the catwalks than exhibited on the streets. The loops and whorls of pale golden hair are secured in place by an assortment of strange bits and pieces. Bereft of context, a washer or nut can come to be see as some sort of strange, industrial jewelry. Strange, as always. She crosses the library with her long-legged gait, a driving sort of step, as if she has - as if she always has - somewhere to go, and plants herself in one of her customary half-seated slouches on the arm of the chair beside his own. "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate," she murmurs, a fey half-minute before curving her long fingers over the spine of the volume and attempting to tug the Gangrel's Dante from his grasp.

Jason Malone

Wed 08:28PM CST
~He lets the tome slip from his fingers and into hers as his usual amused smirk curls his lips. After the book is gone, his fingers lace together, steepled in front of him, his gaze turning to her~ I've long since abandoned hope. Comes with the territory.

~His smirk turns to a wry grin, something of a bit of truth in his words though it's masked in his sometimes dry humor. And how perfect does the night find you, Little One? Oh... I haven't told you... I got myself a new pet. You'll have to come see him some night.

Marie-Hélène

Wed 08:40PM CST
"Tch." She makes a reproving sound in the back of her throat, the dry cluck of her tongue against her hard palate. Her mobile mouth stills and her brows rises as she slides her thumb between the pages and relieves him of the book, then cups it with her usual carelessness in her left hand, studying the page he had been reading, or making a pretense of it. "I haven't abandoned hope, Jason-Malone who most definitively should not refer to me as Little One." She gives him a cool, lilting stare: dark eyes half-closed but rapt, attentive. "And I'm rather afraid to inquire as to the identity of your pet. But tell - "

Jason Malone

Wed 08:44PM CST
I never said _you_ had abandoned hope... I would never assign such a mundane thing to you. ~His grin returns to its usual aomewhat sarcastic but definitely entertained nature~ And just why _shouldn't I refer to you as Little One? You are certainly smaller than I.

~If he had pupils, one could actually see the eyeroll that accompanied his chuckle at her comment about his pet, but in this case, only the amused laugh gives him away.~ As for Bailey... he is a horse. A black Morgan with three white socks.

Marie-Hélène

Wed 08:53PM CST
Something streaks briefly across her sharp features: a livid awareness that settles into a bemused half-smile more appropriate to the setting. There's a twist to her fine pale brows, too, a lightness to her bearing as she leans back on the arm of the overstuffed chair and allows her body told fold backwards and fall into the massive thing's deep seat. She is tall enough - lean and long, willowy, even - that she is not entirely lost in the furniture, but it is a clear, close thing. "I could call you smelly, but I doubt you would like that." The upholstery sighs and suffers as she shifts backward against the arm until she is not comfortable (it matters little to her) but aesthetically draped across the chair. Toreador. "And - " she lifts the backcurve of her pale hand to until it is pressed against her red mouth, just beneath her nose. Inhales. " - I suspect I am smellier as well as smaller. Perhaps you should call me that instead." She stills, then, mouth flattening faintly. "You have - " Her voice does not lilt upward (such a thing is too uncertain, perhaps to girlish for the creature), but her brows draw together and her pale head swings to the side, threads of fine golden hair falling to sweep against the architectural structure of her jaw. " - fed him."

Jason Malone

Wed 08:59PM CST
Yeah... interesting thing trying to do that... harder than I'd have imagined with a horse. He's a smart one... that's for sure. Not much of a conversationalist though. ~He lets out another genuine chuckle~ I'm gonna let the whole smellier than thou part of the discussion go... it's no fair waging a verbal war against one who is unarmed. ~He winks playfully~

By the way... you got me thinking the other night and I realized I'm much more Paolo than I could ever be the pilgrim searching for Beatrice. I suppose my beast would be my brother in that story. It's more fitting.

Nathan Hale

Wed 09:07PM CST
Nathan sits on the patio transfixed by the moon and hidden by his own will from the site of most. What does one think out when in a state of insanity. Well mostly swimming pools and Robin Williams, but that story is for another night. Nathan pops his neck and looks around. After blinking repeatedly, he shakes his head and stands up.

Raziel Kevlar

Wed 09:10PM CST
The purring motorcycle engine eased slowly as he came up to the gate. Identify himself allowed him in and he rode up to the front, parking his rocket to the side and heading up to front doors to rap on once.

Muira Stewart

Wed 09:12PM CST
*her flip flops slap against her slender feet, her toes curling slightly, the straps of her emerald green thongs decorated with silk flowers. Her pale slender legs bare, the fringe of white strings from her jean cutoffs whisering softly against her thighs, a white over shirt over a pink tank top completes her outfit, her long reddish brown hair spilling over her slender shoulders, gleaming like silk, the same color as freshly ground cinnamon. Her overlong bangs falling into her eyes, her pale pink lips curling slightly as she flipflops down the steps to the library, humming softly under her breath as she pushes the door open*

Marie-Hélène

Wed 09:14PM CST
"That was quite unaccountably cruel of me," she replies, with her usual arrogance - so finely wrought, so understated. Her chin rises a fraction of a degree, and she fixes him with a look before her attention - drifts, as it often does, to some collection of shadows spilling across his arms, the arms of his chair, in a strange lover's knot, innumerable gradations of light and shadow cast by the supple recessed lighting in the room. "I don't think you should compare yourself to anyone, imagined or real." Her mouth flattens, her nostrils flare with a cool breath expelled. She inhabits space that another might simply take up. "I find the reality is ever more complex than any textual representation of it. The difference between living something and the memory of it. No narrative can capture the confusing force of pushing through those threads, and making and remaking yourself. Dwelling - " she glances up as Muira walks into the library, nods to the young Brujah with casual grace, but otherwise falls silent.

Nathan Hale

Wed 09:16PM CST
He would yawn if he could, but those damn lungs, the doc told him, those cigarettes would kill him. What the fuck did that quack know? Bastard should of told Nathan to eat more garlic. Perhaps things would have been different, but alas here he was, staring at the moon, and missing the sun. Turning his head, Nathan notices a light on in the library. A smile spreads across his face, as he makes his way toward the double doors leading into the library. Turning the handle he opens the door, steps in, and closes it behind himself. Standing there wide eyed with a cheshire grin, Nathan runs a hand threw his dark mused hair. Tonight he is wearing the same outfit he will probably wear for the summer. Green hawaiian shirt with white orchid print, light brown cargo shorts and a pair of leather sandles, not flip flops though, they make noises like you are being followed. No good for paranoid people.

Jason Malone

Wed 09:20PM CST
Ah... but you forget the immortal words... those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Not to mention that too often stories are studied for their standing as a work of art or their fine literary quality and not judged on the most simple purpose of a book... to tell a story, and usually a story with a moral. Aesop didn't get famous for forgetting the past... he's famous for finding ways to remind people of it. Besides... the really good and the really bad are always in one's mind... or repressed... they never go away.

~His black soulless gaze turns first to Muira and his otherwise serious demeanor changes to a more lighthearted one.~ Speaking of the Past... Muira... you believe in that rule of three thing... don't ya? ~His gaze then turns to Nathan... good thing no expressions can be read in those black eyes... because DAMN... that's one fugly shirt. He nods to the man before looking back to Muira~

Muira Stewart

Wed 09:24PM CST
*she smiles brightly a she shakes her hair out of her bangs, nodding to Jasons words and quoting softly*

Mind the Three-fold Laws you should three times bad and three times good.

*her brow lifts then she looks to Marie, then back to Jason* An' why d'ye be askin, lad?

Nathan Hale

Wed 09:24PM CST
Nathan nodded sagely, back at the man. Recognizing Marie but not Jason, none the less agreeing with unknown wise man rather than the toreabore. Seeing Muira he smiles and half bows.

"Ms. Montgomery"

Muira Stewart

Wed 09:25PM CST
*she looks to Nathan*erm...m'last name is Stewart, sir.....I dinna know anyone named MOntgomery.....

Nathan Hale

Wed 09:27PM CST
Nathan wrinkles his nose at the comment.

"Not yet but one day if you brush your teeth and be a good girl, you might find your Mr. Montgomery"

Nathan smiles and looks for an open chair.

Jason Malone

Wed 09:28PM CST
We were just discussin' the past. I identify with a character in the story due to some shit in my past... Marie-Helene is of the opinion that one should not identify in such a way... that the past is the past. I look at it as a means to see that others have had similar problems and discover why their problems happened to perhaps gain insight on my own and perhaps prevent future incidents that might be similar. ~He shrugs a bit, his eyes darting to the odd man... wow... now he understands the shirt.~

Raziel Kevlar

Wed 09:28PM CST
Once he was in, he wandered the halls heading towards the library, wondering what kind of books were kept in the manor. But seeing the others gathered in, he looked to each in turn.

Jason Malone

Wed 09:29PM CST
~He looks to Raziel and nods~ Evening Raziel... how's the job hunt?

Muira Stewart

Wed 09:31PM CST
*She shakes her head*One shouldna' ferget their past....it helps us become what we are in the present...and will help us keep f'rm makin' the same mistakes in the future....*she murmur ssolumnly, slipping into the room, turning when Raziel comes in, her smile softening...almosy shy*Guid e'en Raziel....

Raziel Kevlar

Wed 09:35PM CST
He looked at Jason and nodded once. " Evening Jason. It seems to have gone good enough." He looked to Muira, smiling to her. " Good evening Muira. "

Nathan Hale

Wed 09:35PM CST
Nathan looks at each chair in turn, crossing his arms, he gives up and leans against one of the book cases that lines the wall.

Muira Stewart

Wed 09:39PM CST
*If she could blush she would be bright red by now, slapslapping over to a chair, her hands folding with almost maidenly shyness in her lap as she sits, her long bangs falling over her gaze like a silken curtain, her small whiet teeth nibbling at her lower lip*

Jason Malone

Wed 09:46PM CST
~Wow... Muira speechless... this was a first that he'd seen. Hmmm... he'd go back to reading his book, but that was in Marie-Helene's clutches at the moment. His black gaze turned to Nathan, for a moment trying to figure out who the kook might be.~

Muira Stewart

Wed 09:48PM CST
*she clears her throat, looking up, her bangs falling away and the light glinting off those gold flecks in her deepsea green eyes, her delicate borws arching but she maintains her silence....for after all...even a fool is considered wise when she says nothing....*

Raziel Kevlar

Wed 09:51PM CST
He followed after Muira, opting for a chair next to hers. He sat down facing her. " You look beautiful tonight Muira, how are you feeling tonight? "

Jason Malone

Wed 09:53PM CST
~His eyes shift back to Nathan~ For sitting or throwing? ~His grin takes on an almost impish aspect. His gaze slides slowly to Raz and Muira... ah... to be young and goofy again.~

Muira Stewart

Wed 09:54PM CST
*her gaze meets his, her smile brightening, flattered by his attention*Fine an'well, Raziel...the mildness o'the Summers here...enou' to boggle th' mind.....I coulda swore there was tale told of summer in Chicago being lethal.....*she looks at her foldedn hands*Ah....but summer as only just begun, aye?

Marie-Hélène

Wed 09:55PM CST
The creature's attention wandered to the book in her hand, or - specifically - to the indentations in the glossy paperback cover made by the tips of her long, delicate fingers, the splash of color blooming across the faint gloss from the light smearing from the wall sconces. "Jason." Abruptly spoken. Others have gathered in the library in the interim, but she has not perhaps bothered to notice them. Rising - undulating up from her seat - she finds her feet and holds out the well-worn volume. "I did not mean to sound either flippant or chastizing. It's just that I do not hold with hell." The Toreador glances around the room, almost abruptly, but then her gaze falls back to him. "Nor should you. But we can continue the conversation another night, I think. Good evening. M'selle Stewart. The rest of you."

the ugly one

Nathan Hale

Tue 07:23PM CST
Nathan sits at a chair on the patio, his car parked outside in the front of the Estate.

Marie-Hélène

Tue 07:24PM CST
The night is warm, the winds moderate. This evening, the Toreador eschews the library in favor of the patio. She leans against the railing at the edge, one narrow hip slung against the scrolled ironwork, one pale hand negligently dripping across the dark scrollwork, a cigarello - cheap and noxious - in her hand. Her pale hair is almost loose, bound into a thick tail at the nape of her neck with a pair of wire twist-ties usually employed to close garbage bags.

Nathan Hale

Tue 07:26PM CST
Nathan comes into view, pulling back his will which has kept him out of site until now. He lounges in the chair, dark hair mused as usual, green hawaiian shirt, cargo short and sandles. The night is clear the solistice is passed, Summer is on. Nathan tries to make it feel that way, though he missed the sun very much.

Marie-Hélène

Tue 07:35PM CST
The Toreador wears a pair of worn jeans, oversized, the waist cinched to her hips by virtue of a belt that is itself perhaps three to five sizes too big for the willowy creature. Someone has driven extra holes into the leather with something round and perhaps blunt - a screwdriver, or something similar - and the excess is doubled through the worn, straining beltloops. Above these, a cheap cotton jersey, sleeveless - perhaps even a men's undershirt - loose around the creature's narrow torso. She glances up sharply as Nathan appears within the range of her peripheral vision and fixes him with a dark-eyed, pale-lashed look.

Staring, she takes a drag from her cigarello. Inhales smoke, exhales the very same smoke. She says nothing at the moment, but the weight of her intense regard is difficult to ignore. Unblinking and unwavering, she studies him with a predator's close, patient cool.


Nathan Hale

Tue 07:37PM CST
Nathan stands slowly, moving toward the railing, pulling up his shorts as he goes. Sandles scrape over the deck of the patio. No grace in this one, he moves very much like the man he used to be. He still doesn't say a word until the mysterious woman speaks. Watching her with a slight frown on his face. As he gets within a few feet of her he offers his hand, not for a handshake but for the cigar.

Marie-Hélène

Tue 07:41PM CST
Her teeth close around the tip, lifting the black cigarello perhaps 5 degrees toward the sky, perhaps 15. The red mouth flattens around the thing, and the creature's eyes half-close as she changes the angle and subject of her study from his face to his hand. When he closes the distance, she plucks the noisome thing from her mouth, holds it delicately between her long fingers, and offers it to him, careful to keep the smouldering tip well away from either of them.

Nathan Hale

Tue 07:45PM CST
Taking the cigarello from the woman with a boyish cheshire grin. He holds it away from them as she had done. Bringing it to his lips, he takes a very small pull from it, the whole time keeping his eyes on the very unique kindred before him. Pulling the cigarello away from his lips, he mimicks her by tilting his head back at the right angle and exhaling offering it back to her.

Marie-Hélène

Tue 07:50PM CST
The tobacco is cheap and harsh, with a burning chemical undertone that lingers unpleasantly in the back of the throat. The creature's clothing is not much better: inexpensive, make-shift, at clear odds with the fineness of both her limbs and the cool confidence of her bearing. Her head swings to the side, the thick gathering of pale hair sweeping sidelong with the motion, curling tips grazing the elbow of her right arm, which supports her negligent lean. She accepts the cigarello back and lifts it to her mouth again, her chin rising in cool arrogance, her eyes slitting to study him closely.

"What did you say your name was, petit?"

Nathan Hale

Tue 07:53PM CST
Nathan turns and leans again the rail looking up at the moon as it drifts across the vast skyscape. As she speaks his gaze turns to her and then back to the moon.

"I am Nathan, I am a Lunatic."

He smiles to himself and again looks at her out of the corner of his eye.

Marie-Hélène

Tue 08:03PM CST
"Mmmm." Her fingers thread through the ironwork, broken nails working against the bare hint of rust in the narrow jointure of a particularly intricate bit of scrollwork. "Yes, a Lunatic. You told me that before. Do you remember that?" Pale brows draw in a rising upward arc, fine and narrow, just furrowed. "My name is Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais. You may call me Marie-Hélène or Mademoiselle Alette. You may not call me Marie. I am Toreador."

Amusement coils at the corners of her mouth like smoke at the edges of the sky.

Nathan Hale

Tue 08:05PM CST
Laughs and scratches his head.
"Really I cant call you Marie?"

Marie-Hélène

Tue 08:07PM CST
Flatly, with a cold and narrow stare. "No." Her spine straightens, and the change in posture emphasizes the willowy lines of her model's figure. Smoke flares from her nostrils, and her left arm drifts to her side, cigarello held carefully between her fingers.

Nathan Hale

Tue 08:10PM CST
Nathan frowns and narrows his eyes at her, remember what Morden said and decides to apply the theory.

"In that case I want to be called Duke Nathan Cornellius of Luna."


Raziel Kevlar

Tue 08:14PM CST
The revving of the motorcycle eased slowly as it approached the gates. The suit reached up to slide the faceplate up and he leaned over to press the gate box button. After being let in, he idled his way up to the front and pulled his bike to the side before cutting it off and standing it up. Removing the plain black helmet, Raziel lifted himself off and stretched slowly. He wore the same dark navy blue suit that he was always seen in. A quick check to make sure it was straight and proper, he went to the door and rapped on it once. It was answered and he was ushered in, he headed straight for the garden.

Marie-Hélène

Tue 08:19PM CST
"Mmm." The creature's generous mouth shapes itself around the sound with the sort of precision usually exercised by great masters completing masterworks. The sound - like everything about her, it seems - is negligent and careless. Her dark eyes rise dismissively, drifting over the shape of the Elysium's brick structure, and then above it, to the dark sky. She is studying the spaces between the stars, the points of untouchable distance, or so one might guess from the narrow band of concentration clear on her face. "You're Nathan the Lunatic. Remember?"


Nathan Hale

Tue 08:22PM CST
Laughs and scratches the back of his neck. Looking up to the same stars.

"Well I guess I am. Hey Marie-Helene puff, puff, give."

Reaching for the stank cigarello.

Marie-Hélène

Tue 08:28PM CST
She doesn't look at him. She simply hands him the cigarello with the same strange combination of exaction and negligance that marks her lean pose against the ironwork. The sharp posts dig into the spare flesh of her right hip. When the French doors open onto the patio, she turns and glances sharply at them, dark eyes narrowed against the rainbow blur of the outdoor sconces, studying Raziel with the same intense attention she gave to Nathan when he first appeared on the patio.


Nathan Hale

Tue 08:32PM CST
Nathan takes the cigar, doing a little Groucho Marx pose, following Marie's gaze to Mr. Kevlar. Maintaining the Marx inpersonation.

"Well, what do we have here my Chickadee, Marie?"

Raziel Kevlar

Tue 08:38PM CST
He stood there for a long minute, letting his eyes drift lazily along the entire expanse of the garden and patio area. His dark hazel eyes slide over both of them, pausing only three seconds on each looking both evenly but with any hint of expression before they kept moving. He let his feet carry him in their direction. He was a good six feet and an inch, medium build and average looks. His fine black hair hanged loosely along his jaws and his dark hazel eyes seemed to miss nothing in sight.

Marie-Hélène

Tue 08:43PM CST
The Toreador seems thoroughly inclined to ignore Nathan's comment. Her dark blue eyes remain steady on Raziel as he enters, but do not so much as flicker in Nathan's direction.

Nathan Hale

Tue 08:45PM CST
Nathan hands the rank cigarello back to her. Bowing to Raziel.

"How pleasant to see you this evening."

Not remember the mans name he decided to give his own.

"I am Duke Nathan Cornellius of Luna and I forget your name Mr..?"

Marie-Hélène

Tue 08:43PM CST
The Toreador seems thoroughly inclined to ignore Nathan's comment. Her dark blue eyes remain steady on Raziel as he enters, but do not so much as flicker in Nathan's direction.

Nathan Hale

Tue 08:45PM CST
Nathan hands the rank cigarello back to her. Bowing to Raziel.

"How pleasant to see you this evening."

Not remember the mans name he decided to give his own.

"I am Duke Nathan Cornellius of Luna and I forget your name Mr..?"

Raziel Kevlar

Tue 08:51PM CST
He watched Marie steadily but looked at Nathan when he spoke. Giving him a bow in return. " Good evening Mr. Hale." He straightned up and held a leather gloved hand out. " I am Raziel Kevlar, of the Caitiff. "

Nathan Hale

Tue 08:55PM CST
Nathan blinks 3 times fast.

[He knows who we are]
{How?}
[You probably met him and forgot]
{Why don't you start keeping track of these things then.}

Blinky blink blink. And we're back folks. He looks to Marie Helene.

"Is Katif, like the Toribore or whatever?"

Marie-Hélène

Tue 09:00PM CST
She accepts the foul smoke with a hitch of awareness, long pale fingers curling over the cheap black paper. Some hint of ink - a nothing, a whisper of it - comes away on her fine skin as she rolls the smoldering cigarello lightly back and forth, savoring the smoke. Oh - the smoke. It coils upward like a jester's thing, two and then three separate strands pulling apart then twining together: double helix, trebled helix, something intricate and complex, something nearly organic. The pale creature stares at the smoke that rolls from the little cigar trapped between her precise, pale fingers with a cool, spartan rapture. Then she exhales a lungful of smoke she has been holding far too long and destroys the tableau that has managed to enthrall her. Her fine posture changes, her body sags from the center of her gravity - now somewhere near the small of her back, the delicate incurve of her lumbar spine - and then stands. The railing shakes with the force of her movement, she releases the wrought iron and - "No. The Caitiff are the pretty ones. The Toreador are ugly, remember?" - lies without qualm or care, then strides off to the parking area beside the driveway.

accustomed.

Marie-Hélène

Sun 09:41PM CST
There are a pair of volumes in the Seneschal's library which categorically do not belong there. The room is a haven of leatherbound books, first editions and the like, fine printings set by hand and bound in the softest of colourful leathers. The two extra volumes are cheap: cheap paper - pulp, with the peculiar scent that comes to old paperbacks, almost acid but deep and woody as well - cheap inks that wash off onto one's fingers much as newspaper ink, and cheap, lurid covers. Vintage pulps from the 1950s. In the ashtray beside them, the remains of a cheap cigar. The scent is still acrid in the air.

Little wonder, then, the scent returns, harsher. Footsteps down the hallway, a driving and assured gait, the clatter of heels sharp against the wooden floor. The door swings open, and Marie-Hélène - of the battered BDUs and old cargo pants, of the cheap, self-painted t-shirts - barges in wearing a drifting dress of red silk that bares much of her long legs and skims the lean curves of her model's figure. Her hair is twisted up in three complicated layers, and the pale colour takes some hint from the dress beneath, warming the silvery locks to something more roan and golden. She goes straight for the two paperbacks, looks up suddenly, sharply as she leans to take them from their perch, and fixes Jason with a strong, sure look. "M'sieur Malone."

Jason Malone

Sun 09:45PM CST
~Already watching the doors as she comes in, having anticipated an arrival from the footsteps, one thich brow raises in curiosity at her rather... unusual appearance. His lips curl into an appreciative smile which leads to a genuinely warm chuckle.~ Well good evening little one. You are looking... exquisite this perfect night. What's the special occasion? Hot date?

Marie-Hélène

Sun 09:56PM CST
"I might well be taller than you, Jason." The paperbacks hang negligently from her long fingers, skimming the line of her hip as she assumes a pose that is constructed of equal parts smolder and slouch. The pose emphasizes the long, narrow sweep of her body, the languid length of her limbs. After a moment, she wraps her left arm around her waist, curving her fingers around her right forearm. The paperback taptaptaps against her hip. She isn't smiling, not precisely, but there is a distant, almost bemused expression on her generous mouth that echoes in the quizzical pattern of her pale brows. At least in those heels - which verge on the illegal - she may be right. "Is there some reason you must persist in calling me little one?"

Her eyes narrow faintly, but a twitch of her mouth dismisses the expression from her clarified features. She drifts a glance down at her attire and waves a dismissive hand. "There isn't a special occasion, although I did attend the symphony. I'm surprised to find you here."

Jason Malone

Sun 10:02PM CST
Surprised to find me here? ~He offers a chuckle at that~ Why? because Gangrel aren't supposed to read and appreciate knowledge and fine literature? You haven't figured out I'm not your basic cookie-cutter gangrel? It's been years though since I've heard a good symphony.

~He closes the book and sets it carefully aside, running his hand along the leather cover appreciatively before turning his gaze back to her, starting low and working up to her eyes~ As for calling you Little One... it's not much different than you calling me petit... yes? Besides, why do you persist in calling me mister Malone? Aside from the world spinning off axis reason you gave before? ~One black eye is momentarily blocked as he offers a teasing wink~ And I've always liked tall women.

Marie-Hélène

Sun 10:11PM CST
"Tch. No," her mouth curves from a smile into a pure, prescient smirk that sparks the corners of her lips wide but thins the line to a crescent. "petit. When have I ever assigned some role to you, or another? I am surprised for other reasons, and if you cannot divine them, then - " Her shoulders curl upward, then plunge. The cut is almost fitted, but certainly modest in the front. Her shoulders are left almost bare, the line of her throat and the sharp wings of her collarbones exposed, but little more than that. She remains almost still as he looks at her, though supple, subtle movements - the level of her chin, perhaps, the causal swing of her curving arm - give her clear awareness away. " - I'll not reveal them. But perhaps we can come to an agreement regarding names, diminutive and otherwise, and keep the world wholly on its axis, while we're at it?"

Jason Malone

Sun 10:17PM CST
I suppose that would be acceptable. ~he rests his elbows on the arms of the chair and steeples his fingers together in front of him~

But please, enlighten me as to your surprise at my being here? It's truly one of my more unusual quirks... I like packs and I view the Camarilla as my pack... so I will often go to places where I am likely to run into my packmates, either ones I haven't met yet or those to whom I have become accustomed to having near. ~Fortunately, or unfortunately the empty blackness of his eyes swallows most of what can usually be read in someone's eyes leaving his statement at face value or open to interpretation.~

Marie-Hélène

Sun 10:26PM CST
"That was easy." Her red mouth narrows and flattens. The expression could be narrow and hard, but her brows have not drawn together and her mouth remains wide. Instead, it appears simply private. Her eyes flicker to follow the movement of his hands, then rise to his face again. "I'm surprised at that, too. But, packs?" The fingers on her left hand open, flutter expressively as she asks the question. Her center of gravity shifts, and her body follows moments later, liquid shift. " - as in, wolves and the like?" The almost-smirk becomes a strange, rarified smile as she studies him. If this were a vaccuum. "Or something else?"

Jason Malone

Sun 10:29PM CST
~He nods a bit, his smile taking on a more pensive air to it~ Like as in animal packs... nothing more. Call it packs, family, extended family... whatever. I'm not a terrible fan of solitude. I like contact with others, mental, social, physical... all of it.

Hmmm... so I surprise you? Now that surprises me. I've always felt myself very open-bookish, almost to a dangerous degree.

Marie-Hélène

Sun 10:37PM CST
She remains as she is for a long moment, still in a pose that is near repose. His response breaks against her like waves against a sandbar, she absorbs it with her usual intensity, completely focused on his features - and then on something beyond his shoulder, some structured gathering of shadows caused by the numerous diffuse lights in the library.

"I have to go." Abruptly, the more so because there is immediate urgency to her voice, but she has not bothered to look at one. Indeed, she isn't wearing one, just a dripping strange of diamonds set in platinum that slides over her fine wrist like ice-wrought fire. "Walk with me?"

Jason Malone

Sun 10:40PM CST
~As she states that she must go he momentarily looks puzzled, as if he said something wrong but doesn't know what. When she adds the offer, the puzzlement leaves and he slips to his feet with an animal grace.~ Of course. ~with almost soundless strides, he is by her side~ Is everything alright?

Marie-Hélène

Sun 10:49PM CST
The creature turns as he rises, and for the moment before he draws abreast of her, he has the vision of her slender spine, revealed from the small of her back to the last twinned structure of her last cervical vertebra by the cut of the dress. Another chain of diamonds spills, a straight ghost of the line beneath it. The faint shadow of the platinum chain is a darker shade of pale against her flesh. "No, petit." Her mouth slips wider with that, and her pale brows rise expressively above her dark eyes. "Have I just broken our bargain, and so soon?" Her own footsteps are loud - clattering toe-heel affairs, the delicate shoes she plants with care when she remembers to do so, which she forgets when she wishes to go somewhere, now. "Nothing is wrong. I only returned for these." Lifting her right hand, to display the pulp novels. "I was already late for the next stop this evening, or I would stay and - " Her mouth narrows, her eyes flicker across his profile, and then up and away. Her chin follows suit, a keen but understated arrogance to the gesture. " - discuss packs and such things. Or - " she tosses a glance over her shoulder, keen dark eyes narrowing on the volume he had been reading. " - Dante. Who is your Beatrice" - the Italian pronounciation, scholar that she is. Her eyes are on his profile, again. The shape of his jaw. The shadows beneath it. "Jason Malone?"

Jason Malone

Sun 10:56PM CST
~And it's his turn to suddenly seem a bit off as she asks the Beatrice question... so much so that his step falters, the toe scraping across the floor before he catches himself.~ I am preparing something for you... when it is ready, then I will tell you a tale. I had a Beatrice once, and now she awaits me in hell... with only vengeance on her mind. But... that is a tale for someplace more private where the walls and occasional servants don't have ears. ~His eyes focus straight ahead as they walk, trying to regain his normal calm~ If you would permit me to retain that reflection of my inner self until then, and for that matter, if you care to know or care to participate in a special evening with someone like me... a pilgrim lost on a journey.

Marie-Hélène

Sun 11:08PM CST
His step falters; she is almost two steps ahead before she turns - raptor - and fixes him once more with the dark weight of her gaze. She looks like something caught between points of motion, an unfinished symphony, transitional, like a bird stretching its wings for flight, the moment the wind catches them, before its feet have left the ground. The creature stares with her usual abstract intensity. In the shadows of the hallway, caught betweentimes, never has she looked less human.

"Petit." It is a word that she tosses off without thought, normally, her manner so uncaring as to verge on the contemptuous. Now it is closer to an intimacy, spoken with care and and a proprietary flavor, as if she were hearing the syllables roll from her tongue (again) for the first time. She holds out a hand - her left hand, long arm across her body, for the right hand still bears the two volumes - but the straightforward invitation in the gesture, the almost-human instinct does little to soften the stark, pale lines of her sharp still features. "Retain what you will. I will not intrude. And I would be honored to join you, but you should know something."

Jason Malone

Sun 11:13PM CST
~He returns to her side, his hand clasping hers and giving it a squeeze, gently~ There are things I will not discuss in public is all. ~his black eyes look to her curiously~ What should I know?

Marie-Hélène

Sun 11:19PM CST
Her eyes drop to his hand as he takes her, squeezes the cool fingers gently. She does not return the gesture. Her hand is soft, the fingers long and stained (he can see, or perhaps fell the subtle change in texture) with ink or some similar substance. There is a tracery of rust beneath her short nails, but the green polish of earlier nights has been entirely erased. Her eyes flash up from his hand, to his eyes. She is there, her reflection, misshapen in the swimming darkness, but there.

As always, she is near captivated by herself. If nothing else, her reflection stirs her fingers in his hand. She flashes him a smile, wide and sure. "I am not likely to ever be what you think I am." That said, she releases his hand and allows her arm to slip back to her side. The red dress - which twisted with the movement - slipslides back into place as well. "If the invitation is still open, I accept."

Jason Malone

Sun 11:23PM CST
~He lets out a loud laugh, after she speaks, as if he was expecting something FAR worse than that and has had the weight of the world lifted.~ Dearest Little One... that would mean you believe I have some grand ulterior motive. Answer this... As much as our kind can be trusted friends, do you feel you could be that? If so, then I wouldn't ever be disappointed.

~He gets his usual grin back before continuing~ Besides... part of my appreciation for your company is unravelling exactly who you are... or as close to it as you will allow.

Marie-Hélène

Sun 11:35PM CST
"Will I betray you for some scrap of advantage in the long running nights? Sink my claws into your back in order to improve my standing in the Prince's eyes, or another?" She flashes him another dark-eyed glance, a supple movement of her gaze flickering away (from her reflection, and the fascination of vanity) to focus again on him. Her smile edges wide and strange. "No, never. Not because I will be a great friend, petit, but because I have no care for their games, and never will. Except - " another tender curl of her shoulders, forward, some gallic expressiveness enlivening the movement beyond a mere shrug. " - for the games I want to play, and those are entirely my own."

They are close to the door, and she stops there, her pale fingers wrapped around the handle. She casts a staying glance to the ghoul who comes to open the door for her, as if she were not entirely capable of such complex tasks herself, and turns her full attention back to Jason. The weight of the pale, complex crown of her woven hair collides with the wooden door, her hip brushes against the handle as she turns. The dress ripples, the diamonds sparkling down her back flash with captured, repressed fire. There are eyes and ears everywhere. "When you unravel the threads, let me know." She flashes another brimming smile and carefully depresses the latch. The door opens behind her, spilling her almost stumbling into the cool night. She watches him for another moment, for any reply that he might give, half-supported by the heavy weight of the door, and then regains her footing, turns and walks away.

Jason Malone

Sun 11:41PM CST
~He nods gently as he watches her go, his thoughts hidden in the soulless eyes~ Little one... I give almost anyone the chance to betray me once... after that, they lose the ability, so I do not fear. Play your games, my dear... I'm sure they will be as entertaining and captivating as you.

~He follows her out the door, he himself heading for his jeep, his hands slipping in the front pockets of his jeans.~ There are VERY few things cut in stone about the future. We do not know what will be found in our journey... nor who we will become. When I unravel your tapestry, perhaps even you will be surprised. Be safe, Marie-Helene... I have become accustomed to you. ~He turns and heads off towards his jeep.~

more fun than others

[Missed early posts. Just greetings and such. They're in the library.]

Nathan Hale

Sat 12:01PM CST
Looks from woman to woman, shivers for a second.

{Dude I dont think we should be here.}
[Listen just stay calm I will get us threw this]
{Okay this is your rodeo}
[No problem]


Nathan walks to the walk, as if looking at one of the volumes of books, mumbling to himself under his breath, then popping his neck.

Marie-Hélène

Sat 12:14PM CST
The Toreador stares quite flatly at Nathan as he mumbles underneath his breath, and generally stumbles into the room, betraying an inordinate amount of nervousness. Her generous mouth sets itself into a flat line, and the creature's nostrils flare with an unnecessary but absolutely expressive snort. "Tell me something interesting, Mme Hough."

Cassandra Hough

Sat 12:18PM CST
She looks at Marie and arches a brow, "Interesting in what way? Are you not more inclined towards the artistic and interesting than I? Us Ventrue are very stuffy I've heard." Traces of a smile on her lips

Nathan Hale

Sat 12:20PM CST
Nathan doesnt even know the word Ventrue, but realizes the woman is givig him a hint, his dominate side of him kicks in. He turns oh how rude of me.

"I am of the Clan Malkavian."

He just blurts it out. Then bows like a stage actor.

Marie-Hélène

Sat 12:24PM CST
"Something you consider interesting, madame. I'm not given to stereotyping. Perhaps you have something to say worth the time I'll spend listening to it." Marie-Hélène spares a sliver of a glance for Cassandra, dark eyes stark in her pale face, sharp features nearly unstructured with the lack of conventional definition. Her brows and lashes are the same pale, nearly colorless blonde as the untidy mass of her hair. At Nathan's outburst, she glances sharply up. Her mouth spreads in a spare expression that flashes white teeth beneath painted lips, but cannot really be termed a smile. "Yes, petit. We've already quite figured that part out." The spoiled creature rolls her eyes precipitously, then refocuses on the next nail, peeling off another layer of old paint.

Nathan Hale

Sat 12:26PM CST
Nathan scratches his head and looks from woman to woman again.

"And you evil things are?"

Cassandra Hough

Sat 12:26PM CST
Her tone drops a couple of degrees in temperature, "Oh, I doubt I have anything interesting to say to you, nothing that could be worth your obviously precious time." The polite smile stays on her face and she turns her attention to Nathan, gesturing to him to come closer. "Indeed you are. You seem quite ill at ease, is there a way to remedy that?"

Cassandra Hough

Sat 12:28PM CST
Cassandra seems surprised and amused as he says this, "I am not evil, in fact, I have once upon a time been described as delightful, I cannot speak for Miss Alette. Are you evil?" Her amused eyes bore into Nathan.

Nathan Hale

Sat 12:29PM CST
Nathan raises an eyebrow, this woman looked to antique to mess with, the sparks between the two woman scared him, so he sought a seat where he could watch them both.

Marie-Hélène

Sat 12:33PM CST
"You see?" Her blunt thumbnail at last undercuts the ragged patch of paint on her index finger. The flake pops off the nail, and the creature turns her complete, undivided attention to the next nail. "That was extraordinarily interesting, Mme." The spare almost-smile has fallen from her mouth, and the creature is nearly expressionless once more. She taps a glance from Cassandra to Nathan and back again, at his question and her answer. "I eschew conventional definitions of good and evil. They're tiresome, and I'm afraid rather restricting. However, unlike Madame Hough, I confess that I have never been considered delightful."

Nathan Hale

Sat 12:43PM CST
"I myself am a Humanitarian."

Cassandra Hough

Sat 12:44PM CST
"So, now that we have that settled, what troubles you, young man?"

Nathan Hale

Sat 12:47PM CST
"I came here after being called by Mr. Stevenson. But I come here often of late. "

Cassandra Hough

Sat 12:50PM CST
"Well, it is a shame then that he is not available at the moment. Please do sit. You are making me nervous." She smiles in an amiable fashion.

Nathan Hale

Sat 12:52PM CST
He sits in one of the leather bound chair crossing his legs, placing his hands on his laps.

"So you know lot about me and I know nothing really about either of you ladies. What is a Ventrue?"

Marie-Hélène

Sat 12:56PM CST
Marie-Hélène has finished with her fingers. Only the index finger has been freed of its unfortunate affliction (and, for that matter, affectation) of green paint, and so it remains. In lieu of further grooming activities, she instead curls her right leg beneath her body and half-rises, swinging a long arm over the chair's arm, reaching to the floor for her small black bag. From the black leather bag: a spiral-bound book, whose metal binding digs into the flesh of her left hand as she cups it carefully and slides a pen from inside the metal rings. The pen is cheap, a Bic stolen from a Motel 6 in Lima, Ohio, the plastic heavily marked with the dull incisions of human teeth. She rests the pen in her mouth - between her teeth - as if it were a cigarette, and watches the pair of them with an animal's extraordinary intensity. Perhaps she is simply given to dramatics.

Cassandra Hough

Sat 12:59PM CST
"Nothing too important." She smiles calmly. Do you have one that you would call a parent or sire? Someone who made you?

Nathan Hale

Sat 01:07PM CST
((no worries))

"I actually do not know. I have been mentored by Teagan but only on our clan. Not yours. I am interested."

Marie-Hélène

Sat 01:13PM CST
"And has she schooled you, yet - " Her pen is still perched between her teeth. She speaks around it, and the obstruction highlights both her faint accent and the clear, pedantic precision of her pronunciation. "In the importance of throwing dramatic fits at inopportune times? I find that to be an important and underestimated skill." The creature offers another - oh, it is not a smile - baring of white teeth, and unfolds her body, snapping the journal closed and stetching her arms luxuriously above her head. She holds the pose for a long moment before collapsing almost bonelessly in upon herself. Her shoulders coil in a bare, indifferent shrug. "If not, you should ask her to begin such instruction, petit. It would not do for your to fall behind in your lessons."

Cassandra Hough

Sat 01:14PM CST
She smiles, "Teagan is a lovely girl. Ventrues are the traditional leaders of our organization. Miss Allete's clan has a flair for the dramatic, and," she pauses and a hint of a smirk, "it would appear that perhaps your mentor does as well."

Nathan Hale

Sat 01:17PM CST
Nathan scratches his head listening to them both, watching Marie pull of the catty stretch pose. He raises an eyebrow.

"Yes.. right. Well it is all very new to me you see so. I guess I will be learning about outbursts and drama and what not."

Marie-Hélène

Sat 01:25PM CST
The pen shifts position; Marie-Helene rolls it between her teeth like a cigar. The already buckled plastic cracks further, a faint, almost wet sound shirring as the barrell collapses and distends beneath the pressure of her teeth. "You shouldn't listen to madame," the creature mutters, almost sullenly, after a moment. She removes the pen and considers the now oval barrell, studying the pattern of breakage in the cheap plastic, the manner in which the gold ink marking the address and phone number of the hotel has been chipped away over time. Her eyes - which are dark and blue, some twilight color, shaded by pale lashes - half-lid as she considers the patterns and - perhaps - becomes lost in such considerations. Rousing herself, she flickers a glance at Cassandra and then back to Nathan. "I quite despise dramatics, and would not ever engage in anything like them. Whatever you learn about the clans will be wrong when it comes to any single individual. You'll be easily misled if you incorporate the stereotypes into your worldview. And you should probably not seek instruction around creatures such as me. I will delight in leading you astray."

Cassandra Hough

Sat 01:28PM CST
Cassandra chuckles softly as she watches Marie speak.

Nathan Hale

Sat 01:32PM CST
Nathan takes this into account. Feeling the leather arms of the chair. Taking in what was said. His cherubic face forms into a cheshire grin.

"What are the ugly ones called again?"

Marie-Hélène

Sat 01:33PM CST
Expressionlessly: "Toreador."


Nathan Hale

Sat 01:35PM CST
"Oh okay Toreador are the ugly ones."

Nathan makes a mental note of it.

Marie-Hélène

Sat 01:41PM CST
"The pretty ones are Brujah. The Gangrel are crazed, skulking monsters." Off-handedly, the creature curls her shoulders in negligent expression and twirls the broken pen between her fingers. Glimpses of the journal reveal only script, no sketches, nothing of the sort. Pages and pages of dense, heavy handed script running together as if actual words had been melted, unformed and refused in a broken amalgam. "Shouldn't you get to work on the hysterics?" Her pale brows rise, the both of them, widening her dark eyes and lending a quizzical expression to her sharp features. "I recommend beginning with a traditional tantrum before you branch out into the more difficult variations."

Nathan Hale

Sat 01:44PM CST
"Tantrum..huh?"

Nathan sits confused.


"You mean like a child? Nah I'm cool."

Marie-Hélène

Sat 01:49PM CST
"Suit yourself, petit." The Toreador twirls the pen about, and slides it back into her mouth, broken barrel and all. She finds the apex of failure with her right canine tooth - still dull and human - and her jaw sinks closed. The cracks widen, splinter, the sound is some small, lesser cousin of the sound an ice floe makes as it begins to break apart.

Nathan Hale

Sat 01:53PM CST
"I have been learning lots of history about the great wars and some of the clans, but I mean this is now-a-days what do vampires do?"

Nathan stratches the back of this neck and pops it.

Cassandra Hough

Sat 01:55PM CST
"We seem to sit around old libraries while we toy with others." She smirks.

Nathan Hale

Sat 01:56PM CST
Nathan laughs out loud.
"We need special hand shakes."

Marie-Hélène

Sat 01:58PM CST
"We produce drag shows, generally. Occasionally, the Camarilla branches out and backs some up and coming young musical, but often as not, the whole overstructured apparatus makes everything grind to a complete halt, the promising young musical becomes little more than a series of boring vignettes, nothing more than pastiche, and no one is interested. The bureaucracy backs up, takes stock, pulls out, and returns to the drag show business. My - " crack. The barrel splits deeply, now, no longer oval but flat, with three sharp spikes of plastic at the stressed corner. " - personal job is to fluff the - oh, Madame Hough - what does one call it? The glittering little bits of foil through which the performers march onto stage."

Marie-Hélène removes the pen from her mouth, and tips the broken thing in the Ventrue's direction. "Or, yes. There is that, too."

Nathan Hale

Sat 02:00PM CST
Nathan shakes his head lost.

Cassandra Hough

Sat 02:01PM CST
"Some of us have a lot more fun than others though, obviously," she chuckles.

Marie-Hélène

Sat 02:07PM CST
"Yes, if they try to toss off the fluffing glitter job on you, petit, you should refuse categorically. There's nothing to recommend it, and it's terribly hard on the knees. Moreover, have you any idea how hard it is to get glitter out of your mouth and eyes after a show? The schedule is punishing." The Toreador tosses her broken pen onto the table beside her, abandoning it there. She takes up her journal and rises with a precipitous almost-grace, some confident undertone clear in the movement. Her hair swings heavily on the back of her head, a creditable mass of pale colour, barely kept in place by the most make-shift of fastenings. "And I have more glitter to fluff. Madame." She tosses a glance and a faint nod toward Cassandra. "Monsieur." And a similar nod toward Nathan, then bends, scooping her bag from the floor and striding toward the door.

Boundaries

Jason Malone

Thu 07:21PM CST
~Much like the night before, the evening started at the Park and then continued, after changing, over to the club. He arrived, dressed more civilized than usual with gray pleated slacks and a black silk banded collar shirt. His eyes, as always, hidden behind sunglasses... this night, they are black instead of the usual mirrored. Black python-skinned cowboy boots clicked along the floor as he walked. Once inside, he stepped to the side and let his eyes adjust as he surveyed those in attendance.~

Jason Malone

Thu 07:29PM CST
~Slowly he began moving through the crowd, brushing against people ever-so-lightly, but enough to feel them, to smell them and to feed off their life and energy. Despite being gangrel, he loved the pure animal nature that people practically oozed at places like this. It was often the best hunting grounds and a true gift to those like him. His movements merged with the underlying beat in the music as he stalked through the field of prey, his every move, every step one of predatory grace.~

Marie-Hélène

Thu 07:32PM CST
She is seated at the bar; but seated is not the proper word for the negligent manner in which she inhabits her barstool or casts her pale elbows casually back, both resting against the bar. She must certainly own finer things than she usually deigns to wear - isn't it the price of admission to her particular club? - but tonight as usual, she is downwardly mobile. Oversized cargo pants, an ugly olive color with coarse fabric hang suspiciously from her narrow hips. The pants are ridiculously oversized, in a way that cannot even be supported on her willowy frame, and come close to swallowing her entirely. Oversized, fraying pockets on either thigh, the hint of jackboots at the feet - just a gleam of dull polish, perhaps, at the toes, nearly swallowed by the frayed bottom hem. Atop this, she wears an ordinary black cotton jersey, a wifebeater that fits to the lines of her narrow torso in such a way as to emphasize only her thinness, the near straight, narrow line of her body, the length of her long arms, which can seem either elegant or merely storklike.

Despite the unlikely get-up, someone is chatting her up. At the least, he is attempting to do so, leaning across the bar with a bottle of beer in his hand, apparently speaking in a low voice. Now and again, the pale creature shoots the man next to her a sharp and narrow glance that bleeds into the merely bemused. She makes not one word of reply, and insteads studies the crowd, its riot of movement near organic, a larger organism that throbs like a great fat heart riddled with worms.

There is a shark among the sheep. After some time, her dark gaze fixes on him to the exclusion of all else.

Jason Malone

Thu 07:39PM CST
~Moving up behind one mortal woman or another as he crosses the floor, he moves up behind her, moving still with the music. Under his sunglasses his eyes close as he forces breath into his lungs through his nose, his keen senses taking in the scent of the woman... down to the alcohol in her blood which peeks out in the perspiration as she dances. His lips curl upward, his hands tracing her form without ever touching her before he lets out a low growl, swallowed by the din of the place and moves away from this particular sheep.~

His eyes constantly scan the area and eventually feel the weight of Marie-Helene's gaze, his shielded gaze going to her as he moves up behind another potential meal, mimicking his previous actions.~

Marie-Hélène

Thu 07:48PM CST
The Toreador watches him steadily, but makes no move to rise. She simply reclines there against the bar. There is a highball glass beside her right elbow half-full with amberish liquid, sweating slowly, leaching a deep, ragged wet stain into the napkin surrounding the glass.

He moves from woman to woman on the dance floor - predator, in time to the beat of the music - and she shifts position minutely to follow his path. Her sharp features are half framed by the loose halo of her pale hair, which catches the wild, shifting colors spilling over the crowd and reflects them back, reds and blues, yellows and oranges, the colors of the spectrum. Her mouth is the only other colorful thing about her, the generous width painted a deep red, but the color is mostly lost, for her lips are pressed together in a strange, flat smile that just tilts upward at the corners, a bare impression.

Jason Malone

Thu 07:56PM CST
~As he leaves the next potential victim, he again snakes through the crowd, stopping behind one mortal or another, then looking to Marie-Helene the way one would asking whether their friend would prefer this shirt or that, or more appropriately, this steak or that one.~

~It's always amused him, moving among them. He prefered smaller clubs, less frequented by his own kind, where he could feed almost openly without concern as to whether his peers saw the momentary flash of fang. Fangs, oh how his ached at the moment, so wanting to sink in and feast... but he must refrain... at least for the moment. Again, his dead lungs took in the scents of those nearest him, reveling in their life energies.~

Marie-Hélène

Thu 08:07PM CST
Marie-Hélène remains almost utterly still. The man with the beer beside her has long since given up his attempted banner, and the empty space beside her is soon filled as the crowd of drinkers senses an open place at the bar. The small crowd grows - 2 or 3 deep - people squeezing in for a drink, then fighting their way back through the narrow knot about them. She seems utterly unaffected by the scene: by the nearness of the humans, by the heat, by the tangle of smoke spilling up to the ceiling, by any of the women he has offered.

...smoke, she moves at last. Leans forward enough to tip her right arm behind her and retrieve a fat, ugly cigar that has been smoldering in an ashtray six inches to her right. She puffs slowly on the cigar, with a near-meditative focus, a precise care given over to the casual action, still watching. At last, she opens her mouth, a cloud of smoke roils out from between her red lips and she nods, surely. Mouths the words that one before returning to the cigar. That one is no one special or spectacular, but she is close to toppled from some combination of alcohol and exhaustion. Her eyes are nearly crossed, her dancing is wild and jerky, without rhythm, closer to series of involuntary muscle spasms than a dance.

Jason Malone

Thu 08:19PM CST
~He grins a bit as she indicates the one that's completely sloshed. No challenge tonight... that's for sure, but he slips around in front of her, amid her and her friends and leans in talking to her as she dances and he maintains his same predatory dance. He leans in even further after she responds to him and kisses her neck gently before starting to back away, making sure the woman hears his last words. She nods and he spins around, making his way over towards Marie-Helene.~

~As he approaches her, he ceases his baser instinct of taking in others' scents, realizing the cigar would drown out most things. He smiles, much like he did with the women on the dancefloor, as if she too is prey. Inserting himself between Marie-Helene and the small crowd, he places both hands on the bar, trapping her in place before he leans close, his chin at her shoulder as he forces another breath in, this one running from the base of her neck up into her hair. When he finishes, he pulls back to look at her once more~ "That one was too easy tonight... but I've made arrangements to ensure she's more of a challenge when the time is right."

~His lips curl into an almost sadistic, or perhaps just devlish smile~ "I'm glad you could make it. I trust, as always, you're night is perfect"

Marie-Hélène

Thu 08:36PM CST
She is half-perched, half-slouched across the stool at the bar, her feet planted forward from the lean length of her body, her shoulders thrust back, hovering a few inches above and in front of the bar. He does not simply trap her against the bar: he must lean across and above the lean, coiled length of her long body to place his chin above her shoulder, to breath a breath across the pale sweep of her bare neck. She lifts her smoldering cigar out of his way as he steps near, holding it back, away from her body and his, over the bar. Her eyes move as he sweeps in, tracking his hidden eyes until he is too close. Then, she tracks the hollow at the jointure of neck and jaw, watching the movement of sinew, bone and muscle as he speaks.

He can feel the faint curve of her cheek deepening. It is not a touch, so much as a sensation of air displaced close to his skin. Before he draws back, to look at her, she tips her head to the side and brushes her cool mouth across his cheek. One-half of a continental greeting.

"Always, petit." His glasses are not mirrored, but the dark lenses are still subtly reflective. She is there - a pale smear of near colorless blond hair and porcelain skin, an impression of light without detail. Her dark blue eyes shift over this reflection, but no clear expression surfaces on her generous mouth. Moments pass like this. She makes a show of breathing, and the movement feels charged. She exhales, and stares at him with the same curious opacity. At last, her body compacts through the torso and she leans forward, brushing her cheek against his mouth, her mouth against his opposite cheek. The second half of a continental greeting, into which she murmurs, "Perhaps I do not like challenges."

Jason Malone

Thu 08:44PM CST
~As she gifts him with the continental greeting, she can more feel than hear the low growling rumble... perhaps less a growl than a purr. In either case, the sound is not one of annoyance or anger, perhaps one of contentment. No question there are a finite number of people that could get that close to him without feeling his fangs, angrilly. In a slightly animalistic fashion, the tip of his tongue grazes against her cheek as she completes the greeting... perhaps his own version of the continental greeting...perhaps just curiosity.~

"Not liking challenges? We will have to work on that then... We'll have to broaden your horizons. Besides, what fun is victory when the battle is assured?"

Marie-Hélène

Thu 08:52PM CST
Her skin tastes sharp: not with the tang of human sweat, but with the sharp ashen promise of good tobacco. The scent suffuses her skin, mingles with the cheap noxiousness of the grainy pink soap common to convenience store bathrooms. Beneath these paired scents, other residue: chemical and organic, vinegar and rot so faint no human and few predators could sense them. "My horizons are more broad than you might know, cher. I don't even recognize the existance of horizons. That there is some limit to the world is rather - " as she leans back, she returns the cigar to the ashtray on the bar. Her long right arm - the bare skin awash in runnels of multicolored light - lilts downward to settle atop his own, where it cages her in. Her fingers spread wide over his forearm, the nails short and brittle, remnants of old green polish lingering just above the pale half-moons of the nailbed. " - limiting." One corner of her mouth quirks wider. "But tell me, how will you expand them if I admit to their existence?"

Jason Malone

Thu 09:07PM CST
~His eyes, from the safety of the sunglasses watch her every move, every detail of her being at this range. 'This one has potential' he thinks to himself... but in the back of his mind, the warning... she is Toreador... like all Toreador, she can't be trusted. That small voice is followed by the mocking laughter at the thought of a Toreador ever being a threat to him... as long as he remained alert~

"You are ever the enigma... aren't you, little one?" ~He grins before reaching over and taking her cigar and bringing it to his lips, taking a puff off of it, letting the smoke move off to the side before replacing the cigar in the ashtray~ "You don't like challenges... or rather may not like challenges, and recognize no boundaries... well, we shall test both of these things then in the near future. There are certainly limits though, self imposed as they may be. We are not free to do as we choose, even in this life. Rules... traditions of society guard against that... for better or worse."

Marie-Hélène

Thu 09:22PM CST
Something in her gaze sharpens. Pale lashes flatten, and her dark eyes narrow as she lifts her chin in a kind of studied defiance, provoked by the diminutive that she bestows so freely upon all others. She stares hard at him, her features sharp in the 3/4 profile, her hand light upon his arm, her mouth twisted into a mild, contemplative frown. "I'm not an enigma," she replies at last. Her nostrils flare against the scent of the tobacco as the cigar drifts in front of her. "I understand myself quite perfectly. With the whole picture, it all makes sense. Or something like it. Language is a thin vessel in which to embed understanding, however. It shatters."

She offers a momentary shrug, the black cotton against her pale skin, the knotwork of muscle, the sharp emptiness beneath the flat curve of her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her through. And smiles again. "Or perhaps I shatter it. Do you chafe against the boundaries of society?"

Jason Malone

Thu 09:33PM CST
~Aha...something finally seems to have gotten to her. He takes a mental note, hiding it in the predatory grin. He stands up, freeing her to move about, but slowly slides his arm along under her hand, reminding one of how a dog will pet itself under someone's hand~ "Enigma is not an insult, little one... it's a term of respect. It's never good to be THAT open of a book."

~His hand reaches out and brushes against her cheek for a moment as if swiping an errant piece of hair from her cheek.~ "and yes... I chafe against the boundaries of society. I'm certain you'll learn that about me soon. But for now... I must go and get a bite to eat... and that is something I do in solitude... at least for now. All of this play has made me exceedingly hungry." ~Was it the play on the dancefloor with the mortals or the wordplay with her?~

"I will see you soon little one... for something a bit more liberating... if you're up for it. I truly enjoy testing boundaries... It'll be an interesting challenge to find yours."

~From behind the dark glasses, black eyes glimmer with mischief.~

Marie-Hélène

Thu 09:48PM CST
Marie-Hélène's features remain nearly still. Her dark eyes flash down to his arm and her hand as he releases her; she watches her fingers slide over his arm with an expression so abstracted it appears quizzical. The pale wedges of her fine fingers, the black silk beneath them, the shape of his arm defined by the shape of her hand, the shape of the sleeve, the sheen of light pooling on the fabric. So easily is her attention captured. Rapt, she stares at the absent space where his arm was for several moments after it is gone. Her fingers flex and stretch to the limits of their motion. She does not look up until he brushes his hand across her cheek - a stray lock of her haphazardly arrayed hair, or merely a stray touch. Her eyes narrow minutely, but her mouth twists in supple, ambivalent response.

"I wonder what you will find, petit." She flickers a glance back to his eyes; or at least, to her reflection in the dark glasses. Expressionless again, she simply tips her pale head as he steps further away, begins to melt into the crowd. There is a sudden, sharp, inhuman smile before she loses sight of him. "Enjoy your meal."

correspondences. - by return of post

[By return of post: a cardboard box of moderate size. The address was printed by a computer on a sticky label, some mail-packaging facility. Inside, an inordinate amount of popcorn, styrofoam peanuts, and bubblewrap surround a smaller package. The second box is acid-free, museum-archival quality. Within this box, a letter on fine linen paper, so very rich that would could, perhaps, weave clothing from it, did one have the drive and skill. The ink, however, is watery and cheap - a ball point pen, of all things, and not a fine one. Her handwriting begins in a neat, contemplative fashion. She was paying close attention to the nib of the pen against the paper, the shapes that she constructed as she wrote, the nap of the paper beneath her pen. As the letter continues, however, the script grows hurried, slanting, reckless as usual.

The packing material inside the second box is also archival quality, and it surrounds, eventually, a much-corroded but still intact leather-bound journal, the account of one Silas Krieger covering perhaps ten years from 1813 to 1823 in the Old Northwest Territory (Ohio, or Michigan. Closer inspection might reveal which.). Krieger was a farmer, and the journal is largely an account of his holdings, his plantings, the life of his farm and county. In the middle is an extended dissertation on the state of the world shortly after the war of 1812, with discussions of US-Canada relations, US-Europe relations, the state of the European states, European history, political economy, and so on. It is quite out of keeping with the rest of the terse accounts, passionate and insightful - an intelligent man's creation - but it is - frankly - nothing new. There are no great revelations about the state of the world, and the thinking is - though sweeping - often cliched, if intelligently so. The account that caught her attention has some interest, but the real historical value of the journal lies in the daily accounts the Toreador has scorned. A genuine scholar of the age could reconstruct the political and agricultural history of the community and learn much about life on one of the early American frontiers, the state of relations with the natives, could - perhaps - fill in the blanks about several now-extinct tribes, and so on.]

From the forum post:

Ignoring rather than placating the wanton, violent black thing that lives inside her cool, pale shell, she closes the journal and takes up the least of weapons: a pen. The paper below is thick and rich, almost creamy, appropriate for correspondence, but the pen is cheap, plastic, breakable. He writes with old-fashioned ink. She writes with whatever is handy at the moment, caring for the appearance of the thing only when she wishes to trouble herself to do so. She is momentarily stymied by the blankness before her, not simply by the possibilites, but also by the challenge it presents. Her head tips to the side, and the long, wretched tangle of her golden hair spills over her left shoulder. Irritated, by the bulk she brushes it away and returns to the blank page before her, wonders, idly, whether any other will read her own insignificant words long after she is dead, words written in the shell of dead building, on the banks of a dead river, beneath the facsimile of a dead night's sky.

Under such circumstances, it is so easy to begin. She smiles a generous, treacherous, predator's smile, and writes:

Dear Sir,

"The struggle between good sense and power, has continued with daily increasing violence, since the invention of printing. How this contest is to terminate, it is now difficult to predict; but such is the powerful aid given to reason by the press, that the best result may be hoped."

You will find this passage in the enclosed volume, surrounded by accounts of the peculiar diseases to which cattle were apparently subjected 200 years ago. We share the same interest in cattle, and so I believed that you would quite enjoy the enclosed volume. You will excuse me if I am not the best of correspondents, but I have roused my shadow with indelicate thoughts and have not yet appeased it. I will not appease it, of course, not when it bawls so. Hunger is one thing; savagery another. I am not opposed to savagery within reason, but will not favor it without cause. I do not know if I sound precious when I write that. I suspect that I do, but you - I think - know me well enough by now to know that I am not a sentimental creature and do not cry and bemoan my current state and appetites. But cruelty, sadism, delight in mere destruction, power - yes? over others, not the self - is merely another form of decadence, another braided thread of self-delusion. I think it would be the beginning of the end, to succumb -

- oh, but you know this. As ever. What am I? Some recording forever pitched into an endless loop, the same ethical considerations, the same temptation to stray, the same restraint. I construct myself in our correspondence so that I may remember. The fight is eternal, the battle one of attrition. It is easy to lose, I think, but I will be wholly Greek. Balance is all in such things.

And so, my farmer. Our farmer, now, I suppose. I do not believe that there is anything unique in this account - although, I am no expert in the area, my knowledge confined to a quite narrow peninsula in the whole continent of human knowledge, and perhaps you will find more of interest in the dry accounts of surveys and haying - but I was quite taken with the passion of his analysis of the political imperatives of the day, not simply those of his home or county, but of the world. I have always considered such consciousness of the world, or one's place in it as an active participant, a thing peculiar to the aristocracy (political, moral, intellectual) at least through the mid-nineteenth century. To find such insight, such passionate force in the writings of a nameless man from the middle of nowhere, with no influence and little stake, well, I do not know whether this is a lovely thing or a tragedy, but I have breathed this man's passion for four nights now, and suspect you will find at least some diversion in the contents of the volume. Never apologize to me for your scholarly discourses. Lecture me at length: I am an apt and rapt pupil, you see.

I welcome the gossip; of course, they tear themselves apart. They have nothing else to do. Here, I am afraid, that there is nothing so cohesive that it may be torn apart. The elders have the collective brain power of - oh, a muddle-headed cow - and the younger crowd contains so many pallid specimens that I despair of finding any worthwhile companionship in social circles. Perhaps I will be driven away out of sheer boredom, rather than simply "sauntering vaguely downward" as is my wont. I do like sauntering, however. I think it suits my figure.

Oh, I have found a few who are not entirely, irredeemably boring, but I do worry that, within a century or so, the standards will have fallen so far that the vaunted institution of which I am a member and from which you are - how shall I put it delicately, petit? - voluntarily exiled will fall not from the treacherous weight of all the irrelevant scheming, but from the sheer, mind-numbing stupidity of its members. What is it that happens to cows in London these days? With the sponges in the brain? One wonders if such a disease affects all portions of the food chain equally, both downward and again upward. I apologize for my extended (and trite) contemplation of my society. I know you cannot find such petty complaints amusing, who have broken all ties, and perhaps you find my continued adherance almost perverse. I suspect it is. As to how they find me, I believe one or two are quite taken with me, others are easily offended, but a few pale words soothe their tempers, and the rest - oh, the rest put me in a narrow box that best approximates what they think I should be, and then simply ignore it when I walk outside the box. Much as - I think? - they did you, before you broke ties and confounded your brethern.

You know - or do you? - that I quite share your opinion of humans, individually and en masse. I find their innovation and constant - how to express it - drive. Drive! utterly compelling. New York is a thing of such beauty, but so too is Cleveland or Pittsburgh, Paris or Tokyo. I hope, I think, to find myself in Tokyo someday, to immerse myself in strangeness, although I will have to expand my knowledge of languages, as I'm afraid none of the languages at my disposal would see me through Tokyo. I could go on, and will - no doubt - someday soon, but tonight I feel dawn gathering at the edges of the world. I must send this off to you, and seek my refuge.

yours,

ellie mae (now that I am decidedly midwestern)

P.S. - I note that you did not respond to my offer of play-by-mail Monopoly. I assume silence means assent, and therefore offer you an update. You are now the limousine - you see how I esteem you? - and you have ended up in jail. In the meantime, I have gathered the railroads to my tender breast, and am eyeing the utilities with a certain calculting lust.

P.P.S. - You cannot know how much receipt of your letter enlivened my night. The thought of you always brings a smile to my lips.

P.P.P.S. - My love to Lady Delinore, although I am not sure that she will return the sentiment. Has she forgiven me the incident with the - well - she will know the incident, if you do not.

P.P.P.P.S. - I have raided the alphabet for my ps tonight. I find my funds growing short - perhaps another few months before I am destitute, and so I am brokering a deal with the usual suspects. If you are interested in joining me, do tell. As usual, it will be a one-time deal.


[Additions: I have no idea what incident she's referring to. Heh. Make it up, or pretend he's never heard about it, or is too much a gentleman to mention it. As for the "deal," M-H funds her unlife by maintaining certain connections first cultivated during her student days. She brokers "conflict diamonds" for certain Sierra Leonian (and other) rebels - brutal, stupid men all. There is nothing noble in this - through diamond cutters in Amsterdam willing to inscribe these contraband diamonds with the serial numbers that all non-conflict diamonds have to have in order to be sold in the US and Europe, and then brokers the diamonds at the diamond exchange in NYC, or directly in some cases. Boring business, but necessary. This also explains her rather extensive collection of diamond bracelets, chains, etc. I'm assuming she's invited him to participate in the past? Maybe to invest money, only, maybe to broker some? I don't know. So. Yeah. ;) Whatever works, and if it doesn't, ignore the last PPPPS. :grins:]

la muse malade

There are words on her hands, another's words, the crabbed script reversed and inscrutible. The paper and ink are older than the rusting shell of a structure in which she resides, beached like some fat, dead whale on the banks of the sluggish old river. The lingering scents are chemical, residual, but infected, infested by the river's slow moist rot. The factory - long abandoned - has been stripped of every useful bit of equipment, and most of the useless scraps as well. What remains are only those things too large for the loading bay doors, too outdated to be worth even the scrap metal, or too cumbersome to lift without a massive industrial crane.

And there is one of those, here, too. A crane: industrial, its stark, rusting structure resembles nothing so much as the broken bones of a brontosaurus slapped together again with rust and glue, looming over the squalid entrance to some third-rate natural history museum. The tracks are invisible, lost in the overhead gloom but the huge neck looms over the central cavern of theold factory, its useless boom near fused into position by oxidation. Dead thing that she is, she is only there to study the old factory's scraps at night, deep shadows broken here and there by some reflection of the city's lights. Her perspective is that of a blind man, with the whole of an elephant to explore, and she supplies the details that are missing, anthropomorphizes the long dead machine, romanticizes it, when she is in a romantic frame of mind. It has a name in her mind - wordless, inhuman - and some slumbering consciousness, so huge and low it cannot be imagined but only approached: an asymptotic understanding.

Tonight she is in a romantic frame of mind, and she glances up from the crumbling pages, the claustrophobic script, to the still expanse above her. It is dark enough in here that she can fool herself into believing that the roof has been removed, that she stares up into the heart of some altered night sky, some variant future where all the stars have been extinguished, and only the utter blackness remains. She looks to the broken void of the sky; her gaze drops to the open page near dissolving beneath her long, pale fingers. She considers both of them, together, and the harsh quality of light cast by her cheap plastic torch, its directed beam diffused by a makeshift metal shade - no more than a punctured bucket upturned on its end - flaking rust.

The world at this moment, presents very nearly the same evidence that has been given by every country and every age, that wisdom and foresight but rarely have much influence, in producing extensive revolutions. So much depends upon circumstances, beyond all our powers of calculation, that in almost every instance of human history, the events have been productive of consequences, directly contrary to prediction. A few, and a very limited few, have ever possessed talent enough, to form correct estimates of the real bearing of great commotions among mankind. Effects are continually mistaken for causes.

She is seated, cross-legged, on a bulbous structure that reminds her of a flattened toadstool, seen through a looking glass. An engineer might know what purpose the great fat dead metal thing once served, but she cannot begin to speculate. Such practical considerations are well beyond her, the intricacies of structure and engineering, the mysteries of load bearing and cogs and wheels, fulcrums and teeth and gears. Her appreciation of the echoing space is wholly aesthetic. Industry dies, lives pass, but the bones remain to rust and bleach in the sun, to be haunted by the cold hard moon. And her, of course.

Somewhere above, on the tar-covered roof a young man - the sort who still breathes and wants and eats and fucks and sleeps the sort of dreaming sleep now foreign to her - sprawls in a lightheaded swoon engendered by alcohol and bloodloss. It is his blood that is still hot in her mouth, staining her pale lips deep red. His blood that makes her head swim until the tight characters of the scrabbling script bleed wordlessly together and reform. She smiles a cool smile at the sensation, and then smiles the same cool smile against the sensation; her head clears abruptly. An hour or two before dawn pales the sky, she will lead the young man stumbling away from this industrial wasteland and put him back on the path to humanity. For now, she is content to leave him where he is, struggling to consciousness in the cool night wind.

The struggle between good sense and power, has continued with daily increasing violence, since the invention of printing. How this contest is to terminate, it is now difficult to predict; but such is the powerful aid given to reason by the press, that the best result may be hoped. The French revolution was nothing more than an effect of this long opposition of prescriptive usurpation, against a relinquishment of power. Those who view the triumph of despotism as complete, know little of human nature, and less of the ordinary course of thing in the world. Every symptom evinces an approaching storm, of perhaps tenfold more violence, than the one so lately abated.

These are old words, insignificant. The author is long dead, his name unknown. His whole existance is putative, except for the name attached to the journal in his hand, written in watery ink, in forward slanting script. She has read through the whole of the thing twice now, and but for the passage to which the book is now opened, it is nothing more than an account of the milk production of his cattle and the egg production of his fowl, how many biscuits he ate in the morning, how long the shoes on his oxen lasted. Where the sun rose, what the river did, where the storm came from, and how long it took to clean up the debris. But here is this passage, incongruous and out of place among the terse, undemonstrative renderings of the day's accounts, and she still cannot wrap her mind around it, she cannot penetrate either veil. Thinking too long on the matter awakens the beast inside her in supple, subtle ways. It stretches its legs, yawns through her body, pricks her remote, intense calm in unsettling ways. She is full, but she is hungry and so she toys with thoughts of death, great violence, blood - always blood. She considers the man above her, whether it would matter if he died, what might happen to the shell of his body, and then - with some effort - removes the thought from her mind. She does not care whether he dies, but she will not become the sort of creature who kills because it can.

Ignoring rather than placating the wanton, violent black thing that lives inside her cool, pale shell, she closes the journal and takes up the least of weapons: a pen. The paper below is thick and rich, almost creamy, appropriate for correspondence, but the pen is cheap, plastic, breakable. He writes with old-fashioned ink. She writes with whatever is handy at the moment, caring for the appearance of the thing only when she wishes to trouble herself to do so. She is momentarily stymied by the blankness before her, not simply by the possibilites, but also by the challenge it presents. Her head tips to the side, and the long, wretched tangle of her golden hair spills over her left shoulder. Irritated, by the bulk she brushes it away and returns to the blank page before her, wonders, idly, whether any other will read her own insignificant words long after she is dead, words written in the shell of dead building, on the banks of a dead river, beneath the facsimile of a dead night's sky.

Under such circumstances, it is so easy to begin. She smiles a generous, treacherous, predator's smile, and writes:

Dear Sir,

"The struggle between good sense and power, has continued with daily increasing violence, since the invention of printing. How this contest is to terminate, it is now difficult to predict; but such is the powerful aid given to reason by the press, that the best result may be hoped."

You will find this passage in the enclosed volume, surrounded by accounts of the peculiar diseases to which cattle were apparently subjected 200 years ago. We share the same interest in cattle, and so I believed that you would quite enjoy the enclosed volume. You will excuse me if I am not the best of correspondents, but I have roused my shadow with indelicate thoughts and have not yet appeased it. I will not appease it...

correspondences - receipt

[The paper is an off-white (cream, perhaps?) color,
thick, slightly rough to the touch. In some ways, it
almost calls to mind the feel of papyrus - or
foolscap, or vellum - rather than the phantom whips
that the people of this day and age call "paper". The
ink is dark, black like sins burned into a wicked
heart, with nary a smear or blot in sight (he uses an
archaic pen, she recalls, dipping the stylus into the
inkwell with each stroke). The letters themselves are
clear and precise, each perfectly formed - as if the
sheer simplicity of writing was an art-form honed
through years (decades? centuries?) of practice.]



As is my wont, I shall be contrarian, beginning
with your own ending - and assert that, indeed, chess
played in the conventional fashion does, in fact, lack
a certain spark. But it is not the game itself that
matters, as much as how you play it...

In regards to other matters, it would seem that
once again, you nestle among the habitués of the Ivory
Tower, beguiling them with your not-inconsiderable
charms. If they are anything like I remember them
being when last I walked among them (and truly, how
could they be other, those static monuments, those
cold dead paragons of indifference?), then they have
no idea what to make of you. After all, while the
moon can reflect the light of the sun, can it even
truly understand what drives Helios to burn so
passionately?

By the time this missive leaves my desk, and
wings its way to you, I suspect much time will have
passed (and yet, no more than an eyeblink in many
senses, yes? What a slippery slope, Time is...)
Added to the lethargy with which I suspect your letter
found its way to me (perhaps a snail would serve the
American Postal Service as a far better mascot than
their current eagle), and it will have been some time
since your initial foray into the "Second City" (and I
ponder, not for the first time, of the utter arrogance
of that name). I wonder, have your brothers and
sisters welcomed you with open arms? Or do they still
respond with their traditional callousness and lack of
vision? You asked me - perhaps in jest, or mere
half-seriousness, for who would take the advice of a
worthless old fool such as I to heart? - which path
you should choose among the options open to you. I
would advise - AS I ALWAYS DO! - to follow whatever
path your heart deems best. And, should that path
lead you from the chill hallways of the insipid
cognoscenti, down the lesser-trod trails of personal
freedom and the denial of social fetters forged
centuries ago by those with no true love for you or
your ideals, then my door is always open.

But enough of such things - I know I harp
endlessly, and my scholastic tendencies must grate
upon your artistic sensibilities, so no more. If it
is gossip you must have - and is not gossip the
lifeblood of your sodality? - then I can provide such
in small doses, at least. The waters of New York once
more swirl with intrigue and conflict, not all of
which is sponsored by our friends across the river.
The victorious party spent the obligatory period of
time pretending to remain vigilant and wary, before
beginning their orgy of self-congratulation. Of
course, to the victors go the spoils... but it did not
take long for the victors to begin eyeing each others'
throats to see who would claim the choicest of
morsels, and who would join so many others at the
bottom of the harbor, providing food for the local
aquatic ecosystem.

Others have asked why I remain, when all I have
to look forward to is the migraine of dealing with the
petty jealousy and intrigues of those who hold the
city, and awaiting the night when the wolf returns to
find the shepherds laying dead by their own hands. To
this I must suggest that the native treasures of the
city are rare and wonderous indeed, and that we do
those who live and work and die by the light of day a
disservice if we do not acknowledge their skill and
craft. In many ways, they surpass us utterly - they
seek to become one with the divine, while we have
forgotten what it means to be human.

I find myself growing somewhat maudlin, which is
never a good sign. It is writing, I fear, which
brings it out of me - too much time to think, and too
much need to think of what one wishes to say, before
committing words to paper. Far better, sometimes, to
simply let one's thoughts and ideas carry them away on
a whirlwind of speech. Though others - Lady Delinora
among them - would likely claim it is merely my
penchant for oratory that makes me say such things.

The sky grows pink, and I feel Morpheus' touch
upon my shoulder. Thus do I end my missive, perhaps
making you pleased by the rising of the sun for the
first time in your recent memory. I hope that, as you
read my words, you think of me with a smile, even as
the brush of your regard never fails to bring a smile
to mine own weathered visage.


Yours in perpetuity,
Marcus Alessandro, patrician-of-ill-repute

"Sic volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas"

whenever you like

Jason Malone

Fri 07:30PM CST
~Walking out of 'his' room for the last time, Jason carried the duffel bag packed with his things, readu to move into his new place. This town seemed alright, it was time to settle down and start living.~

~He was a bit disappointed that he'd yet to find any of his clan, but that's not exactly unexpected... it's been a long time since he was in a place where his family banded together like a pack. Too long. He missed the pack mentality, and he'd bet that most of the other Cam members he's met wouldn't understand it if he explained it.~

Jason Malone

Fri 07:35PM CST
~Carrying the bag in one hand, he headed down the stairs then stopped. He didn't want to leave yet... not just yet. He wasn't centered. Too much thinking going on. He turned and walked through the halls until exiting into the garden. Looking around briefly, ensuring he was alone, he dropped the bag then knelt down, knees against the hard stone. He places his hands on his thighs as he sat back on his heels, inky black, pupil-less eyes staring into the clouded night sky.~

Jason Malone

Fri 08:23PM CST
~slowly, rhythmically he took deep breaths in through his nose and then slowly out his mouth, the long dead lungs and airways mimicing their job during his living years.~

~Only the forced rise and fall of his chest gave any indication that he was more than a statue.~

Marie-Hélène

Fri 08:31PM CST
The Toreador no more silent tonight than she was earlier in the week. Stealth is not her weapon, and one suspects she might willfully break whatever silence she might leave in her wake. The car, the engine, the slamming of doors. The crunch of gravel grinding beneath her booted feet, the zippering slither of corduroy ribs rubbed against each other, or skin, one or the other. The wind is rising and the sky is hard with orange clouds again, but these are fast-moving, non-threatening. The weight of the weeks storms has been bled from the air, leaving it with an odd, almost clean tang that lingers in the back of the throat like laundry detergent, sharp and bright.

Keys jingle from her fingers, the announcement of her presence is deliberate, loud against the night, in the stillness left by the sudden absence of engine noise. She circles the house, from the driveway to the sideyard, holding hard to the shadows as if they held some secret for her, as if she could hide there. She is easy to see in all but the deepest of shadows, though, pale skin, pale bright hair, pale shining sleeveless silken something for a blouse this evening, a feminine counterpoint to the heavy corduroys and shit-kickers she's sporting below.

She pays less attention to the stepping stones tonight, her high heels hidden away whereever she lairs. There's no worry about grass and dew ruining the finish of those heavy, dirty old boots that seem incongruously large on her slender frame. Her gait is wide and long, the full length of her long legs, almost heedless, until she stops abruptly some feet from the Gangrel, eyeing his bags, her body turned in sharp profile as she studies with sidelong, expressionless care.

Jason Malone

Fri 08:36PM CST
~He heard the music, and the steps. When at last the cacophony of sounds stills, a slow smile spreads across his lips before he even turns his head~ Hey there. I was hoping I'd run into you tonight, before I moved. How goes things tonight... aside from perfectly?

~His grin turns more playful and sarcastic though light hearted and his head turns towards her, gleaming black eyes taking in the change of wardrobe style and the odd dichotomy between the blouse and boots~

Marie-Hélène

Fri 08:43PM CST
"Out of the nest of vipers, are you?" The creature cuts a glance at the bulk of the estate, the black windows like dead eyes, the few lit windows spilling scant light into the summer's night. Fireflies swim above the still garden beds, patternless but purposeful in the warm air. "Or at least, the house of the quotidian bourgeousie, that's an improvement, I think. And, as you say, my night is perfect, as usual. I have found - " Her mouth spreads wider. Were she facing him straight on, it would be a perfect symmetrical smile. As it is, he sees only one slashing half of it curving her cheek soft against her otherwise sharp profile. "I have found the journal of some old settler, which has consumed my last two nights' consideration. Or perhaps three nights," she muses, after a moment. Time slips strangely, and is so easily lost.

"Will you come back here after the move?" Her shoulders curl, her head tips backward toward the house.

Jason Malone

Fri 08:49PM CST
~Hmmm... how odd, most torries are never deep enough to enjoy anything written... the depth stops at how the book is bound or the elegance of the script and never permits actual analysis of the spirit of the work. He can't help but grin at that realization with a bit of amusement~ And what has so captivated you about the settler's words to merit several nights of your exquisite attentions? ~He arches an eyebrow curiously as he shifts his weight back onto his feet and before rising in one easy fluid motion~

As for my coming back here after moving... this _is_ the place where our fellow cam citizens gather, is it not? We will all be drawn here from time to time I'm certain. Besides, there are other ways to contact me now than just running into me by chance. Even gangrel know the benefits of cellphones.

Marie-Hélène

Fri 09:02PM CST
"Well," she begins, flipping her jangling keys for emphasis before returning them to her right front pocket. Her long arms drift across her torso, finding themselves crossed as if by accident, and her whole lean figure settles into a concentrated slouch, as if she had been poured that way. Doubtless, her Sire would be appalled. "I've never been particularly interested in primary historical texts before - journals and the like - preferring other more significant works. I happened upon this one by chance, and there is nothing extraordinary about the text. In itself, it is largely an account of the passing seasons, the workings of the farm. How many eggs were laid, how much - " her bare shoulders sketch an eloquent twist this side of disdainful. She is not disdainful, but rather, somehow, careless, freely so. " - corn, bacon they had from the hogs they slaughtered, whether or not the horse threw a shoe and how outrageous were the charges for salt or sugar or grinding meal."

Her fingers tap her elbows lightly. Her nails are blunt, flaking enamel with every movement of her hand. On each finger, some plastic gem has been pasted to the skin, but the glue has begin to run in the heat, and the gems are off-centered, the glue dark against her luminous flesh. "In the middle of all this, however, he wrote, perhaps, a twenty-page account of his beliefs about the politics of his time, the situation of the States, Canada and Europe, the influence of violence, the violence of authority, a whole system of belief or awareness distilled from some taciturn farmer with three egglaying chickens..." Her voice trails off. That is, in essence, everything that has caught her attention, but there is something else that she finds she cannot name, and does not wish to begin to give voice to in front of another Kindred.

She remains in profile and casts him another glance. This time, her pale brow hooks upward in time with the supple curve of her generous mouth. Her voice is entirely different, but without any tangible evidence of it. The tone, volume, and rhythm are all the same, only some inflection, some vague, shifty timbre has changed, back to a teasing haughtiness appropriate to social circles. "Am I to be blessed with your number, then, M'sieur Malone?"

Jason Malone

Fri 09:11PM CST
~He listens curiously to her summary of the journal... he can see where some things would catch attention, but still what about that would catch _her_ attention? For all his attention and thought about the story, he can't help but be broken from it by her attitude... yup, definitely Toreador, which always makes him smile.~

Well, normally I only give my number to friends...and friends generally don't call me Mister Malone, no matter how elegant it sounds in French... I'm not terribly certain. I mean truthfully I really thought we had passed this whole formality crap. ~the grin curving his lips and twinkle full of mischief in his eyes give away his amusement and enjoyment of their banter.~ Or am I committing some faux pas through my familiar address of you, dear Lady?

Marie-Hélène

Fri 09:21PM CST
"And if I were not occasionally formal with you, petit - " she replies, the whole of the thing that has devoured the last three nights of her existence now apparently forgotten as easily as one might forget a paper favor cast to the river with a flame to light its way, " - you would not be able to find any fault with me, and would not, I think, be able to tease me so mercilessly. We would have nothing to say to each other, and would fall to unaccountable silence whenever we see each other, and only the crickets and whatever other - "

Something has landed in the pale tangle of her hair, the black, chitinous body a dark smear against the washed out gold. The creature goes still as the dead - her mouth set with a sort of stylized dread - and then unwraps a languid arm to pluck the katydid from her hair and fling it away with a theatrical shiver of disgust. " - insects - " her voice lowers a half-octave in dread, and another delicate shiver laces through the taut set of her shoulders. " - live in the night would be the only sound. We might go mad from the silence. So you see, it is purely out of a spirit of charity, fellow-feeling, and camaraderie that I continue to address you so formally. Did I not do so, all would clearly be ruin."

The stark slice of her smile underscores the drama, grounds it in something flat, real and unspoken.

Jason Malone

Fri 09:29PM CST
~Lacking any discernable pupils makes it difficult for others to tell where his eyes are actually focused, but they do follow the insect and then her ease of motion as she flicks it away~ So unfortunate a creature is the insect to be so idly flung aside by you. I pity him... and I suppose, I should thank you for caring so much to deliberately give me something with which my words might cling.

~He lets out a soft laugh~ You are too generous... so I suppose I should return the favor and perhaps on occasion call you Marie... or perhaps even the more diminutive... Mare. Then you too could find fault in me and the world would not be unwoven.

Marie-Hélène

Fri 09:38PM CST
"I am always generous, cher." She favors him with a raptor's predatory smile, then tips her chin upward in another understated but utterly arrogant gesture that suits her, completely. "It is one of my lesser qualities. And you are generous, too - " The fingers of her left hand drum against the pale flesh of her right forearm, the sound is flat, compact, but still quite clear in the garden's quiet. " - too generous. I could never accept such a gift. In fact, I think if you were to call me such diminutives, I might not answer, thinking you were speaking to some fat-thighed, whey-faced American gorging on fried cakes and reading whatever drivel it is they read. Reader's Digest, yes? or True Romance Stories, or something with hard faced spies and bright eyed, sprightly maidens in patriotic bikinis. The possibilites are endless.

"You see why I must refuse the offer."

Jason Malone

Fri 09:45PM CST
~He makes an exaggerated bow, his right arm tucking into his stomach as his left swings wide~ But of course m'lady I certainly see why you would refuse. Though, one must question given your obvious opinion of Americans, why would you subject yourself to such a stress as living among them? As one born and raised many years in London and having worked hard to eliminate my accent, I can certainly understand the attitude... things in this country have changed dramatically over the last five decades.

~Straightening once more he bent back to stretch his back, as if the act of the bow was so foreign that it strained his body.~

Never mind that... tell me, sweet Marie-Helene, what is it that excites you and drives you? Tell me of yourself, if you would so gift me?

Marie-Hélène

Fri 09:57PM CST
The Toreador watches with a sharpened sort of attention. Her eyes are dark blue, but the colour is lost in the garden shadows, and so tonight they are simply dark. Still, there is a keeness to her gaze that is not lost in the night's shadows. The contrast of her dark eyes against her pale skin and pale brows, the leveled concentration, the intensity of the study, as - when she decides to watch something, him, anyone, anything - she sees nothing else at all.

"I'll tell you a secret," Her gaze flickers up away, to the changing patterns of the clouds, the dull orange throb of the sky. Her voice takes on a curious air, thoughtless and flippant, the supple curl of her shoulders elegant and disarming. Distracted, disingenous. "I am an American. I was born and raised in the United States. In truth, there are things I adore about the country, no less its energy, compared to the - " her mouth twitches, narrows into a flat line. " - degenerate, insular, incestuous circularity of European society. Years ago, Europe was a refuge for me, from American parochialism, from American anti-intellectualism. Now, the United States is a refuge from the decadence and stasis of European society. That is what drives me, petit," she continues, casting a flippant little half-smile toward him, barely taking her eyes away from the night sky. Her brows, however, sketch a twitchy sort of arrogance above her calm dark eyes. "Of course, it could all be an elaborate fabrication. I'm not known for my truthtelling. And now I want something back from you. Something alike," now she looks back from the sky, and fixes him with a fierce, forbidding stare that will doubtless remind him again of a tiger cub at play. " - back from you. What say you, Jason?"

Jason Malone

Fri 10:01PM CST
~A grin of amusement at her response... it would make sense, someone so adamantly against something is usually hiding something. It would make sense. Hmmm... much like the old Silence of the Lambs movie, they've come to the quid pro quo... something about her for something about him. He ponders her request a moment before nodding gently and thoughtfully~ Very well... what would you like to know... I have precious few secrets and almost no capacity for deceit... a character flaw to be sure. Ask and ye shall receive.

Marie-Hélène

Fri 10:09PM CST
"That's an extraordinary character flaw. Some Tremere is like as not to devour you, someday." Her eyes half-hood, her attention falls to the dark grass as she considers his offer. Dew is already gathering on the blades, and the lights from the patio prick out the smallest droplets here and there, gilding the flat blades with rummy, orange light. Her stance shift subtly, a curve of her hips, the most minute change in her slouched center of gravity, and she kicks out to dislodge a half-dozen little droplets. Her eyes are bare slits as she considers this - the movement of her foot, the light smothered to almost nothing by the flat black boot, the supple give of grass beneath her feet, forward momentum.

"I don't know where to begin, so I will frame it in the broadest possible way. Why are you here?" There are far too many ways to take that question. If he looks at her, he will catch the sidelong, expressionless edge of her gaze, her head still tipped forward in consideration, the mass of her pale hair beginning to fall from its haphazard plait.

Jason Malone

Fri 10:18PM CST
~Black eyes study her every move and line of her form as he quietly watches her think. When she speaks, it's his turn to stop and ponder the weight and meaning of her words. After a long moment, and his usual gesture of his hand running through his hair as he thinks, he finally nods~

Hmmm broad indeed... so I'll try to narrow it down. I'm here because my sire, in what he felt an act of kindness extended my existence to ease what he felt was my pain. I had gained his attention and favor... read that as he ghouled me for a time... when I took pity on one of his pets and nursed it back to health. ~he pauses as he considers further~

When my clan left the Cam, I remained because I felt the Cam was a higher calling, so to speak, and felt my work here was not done. I'm in Chicago because I could not stand Cleveland and wanted to be someplace else and I had never been here. I'm in this house because of the generosity of our seneschal, and in garden to soothe and balance a troubled soul before embarking on my evening... and lastly, I stand here talking with you because I find you to be wonderful company and one of the few people I've known that I enjoy speaking to and spending time with. ~running his thumb and forefinger over his chin for a moment, he considers absently whether there is anything else to add~ And I believe, short of the very zen answers or philosophical debate over existence, would sum up why I am here.

Marie-Hélène

Fri 10:32PM CST
Something in his story sharpens and quickens her interest. There is an almost invisible surge of energy through the Toreador's lean figure, less visible than it is palpable, hanging in the air like the metallic scent of a coming storm. She stares at him, hawkish, and allows the tension of that moment to drain from her body, still motionless for all practical purposes, with little more than casual twitch of her long arms to mark the passing moment.

"Thank you for avoiding the zen answers and philosophical discourses," she says at last, freeing one arm from the tangle, leaving the other to lounge across her slouched, incurved torso. Her tone is dry, her mouth twitches with closely held humor. "I'm all for them, but only when one has nothing else to do. They're just a way to past the time. I think, now, too, that I will have more interesting questions to ask you, in the future, if we pass the time trading truths, but you should know, petit" wry, her mouth twists lightly around the diminutive, she pronounces it with a linguist's distinct care. The fricatives, the hard stops, the clack of her tongue against her teeth, her hard palate, cleverly and clearly voiced. " - that I am not so vain as I might seem. You needn't compliment me. I think we both take pleasure in the other's company. When it is not so - " her cool arms, her white shoulders curve forward, emphasizing her poor posture, the almost adolescent smolder of her pose, " - we will speak no more."

Jason Malone

Fri 10:39PM CST
~Her words appear to impress him somewhat as he listens.~

We will definitely need to talk more, and you may feel free to use that flaw of mine. I don't fear anything I might say... those who might wish to use it against me or to harm me would soon find the folly in that. ~He can't hide the grin~

As for the compliments.., I do not compliment for vanity sake... I say what I believe, and if it happens to be complimentary, so much the better.

~He reaches down and picks up his bag, eyes still fixed on her~ Walk with me? I have a pen in my jeep so I can give you that number before I head out and begin organizing my new home. But I would very much like to see you again soon... perhaps outside this setting, someplace more... alive.

Marie-Hélène

Fri 10:47PM CST
She absorbs his words, pale head tipping forward once, in acknowledgment of something he says, pale shoulders curling expressively at another. Much as he studies her, she studies him, with a similarly fixed attention. Only when he draws abreast of her does she turn and fall into step beside him, her assent to the plan a pair of barely voiced words, uttered only for politeness sake.

They pass from uncertain to deeper shadow, the heavily thatched lawn crunching quietly beneath their feet. The fireflies have become lazy, now, their intermittent flickers of chemical light sketching strange patterns in the night. "I wonder what you will consider alive." She muses, as they approach the driveway, with a curiousity that is wholly idle. Admonishment comes hard on musings heels. "Don't tell - I prefer the surprise."

Jason Malone

Fri 10:52PM CST
~As they walk, he smiles within the shadows, his eyes going from their black to gleaming red, as he scans the area, making sure no one else is around... not for any purpose, just habit. When they leave the darker shadows, his eyes fade back to black.~ I wouldn't dream of ruining the surprise... I'd be a terrible bore if I did that, and not worth your interest...if I guess correctly.

~He leads her to the parking area and to the deep green jeep grande cherokee. Unlocking the door he tosses the bag in before leaning in and grabbing a pen and a piece of scrap paper. he jots something down on the paper before handing it to her. the paper has his name and his cell number.~ Call whenever you like.

Marie-Hélène

Fri 11:03PM CST
She accepts his number, folding into into her cool hand, then sliding the folded paper into her left front pocket. Then, with a supple half-smile, she plucks the pen from between his fingers and flattens his hand against the frame of the driver's side door. Her hands are cool and soft, but her nails are ragged and her fingers are stained with ink and newsprint, rust and something else, dark and colourless in the drive's filtered shadows. "Thank you. And, for you."

Carefully and clearly, she writes her number on his hand. There is no name attached to it; he is unlikely to confuse this one for another. Her smile dances wider as she tips the pen back to him, then turns and saunters away, flicking three fingers over her shoulder in a little wave as she ambles toward the house. "Whenever you like."