Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 09:43PM CST
The Elysium library is lined with leatherbound volumes in great profusion: all the classics of the last five centuries in very fine if not first editions, and most of the volumes that strive to become classics of the contemporary age, again in fine editions, printed on creamy papers and bound in rich corinthian leather.
Sprawled across an easy chair, all long legs and elegant, sylph-like arms, the Toreador ignores the whole wisdom of remembered history in favor of a cheap paperback that still smells like the greasy spoon and the waitress from whom she stole it. The inexpensive pulp is rough against her fine fingers, the cover is ridiculously lurid, but the creature seems to prefer it to everything else accumulated in the library.
Sonatine Vidale
Mon 09:44PM CST
The gates slowly creaked open to the private estate of Bryce Stavenson. The Elder Brujah was someone Sonatine was very eager to speak with about matters concerning the clan. After-all, it wasn't going to be too long before Bryce would start asking questions about Sonatine's power struggle on the streets. With Erikka's growing reputation among the streets, he was going to need her in more than just servitude.
The black 2004 Lincoln Continental slowly made it's way down the drive. It's headlights died to give way to the amber colored foglights. The light would be sufficient enough to guide his car into the parking space he normally occupied.
While Bryce's home was considered Elysium, it was still the haven of an Elder. As such was the case, certain formalities always were in order. As usual, Sonatine Vidale; Primogen of Clan Brujah, was expected by the head servant. As the car's breaks clamped onto the inner drum of the tire, the car would slow to a stop. It took several minutes before the door opened; these precious minutes being reserved for private instruction for his chouffer.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 09:52PM CST
One long leg curved under her body, the other cast over the arm of the sleek chair, the Toreador shifts quietly and sinks deeper into the comfortable depths. Air sighs out of the cushions as she changes position, faint response to the shifting of her slight weight.
The combination of old army surplus camos and expensive heels is a strange one, made stranger by the narrow sleeveless tee in the blaze orange usually favored by deer hunters that completes the ensemble. Somehow, however, it all seems to fit. The creature's eyes are narrowed in concentration, her mouth half-open, thoughtlessly. Otherwise, she doesn't make much move.
Sonatine Vidale
Mon 10:05PM CST
Stepping out of the car was a black suited individual with a menacing appearence to boost. His suit was expensive, and his looks cold hearted. The pinstripes suggested something of a proffessional career; wether it be legal or not wasn't revealed just yet. Rising from the car, the armani tailored individual gripped the framework of the car, and looked out at the manner from over the top of the door. Moistening his lips, he'd continue to step forward and allow the door to close behind him.
Each step took him closer to the front door, his eyes focusing harder the closer he got. Without his trench coat, he looked a bit more business oriented. With it, the whole criminal element would come out on top. Tonight, he chose to not wear the coat. The fact that he almost looked elegant was coupled with the black tribal tattoo's staining his bald scalp. His skin was a bit pale this evening, but in the company of others, who would honestly care?
His hand moved to the doorhandle, and slowly pulled it open to clear his path. His dress shoes mad ehis presence known to the caretaker of the house, Nino. As the Italian ghoul approached him, they exchanged greetings, and Sonatine was allowed entrance. His path was chosen, and his intentions lead him toward the private study. Soon the wooden doors would slid open, and the menacing figure would make his entrance.
(Flaw: Obvious Predator + Intimidation 4) When at first glance, Sonatine is not the type of person you'd wish to associate with. It was as though on first thought, you would pin him as untrustworthy, and dangerous beyond all comparison. Perhaps it was coupled to the extreme confidence that radiated off him that made him seem in full control of himself; or maybe it was because of the horrible reputation that followed. Whatever the case; few people felt that Sonatine Vidale had anything good for them to deal with.
They would receive no mercy until seeing through his nature.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 10:16PM CST
The sounds of greeting, the usual shuffle of entrance from the front hall pricked the Rose's consciousness and drew her attention away from whatever held it (could it really be the horrible paperback? Shouldn't she be conditioned against that sort of thing?) to the quiet sound of footsteps, the subtle scrape of the door against the floor. Still, she kept her head down, studying the pages with an intensity sometimes thought to be peculiar to the artists in her clan (shh. I am making something sing), and lifted her head, startled, only as Sonatine at last made his entrance.
It was more dramatic that way, the sweep of her dark gaze up from the pages of the novel, just shadowed by a faint shimmer of pale lashes, the sweep of her attention across the strange Kindred, the slow-crawl of a porceline smile. If she were human, her breath might catch in the back of her throat, or her autonomic nervous system would betray her: pulse rate, respiration, the usual signs of anxiety.
She is not mortal, however. She is dead as he, and only the apparition of a smile dances across her mouth as she slipslidesslithers out of her sprawl in the armchair.
"Good evening," it is all a game, and the prick of fear is also the prick of excitement, enlivening a dead heart. The ghost-smile slides full and wide, as the Toreador offers one longer-fingered hand in greeting. "I don't believe we've met, and I hope you don't think me too forward for saying so."
Sonatine Vidale
Mon 10:29PM CST
It was as though tension had halted his steps. Dark eyes casted themselves upon the female form of Marie-Helen Alette. His hands were clasped at his back, his expressions erious and cold. Little did he have time anymore for laughing and carrying on. Pleasantries had been written out of his little black book for a century now. His posture was stern, and his demeanor cold and unforgiving. Dark eyes held her gaze steadily as she felt bold enough to make his aquaintance.
That could be her first mistake. Treating him as a commoner might a fellow peasant.
The Brujah Primogen stepped further into the room as he turned his head to look her over some. As he hand extended, a distant gaze would follow down the smooth and pale skin of the Vampiress before him. A slight murmer was her responce, as though to touch her might give him an illness he'd rather not deal with. "Delighted. I am Sonatine Vidale; Primogen of Clan Brujah." His tone was laced with malevolence, his voice cold with a lack of passion. Sarcasm was the prime weapon of choice for many arrogant bastards alike.
Note, he did not change his posture to accept her hand, but instead decided not to touch her all together. At the small of his back his hands would stay, for now.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 10:39PM CST
"Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais, M'sieur Vidale," the Toreador murmured, withdrawing her hand as casually as she could muster, as if the slight did not begin to bother her in the least. Perhaps it didn't: perhaps she preferred it that way. Her expression remained, sly and rapt, and her eyes continued to linger upon his face without ever precisely meeting his eyes. "Toreador. If you're planning to take advantage of the library this evening, there's a very fine volume of Aesop's fables you should consider.
"Beyond that, I must apologize for my intrusion and presumption. Good evening, M'sieur Vidale." The creature offers a brief sweep of a bow, and returns to her armchair and her paperback.
Sonatine Vidale
Mon 10:45PM CST
"Yet another Toreador, how lovely." He said, his words rolling with sarcasm. His eyes held their gaze confidently, and why not? Sonatine had the age, experience, and strength to hold his own in several conversations. The problem with this was that there were many other's that could do the same; and perhaps better than he. Simmon Ledeux was one of them, and Sonatine knew that. Fear wasn't the word best associated with what he felt for Simmon; but vigilance was.
The Toreador rarily left s good taste in his mouth. How would this one fair, he wondered.
"Tell me, Marie-Helene; what do you bring to Chicago?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 10:53PM CST
The Toreador's blue eyes swept upward from the cheap pulp, returning to Sonatine's face once more. Her own features were now as still as a frozen lake, and her eyes had darkened with the returned chill. "Aside from my excellent taste, my familiarity with the classics, and my ascerbic wit?"
Her glance grew fixed, and then drained away, as the corner of her mouth twitched upward into the smallest of cultured smiles. "I'm afraid that I give away my secrets less easily than you your hand, M'sieur Vidale. Surely, you wouldn't expect any less, would you?"
Sonatine Vidale
Mon 10:58PM CST
The problem with Vampires these days was that they made things way to obvious. It was as though every one of them had some vast secret life they kept to themselves when in actuallity they were already doing that with the mortals.
How very trite it must be.
A breif smile came over his lips as he decided to take an interest in the youth. His steps guided him carefully toward the leather chair just feet from her placement. Before he lowered into it, he casually unbuttoned his suitcoat and hung it on the thin wooden coat-rack. Afterwards, Sonatine removed a switchblade, a thin metal cylander, and a zippo lighter from the various pockets and sat down. After setting his affectes off to the side, the Primogen would settle into the chair and turn his gaze back upon her.
"Tell me, of these classics.." He said, his voice growing a little more alluring, in a darker quality then most would consider enticing.
Sonatine Vidale
Mon 10:59PM CST
Dice Validated
to Marie-Hélène Alette: 3D10 Dice Roll: 8; 6; 8
Sonatine Vidale
Mon 10:59PM CST
to Marie-Hélène Alette: (Presence 1; Awe, is in affect.)
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 11:10PM CST
"The classics, M'sieur Vidale," the creature repeated, sitting up, perhaps, and leaning closer to him as she murmured the words. "Literature, history, philosophy. Where would you prefer to begin? With Homer, or would you prefer something more recent? Moby Dick, perhaps, and the eternal maddened quest for that which you can never truly find? Or perhaps we could even turn to the contemporary period, when even the precepts of modernism have been torn down into an endless cacophony and the very foundations of language and thought have been destroyed. What makes a cat different from a bat, beyond some convention we affect to know?"
The paperback snapped shut, and the title - though half-obscured by her hand - was mostly visible. Something about love or lust, some contemporary faery-tale of Prince Charming and Mrs. Right, complete with just enough in the way of euphemistic sex to appeal to the average housewife. "Except, now Derrida is old hat, and even the Language poets are old men, drooling into their oatmeal and pissing into their diapers, and they are turning back to a vicious cycle without ever learning the lessons they were so very close to capturing before it all got captured by the academy and calcified by tradition." Expelling the rest of her deep breath, the Rose leans forward again, in a manner that verges on the besotted (to those who know her), but might still seem remote, and lifts a cool, pale brow. "If you tell me where your interest lies, I will be happy - " a faint shrug, as she trails off.
Sonatine Vidale
Mon 11:24PM CST
His eyes settled upon her as she went into her spleal about Moby Dick, Homer, and the true classics of the world. It was good the modern school system still valued their history. By now his interest in her had peaked to a point where he could realize that her intelligence was well off and her rationale qualities were stable. No, she was not the typical young Kindred, abusing the great gifts granted by the blood of Elders.
"Tell me, of your own views about this world you live in. Obviously your death must have had some impact on you, what changes in mentality did you share with those of the classical sence? Did Poe's morbid world excite you to mourn your death, or has such ideals been passified by an unjust God?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 11:38PM CST
"Poe is yet another unfortunate genius, too driven by his brilliance - thank whatever god you know - to see that, essentially, the brittle world he created was simply a creation, not some undiscovered country, some new reality to which he and only he bore the secret key." Her pale eyes half-closed, the fine lashes glancing across her high pale cheek, as she settled back in the chair. Her attention was still rapt upon him. "I - " Her nostrils flare, briefly, some irritation that nuzzles at the core, with the terminology, perhaps, the limits of the same. "I did not mourn my death, M'sieur Vidale, though perhaps I mourn the loss of certain essential portions of the world that I will never again see: the sun at noon, a shadowed summer day. To seperate these things from our experience thins us, until we become a pale core of beaten metal: what is the point of continued existance without something to compel one forward? Power is a dry husk of a thing, and so is immortality, to pretend otherwise is to invent blindness, loss, the cacophony our gibbering enemies would bring to life in the world."
And she continues, speaking with clear force and passion rarely given shrift within the Elysium, which she would never allow to surface under any other circumstances. "Decadent games are simply that: decadent. I do not believe in God, nor do I not believe in God, nor do I believe in the ideal of justice, what is justice, beyond that which we want? As for my death, M'sieur, what would you like to hear? Something was given to me, and something was taken away. This is the way of the world."
Sonatine Vidale
Mon 11:46PM CST
"Ahh.. a true philosopher I see." He mused. His sire was something of a philosopher; until she was murdered.
Sonatine tinted his affects with a light touch. Fingertips edged over the switchblade as he tormented himself with the idea of lighting a cuban cigar. Eyes settled once more upon the inspiring girl as he did indeed find her, inspiring. It was something of an oddity that he find comfort in anyone these nights, besides his blood-doll; Erikka Brennon.
"And what of this city? Your thoughts in particular.."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 11:56PM CST
"If you will, M'sieur, I would not call myself a philosopher." The curve of her smile; the flash of her gaze - serious now. Her calm, sharp features are oddly expressive under these circumstances, in ways that she could not begin to imagine or control. "Although certainly, you may. It is, however, tempting to the ego, and as important as the ego is in the everlasting Elysium game, I cannot allow it to master me."
"As for this city - " her shoulders rose and fell again, a mild and calculated shrug, " - I have met but few Kindred, and those that I have met are thus far - " she leaned in, confident in her confidante, but some habits are well-ingrained, and perhaps this one, to decline to pass such overt judgment on other Kindred, at least in the hearing of another. " - why, I do not know them well-enough to say." She was surprised for find that to be true. "Although," another skimming almost-smile, more distant and withdrawn. "the Camarilla seems fractured, the ties are loose: it makes me think of wolves, hunting, and how easily they hunt stragglers. This city is vulnerable."
Sonatine Vidale
Tue 12:00AM CST
"Mmm, yes. I think we see eye to eye, you and I." He said, a short taunting smirk approaching his lips afterwards. Sonatine sighed, and rose to his feet. "Regardless, life itself is a mere game, Ms. Alette. .. Good evening." He said with a slight nod. Gathering his things, he would sip the coat on and begin making his way out of the Elysium without another word.
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Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais
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dimanche, avril 25, 2004
mother may i?
Luce
Sun 01:49PM CST
She has been here before; she has been here for two nights running, and the bartender and patrons have grown if not accustomed to her presence, at least less-sensitized to it. Her arms are draped over the edge of the bar like so much cloth; silk, or something like it, the low and liquid sweep, the boneless ease of her perch. The ashtray beside her right elbow holds exactly two butts of her sharp-smelling cigarellos, smashed to nothing with careful precision. Her third smoke of the evening is held negligently between the index and middle fingers of her pale hand. Occasionally, she takes a drag and spills more smoke into the already smokey atmosphere. Her other hand is wrapped around the neck of a bottle of beer, which is turn rests, sweating, on her denim-clad thigh, just below the long angled jointure with her narrow pelvis, wrist settled against the curve of her hip.
Such visible ease, such elemental caution: the hooded eyes, the flaxen hair spilling across her largely-bare shoulders, and her skin pale as the surface of the moon cast against the velvet night. She doesn't speak to anyone, she hasn't responded to anything said to her with more than a slow-blooming smile, wretched and poisonous and perfectly bright.
Ashe Kincade
Sun 01:57PM CST
The wooden stares creaked with each step he took to descending them. His hands hung loosily at his sides as he marched his way down into the main portion of the bar. Soon a single hand would grip the cheap banister and he'd shuffle down to the main area. Eyes scanned over the enterior a bit before deciding to continue on walking. This evening he wore a black bandanna accompanied with black jeans, and a tight fitting grey tee shirt. With this on, his muscles could be seen, as well as his broad chest.
Sniffling a bit, Ashe would make his way toward the bar, having just woken up. Coming closer, his eyes would shift over toward Luce a moment, then come back toward the tender. Yeah, she was the broad that came in not too long ago, but what did that matter? It wasn't like he knew her or anything. He'd bring his attention back to the tender further by leaning closer and listening to what th eman had to say. Nodding, Ashe would reach out, pull the cigarette from the man's lips, and put it in his own. From here, the rogue walked toward his usual table and kicked out a chair.
Luce
Sun 02:14PM CST
From the moment Ashe enters the room, the creature's shadowed, back-lit gaze follows his path. Raptor, hawk, viper: something with half-lidded eyes and a vague, malevolent intellgience, or so she would seem were it not for the skimming curve of her mouth, the wretched certainty of her confident sprawl.
Otherwise, she doesn't move, at least until Ashe has made his rounds. The bar, the 'tender, and then his usual table, the floor scarred from his usual manner of selecting a chair. After he has chosen his chair, the creature rises with a liquid grace; she seems to slither off her perch at the bar, hip bumping the stool back toward the bar as she sidles across the room. Her gait isn't deliberately sidelong, but is perhaps rather a byproduct of her shape: the long limbs, the narrow torso, the unexpected height.
Instead of settling into a chair, she perches on the edge of the table and puts her beer bottle down in emphasis. The cigarello - or is it a cheroot? - falls from one corner of her mouth, expelling smoke like a dull chimney until she takes another draw. "Evenin'."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 02:18PM CST
The chair scutted across the floor some. Ashe's responce to this would be to turn around and lower himself into it promptly. His boots rose to rest upon the edge of the table as he took in a drawing breathe of nicotine. His eyes moved to the sasheying hips of Luce as she drew closer. There was something about the girl that he couldn't quite place. As she came to his table, he'd woonder what the attraction was between them. "Something I can help you with darlin`?" He asked, rather as though he was unimpressed with her.
Luce
Sun 02:26PM CST
"Yeah," her grin: quicksilver. Her voice is rough with smoke, most traces of her French accent scoured from the weight and infelction of the words. "There is, as a matter of fact."
Oh, but she was enjoying herself. It sounded for all the world like the dialogue from some old movie, some movie filmed before the apparent invention of irony, when black and white shadows and long shuttered glances and smoke, spilling from the tip of a cigar, could mean something, and only that. Her mouth thins, just, with that rich background awareness, as she hitches herself further up on the table and hooks her high-laced high-heel'd foot around the bottom rung of Ashe's chair. "Business, not pleasure, though."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 02:31PM CST
His eyes followed down her leg in a manner that suggested he enjoyed what he was looking at. Slowly his smokey blue eyes would come back up to her as his arms crossed. After a second he'd tap his ashes into the nearest tray and cross them again. "And what sort of business are we talking about?" His voice grew a bit gruff toward the end, something that might tell those who know him his demeanor was turning serious.
Luce
Sun 02:41PM CST
The creature braces herself carefully, hands planted beside either hip, long fingers splayed wide. The cigarello remains in her left hand, held like a pencil or a paintbrush, the glowing tip carefully cast away from her body and out over the floor. The wooden table groans as she shifts her weight, balancing against both of her feet. As she leans forward, her spaghetti straps fall in helpless curves against her smooth upper arms.
Mostly, though, it is her face - the half-curve of a sly, delightered smile, the low-lidded light of the eyes - clear as she bends low. Her mouth stops less than an inch from the shell-curve of his ear, an audible snap of her dull white teeth disturbs the air and heralds the widening of her faint grin. "I have a favor to ask you, Mr. Kincade." Her voice is quiet now, it purrs from someplace coiled in her chest. He feels the vibrations, the faint currents of air almost as much as he can hear her voice. "I do hope you can oblige me."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 02:46PM CST
"That all depends on the favor.." He said, turning his eyes back on her.
Luce
Sun 02:53PM CST
"Of course," her smiles rakes rogue, pulling back from her teeth. She doesn't move, now, even when he shifts his stance subtly enough to catch her lashed gaze again. "It's simple enough. I'd like permission to enter your clan's domain and - on occasion - hunt. If you could pass on the request," she continues, offering an elegant shrug of her bare shoulders, "I would be most grateful."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 03:05PM CST
Ashe narrowed his eyes at her some. As she spoke of the blood, it was hard for him not to grimace and perhaps smack her. God how he hated talking about things like this in public. Even if it was his own bar. Talking in a private booth was one thing, but in the middle of the room where people could take the barest chance to listen? Dear god no. "Must you really speak so openly? Besides, I'm not the one you should be talking too.."
Luce
Sun 03:18PM CST
"Calme-toi, mon petit." The Rose flickering a shuttered glance at him, rising at last and lifting the cigarello to her mouth in one long, smooth motion. "There isn't anyone close." Her faint grin reveals even, white teeth, the tip her tongue against the damp twist of paper. "I am not wholly irresponsible," her gaze drops, the smile widens, and lashes shield her eyes, a curtain of pale color. "although, perhaps, sometimes, a little too - free, eh? Perhaps you could - ignore the latter request and pass on the former request."
Leaning back, sprawling again, the creature once more braces herself with either hand and lightly taps her foot against the cross-bar of Ashe's chair, elegantly non-chalant. "I get bored, sometimes - " a wave of her hand, a curl of fine-filtered smoke, " - with the museums."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 03:25PM CST
Ashe looked tired, as though he had been fighting since he was first embraced. His eyes rolled up to her own as he huffed a moment. Relaxing once again, he flicked the ashes away and took another draw of the cigarette. Exhaling, he'd continue. "What's the matter, too afraid to approach him yourself?" He asked, meaning Sonatine Vidale, the Primogen of Clan Brujah.
Luce
Sun 03:30PM CST
"Perhaps," she responds, her quickened mouth flattening, but only at the corners. The expression could be a smirk, but is protected from anything so crass if only by curve of her risen brows.
"I am - " she offers a gesture to the night, a flip curl of her slender wrist. The smoke from her cigarello describes cursive scrawl in the night, looped and intricate. "- what I am, after all, a delicate flower, indeed."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 03:33PM CST
"Huh.. I'm sure." He said eyeing her a bit. Ashe stubbed out the dwindling cigarette and shook his head. Soon his arms would cross again and he'd eye her a bit more. "So what brings you to the wonderful Windy City, baby?" He moved his feet some, repositioning them to cross on the surface. His eyes moved to her hips again for a second before centering on her eyes. He could have been looking past her hips to the bar, by the way.
Luce
Sun 03:42PM CST
Her gaze flickers coolly back, following the trajectory of his shifting glance: her narrow hips, the faint curve cinched into well-worn denim, or the bar lost in drifts of smoke. Briefly, she focuses on the bartender. The smile falls just from her face as she studies the man, all manufactured artiface fading into an intense blank canvas, more sculptural than expressive.
"That's a question and a half," she responded before she even began to turn. In profile, her sharpened features are defined and skimmed by the pale remaining light. Her mouth moves, the corner twitches upward, as she glances back at him, now with a focused intent. "Which answer do you want? I have many. I'll give you this one: it was somewhere on the map between New York City and oblivion." She pauses, then, sandal'd foot tapping lightly at the cross-bar of his chair once more. "Or did you want something better suited for polite society?"
Ashe Kincade
Sun 03:47PM CST
"Honey, I honestly couldn't give a shit. Mind games and enigmatic phrases aren't my fortei.." He said, nearly mocking her flawless french. God, it was amazing how many Germand and French eople resided in Chicago, Il.
Luce
Sun 03:54PM CST
"If you don't give a shit, darlin'," barely shifting to the broad New England tones of her human youth, the Toreador flashes Ashe a whip-razor grin, all white teeth and fine lips, sailor-mouthed. "why the fuck did you ask?"
Ashe Kincade
Sun 03:57PM CST
"To make you think you were special, of course.." He said, standing with the feintest of grins. After tipping an imaginary hat, Ashe turned and started to walk out the door. The city had business with him tonight, and he wasn't about to let an appointment slip.
Luce
Sun 04:00PM CST
The creature returned the imaginary tip of a hat with a raking smile and smoldering little wink. And then she watched him, with a ravaging sort of attention, as wove his way through the smokey confines of the bar and disappeared into the narrow stairwell, up, up and out.
It would not be long before she would follow.
Sun 01:49PM CST
She has been here before; she has been here for two nights running, and the bartender and patrons have grown if not accustomed to her presence, at least less-sensitized to it. Her arms are draped over the edge of the bar like so much cloth; silk, or something like it, the low and liquid sweep, the boneless ease of her perch. The ashtray beside her right elbow holds exactly two butts of her sharp-smelling cigarellos, smashed to nothing with careful precision. Her third smoke of the evening is held negligently between the index and middle fingers of her pale hand. Occasionally, she takes a drag and spills more smoke into the already smokey atmosphere. Her other hand is wrapped around the neck of a bottle of beer, which is turn rests, sweating, on her denim-clad thigh, just below the long angled jointure with her narrow pelvis, wrist settled against the curve of her hip.
Such visible ease, such elemental caution: the hooded eyes, the flaxen hair spilling across her largely-bare shoulders, and her skin pale as the surface of the moon cast against the velvet night. She doesn't speak to anyone, she hasn't responded to anything said to her with more than a slow-blooming smile, wretched and poisonous and perfectly bright.
Ashe Kincade
Sun 01:57PM CST
The wooden stares creaked with each step he took to descending them. His hands hung loosily at his sides as he marched his way down into the main portion of the bar. Soon a single hand would grip the cheap banister and he'd shuffle down to the main area. Eyes scanned over the enterior a bit before deciding to continue on walking. This evening he wore a black bandanna accompanied with black jeans, and a tight fitting grey tee shirt. With this on, his muscles could be seen, as well as his broad chest.
Sniffling a bit, Ashe would make his way toward the bar, having just woken up. Coming closer, his eyes would shift over toward Luce a moment, then come back toward the tender. Yeah, she was the broad that came in not too long ago, but what did that matter? It wasn't like he knew her or anything. He'd bring his attention back to the tender further by leaning closer and listening to what th eman had to say. Nodding, Ashe would reach out, pull the cigarette from the man's lips, and put it in his own. From here, the rogue walked toward his usual table and kicked out a chair.
Luce
Sun 02:14PM CST
From the moment Ashe enters the room, the creature's shadowed, back-lit gaze follows his path. Raptor, hawk, viper: something with half-lidded eyes and a vague, malevolent intellgience, or so she would seem were it not for the skimming curve of her mouth, the wretched certainty of her confident sprawl.
Otherwise, she doesn't move, at least until Ashe has made his rounds. The bar, the 'tender, and then his usual table, the floor scarred from his usual manner of selecting a chair. After he has chosen his chair, the creature rises with a liquid grace; she seems to slither off her perch at the bar, hip bumping the stool back toward the bar as she sidles across the room. Her gait isn't deliberately sidelong, but is perhaps rather a byproduct of her shape: the long limbs, the narrow torso, the unexpected height.
Instead of settling into a chair, she perches on the edge of the table and puts her beer bottle down in emphasis. The cigarello - or is it a cheroot? - falls from one corner of her mouth, expelling smoke like a dull chimney until she takes another draw. "Evenin'."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 02:18PM CST
The chair scutted across the floor some. Ashe's responce to this would be to turn around and lower himself into it promptly. His boots rose to rest upon the edge of the table as he took in a drawing breathe of nicotine. His eyes moved to the sasheying hips of Luce as she drew closer. There was something about the girl that he couldn't quite place. As she came to his table, he'd woonder what the attraction was between them. "Something I can help you with darlin`?" He asked, rather as though he was unimpressed with her.
Luce
Sun 02:26PM CST
"Yeah," her grin: quicksilver. Her voice is rough with smoke, most traces of her French accent scoured from the weight and infelction of the words. "There is, as a matter of fact."
Oh, but she was enjoying herself. It sounded for all the world like the dialogue from some old movie, some movie filmed before the apparent invention of irony, when black and white shadows and long shuttered glances and smoke, spilling from the tip of a cigar, could mean something, and only that. Her mouth thins, just, with that rich background awareness, as she hitches herself further up on the table and hooks her high-laced high-heel'd foot around the bottom rung of Ashe's chair. "Business, not pleasure, though."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 02:31PM CST
His eyes followed down her leg in a manner that suggested he enjoyed what he was looking at. Slowly his smokey blue eyes would come back up to her as his arms crossed. After a second he'd tap his ashes into the nearest tray and cross them again. "And what sort of business are we talking about?" His voice grew a bit gruff toward the end, something that might tell those who know him his demeanor was turning serious.
Luce
Sun 02:41PM CST
The creature braces herself carefully, hands planted beside either hip, long fingers splayed wide. The cigarello remains in her left hand, held like a pencil or a paintbrush, the glowing tip carefully cast away from her body and out over the floor. The wooden table groans as she shifts her weight, balancing against both of her feet. As she leans forward, her spaghetti straps fall in helpless curves against her smooth upper arms.
Mostly, though, it is her face - the half-curve of a sly, delightered smile, the low-lidded light of the eyes - clear as she bends low. Her mouth stops less than an inch from the shell-curve of his ear, an audible snap of her dull white teeth disturbs the air and heralds the widening of her faint grin. "I have a favor to ask you, Mr. Kincade." Her voice is quiet now, it purrs from someplace coiled in her chest. He feels the vibrations, the faint currents of air almost as much as he can hear her voice. "I do hope you can oblige me."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 02:46PM CST
"That all depends on the favor.." He said, turning his eyes back on her.
Luce
Sun 02:53PM CST
"Of course," her smiles rakes rogue, pulling back from her teeth. She doesn't move, now, even when he shifts his stance subtly enough to catch her lashed gaze again. "It's simple enough. I'd like permission to enter your clan's domain and - on occasion - hunt. If you could pass on the request," she continues, offering an elegant shrug of her bare shoulders, "I would be most grateful."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 03:05PM CST
Ashe narrowed his eyes at her some. As she spoke of the blood, it was hard for him not to grimace and perhaps smack her. God how he hated talking about things like this in public. Even if it was his own bar. Talking in a private booth was one thing, but in the middle of the room where people could take the barest chance to listen? Dear god no. "Must you really speak so openly? Besides, I'm not the one you should be talking too.."
Luce
Sun 03:18PM CST
"Calme-toi, mon petit." The Rose flickering a shuttered glance at him, rising at last and lifting the cigarello to her mouth in one long, smooth motion. "There isn't anyone close." Her faint grin reveals even, white teeth, the tip her tongue against the damp twist of paper. "I am not wholly irresponsible," her gaze drops, the smile widens, and lashes shield her eyes, a curtain of pale color. "although, perhaps, sometimes, a little too - free, eh? Perhaps you could - ignore the latter request and pass on the former request."
Leaning back, sprawling again, the creature once more braces herself with either hand and lightly taps her foot against the cross-bar of Ashe's chair, elegantly non-chalant. "I get bored, sometimes - " a wave of her hand, a curl of fine-filtered smoke, " - with the museums."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 03:25PM CST
Ashe looked tired, as though he had been fighting since he was first embraced. His eyes rolled up to her own as he huffed a moment. Relaxing once again, he flicked the ashes away and took another draw of the cigarette. Exhaling, he'd continue. "What's the matter, too afraid to approach him yourself?" He asked, meaning Sonatine Vidale, the Primogen of Clan Brujah.
Luce
Sun 03:30PM CST
"Perhaps," she responds, her quickened mouth flattening, but only at the corners. The expression could be a smirk, but is protected from anything so crass if only by curve of her risen brows.
"I am - " she offers a gesture to the night, a flip curl of her slender wrist. The smoke from her cigarello describes cursive scrawl in the night, looped and intricate. "- what I am, after all, a delicate flower, indeed."
Ashe Kincade
Sun 03:33PM CST
"Huh.. I'm sure." He said eyeing her a bit. Ashe stubbed out the dwindling cigarette and shook his head. Soon his arms would cross again and he'd eye her a bit more. "So what brings you to the wonderful Windy City, baby?" He moved his feet some, repositioning them to cross on the surface. His eyes moved to her hips again for a second before centering on her eyes. He could have been looking past her hips to the bar, by the way.
Luce
Sun 03:42PM CST
Her gaze flickers coolly back, following the trajectory of his shifting glance: her narrow hips, the faint curve cinched into well-worn denim, or the bar lost in drifts of smoke. Briefly, she focuses on the bartender. The smile falls just from her face as she studies the man, all manufactured artiface fading into an intense blank canvas, more sculptural than expressive.
"That's a question and a half," she responded before she even began to turn. In profile, her sharpened features are defined and skimmed by the pale remaining light. Her mouth moves, the corner twitches upward, as she glances back at him, now with a focused intent. "Which answer do you want? I have many. I'll give you this one: it was somewhere on the map between New York City and oblivion." She pauses, then, sandal'd foot tapping lightly at the cross-bar of his chair once more. "Or did you want something better suited for polite society?"
Ashe Kincade
Sun 03:47PM CST
"Honey, I honestly couldn't give a shit. Mind games and enigmatic phrases aren't my fortei.." He said, nearly mocking her flawless french. God, it was amazing how many Germand and French eople resided in Chicago, Il.
Luce
Sun 03:54PM CST
"If you don't give a shit, darlin'," barely shifting to the broad New England tones of her human youth, the Toreador flashes Ashe a whip-razor grin, all white teeth and fine lips, sailor-mouthed. "why the fuck did you ask?"
Ashe Kincade
Sun 03:57PM CST
"To make you think you were special, of course.." He said, standing with the feintest of grins. After tipping an imaginary hat, Ashe turned and started to walk out the door. The city had business with him tonight, and he wasn't about to let an appointment slip.
Luce
Sun 04:00PM CST
The creature returned the imaginary tip of a hat with a raking smile and smoldering little wink. And then she watched him, with a ravaging sort of attention, as wove his way through the smokey confines of the bar and disappeared into the narrow stairwell, up, up and out.
It would not be long before she would follow.
mercredi, avril 21, 2004
tell me about yourself
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 07:05PM CST
Evening finds the Toreador sprawled in the Elysium's library. Although the walls are lined with thick-bound leather volumes - first editions of Carl Sandburg and Mark Twain, H.D. and Ezra Pound, Lord Byron and Sylvia Plath, Marie-Hélène Alette de Saunsanne d'Allais eschews those volumes in clear favor of another. The title and most of the lurid cover are obscured; she has twisted the paperback, bending the spine completely backward. Still, the vibrant colors, the suggestion of something - heaving - are livid, particularly in this room full of dusty volumes.
The creature's mouth is pale tonight, the corners snicked downward in a disingenuous curve of concentration. The rest of her features, too, are mostly devoid of make-up, and whatever prettiness she may have under such circumstances is quite changed when her face is bare. Her features are stark, perfectly symmetrical, with an attractive and almost sculptural curve to the cheekbones and brow. With lipstick to emphasize the width of her mouth, shadow to quicken the light in her eyes, mascara to sweep the pale lashes dark, she is a different creature entirely.
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 07:15PM CST
Teagan's not unused to finding others in the library. In fact, it oftentimes pleases her that others also take the same pleasure as she in reading the great poets of the ages. But as the Malkavian enters the Estate this evening and sees this figure perched within well, it gives her pause.
She's a creature of habit most of the time, aside from her deviations on occasion due to her very nature as a Lunatic.
Teagan's make up is minimal, only the slash of crimson red lips and the glittered yellow of painted eyes take away from the pale color of her features. She observes Marie another moment, a slight frown drawing her features. She still doesn't quite know how to deal with the creature.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 07:22PM CST
Not so much perched, as sprawled across the expanse of a finely-upholstered, overstuffed leather chair. The Toreador's long limbs, so attractive in aggregate, when posed just so, when shown to advantage by the lines of a designer dress might seem almost awkward when seen from this perspective. She was all limbs, all arms and legs, too tall, gangly even, and would remain so were it not for the strange fashions of the day and a close study of the facsimile of grace.
Teagan's footsteps on the hardwood floor - slight though the sound might be - interrupts the Toreador's concentration and the narrow frown of close, intense concentration breaks and wavers, as the ocean does when it first hits the continental shelf, a hint of things to come. Dark (glittering) eyes flicker up and over the top-most edge of the folded paperback and settle on Teagan. Her mouth crawls into the first stage of a smile and a pale brow rises in speculative assessment.
"Not slumming tonight, hmm?"
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 07:30PM CST
(Baby likes to play. Taunt. Insult. Shan't rebuke though. Peel away the layers.)
The soft tote bag is swung over the back of a chair as she strolls inside the room, her sable eyes resting upon Marie, cutting the lithe form with eyes that seem to be seeing things that aren't there. And perhaps she does. She wraps small hands around the wooden chairback and her spine straightens just so. The purple coat with its fake fur collar shifts with the movement of her body, glimpses of a black top and faded jeans visable beneath. Her lips curls just enough to reveal the points of several white teeth before she responds in that perfectly dignified English accent.
"Not tonight no. You neither? The streets not appeal?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 07:39PM CST
"I try to play one against the other," the Toreador replies, as her faint smile curves wider. Her lips remain pressed together, except when she utters the brief words in her faintly continental accent. The vowels glide French, longer and rounder. "And that way, neither is as likely to disappoint. You looked rather lost. The rain."
The paperback creaks beneath her firming grip, slick cover sliding against slick back cover, and the cheap pulp pages rustle thickly. The Toreador arches her back, then resettles in the chair, tucking one leg under the other. "Tell me about yourself." It is an abrupt change in subject, but the Toreador's sharp features betray no such awareness.
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 07:48PM CST
There's a flicker of something in the eyes. A slight parting of the red lips. The brow contorts, as memory floods her mind. The voices laughter is like static filling her ears and she cannot help but shut her eyes to it.
"What?"
She murmurs it, barely a sound really as Ashe's features register behind the flickering eyelids, the rain was falling. It beat against her flesh like a heartbeat. (Not even the rain has..)
The eyes open and she grasps the chair, scraping it backward and seating herself as if it were the continuation of a single movement. She feels her hair sliding over her shoulder, obscuring an eye as she narrows them slightly at the woman.
"Tell you about me? Well, that covers such a wide area. Narrow it down. Tell me what you want to know."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 07:57PM CST
The creature flexes the paperback in her hands once more, then casts is almost violently aside. Perhaps she had no more use for it. Perhaps she simply needed to move, to feel herself move, to feel herself complete a gesture that stretched her arm to its limit, almost beyond. Dark blue eyes flicker, tracing the moment of her pale hand against the shadows and shelves, following her own movement as the eye naturally traces the arc of light.
"I know. It covers - everything." Marie-Hélène hasn't looked up. Her gaze remains almost fixated upon her own hand until her shoulders curl in an emphatic shrug. Then her gaze flickers back to the Malkavian, a sweep of lashes across her eye, teasing the curve of her cheek. "That's why I asked. I want to see where you start. That's what I want to know. Humor me?"
Draven the Elder
Wed 08:01PM CST
Again the Elysium. You'd think one such as he had better things to do than frequent the Dorian Estate, but it was good for amusement every now and again. He drifted in like some fell phantom, the shadows clinging to the animal for a moment, before releasing him totally. His facial features were obscured in darkness and fabric, the hooded cowl of his coat that was more cloak than coat pulled low over his face. Of his body, he wore a combination of animal skins and old, tough leather. A wide belt was buckled around his waist, devoid of weaponry for this evening. Knee-high boots, silent despite their clunkiness-looking appearance were upon his lower leg, his lower body covered by doeskin pants.
His eyes flicked from one individual to the other beneath the cover of his cowl. One he recognized. One he did not.
Draven the Elder
Wed 08:01PM CST
Again the Elysium. You'd think one such as he had better things to do than frequent the Dorian Estate, but it was good for amusement every now and again. He drifted in like some fell phantom, the shadows clinging to the animal for a moment, before releasing him totally. His facial features were obscured in darkness and fabric, the hooded cowl of his coat that was more cloak than coat pulled low over his face. Of his body, he wore a combination of animal skins and old, tough leather. A wide belt was buckled around his waist, devoid of weaponry for this evening. Knee-high boots, silent despite their clunkiness-looking appearance were upon his lower leg, his lower body covered by doeskin pants.
His eyes flicked from one individual to the other beneath the cover of his cowl. One he recognized. One he did not.
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 08:03PM CST
"Where I start. Shall I become very deep then and ask where do any of us start? Where do we begin?"
She shifts her weight in the seat, sliding the coat down her arms and making a show of carefully folding it. She begins to speak slowly. Aware always of the eyes. She drapes the coat over the back of the seat. The soft lilt of her voice filling the room.
"I was born in England. But my family is of no interest. They were rich. As many were. Still are. You'd find more enjoyement if I spoke of him. Of crosses and Bibles. The dark humour of his eyes. A Priest he was. Brought me the present of everlasting darkness."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 08:09PM CST
"No, M'selle O'Braonain," the Rose murmurs quietly in reply, lifting her chin just so as the cowled man stalked into the library. Her smile has softened, but somehow it isn't soft, somehow it mirrors the sharpened awareness of her quiet voice, some intensity gained with the decrease in volume. "I don't care about Him," echoing the girl's emphasis of the name, allowing the word to stand alone, pillowed by silence on either side. "I'm interested in you, and not merely for amusement or enjoyment."
Another pause, as the Rose expells her half-baited, unnecessary breath. "And so: you."
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 08:13PM CST
She feels him enter. The prickling of the fine hair on her arms. The softed whisper of the voices as they scurried about. Teagan's lips part slightly as her eyes remain steady on Marie, but her voice gains a softer tinge as she watches the reaction to his appearance.
"And so, me. Before I begin I think should address our company. Seems only proper. Hello again Draven."
She turns now, twisting her body, but only enough so that she can rest her chin on her arm. That lop sided grin as she stares into the Wolf's eyes.
Draven the Elder
Wed 08:17PM CST
The wolf-in-man's-flesh folded his arms over his broad chest, each finger of his hands pointed in elongated fingernails that looked to be quite sharp. He came to a halt just inside the library. Enough for speaking distance. He spoke, his harsh feral voice accented in what would be an ancient French dialect. Were they to actually see his eyes, they seemed to glow with the attracted light a deep, burnished gold. However, his face was obscured. "Madamoiselle O'Braonain." The hooded head nodded briefly. He was a broad, tall man, but his size all but belied the preternatural grace of an animal not quite normal.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 08:25PM CST
"Messire..." the Toreador's dark blue eyes flickered with reflected light, or something else. Interest. Awareness, or perhaps even irritation, that the object of her focus shifted just so from her grasp. Arrogance was not beyond the creature, a certain flayed and cultivated pride. She unfurled one long, pale arm to match the greeting, offering either her knuckles to be kissed, her hand to be shaken, or just a faint little wave, adaptable creature that she is. She caught the age of the cowled man's dialect, and schooled her features and voice accordingly, a cool skim of sound, accompanied by that cool skim of a gesture. "...Draven? Allow me to introduce myself: Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais, a Rose recently transplanted to this city. The pleasure is entirely mine."
Draven the Elder
Wed 08:28PM CST
An amused, short, barely-there grunt was issued as he accepted her hand. His fingernails were black as death, (un?)naturally. He drew that had to within the shadowed depths of his cowl, where she'd feel tough leathery lips press to her knuckles, and coarse hair. A beard, perhaps? Or fur? "Draven LeRenne, Lord of Wolves." Pleasure was not something he spoke of much. The Feral Heart was a cold path.
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 08:33PM CST
Teagan watches the exchange with little more than a passing glance. She turns, her movements followed by the soft scent of her fragrance. Vanilla and some other elusive scent. She pulls her bag free and begins to rummage within it. Not for any particular object, simply for something to occupy her limbs, to bide her time whist the two become accquainted. She finds a book of poems. The cover leather and beginning to fray. She places it upon the table and then flicks it open, running the pad of her index finger down the page. A soft sound, perhaps a tune, rumbling the cords of her throat.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 08:41PM CST
Another Rose might flinch away from the black fingernails or the brush of coarse hair across her knuckles, but Marie-Hélène does no such thing. Nor, in fact, does she lean forward (as yet another Rose would do), thrillingly alive to the strange possibilities such overt physical deformity might represent.
No, the creature simply accepts the gesture with the cool, dignified grace exhibited by far too few of her kind in these late days, though perhaps something else, some impulse to mere mischief (or sheer destruction) dances at the corners of her mouth, just out of sight, just within her concious control.
"It has been several years since I have met one of your clan within the confines of an Elysium," she continues as she withdraws her hand. Her voice is nothing like the voice Teagan heard - or rather, it is precisely the voice Teagan has heard, except: walled off and up, protected and self-protective and utterly, flawlessly correct. "I am pleased that you are on our side, and not - " the faintest of shrugs. She will not speak of such things, such things are not for polite company (how far sould she carry this act? to the end, of course), are they?
Her level gaze does not essentially leave the Lord of Wolves, but somehow shifts to encompass the rummaging Malkavian in the conversation. "M'selle O'Braonain. What are you reading?"
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 08:49PM CST
She lifts her head and cranes her neck around, resting her elbow on the table beside her and the back of her skull against her hand, her eyes slightly hooded as she slowly lets her gaze play over first She and then Him. With her unrestrained hand she gives a small gesture toward the book.
"Blake. I read of his Tyger. I quite like his style. Perhaps I could show you another favourate? It begins "O Rose, thou art sick.."
There's a tiny smirk playing over her lips now.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 08:59PM CST
The creature's pale brows rise faintly, in almost-mocking concert that could be considered self-mocking, if mockery is ever at issue. "The Invisible worm/That flies in the night/In the howling storm..." She trails off with the end of the stanza and taps one pale, unpolished nail against her temple and salutes Teagan with two long fingers. The gesture says it all: touché.
"A touch, m'selle, a veritable touch." The creature's faint smile widens and deepens as her hand falls back to her thigh. "Blake is a very fine choice, particularly for the young. He is one of the most accessible introductions to the literary world, and yet, his simplicity hides a thorough complexity of meaning, meter and rhyme."
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 09:05PM CST
Pleased. She nods and gives the woman her full attention once more. In some ways, the Malkavian has resorted to childlike behaviour, not that at her age of embrace she was so far from still being one. Still a child at eighteen? Perhaps. But there is something deeper that resides within her now. A dark to her light. Shadows that seem to move across her features like passing clouds over a field. She bends to this Beast, more frequently than others, and on occasion, she even seems her age. But tonight, she's content to act the innocent young waif she once was. To play the game with this creature. To hang each other on their barbs.
"Indeed. It is my greatest passion, to study the poets. To sit and let their words envelop me. The beauty of a sunrise we are denied, but through words, on occasion I still get to see one."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 09:18PM CST
"You sound more like a Rose than I do, most nights, m'selle," the Toreador replied, cool attention now concentrated on the Malkavian again. The creature's eyes thin faintly, some passing fancy or thought dismissed almost as soon as it had arisen. "If you seek beauty or truth in words, demoiselle," a different appellation, spoken with an entirely different intonation, "stay away from most everything written in the 20th century. Before then you may still find both Truth and Beauty."
Those words she pronounces with clear and careful enunciation, separating them in speech as they would be - capitalized, emphasized - on the written page. "Thereafter, both fall victim to other, harder masters, and I would not wish to deprive you of your sunrises."
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 09:25PM CST
"No indeed."
Teagan makes a study of the Toreador. Watching the eyes and taking in the formation of words from the mouth. She tilts her head to one side, allowing her dark hair to cascade nicely over one shoulder. Leaving bare the soft flesh of the neck that once a creature like them could not resist sampling.
"Tell me about yourself now."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 09:36PM CST
Toreador are sometimes more mysterious in their ways than Malkavian. This one now rises, suddenly, mind taken with something else she remembered and left, and now wishes to resume.
Or perhaps she is merely avoiding the question.
"Ask me that next time, m'selle." She has already found her feet, and begins toward the door without bothering to retrieve her paperback. "Ask me next time, and perhaps I will answer."
From the library to the hall, from the hall to the night, swift-footed and long-legged, striding all the way.
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 09:41PM CST
Teagan watches the Toreador leave, a small smile gracing her innocent features as she rises in her wake and begins to collect her belongings.
"Goodnight then, goodnight. Put the lights out. Farefull. Yes Miss Marie, next time I will ask."
With this small statement, she departs.
Wed 07:05PM CST
Evening finds the Toreador sprawled in the Elysium's library. Although the walls are lined with thick-bound leather volumes - first editions of Carl Sandburg and Mark Twain, H.D. and Ezra Pound, Lord Byron and Sylvia Plath, Marie-Hélène Alette de Saunsanne d'Allais eschews those volumes in clear favor of another. The title and most of the lurid cover are obscured; she has twisted the paperback, bending the spine completely backward. Still, the vibrant colors, the suggestion of something - heaving - are livid, particularly in this room full of dusty volumes.
The creature's mouth is pale tonight, the corners snicked downward in a disingenuous curve of concentration. The rest of her features, too, are mostly devoid of make-up, and whatever prettiness she may have under such circumstances is quite changed when her face is bare. Her features are stark, perfectly symmetrical, with an attractive and almost sculptural curve to the cheekbones and brow. With lipstick to emphasize the width of her mouth, shadow to quicken the light in her eyes, mascara to sweep the pale lashes dark, she is a different creature entirely.
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 07:15PM CST
Teagan's not unused to finding others in the library. In fact, it oftentimes pleases her that others also take the same pleasure as she in reading the great poets of the ages. But as the Malkavian enters the Estate this evening and sees this figure perched within well, it gives her pause.
She's a creature of habit most of the time, aside from her deviations on occasion due to her very nature as a Lunatic.
Teagan's make up is minimal, only the slash of crimson red lips and the glittered yellow of painted eyes take away from the pale color of her features. She observes Marie another moment, a slight frown drawing her features. She still doesn't quite know how to deal with the creature.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 07:22PM CST
Not so much perched, as sprawled across the expanse of a finely-upholstered, overstuffed leather chair. The Toreador's long limbs, so attractive in aggregate, when posed just so, when shown to advantage by the lines of a designer dress might seem almost awkward when seen from this perspective. She was all limbs, all arms and legs, too tall, gangly even, and would remain so were it not for the strange fashions of the day and a close study of the facsimile of grace.
Teagan's footsteps on the hardwood floor - slight though the sound might be - interrupts the Toreador's concentration and the narrow frown of close, intense concentration breaks and wavers, as the ocean does when it first hits the continental shelf, a hint of things to come. Dark (glittering) eyes flicker up and over the top-most edge of the folded paperback and settle on Teagan. Her mouth crawls into the first stage of a smile and a pale brow rises in speculative assessment.
"Not slumming tonight, hmm?"
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 07:30PM CST
(Baby likes to play. Taunt. Insult. Shan't rebuke though. Peel away the layers.)
The soft tote bag is swung over the back of a chair as she strolls inside the room, her sable eyes resting upon Marie, cutting the lithe form with eyes that seem to be seeing things that aren't there. And perhaps she does. She wraps small hands around the wooden chairback and her spine straightens just so. The purple coat with its fake fur collar shifts with the movement of her body, glimpses of a black top and faded jeans visable beneath. Her lips curls just enough to reveal the points of several white teeth before she responds in that perfectly dignified English accent.
"Not tonight no. You neither? The streets not appeal?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 07:39PM CST
"I try to play one against the other," the Toreador replies, as her faint smile curves wider. Her lips remain pressed together, except when she utters the brief words in her faintly continental accent. The vowels glide French, longer and rounder. "And that way, neither is as likely to disappoint. You looked rather lost. The rain."
The paperback creaks beneath her firming grip, slick cover sliding against slick back cover, and the cheap pulp pages rustle thickly. The Toreador arches her back, then resettles in the chair, tucking one leg under the other. "Tell me about yourself." It is an abrupt change in subject, but the Toreador's sharp features betray no such awareness.
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 07:48PM CST
There's a flicker of something in the eyes. A slight parting of the red lips. The brow contorts, as memory floods her mind. The voices laughter is like static filling her ears and she cannot help but shut her eyes to it.
"What?"
She murmurs it, barely a sound really as Ashe's features register behind the flickering eyelids, the rain was falling. It beat against her flesh like a heartbeat. (Not even the rain has..)
The eyes open and she grasps the chair, scraping it backward and seating herself as if it were the continuation of a single movement. She feels her hair sliding over her shoulder, obscuring an eye as she narrows them slightly at the woman.
"Tell you about me? Well, that covers such a wide area. Narrow it down. Tell me what you want to know."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 07:57PM CST
The creature flexes the paperback in her hands once more, then casts is almost violently aside. Perhaps she had no more use for it. Perhaps she simply needed to move, to feel herself move, to feel herself complete a gesture that stretched her arm to its limit, almost beyond. Dark blue eyes flicker, tracing the moment of her pale hand against the shadows and shelves, following her own movement as the eye naturally traces the arc of light.
"I know. It covers - everything." Marie-Hélène hasn't looked up. Her gaze remains almost fixated upon her own hand until her shoulders curl in an emphatic shrug. Then her gaze flickers back to the Malkavian, a sweep of lashes across her eye, teasing the curve of her cheek. "That's why I asked. I want to see where you start. That's what I want to know. Humor me?"
Draven the Elder
Wed 08:01PM CST
Again the Elysium. You'd think one such as he had better things to do than frequent the Dorian Estate, but it was good for amusement every now and again. He drifted in like some fell phantom, the shadows clinging to the animal for a moment, before releasing him totally. His facial features were obscured in darkness and fabric, the hooded cowl of his coat that was more cloak than coat pulled low over his face. Of his body, he wore a combination of animal skins and old, tough leather. A wide belt was buckled around his waist, devoid of weaponry for this evening. Knee-high boots, silent despite their clunkiness-looking appearance were upon his lower leg, his lower body covered by doeskin pants.
His eyes flicked from one individual to the other beneath the cover of his cowl. One he recognized. One he did not.
Draven the Elder
Wed 08:01PM CST
Again the Elysium. You'd think one such as he had better things to do than frequent the Dorian Estate, but it was good for amusement every now and again. He drifted in like some fell phantom, the shadows clinging to the animal for a moment, before releasing him totally. His facial features were obscured in darkness and fabric, the hooded cowl of his coat that was more cloak than coat pulled low over his face. Of his body, he wore a combination of animal skins and old, tough leather. A wide belt was buckled around his waist, devoid of weaponry for this evening. Knee-high boots, silent despite their clunkiness-looking appearance were upon his lower leg, his lower body covered by doeskin pants.
His eyes flicked from one individual to the other beneath the cover of his cowl. One he recognized. One he did not.
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 08:03PM CST
"Where I start. Shall I become very deep then and ask where do any of us start? Where do we begin?"
She shifts her weight in the seat, sliding the coat down her arms and making a show of carefully folding it. She begins to speak slowly. Aware always of the eyes. She drapes the coat over the back of the seat. The soft lilt of her voice filling the room.
"I was born in England. But my family is of no interest. They were rich. As many were. Still are. You'd find more enjoyement if I spoke of him. Of crosses and Bibles. The dark humour of his eyes. A Priest he was. Brought me the present of everlasting darkness."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 08:09PM CST
"No, M'selle O'Braonain," the Rose murmurs quietly in reply, lifting her chin just so as the cowled man stalked into the library. Her smile has softened, but somehow it isn't soft, somehow it mirrors the sharpened awareness of her quiet voice, some intensity gained with the decrease in volume. "I don't care about Him," echoing the girl's emphasis of the name, allowing the word to stand alone, pillowed by silence on either side. "I'm interested in you, and not merely for amusement or enjoyment."
Another pause, as the Rose expells her half-baited, unnecessary breath. "And so: you."
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 08:13PM CST
She feels him enter. The prickling of the fine hair on her arms. The softed whisper of the voices as they scurried about. Teagan's lips part slightly as her eyes remain steady on Marie, but her voice gains a softer tinge as she watches the reaction to his appearance.
"And so, me. Before I begin I think should address our company. Seems only proper. Hello again Draven."
She turns now, twisting her body, but only enough so that she can rest her chin on her arm. That lop sided grin as she stares into the Wolf's eyes.
Draven the Elder
Wed 08:17PM CST
The wolf-in-man's-flesh folded his arms over his broad chest, each finger of his hands pointed in elongated fingernails that looked to be quite sharp. He came to a halt just inside the library. Enough for speaking distance. He spoke, his harsh feral voice accented in what would be an ancient French dialect. Were they to actually see his eyes, they seemed to glow with the attracted light a deep, burnished gold. However, his face was obscured. "Madamoiselle O'Braonain." The hooded head nodded briefly. He was a broad, tall man, but his size all but belied the preternatural grace of an animal not quite normal.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 08:25PM CST
"Messire..." the Toreador's dark blue eyes flickered with reflected light, or something else. Interest. Awareness, or perhaps even irritation, that the object of her focus shifted just so from her grasp. Arrogance was not beyond the creature, a certain flayed and cultivated pride. She unfurled one long, pale arm to match the greeting, offering either her knuckles to be kissed, her hand to be shaken, or just a faint little wave, adaptable creature that she is. She caught the age of the cowled man's dialect, and schooled her features and voice accordingly, a cool skim of sound, accompanied by that cool skim of a gesture. "...Draven? Allow me to introduce myself: Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais, a Rose recently transplanted to this city. The pleasure is entirely mine."
Draven the Elder
Wed 08:28PM CST
An amused, short, barely-there grunt was issued as he accepted her hand. His fingernails were black as death, (un?)naturally. He drew that had to within the shadowed depths of his cowl, where she'd feel tough leathery lips press to her knuckles, and coarse hair. A beard, perhaps? Or fur? "Draven LeRenne, Lord of Wolves." Pleasure was not something he spoke of much. The Feral Heart was a cold path.
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 08:33PM CST
Teagan watches the exchange with little more than a passing glance. She turns, her movements followed by the soft scent of her fragrance. Vanilla and some other elusive scent. She pulls her bag free and begins to rummage within it. Not for any particular object, simply for something to occupy her limbs, to bide her time whist the two become accquainted. She finds a book of poems. The cover leather and beginning to fray. She places it upon the table and then flicks it open, running the pad of her index finger down the page. A soft sound, perhaps a tune, rumbling the cords of her throat.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 08:41PM CST
Another Rose might flinch away from the black fingernails or the brush of coarse hair across her knuckles, but Marie-Hélène does no such thing. Nor, in fact, does she lean forward (as yet another Rose would do), thrillingly alive to the strange possibilities such overt physical deformity might represent.
No, the creature simply accepts the gesture with the cool, dignified grace exhibited by far too few of her kind in these late days, though perhaps something else, some impulse to mere mischief (or sheer destruction) dances at the corners of her mouth, just out of sight, just within her concious control.
"It has been several years since I have met one of your clan within the confines of an Elysium," she continues as she withdraws her hand. Her voice is nothing like the voice Teagan heard - or rather, it is precisely the voice Teagan has heard, except: walled off and up, protected and self-protective and utterly, flawlessly correct. "I am pleased that you are on our side, and not - " the faintest of shrugs. She will not speak of such things, such things are not for polite company (how far sould she carry this act? to the end, of course), are they?
Her level gaze does not essentially leave the Lord of Wolves, but somehow shifts to encompass the rummaging Malkavian in the conversation. "M'selle O'Braonain. What are you reading?"
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 08:49PM CST
She lifts her head and cranes her neck around, resting her elbow on the table beside her and the back of her skull against her hand, her eyes slightly hooded as she slowly lets her gaze play over first She and then Him. With her unrestrained hand she gives a small gesture toward the book.
"Blake. I read of his Tyger. I quite like his style. Perhaps I could show you another favourate? It begins "O Rose, thou art sick.."
There's a tiny smirk playing over her lips now.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 08:59PM CST
The creature's pale brows rise faintly, in almost-mocking concert that could be considered self-mocking, if mockery is ever at issue. "The Invisible worm/That flies in the night/In the howling storm..." She trails off with the end of the stanza and taps one pale, unpolished nail against her temple and salutes Teagan with two long fingers. The gesture says it all: touché.
"A touch, m'selle, a veritable touch." The creature's faint smile widens and deepens as her hand falls back to her thigh. "Blake is a very fine choice, particularly for the young. He is one of the most accessible introductions to the literary world, and yet, his simplicity hides a thorough complexity of meaning, meter and rhyme."
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 09:05PM CST
Pleased. She nods and gives the woman her full attention once more. In some ways, the Malkavian has resorted to childlike behaviour, not that at her age of embrace she was so far from still being one. Still a child at eighteen? Perhaps. But there is something deeper that resides within her now. A dark to her light. Shadows that seem to move across her features like passing clouds over a field. She bends to this Beast, more frequently than others, and on occasion, she even seems her age. But tonight, she's content to act the innocent young waif she once was. To play the game with this creature. To hang each other on their barbs.
"Indeed. It is my greatest passion, to study the poets. To sit and let their words envelop me. The beauty of a sunrise we are denied, but through words, on occasion I still get to see one."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 09:18PM CST
"You sound more like a Rose than I do, most nights, m'selle," the Toreador replied, cool attention now concentrated on the Malkavian again. The creature's eyes thin faintly, some passing fancy or thought dismissed almost as soon as it had arisen. "If you seek beauty or truth in words, demoiselle," a different appellation, spoken with an entirely different intonation, "stay away from most everything written in the 20th century. Before then you may still find both Truth and Beauty."
Those words she pronounces with clear and careful enunciation, separating them in speech as they would be - capitalized, emphasized - on the written page. "Thereafter, both fall victim to other, harder masters, and I would not wish to deprive you of your sunrises."
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 09:25PM CST
"No indeed."
Teagan makes a study of the Toreador. Watching the eyes and taking in the formation of words from the mouth. She tilts her head to one side, allowing her dark hair to cascade nicely over one shoulder. Leaving bare the soft flesh of the neck that once a creature like them could not resist sampling.
"Tell me about yourself now."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Wed 09:36PM CST
Toreador are sometimes more mysterious in their ways than Malkavian. This one now rises, suddenly, mind taken with something else she remembered and left, and now wishes to resume.
Or perhaps she is merely avoiding the question.
"Ask me that next time, m'selle." She has already found her feet, and begins toward the door without bothering to retrieve her paperback. "Ask me next time, and perhaps I will answer."
From the library to the hall, from the hall to the night, swift-footed and long-legged, striding all the way.
Teagan O'Braonain
Wed 09:41PM CST
Teagan watches the Toreador leave, a small smile gracing her innocent features as she rises in her wake and begins to collect her belongings.
"Goodnight then, goodnight. Put the lights out. Farefull. Yes Miss Marie, next time I will ask."
With this small statement, she departs.
mardi, avril 20, 2004
let there be - light!
Ashe Kincade
Tue 10:32PM CST
Ashe sat, accompanied by two other men. Drinks were scattered upon the table in the forms of empty beer bottles, empty shots, and half filled bottles of vodka, whiskey, and tequila. The lighting was dim, the atmosphere enough to kick anyone out who wasn't use to the type of welcoming the bar might give them. It was a den of murderers, theives, and prostitutes. The bar was ran by a former Hell's Angel biker who had a soft heart for troublemakers and derelicts.
It's almost ironic that a primary detective for the Chicago Police Department often came here with his good friend, ally, and quasi-partner; Ashe Kincade. The other man to Ashe's left was a local pawn shop owner, Anthony Marchelli. They all looked pretty typical, but Ashe almost stood out against the other two hard-cases. Ashe held a look of both predator and prey.
Luce
Tue 10:40PM CST
The streets shine with the aftermath of the latest thunderstorm, but the rain hasn't lowered the temperature drastically yet. It's a balmy 63 degrees, enough that she can get by without a jacket, with nothing but a black camisol, worn, flared jeans and jackboots. There are a pair of what appear to be tribal tattoos on her left upper arm, inky black against her pale skin, and nothing about her stands particularly out, beyond her flaxen hair, pulled away from her face and secured with a broken chopstick and a greasy Quaker State pencil.
The front door swings open, then falls closed and the scent of rain billows, herald for the tall, lean woman. She pauses just inside, narrowing her eyes against the darkness or the smoke, while fishing something from a hip pocket. The door opens again and she steps forward and to the side, out of the way, sliding a cigarello between her lips and lighting it with a flameless lighter. She draws one deliberate breath, then exhales a long tendril of smoke while she studies the room.
Ashe Kincade
Tue 10:48PM CST
Smoke billowed from every table in the room. The place wasn't much to begin with; a few wooden tables, a bar, some stairs leading to the upstairs rooms for rent. Whatever the attraction people felt to come in, it certainly wasn't the warm feeling they'ed get. More than likely, that warm feeling was a bullet peircing your flesh.
Bikers made up the primary group of people in the room. Prostitutes came a close second, and older, less talkative males made up the rest. The place particularly gave off a bad vibe of trouble. If people were looking for it, they'd certainly find it here.
Ashe and his small cluster fuck of friends sat off to the side. Smiling a bit, they'ed continue talking about this and that. His eyes moved to the peice of work that walked in the door. She had her looks, but he was sure a background story that involved a bad break-up, a battered spouse, or a struggling artist was hidden in her luggage.
Whatever, it wasn't like he might have cared.
Luce
Tue 10:55PM CST
Background stories always involve something like that: something tragic and necessary, something that crawls under your skin, something you can't ever shake, because you don't wanna shake it, because you're addicted to the drama, because you're addicted to the sameness, because something buried somewhere in there is something that you need.
Maybe it was like that with her. Some people, after all, need trouble.
Two sets of perfect white teeth snap around the end of the smoke. She draws another breath and exhales. Where her entrance elsewhere might draw a few catcalls, a few muttered comments, a few open invitations, here it draws only a few shuttered looks, and a few other hungry ones.
She smiles to herself, the razor-thin edge of a dangerous little smile, and continues her casual survey of the other patrons. Bikers (check); hookers (double check); veterans and teamsters and whatnots drowning their sorrows in a few fifths of cheap vodka (check). One hip curved against the bar, she leaned back to give the 'tender her order, never, essentially, letting the cigarello out of her mouth. When the 'tender returned with the beer, she pushed a few ones across the scarred surface of the wood at him, then returned her attention to the small group off to the side. Her chin rose, just so: acknowledgment or greeting, or a vain attempt to find an angle from which the smoke wouldn't sting her eyes.
Ashe Kincade
Tue 11:05PM CST
The beer was brought to his lips as he settled back into the creaky chair. The wood had long since seen it's days of newly furnished years, now it served more simpler tasks. Ashe lowered the beer, allowing his fingers to curl around th neck of it. His non chalant attitude was part of his charm; the bad boy image often associated with James Dean, apparently. In truth, you could categorize Ashe under several different areas. Detective, Mercenary, Hunter, Private Investigator, Hitman, hired hand; he had been these things for the past decade or so.
Should she look more closely to his companions, the table, and himself; she might notice a few interesting articles. Stray bullets laid dorment ont he table next to an obvious silver revolver. A bootknife laid next to that followed by a zippo, three package of smokes, various glass containers, and a police badge.
Ashe, himself, seemed very at ease with himself and his surroundings. While normally very vigilante, one could diffenatley see that he was comfortable right now; if you knew him. With short brown hair, baby blue eyes, and three days growth of unshaven facial hair; he could be described as charming yet still very dangerous.
Teagan O'Braonain
Tue 11:08PM CST
This wasn't her scene. If she hadn't been caught in the storm, now nothing more than the occasional fat drop of rain and the faint rumblings of thunder, she would never have thought of taking shelter in such a location. Her hair was soaked through, strands dripping into her eyes as she huddled just outside the door, her hands tucked up under her armpits. Not shivering, just miserable. A patron who reminded her of a member of the Village People passed by her in a haze of smoke and booze and Teagan's nose wrinkled.
Should she go inside? A fresh crack of thunder decided for her and the Malkavian yanked at the door and took a step inside.
(Dark. Dark. Cannot see the light. Why are you here? Don't belong. They can see. They can see.)
Raising a hand to her face, Teagan lifted her chin and brushed aside some wet hair, plastered to her head and made quite the show of stalking toward the bar, aware of the eyes upon her figure, squelching forward::
Luce
Tue 11:15PM CST
She looks closely. She always looks closely, and sometimes too closely. It takes a minute - two, three, more - for her to finish her study. Finish she does, however, and when she does, the lean woman plucks the cigarello from her mouth and leans back, balancing her weight between one foot and both elbows, curled and resting against the bar. She lifts the other foot, twisting her ankle to deliberately put the cigarello out on the sole of her shoe.
Teagan crosses in front of her, briefly obscuring the group, and the woman drops the Malkavian a quick, deliberate little wink that the creature may or may not see from behind the mass of her wet hair.
The door falls closed, shutting out the sounds of the storm, and the blonde pushes away from the edge of the bar, carrying the now-unlit smoke and bottle of sweating beer in one negligent hand that rests against the narrow curve of her lean hip. When she reaches Ashe's table, she leans over, deliberately putting her hand down over something - a stray bullet, a glass container, a police badge, something - and lifts her smoke again to her lips. "Someone got a light?"
Ashe Kincade
Tue 11:23PM CST
As the blonde approached, his eyes would meet her determination. Perhaps the most alluring portion of his features, his eyes were a smokey blue color that took a moment to distinguish the hue. It was as though the years had grown to hide the true emotions behind them like a mask. The trio grew silent as she did question them for a light. However, even as Anthony Marchelli would smile to her and begin to move; Ashe's voice would nearly command him to halt.
"Didn't you have a lighter when you first came in here, honey?" His voice was a deep boroque; yet charming enough to perhaps draw a smile from the blonde. The man's relaxed mood showed clearly in his slow movement to take a further sip of the beer. Ashe was dressed in a black bandanna, slate grey tight fitting tee shirt, black jeans, and surrounded by a dark trenhc coat that did everything to conceal his tools of the trade.
Teagan O'Braonain
Tue 11:24PM CST
The sable eyes notice the gesture and peer after her a moment or two as she stands, dripping water onto the floor, shifting her weight from boot to boot. Then she uncurls her hands from around her coat's collar and proceeds to slide it from her lithe body. The leathers are tight enough when dry but the water has made them like a second skin and she doesn't look forward to prying them off later. The tank top is damp, but not saturated, one strap resting just off her shoulder.
Teagan pushes her hair from her face and drapes the coat over a bar stool, taking the ends of her shirt in both hands and wringing it out. As she does she glances around, aware of the curious eyes, but also aware that in her current attire she at least looks as if she may belong after all.
"Beer please. Anything strong."
Luce
Tue 11:30PM CST
The blonde's attention shifts to Anthony Marchelli as he smiles and shifts in his seat, reaching for (presumably) a light, or a book of matches, but snaps back to Ashe like a bullet's ricochet as he speaks up, instead.
Her wide mouth narrows into a faint, pleased little smirk of recognition or acknowledgment. "I did," she replies, with a faint lift of her chin and a certain distinctively challenging quirk of her brow. "But I must have a hole in my pocket." The beer bottle sings hollowly as she taps a sheer nail against the glass and the glass dances against her hip. "And I'm not particularly sweet; you shouldn't call me honey."
Ashe Kincade
Tue 11:36PM CST
The men chuckle a bit at her fiestiness. Ashe's grin turned into a cold smirk as he looked to them as though giving them a secret message between friends. "A hole.." As his eyes rose back to her, they'd pass Teagan O'Braonain, causing a pause in his thinking. He wondered why she would be in a bar like this. Ashe glanced past her a second as his eyes settled upon Luce. "..in your pocket? That's the best you could come up with in under a minute?" He asked. Ashe set his beer on the table and soon crossed his arms in near defiance.
Luce
Tue 11:42PM CST
"Mmm, no." Luce grinned, now - a blatant, rich fillip of expression that enlivened her sharp features and mirrored something sharp in her shuttered eyes. "It was the most obvious thing I could come up with in under a minute. Clearly, it worked.
"So - " with a small forward twitch of her jaw, she shifted the cigarello between her teeth. " - aren't you going to be a gentleman, or something?"
Teagan O'Braonain
Tue 11:42PM CST
Perching herself on the stool, the brunette's attention falls upon the bartender, who is fixing her with a leer she understands too well. Setting down the bottle before her after a moment, he winks and drawls in a voice aged with smoking and excess;
"On the house sweetheart. Aren't you a bit young to be in here?"
He eyes the fine cheekbones, the swan like neck, his gaze lingering on the shadowy hollow where her shirt ends and he can see just a hint of clevage.
She seems to bristle at the comment and if he wasn't mistaken her eyes darkened several shades. Almost black.
"I'm not as young as I look. Thank you for the beer."
The bartender shrugs and moves away, eyeing the little spitfire another minute or two before patrons call. Teagan turns her back on the bar, rolling the untasted bottle between her hands. She slips one foot beneath the other and chews thoughtfully on her lower lip, her eyes traveling the world that seems to exist within these four walls. Men and women she would never have known in her past life. They'd have been classed as beneath her. Now, well, they mostly intriged her. She feels a glimmer of recognition as her eyes stray to a small cluster at a nearby table. She tilts her head. Her eyes cutting the figure of the woman who winked at her. Making a study of her form.
Ashe Kincade
Tue 11:48PM CST
"What can I say toots? I'm not that type of guy.." His arms spread, as though promoting himself for her inspection. Ashe's head tilted a bit as he looked her body over carefully. A slight playful look came to his already charming features as he smirked at her. Once his hands came back to lace themselves along the arms of the chair, Ashe would nod toward the silver zippo laying dorment amongst the bullets.
Teagan O'Braonain
Tue 11:54PM CST
Her vision is somewhat obscured so she cranes her neck, trying to see around the woman to the man she is addressing. There's a familiar tingle running the length of her spine. The voices begin to whisper of familiar faces and she feels the icy wet of the bottle between her hands, drops of water trickling over her fingers from her hair. She stands, slipping her coat over an arm, her beer in the opposing hand and begins to move closer, feigning a search for the toliets.
Luce
Tue 11:58PM CST
"Good," she flashes back, leaning across the table to swipe the zippo and a pair of stray bullets from the table. "I despise gentlemen."
Blue eyes flash a certain fire, like the after-echo of the sun simmering on the horizon, like the hottest heart of a gas flame. And then they are reflecting fire - the shivered dance of the flame, just touched by a repressed shiver of primal fear. She did not swallow, but rather concentrated on the flame and re-lit her cigarello once more before snapping the zippo closed.
"Thanks for the light," she says, taking a deep draw from the smoke and slipping the beer, mostly unnoticed, onto the table. She transfers the bullets from hand to hand and holds them up, just so on the tips of her fingers. "And thanks for these, too. But I gotta go - " the bullets disappear into her hip pocket as she tips an imaginary hat in Ashe's direction. If her gaze lingers on him a moment too long - well, it could nothing, some stray thought, nothing more. " - toots. See you 'round."
With that, she pushes away from the table and turns to saunter toward the door.
Ashe Kincade
Wed 12:03AM CST
He said nothing to her as she pulled her best imitation of a female Humphrey Boggart. Watching her go, he'd shake his head and look back to the men accompanying him. They honestly didn't know whatto make of her, and neither did Ashe. Smirking a bit, he'd grin at them and take another drink of his beer.
God damn the bitter taste of it all.
As the wildcat left the run down pub, his attention would turn more serious as he looked toward Teagan. Excusing himself, the bandanna clad man would straighten his clothing out and stand. Setting his beer down, he'd begin making his way toward her, eyes focused and centered.
Tue 10:32PM CST
Ashe sat, accompanied by two other men. Drinks were scattered upon the table in the forms of empty beer bottles, empty shots, and half filled bottles of vodka, whiskey, and tequila. The lighting was dim, the atmosphere enough to kick anyone out who wasn't use to the type of welcoming the bar might give them. It was a den of murderers, theives, and prostitutes. The bar was ran by a former Hell's Angel biker who had a soft heart for troublemakers and derelicts.
It's almost ironic that a primary detective for the Chicago Police Department often came here with his good friend, ally, and quasi-partner; Ashe Kincade. The other man to Ashe's left was a local pawn shop owner, Anthony Marchelli. They all looked pretty typical, but Ashe almost stood out against the other two hard-cases. Ashe held a look of both predator and prey.
Luce
Tue 10:40PM CST
The streets shine with the aftermath of the latest thunderstorm, but the rain hasn't lowered the temperature drastically yet. It's a balmy 63 degrees, enough that she can get by without a jacket, with nothing but a black camisol, worn, flared jeans and jackboots. There are a pair of what appear to be tribal tattoos on her left upper arm, inky black against her pale skin, and nothing about her stands particularly out, beyond her flaxen hair, pulled away from her face and secured with a broken chopstick and a greasy Quaker State pencil.
The front door swings open, then falls closed and the scent of rain billows, herald for the tall, lean woman. She pauses just inside, narrowing her eyes against the darkness or the smoke, while fishing something from a hip pocket. The door opens again and she steps forward and to the side, out of the way, sliding a cigarello between her lips and lighting it with a flameless lighter. She draws one deliberate breath, then exhales a long tendril of smoke while she studies the room.
Ashe Kincade
Tue 10:48PM CST
Smoke billowed from every table in the room. The place wasn't much to begin with; a few wooden tables, a bar, some stairs leading to the upstairs rooms for rent. Whatever the attraction people felt to come in, it certainly wasn't the warm feeling they'ed get. More than likely, that warm feeling was a bullet peircing your flesh.
Bikers made up the primary group of people in the room. Prostitutes came a close second, and older, less talkative males made up the rest. The place particularly gave off a bad vibe of trouble. If people were looking for it, they'd certainly find it here.
Ashe and his small cluster fuck of friends sat off to the side. Smiling a bit, they'ed continue talking about this and that. His eyes moved to the peice of work that walked in the door. She had her looks, but he was sure a background story that involved a bad break-up, a battered spouse, or a struggling artist was hidden in her luggage.
Whatever, it wasn't like he might have cared.
Luce
Tue 10:55PM CST
Background stories always involve something like that: something tragic and necessary, something that crawls under your skin, something you can't ever shake, because you don't wanna shake it, because you're addicted to the drama, because you're addicted to the sameness, because something buried somewhere in there is something that you need.
Maybe it was like that with her. Some people, after all, need trouble.
Two sets of perfect white teeth snap around the end of the smoke. She draws another breath and exhales. Where her entrance elsewhere might draw a few catcalls, a few muttered comments, a few open invitations, here it draws only a few shuttered looks, and a few other hungry ones.
She smiles to herself, the razor-thin edge of a dangerous little smile, and continues her casual survey of the other patrons. Bikers (check); hookers (double check); veterans and teamsters and whatnots drowning their sorrows in a few fifths of cheap vodka (check). One hip curved against the bar, she leaned back to give the 'tender her order, never, essentially, letting the cigarello out of her mouth. When the 'tender returned with the beer, she pushed a few ones across the scarred surface of the wood at him, then returned her attention to the small group off to the side. Her chin rose, just so: acknowledgment or greeting, or a vain attempt to find an angle from which the smoke wouldn't sting her eyes.
Ashe Kincade
Tue 11:05PM CST
The beer was brought to his lips as he settled back into the creaky chair. The wood had long since seen it's days of newly furnished years, now it served more simpler tasks. Ashe lowered the beer, allowing his fingers to curl around th neck of it. His non chalant attitude was part of his charm; the bad boy image often associated with James Dean, apparently. In truth, you could categorize Ashe under several different areas. Detective, Mercenary, Hunter, Private Investigator, Hitman, hired hand; he had been these things for the past decade or so.
Should she look more closely to his companions, the table, and himself; she might notice a few interesting articles. Stray bullets laid dorment ont he table next to an obvious silver revolver. A bootknife laid next to that followed by a zippo, three package of smokes, various glass containers, and a police badge.
Ashe, himself, seemed very at ease with himself and his surroundings. While normally very vigilante, one could diffenatley see that he was comfortable right now; if you knew him. With short brown hair, baby blue eyes, and three days growth of unshaven facial hair; he could be described as charming yet still very dangerous.
Teagan O'Braonain
Tue 11:08PM CST
This wasn't her scene. If she hadn't been caught in the storm, now nothing more than the occasional fat drop of rain and the faint rumblings of thunder, she would never have thought of taking shelter in such a location. Her hair was soaked through, strands dripping into her eyes as she huddled just outside the door, her hands tucked up under her armpits. Not shivering, just miserable. A patron who reminded her of a member of the Village People passed by her in a haze of smoke and booze and Teagan's nose wrinkled.
Should she go inside? A fresh crack of thunder decided for her and the Malkavian yanked at the door and took a step inside.
(Dark. Dark. Cannot see the light. Why are you here? Don't belong. They can see. They can see.)
Raising a hand to her face, Teagan lifted her chin and brushed aside some wet hair, plastered to her head and made quite the show of stalking toward the bar, aware of the eyes upon her figure, squelching forward::
Luce
Tue 11:15PM CST
She looks closely. She always looks closely, and sometimes too closely. It takes a minute - two, three, more - for her to finish her study. Finish she does, however, and when she does, the lean woman plucks the cigarello from her mouth and leans back, balancing her weight between one foot and both elbows, curled and resting against the bar. She lifts the other foot, twisting her ankle to deliberately put the cigarello out on the sole of her shoe.
Teagan crosses in front of her, briefly obscuring the group, and the woman drops the Malkavian a quick, deliberate little wink that the creature may or may not see from behind the mass of her wet hair.
The door falls closed, shutting out the sounds of the storm, and the blonde pushes away from the edge of the bar, carrying the now-unlit smoke and bottle of sweating beer in one negligent hand that rests against the narrow curve of her lean hip. When she reaches Ashe's table, she leans over, deliberately putting her hand down over something - a stray bullet, a glass container, a police badge, something - and lifts her smoke again to her lips. "Someone got a light?"
Ashe Kincade
Tue 11:23PM CST
As the blonde approached, his eyes would meet her determination. Perhaps the most alluring portion of his features, his eyes were a smokey blue color that took a moment to distinguish the hue. It was as though the years had grown to hide the true emotions behind them like a mask. The trio grew silent as she did question them for a light. However, even as Anthony Marchelli would smile to her and begin to move; Ashe's voice would nearly command him to halt.
"Didn't you have a lighter when you first came in here, honey?" His voice was a deep boroque; yet charming enough to perhaps draw a smile from the blonde. The man's relaxed mood showed clearly in his slow movement to take a further sip of the beer. Ashe was dressed in a black bandanna, slate grey tight fitting tee shirt, black jeans, and surrounded by a dark trenhc coat that did everything to conceal his tools of the trade.
Teagan O'Braonain
Tue 11:24PM CST
The sable eyes notice the gesture and peer after her a moment or two as she stands, dripping water onto the floor, shifting her weight from boot to boot. Then she uncurls her hands from around her coat's collar and proceeds to slide it from her lithe body. The leathers are tight enough when dry but the water has made them like a second skin and she doesn't look forward to prying them off later. The tank top is damp, but not saturated, one strap resting just off her shoulder.
Teagan pushes her hair from her face and drapes the coat over a bar stool, taking the ends of her shirt in both hands and wringing it out. As she does she glances around, aware of the curious eyes, but also aware that in her current attire she at least looks as if she may belong after all.
"Beer please. Anything strong."
Luce
Tue 11:30PM CST
The blonde's attention shifts to Anthony Marchelli as he smiles and shifts in his seat, reaching for (presumably) a light, or a book of matches, but snaps back to Ashe like a bullet's ricochet as he speaks up, instead.
Her wide mouth narrows into a faint, pleased little smirk of recognition or acknowledgment. "I did," she replies, with a faint lift of her chin and a certain distinctively challenging quirk of her brow. "But I must have a hole in my pocket." The beer bottle sings hollowly as she taps a sheer nail against the glass and the glass dances against her hip. "And I'm not particularly sweet; you shouldn't call me honey."
Ashe Kincade
Tue 11:36PM CST
The men chuckle a bit at her fiestiness. Ashe's grin turned into a cold smirk as he looked to them as though giving them a secret message between friends. "A hole.." As his eyes rose back to her, they'd pass Teagan O'Braonain, causing a pause in his thinking. He wondered why she would be in a bar like this. Ashe glanced past her a second as his eyes settled upon Luce. "..in your pocket? That's the best you could come up with in under a minute?" He asked. Ashe set his beer on the table and soon crossed his arms in near defiance.
Luce
Tue 11:42PM CST
"Mmm, no." Luce grinned, now - a blatant, rich fillip of expression that enlivened her sharp features and mirrored something sharp in her shuttered eyes. "It was the most obvious thing I could come up with in under a minute. Clearly, it worked.
"So - " with a small forward twitch of her jaw, she shifted the cigarello between her teeth. " - aren't you going to be a gentleman, or something?"
Teagan O'Braonain
Tue 11:42PM CST
Perching herself on the stool, the brunette's attention falls upon the bartender, who is fixing her with a leer she understands too well. Setting down the bottle before her after a moment, he winks and drawls in a voice aged with smoking and excess;
"On the house sweetheart. Aren't you a bit young to be in here?"
He eyes the fine cheekbones, the swan like neck, his gaze lingering on the shadowy hollow where her shirt ends and he can see just a hint of clevage.
She seems to bristle at the comment and if he wasn't mistaken her eyes darkened several shades. Almost black.
"I'm not as young as I look. Thank you for the beer."
The bartender shrugs and moves away, eyeing the little spitfire another minute or two before patrons call. Teagan turns her back on the bar, rolling the untasted bottle between her hands. She slips one foot beneath the other and chews thoughtfully on her lower lip, her eyes traveling the world that seems to exist within these four walls. Men and women she would never have known in her past life. They'd have been classed as beneath her. Now, well, they mostly intriged her. She feels a glimmer of recognition as her eyes stray to a small cluster at a nearby table. She tilts her head. Her eyes cutting the figure of the woman who winked at her. Making a study of her form.
Ashe Kincade
Tue 11:48PM CST
"What can I say toots? I'm not that type of guy.." His arms spread, as though promoting himself for her inspection. Ashe's head tilted a bit as he looked her body over carefully. A slight playful look came to his already charming features as he smirked at her. Once his hands came back to lace themselves along the arms of the chair, Ashe would nod toward the silver zippo laying dorment amongst the bullets.
Teagan O'Braonain
Tue 11:54PM CST
Her vision is somewhat obscured so she cranes her neck, trying to see around the woman to the man she is addressing. There's a familiar tingle running the length of her spine. The voices begin to whisper of familiar faces and she feels the icy wet of the bottle between her hands, drops of water trickling over her fingers from her hair. She stands, slipping her coat over an arm, her beer in the opposing hand and begins to move closer, feigning a search for the toliets.
Luce
Tue 11:58PM CST
"Good," she flashes back, leaning across the table to swipe the zippo and a pair of stray bullets from the table. "I despise gentlemen."
Blue eyes flash a certain fire, like the after-echo of the sun simmering on the horizon, like the hottest heart of a gas flame. And then they are reflecting fire - the shivered dance of the flame, just touched by a repressed shiver of primal fear. She did not swallow, but rather concentrated on the flame and re-lit her cigarello once more before snapping the zippo closed.
"Thanks for the light," she says, taking a deep draw from the smoke and slipping the beer, mostly unnoticed, onto the table. She transfers the bullets from hand to hand and holds them up, just so on the tips of her fingers. "And thanks for these, too. But I gotta go - " the bullets disappear into her hip pocket as she tips an imaginary hat in Ashe's direction. If her gaze lingers on him a moment too long - well, it could nothing, some stray thought, nothing more. " - toots. See you 'round."
With that, she pushes away from the table and turns to saunter toward the door.
Ashe Kincade
Wed 12:03AM CST
He said nothing to her as she pulled her best imitation of a female Humphrey Boggart. Watching her go, he'd shake his head and look back to the men accompanying him. They honestly didn't know whatto make of her, and neither did Ashe. Smirking a bit, he'd grin at them and take another drink of his beer.
God damn the bitter taste of it all.
As the wildcat left the run down pub, his attention would turn more serious as he looked toward Teagan. Excusing himself, the bandanna clad man would straighten his clothing out and stand. Setting his beer down, he'd begin making his way toward her, eyes focused and centered.
lundi, avril 19, 2004
Presentation
Balthazar Henry
Mon 07:58PM CST
The Toreador Salon, first in awhile for the City of Chicago. Word had been sent of Marie-Hélène Alette's arrival. Despite her apparent status as a Poseur, she was still one of the devine heritage that Arikel had transcribed through the years. Balthazar would not turn her away in these dark times.
Dark times, it was an odd way of thinking about the modern era.
Simmon was before him, standing in front of the Prince's chair. Balthaxar's eyes centered upon him calmly as he spoke. "Apparently we have a Poseur joining our little circle. She should be interesting to invite, despite the tragedy of it all.."
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 08:08PM CST
Simmon stood infront of the princess chair. For the first time perhaps in a very long time the princess chair was not at the head of the room. Indeed he was prince but at this time the Salon had been called by the clans Primogen. That was simmon and as such the head chair was his tonight.
"It happens more frequent in the recent nights then it did even a century ago. Our clan has been plagued with people being embraced simple for their looks simply because their sire found them beautifull"
Balthazar Henry
Mon 08:19PM CST
"Yes, very unfortunate." The Prince bowed his head slightly as he thought about what Simmon had to say. The truth of the matter was that the Posuer's were almost looked down upon in the Toreador Clan. Despite this, as stated before; he would not turn her away. Balthazar sighed a moment, then moved the pocket watch from his black vest and snapped it open. His eyes fell to it a moment, then glided their way back to his Primogen. "She is due to arrive any minute now. She has come recommended to me by word from New York."
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 08:21PM CST
"She had?"
That perked his curiosity. To come highly recommended often ment you have been someones lap dog.
"Who and for what my my Prince"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 08:26PM CST
And with what perfect timing does the door open, a mild ghoul murmuring a fair greeting, the barest essence of an announcement, nothing to disturb the Prince and Primogen already in conversation, but enough to draw their attention should they wish it so.
The crimson dress, the pale hair - a shining river of gilt silver - the dark eyes, the crimson mouth, the long lean limbs and all that self-assurance. She could certainly have been embraced solely for the loveliness of her form: a harsh, angular, demanding sort of loveliness, but loveliness none-the-less.
It takes but little to pick the pair out, to identify their rank if only by the confidence of their manner and the luxury of their surroundings. (Or, peut-être, a little bird whispered into her fair ear.)
"Sire." Marie-Hélène comes close to sighing as she sinks into deep, respectful half-curtsey, in the continental style.
Balthazar Henry
Mon 08:43PM CST
His eyes centered upon the girl as she entered. Her dress captivating his eyes a moment before anything else. Soon, her flawless featurestook hold of his gaze as he studied her frame a bit. The curves seduced him for but only a minute until his composure could be regained. Clearing his throat, the Princ eof Chicago would look to Simmon Ledeux for his reaction to her arrival. It was good to btain more blood for the Roses.
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 08:47PM CST
When the doors open and the woman is shown in Simmons chestnut eyes drift of the prince on that red dress. His mind recalls teh phrase 'The devil is a women in a red dress' and that causes him to smile. He was dressed in a modern and stylish 3 piece suit. It like his shoes matching his eyes and natural hair colour.
"Greetings. I can only assume you have come for the private party before the galla?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 08:54PM CST
"Indeed, m'sieur." The faintest of smiles, subtle but quickened by the spark of something secretive - amusement, perhaps, or knowledge - twitches at the corners of her wide mouth as she rises. "The private party before the gala. I made arrangements before I left New York City, and trust I am expected."
She is painted, but only just: smoke around the eyes, crimson around the mouth, little else to soften the ghostly pallor of her complexion, which is only reinforced by the faint gleam of her cool flaxen hair sifting loose around her shoulders. "Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais."
Her gaze rises, a respectful flicker of a question offered from one to another - she will approach only when such permission is granted. Each city is island unto itself: the law stays the same, but the law changes, everywhere.
Balthazar Henry
Mon 08:57PM CST
Nothing is said from Balthazar at the moment. Simmon is running the show for her, and will make the nessicary introductions.
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 09:01PM CST
"Your arrival has been foretold and we were expecting you"
Extending his hand he motions with his fingers for her to advance
"Please come closer. Iprefer to speak without having to raise my voice fo you to easily hear."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 09:07PM CST
"Bien sûr, messire," the response is murmured mildly, almost (but never) meekly, and with such permission she continues across the remaining expanse between them. Gone is the furious stride, the vibrant living forward motion of earlier in the evening, replaced by a gait more appropriate to the circumstances and locations.
When she reaches the pair, the creature offers another faint curtsey as acknowledgement of their courtesy and - perhaps - evidence of her own. Not so deep as the last, this nevertheless shows her to advantage.
Balthazar Henry
Mon 09:17PM CST
His eyes lingered on her, onfident and proud they spoke. He was in control of everything that the city had to offer him. The question was what she would offer him? Dressed in an elegant suit, he wore it without a coat, and in replace was a black dress vest. A vibrant blue dress shirt accented his regal-like composure. Yes, there could be no doubt in her mind that this was the Prince of Chicago. Silent he was, however, his eyes studying her further while the Toreador Primogen took care of the mundane details involved.
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 09:26PM CST
As she stepped infront of them his eyes looked over her smooth flesh once again. He was a rose, such was his curse to be drawn in by beauty no matter what its origin. Unlike many of the young of his clan he had at least learned to not allow his moments of weakness to be readily identified by others.
"Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais...."
His recital of her name perfect, as was teh french accent.
"....what has brought you to this city?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 09:36PM CST
"Mmm, a 1970 Barracuda 440 - " the air of casual intimacy, the faint, insouciant smile, lasts only a moment. The easiest of boundaries to test, with the poorest of mild jokes. "Ahh, but you must forgive me, messire, such familiarities. You ask a grand question that warrants both time and care in the answering."
Her eyes flick up to meet his - briefly - in faint emphasis of her words and she spares the barest of glances for the Prince as well, gauging his survey of her. Her straight posture falls by slow degrees into the faintest of slouches in a manner that emphasizes the lines the dress rather than the lines of her body. "Why have I come to Chicago?" she echoes, her gaze returning to Simmon at last, all traces of even the most subtle humors draining from her angular features, which fall now into stillness. "To support my clan and my Prince - " the barest flicker of her gaze toward Balthazar, " - and to find my own place. New York is ours again, but my place is not there. So it goes."
Balthazar Henry
Mon 09:47PM CST
His eyes settled upon her intently as she answered the Primogen's in a humorous manne. Balthazar allowed her to finish her statement before he finally interjected. Even as Simmon may try to speak, his voice would grow louder with each syllable. "Already one night in the cit, and you refer to me as your Prince. Such things are not wise for one to do. Until you canully appreciate my city for what it is; you will refer to meby title and name childe." His words came eloquently, his gaze narrowing a bit to emphasze his meaning behind them. "My dear Ms. Alette de Sausanne d'Allais, while you may come recommended by both Clan and Sect; you are no one in the eyes of Chicago. You will do well to think of what tiquette is nessicary before speaking. Presentation is no time to make needless jokes." Balthazar'sone wasn't nessicarily a scolding one, as it was more a mentorial one.
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 09:50PM CST
And so the primogen waits. The prince had spoken, and for now he would simply watch.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 09:57PM CST
"To be sure, M'sieur Henry." The Prince speaks, and the creature's eyes fall away from the Primogen settling instead on the city's ruler. Her chin falls a faint half-inch, formal acknowledgment of both the chastisement and its intent, but otherwise her features remain still as if they were sculpted marble. "There is no excuse for my familiar behaviour, and I will offer none." Her eyes, darkling blue, settle on his face, supple as lambent flames. "I beg your consideration and forgiveness."
Balthazar Henry
Mon 10:00PM CST
"You have it my dear. Please, cotinue.." He said. His voice sounded youthful enough, but his eyes revealed a much more deeper experience.
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 10:12PM CST
Speeking up once again the pimogen asks again.
"Why this city?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 10:17PM CST
She dips her head deeply in acknowledgment of the Prince's generousity, but her gaze soon returns to his face. "I left my Sire's city some seven years ago at his urging. Europe grows crowded, and the salons are thick with Kindred and their progeny, an endless cycle of - how do you say? - social events that never change. One becomes, perhaps, calcified, and there is little room for - ah, for the youth, mais oui?" The corner of her mouth quirks upward, not amused, nor conspiratorial, but merely expressive.
"After this, I came to New York. Le nouveaux monde, they call it still, en Paris, even though the new world is long since as settled as the old. And yet, there is - there is more here, yes? In the general manner, opportunity, space. Whatever the words one wishes to use for it. More room in which, perhaps, to grow." Her attention remains, still, steadily upon the Prince, although she is certainly aware of both the Primogen's automatic deference to the Prince and his attention upon her.
"Why this city?" Her gaze shifts to the Primogen once more. Her chin rises a fraction of an inch and her mouth curls into another faint smile. "Why not another? Are you, perhaps, a post-modernist M'sieur? I chose this city because it was the next large city on the map, because I read Carl Sandburg to my Sire and he approved, because the lights reflect prettily in the lake and because a Rose stands strongly as Prince. Why this city? Why not another? I cannot give you a single answer because there is no single, simple answer. I hope you will not consider my compound answer flip, it is, merely, the truth of the matter. As with most things, there are many reasons, and none. To distinguish between the two of them, that is more trick that perhaps I am capable of, at least when it comes to myself. Another - " the smooth, nigh-bare shoulders rise. Fall. Liquid as molten glass. " - is a different story, entirely."
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 10:22PM CST
Despite her previous error her response was to his liking. She was both honest and fluid with her words. Thought was put into each choice and how they were strung together like chordss of music.
"Very well. Your answer is acceptable to my ears."
He takes a step to the side and turns so that he is facing both the Prince and her
"Take this opertunity to properly and fully complete teh prestation as required by our tradition to the prince of this city"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 10:35PM CST
The young woman's gaze flickers from Simmon to the Prince as he invites her, again, to speak. Once more, she falls into her deepest curtsey - a graceful, swan-like dive that sends her pale hair cascading across her marble cheek like rough-spun moonlight. "I am Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais, childe of Jean-Jacques Alain de Compagnie au Verre, Marquis de Sausanne, Duc d'Allais, childe of Marie-Henri de la Fleur, childe of Lucius, and so on, to the end of the line. I respectfully beg your permission to reside within your domain, and ask that you acknowledge me as one of your loyal subjects."
Balthazar Henry
Mon 10:39PM CST
"My permission is extended to you dear Marie-Hélène. Simmll show you around the city and explain to you my own unique view on the Traditions. Well presence in this city, but we hold our own in the department of the spoken word."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 10:45PM CST
"Merci, Sire." So often it is the little touches that count, the ribbon of respect that weaves itself through her murmured words. As the Prince accepts her into the city and commends her to the tutelage of her Primogen, she lowers her gaze modestly and allows something a mild smile to snake its way across her mouth. "I will remember your kind instruction and your generous forgiveness of my familiarity."
Mon 07:58PM CST
The Toreador Salon, first in awhile for the City of Chicago. Word had been sent of Marie-Hélène Alette's arrival. Despite her apparent status as a Poseur, she was still one of the devine heritage that Arikel had transcribed through the years. Balthazar would not turn her away in these dark times.
Dark times, it was an odd way of thinking about the modern era.
Simmon was before him, standing in front of the Prince's chair. Balthaxar's eyes centered upon him calmly as he spoke. "Apparently we have a Poseur joining our little circle. She should be interesting to invite, despite the tragedy of it all.."
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 08:08PM CST
Simmon stood infront of the princess chair. For the first time perhaps in a very long time the princess chair was not at the head of the room. Indeed he was prince but at this time the Salon had been called by the clans Primogen. That was simmon and as such the head chair was his tonight.
"It happens more frequent in the recent nights then it did even a century ago. Our clan has been plagued with people being embraced simple for their looks simply because their sire found them beautifull"
Balthazar Henry
Mon 08:19PM CST
"Yes, very unfortunate." The Prince bowed his head slightly as he thought about what Simmon had to say. The truth of the matter was that the Posuer's were almost looked down upon in the Toreador Clan. Despite this, as stated before; he would not turn her away. Balthazar sighed a moment, then moved the pocket watch from his black vest and snapped it open. His eyes fell to it a moment, then glided their way back to his Primogen. "She is due to arrive any minute now. She has come recommended to me by word from New York."
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 08:21PM CST
"She had?"
That perked his curiosity. To come highly recommended often ment you have been someones lap dog.
"Who and for what my my Prince"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 08:26PM CST
And with what perfect timing does the door open, a mild ghoul murmuring a fair greeting, the barest essence of an announcement, nothing to disturb the Prince and Primogen already in conversation, but enough to draw their attention should they wish it so.
The crimson dress, the pale hair - a shining river of gilt silver - the dark eyes, the crimson mouth, the long lean limbs and all that self-assurance. She could certainly have been embraced solely for the loveliness of her form: a harsh, angular, demanding sort of loveliness, but loveliness none-the-less.
It takes but little to pick the pair out, to identify their rank if only by the confidence of their manner and the luxury of their surroundings. (Or, peut-être, a little bird whispered into her fair ear.)
"Sire." Marie-Hélène comes close to sighing as she sinks into deep, respectful half-curtsey, in the continental style.
Balthazar Henry
Mon 08:43PM CST
His eyes centered upon the girl as she entered. Her dress captivating his eyes a moment before anything else. Soon, her flawless featurestook hold of his gaze as he studied her frame a bit. The curves seduced him for but only a minute until his composure could be regained. Clearing his throat, the Princ eof Chicago would look to Simmon Ledeux for his reaction to her arrival. It was good to btain more blood for the Roses.
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 08:47PM CST
When the doors open and the woman is shown in Simmons chestnut eyes drift of the prince on that red dress. His mind recalls teh phrase 'The devil is a women in a red dress' and that causes him to smile. He was dressed in a modern and stylish 3 piece suit. It like his shoes matching his eyes and natural hair colour.
"Greetings. I can only assume you have come for the private party before the galla?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 08:54PM CST
"Indeed, m'sieur." The faintest of smiles, subtle but quickened by the spark of something secretive - amusement, perhaps, or knowledge - twitches at the corners of her wide mouth as she rises. "The private party before the gala. I made arrangements before I left New York City, and trust I am expected."
She is painted, but only just: smoke around the eyes, crimson around the mouth, little else to soften the ghostly pallor of her complexion, which is only reinforced by the faint gleam of her cool flaxen hair sifting loose around her shoulders. "Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais."
Her gaze rises, a respectful flicker of a question offered from one to another - she will approach only when such permission is granted. Each city is island unto itself: the law stays the same, but the law changes, everywhere.
Balthazar Henry
Mon 08:57PM CST
Nothing is said from Balthazar at the moment. Simmon is running the show for her, and will make the nessicary introductions.
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 09:01PM CST
"Your arrival has been foretold and we were expecting you"
Extending his hand he motions with his fingers for her to advance
"Please come closer. Iprefer to speak without having to raise my voice fo you to easily hear."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 09:07PM CST
"Bien sûr, messire," the response is murmured mildly, almost (but never) meekly, and with such permission she continues across the remaining expanse between them. Gone is the furious stride, the vibrant living forward motion of earlier in the evening, replaced by a gait more appropriate to the circumstances and locations.
When she reaches the pair, the creature offers another faint curtsey as acknowledgement of their courtesy and - perhaps - evidence of her own. Not so deep as the last, this nevertheless shows her to advantage.
Balthazar Henry
Mon 09:17PM CST
His eyes lingered on her, onfident and proud they spoke. He was in control of everything that the city had to offer him. The question was what she would offer him? Dressed in an elegant suit, he wore it without a coat, and in replace was a black dress vest. A vibrant blue dress shirt accented his regal-like composure. Yes, there could be no doubt in her mind that this was the Prince of Chicago. Silent he was, however, his eyes studying her further while the Toreador Primogen took care of the mundane details involved.
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 09:26PM CST
As she stepped infront of them his eyes looked over her smooth flesh once again. He was a rose, such was his curse to be drawn in by beauty no matter what its origin. Unlike many of the young of his clan he had at least learned to not allow his moments of weakness to be readily identified by others.
"Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais...."
His recital of her name perfect, as was teh french accent.
"....what has brought you to this city?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 09:36PM CST
"Mmm, a 1970 Barracuda 440 - " the air of casual intimacy, the faint, insouciant smile, lasts only a moment. The easiest of boundaries to test, with the poorest of mild jokes. "Ahh, but you must forgive me, messire, such familiarities. You ask a grand question that warrants both time and care in the answering."
Her eyes flick up to meet his - briefly - in faint emphasis of her words and she spares the barest of glances for the Prince as well, gauging his survey of her. Her straight posture falls by slow degrees into the faintest of slouches in a manner that emphasizes the lines the dress rather than the lines of her body. "Why have I come to Chicago?" she echoes, her gaze returning to Simmon at last, all traces of even the most subtle humors draining from her angular features, which fall now into stillness. "To support my clan and my Prince - " the barest flicker of her gaze toward Balthazar, " - and to find my own place. New York is ours again, but my place is not there. So it goes."
Balthazar Henry
Mon 09:47PM CST
His eyes settled upon her intently as she answered the Primogen's in a humorous manne. Balthazar allowed her to finish her statement before he finally interjected. Even as Simmon may try to speak, his voice would grow louder with each syllable. "Already one night in the cit, and you refer to me as your Prince. Such things are not wise for one to do. Until you canully appreciate my city for what it is; you will refer to meby title and name childe." His words came eloquently, his gaze narrowing a bit to emphasze his meaning behind them. "My dear Ms. Alette de Sausanne d'Allais, while you may come recommended by both Clan and Sect; you are no one in the eyes of Chicago. You will do well to think of what tiquette is nessicary before speaking. Presentation is no time to make needless jokes." Balthazar'sone wasn't nessicarily a scolding one, as it was more a mentorial one.
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 09:50PM CST
And so the primogen waits. The prince had spoken, and for now he would simply watch.
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 09:57PM CST
"To be sure, M'sieur Henry." The Prince speaks, and the creature's eyes fall away from the Primogen settling instead on the city's ruler. Her chin falls a faint half-inch, formal acknowledgment of both the chastisement and its intent, but otherwise her features remain still as if they were sculpted marble. "There is no excuse for my familiar behaviour, and I will offer none." Her eyes, darkling blue, settle on his face, supple as lambent flames. "I beg your consideration and forgiveness."
Balthazar Henry
Mon 10:00PM CST
"You have it my dear. Please, cotinue.." He said. His voice sounded youthful enough, but his eyes revealed a much more deeper experience.
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 10:12PM CST
Speeking up once again the pimogen asks again.
"Why this city?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 10:17PM CST
She dips her head deeply in acknowledgment of the Prince's generousity, but her gaze soon returns to his face. "I left my Sire's city some seven years ago at his urging. Europe grows crowded, and the salons are thick with Kindred and their progeny, an endless cycle of - how do you say? - social events that never change. One becomes, perhaps, calcified, and there is little room for - ah, for the youth, mais oui?" The corner of her mouth quirks upward, not amused, nor conspiratorial, but merely expressive.
"After this, I came to New York. Le nouveaux monde, they call it still, en Paris, even though the new world is long since as settled as the old. And yet, there is - there is more here, yes? In the general manner, opportunity, space. Whatever the words one wishes to use for it. More room in which, perhaps, to grow." Her attention remains, still, steadily upon the Prince, although she is certainly aware of both the Primogen's automatic deference to the Prince and his attention upon her.
"Why this city?" Her gaze shifts to the Primogen once more. Her chin rises a fraction of an inch and her mouth curls into another faint smile. "Why not another? Are you, perhaps, a post-modernist M'sieur? I chose this city because it was the next large city on the map, because I read Carl Sandburg to my Sire and he approved, because the lights reflect prettily in the lake and because a Rose stands strongly as Prince. Why this city? Why not another? I cannot give you a single answer because there is no single, simple answer. I hope you will not consider my compound answer flip, it is, merely, the truth of the matter. As with most things, there are many reasons, and none. To distinguish between the two of them, that is more trick that perhaps I am capable of, at least when it comes to myself. Another - " the smooth, nigh-bare shoulders rise. Fall. Liquid as molten glass. " - is a different story, entirely."
Simmon Ledeux
Mon 10:22PM CST
Despite her previous error her response was to his liking. She was both honest and fluid with her words. Thought was put into each choice and how they were strung together like chordss of music.
"Very well. Your answer is acceptable to my ears."
He takes a step to the side and turns so that he is facing both the Prince and her
"Take this opertunity to properly and fully complete teh prestation as required by our tradition to the prince of this city"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 10:35PM CST
The young woman's gaze flickers from Simmon to the Prince as he invites her, again, to speak. Once more, she falls into her deepest curtsey - a graceful, swan-like dive that sends her pale hair cascading across her marble cheek like rough-spun moonlight. "I am Marie-Hélène Alette de Sausanne d'Allais, childe of Jean-Jacques Alain de Compagnie au Verre, Marquis de Sausanne, Duc d'Allais, childe of Marie-Henri de la Fleur, childe of Lucius, and so on, to the end of the line. I respectfully beg your permission to reside within your domain, and ask that you acknowledge me as one of your loyal subjects."
Balthazar Henry
Mon 10:39PM CST
"My permission is extended to you dear Marie-Hélène. Simmll show you around the city and explain to you my own unique view on the Traditions. Well presence in this city, but we hold our own in the department of the spoken word."
Marie-Hélène Alette
Mon 10:45PM CST
"Merci, Sire." So often it is the little touches that count, the ribbon of respect that weaves itself through her murmured words. As the Prince accepts her into the city and commends her to the tutelage of her Primogen, she lowers her gaze modestly and allows something a mild smile to snake its way across her mouth. "I will remember your kind instruction and your generous forgiveness of my familiarity."
Blue the Night (prelude)
Blue is the color of night -
Darkness. No heat. No electricity. None of the dubious comforts of home, the trappings of humanity. (She hardly needed a kitchen.) And so she had only darkness, vast and empty, magnifying the subtle sounds of each little fidget and refracting them back to her. The self, squared. Or perhaps cubed.
There were more iterations than that, lingering traces of who she was almost anyplace she had been. Cubed: what was next? There should be more convenient English terms for such concepts. (I am manifold. I am legion. I am still in the darkness. The darkness is a womb and I am - ) No. Her mouth fell into a narrow grimace, which she could feel distorting her features, puckering her cheeks and crinkling her brow in her deliberate exaggeration. She had not liked the analogy years ago, and it certainly had not aged well.
No light seeped in through the stormblinds covering the high windows that lined the massive space: the only color was the imagined color, the motes of should-be-color, imposed either by her eyes or her mind. Or maybe there was more, maybe she was evolving. Maybe she could see all colors - black is every color, every single color wrapped together and tied with a big funereal bow; black means something, something trite and casual, some imputed sense of tragedy or danger, but, really, it's a rip-off. Her wide mouth curved into the subtle suggestion of a smile: she loved rip-offs.
Meaning
less.
It was still twilight outside. The sky would be blue. Not pale blue, not robin's-fucking-egg blue, not winter-sky blue, and certain not navy blue. The twilit sky would be the sheer essence of blue, after all the detritus of yellow and white and green and pale and pleasant and soothing had been distilled from it, leaving some concentrated substance that would flare against the horizon for 3.5 seconds, perfect, irreconcilable, irredeemable. She could taste it, some other-ache in the back of her throat, some remnant hunger subsumed by the other hunger, the one that drove everything (every. thing). But now - now, the one spurs on the other, piledriver, driving her from her coiled, long-limbed crouch to her feet. And onward: she stalks through the darkness with furious assurance, claiming every single step along the way.
(On est million à rire
Du million qui est en face
Mais deux millions de rires
N`empêchent que dans la glace.)
It's important to know this: she isn't forgetful, even when she indulges. Facts, dates and times, appointments, little fillips of information stain her brain the way neon stains the night, the way the sun stains the horizon at twilight, and the way the twilight sun would stain her flesh: a smoking brand. There's a bag in her hand, an empty dress, something all-too-appropriate, the necessary tools of the trade, snatched from the otherwise empty floor. From the loading dock to the Barracuda (it no longer appeals to her: she can feel the heat seeping from the pavement. She wants a convertible, something that will be blasted by Chicago's summer wind), and then into traffic, another moving blind crawling thing, inching along the surface of the world. All it takes is perspective.
The flickering fluorescent lights of the 7-11 highlight her pallor and hollow her already sharp features, so that she looks like death's understudy, something out of a made-for-TV horror flick (the cruel headmistress?). The shopgirl - insolently flipping through the latest issue of Hotrods Monthly and smoking a Doral - flicks a dull glance up as the creature disappears into the bathroom. (She may not need a kitchen. She does, however, require a shower. Or, a sink, running water at the least.) Twenty-five minutes later she emerges, transformed. The clerk flickers a disinterested glance upward, takes a drag from her cigarette, snaps her gum, and drops her attention back to the magazine. The freaks come out at night; it isn't the weirdest thing she's seen all night, the transformation from hung-over horror-house extra in filthy jeans to fashion plate in a crimson bias-cut dress and lucite heels. Still, something draws her attention again, up and over and out, the insolent swish of the skirt against the woman's lean thighs, the perfect drape of the silk across her torso, the raw confidence of her walk, the after image of the vibrant dress, the color a still-spreading stain.
---
They are to come bearing their talent: undead magi with gifts of dubious magnitude and uncertain quality. Fortunately, although she felt specifically exempted (there was that Nigerian...) from the precise letter of the Primogen's exhortation, she could be deemed to have complied with the spirit, at least, simply by attending. The dress, the hair, the artfully artless elegance, all constructed in less than a half-hour in the bathroom of a 7-11 sitting in the shadow of an empty industrial park in the midst of Chicago's vast urban blight. Few such masterpieces have been completed so quickly, or in such circumstances, though from her sure skill, this is not her first attempt.
She is the first to arrive, a bare invitation, a murmured word passed from mouth to dry, dead mouth, and so on. Somehow, all the energy, all the fire, all the I-don’t-know-what-I-need(oh-yes-I-do) has been consumed and subsumed and contained by sure and subtle flame of the cold, confidant figure: flaxen hair, twilit eyes, blood-red dress, blooded mouth. She is the very first to arrive (certainly not a coincidence, that. This, too, is part of her art.) and she finds a space to inhabit equidistant from the door and the center of the room, from which she appears to be observing and cataloging the furnishings. In truth, she is observing and cataloging the arrivals via the door.
(Quelque chose est toujours laissée la brûlure, se refroidissent au contact, mais en flammes.)
Darkness. No heat. No electricity. None of the dubious comforts of home, the trappings of humanity. (She hardly needed a kitchen.) And so she had only darkness, vast and empty, magnifying the subtle sounds of each little fidget and refracting them back to her. The self, squared. Or perhaps cubed.
There were more iterations than that, lingering traces of who she was almost anyplace she had been. Cubed: what was next? There should be more convenient English terms for such concepts. (I am manifold. I am legion. I am still in the darkness. The darkness is a womb and I am - ) No. Her mouth fell into a narrow grimace, which she could feel distorting her features, puckering her cheeks and crinkling her brow in her deliberate exaggeration. She had not liked the analogy years ago, and it certainly had not aged well.
No light seeped in through the stormblinds covering the high windows that lined the massive space: the only color was the imagined color, the motes of should-be-color, imposed either by her eyes or her mind. Or maybe there was more, maybe she was evolving. Maybe she could see all colors - black is every color, every single color wrapped together and tied with a big funereal bow; black means something, something trite and casual, some imputed sense of tragedy or danger, but, really, it's a rip-off. Her wide mouth curved into the subtle suggestion of a smile: she loved rip-offs.
Meaning
less.
It was still twilight outside. The sky would be blue. Not pale blue, not robin's-fucking-egg blue, not winter-sky blue, and certain not navy blue. The twilit sky would be the sheer essence of blue, after all the detritus of yellow and white and green and pale and pleasant and soothing had been distilled from it, leaving some concentrated substance that would flare against the horizon for 3.5 seconds, perfect, irreconcilable, irredeemable. She could taste it, some other-ache in the back of her throat, some remnant hunger subsumed by the other hunger, the one that drove everything (every. thing). But now - now, the one spurs on the other, piledriver, driving her from her coiled, long-limbed crouch to her feet. And onward: she stalks through the darkness with furious assurance, claiming every single step along the way.
(On est million à rire
Du million qui est en face
Mais deux millions de rires
N`empêchent que dans la glace.)
It's important to know this: she isn't forgetful, even when she indulges. Facts, dates and times, appointments, little fillips of information stain her brain the way neon stains the night, the way the sun stains the horizon at twilight, and the way the twilight sun would stain her flesh: a smoking brand. There's a bag in her hand, an empty dress, something all-too-appropriate, the necessary tools of the trade, snatched from the otherwise empty floor. From the loading dock to the Barracuda (it no longer appeals to her: she can feel the heat seeping from the pavement. She wants a convertible, something that will be blasted by Chicago's summer wind), and then into traffic, another moving blind crawling thing, inching along the surface of the world. All it takes is perspective.
The flickering fluorescent lights of the 7-11 highlight her pallor and hollow her already sharp features, so that she looks like death's understudy, something out of a made-for-TV horror flick (the cruel headmistress?). The shopgirl - insolently flipping through the latest issue of Hotrods Monthly and smoking a Doral - flicks a dull glance up as the creature disappears into the bathroom. (She may not need a kitchen. She does, however, require a shower. Or, a sink, running water at the least.) Twenty-five minutes later she emerges, transformed. The clerk flickers a disinterested glance upward, takes a drag from her cigarette, snaps her gum, and drops her attention back to the magazine. The freaks come out at night; it isn't the weirdest thing she's seen all night, the transformation from hung-over horror-house extra in filthy jeans to fashion plate in a crimson bias-cut dress and lucite heels. Still, something draws her attention again, up and over and out, the insolent swish of the skirt against the woman's lean thighs, the perfect drape of the silk across her torso, the raw confidence of her walk, the after image of the vibrant dress, the color a still-spreading stain.
---
They are to come bearing their talent: undead magi with gifts of dubious magnitude and uncertain quality. Fortunately, although she felt specifically exempted (there was that Nigerian...) from the precise letter of the Primogen's exhortation, she could be deemed to have complied with the spirit, at least, simply by attending. The dress, the hair, the artfully artless elegance, all constructed in less than a half-hour in the bathroom of a 7-11 sitting in the shadow of an empty industrial park in the midst of Chicago's vast urban blight. Few such masterpieces have been completed so quickly, or in such circumstances, though from her sure skill, this is not her first attempt.
She is the first to arrive, a bare invitation, a murmured word passed from mouth to dry, dead mouth, and so on. Somehow, all the energy, all the fire, all the I-don’t-know-what-I-need(oh-yes-I-do) has been consumed and subsumed and contained by sure and subtle flame of the cold, confidant figure: flaxen hair, twilit eyes, blood-red dress, blooded mouth. She is the very first to arrive (certainly not a coincidence, that. This, too, is part of her art.) and she finds a space to inhabit equidistant from the door and the center of the room, from which she appears to be observing and cataloging the furnishings. In truth, she is observing and cataloging the arrivals via the door.
(Quelque chose est toujours laissée la brûlure, se refroidissent au contact, mais en flammes.)
vendredi, avril 16, 2004
une arrivée
Teagan O'Braonain
Thu 10:46PM CST
::She's still edgy. The past day and evening were rough on the Malkavian Fledging and she still found the tremors moved her hands when she thought too long on the memories. They would grow dim eventually, she was sure. But now, having risen in the Church feeling much more at ease, she's taken a stroll and ended up at the Estate. Remembering the Seneschal's offer to spend as much time as she wished in his library, she pushes the buzzer at the gate and waits for the Ghoul to admit her. As the gates creak open, she tugs her red coat tighter about her, turning up the collar and begins to walk toward the door::
Marie-Hélène Alette
Thu 10:52PM CST
There's an old car in the driveway. It looks like so much nothing in the inky shadows: nothing from the modern nights, nothing particularly interesting from past nights, either, the lines obscured by shadows, the gleaming paint job obscured by dust from the road and a fine smattering of freshly spattered insect bodies.
Yum.
Behind Teagan, another form and a whispered conversation with the ghoul. Were they expecting her? Why - yes, they were.
The clothes match the car: worn bellbottoms with frayed, mudspattered cuffs, jackboots and a spaghetti-strapped black camisole, hardly the attire of a fine, upstanding society lady. It doesn't seem to phase the creature. She practically stalks inside in Teagan's wake, lighting a cigarette with a flameless lighter as she flickers her lambent gaze over her surroundings.
Teagan O'Braonain
Thu 11:04PM CST
::As the front door is opened and she casts the Ghoul a friendly smile and a nod, she feels the presence slinking in on her heels. Indeed she turns on her way to the library, coat sliding over her leather pants. She likes them black and the silver buckle shimmers in a way she finds pleasant. The sable eyes are painted smokey and study the unknown female intently. Eyes like fine needle points. The stench of cigarettes. Her fine nostrils flare.::
"Good evening Madam."
::The accent is English, a hint of Irish::
Marie-Hélène Alette
Thu 11:13PM CST
The creature's mouth hooks upward. It's just one corner. It's not really a smile, so much as it is an interesting return on the social investment of the greeting. The cigarette dangles negligently from the other corner of her mouth, and after a moment she presses her lips together, lifting the smoke to a 45 degree angle upward rather than downward before she removes it from her mouth entirely with one long swooping movement of her long swooping arm.
"Charmed." Expressionless, for a moment, but then she sinks into a perfect intimation of a deep (though never subservient) curtsey (and perhaps she means it, after all). "Marie-Hélène." She's holding out her right hand, fingers pressed precisely together, like nothing so much as a furled fan. "Alette. de Sausanne d'Allais."
The survey follows, quickly. Up. Down. Return to settle just so on Teagan's face, the practiced gaze of an Elysium regular, who never meets another's eyes (so unwise) but makes no show about the avoidance, either. "And you?"
Teagan O'Braonain
Thu 11:34PM CST
Arrogence does not become a lady. The voices scatter around her, singing of the light and trying to distract her from her task. The lips slid upward in one corner. A crooked smile that does seem to meet her eyes, though they are glittering in a strange light. They drop to the hand. There's a moment's pause. ((A woman's place is the kitchen...not even the rain...shake hands with the Father...come to show you the light...)). She slips the small pale hand into the other lady's. The dark eyes shutter ever so slightly::
"Teagan O'Braonain. Pleasure to meet you. Shall we?"
::she gives a sweep of her arm. A smirk playing over her lips after a moment. Two can play this game. Yes. Yes they can.::
Marie-Hélène Alette
Thu 11:42PM CST
"Dance?" Slouching, a hip-centered slouch that seems all attitude and no substance, the Toreador flashes Teagan a grin that, while vicious, perhaps even serrated, is far from shuttered. "I don't think so. I gave it up for Lent."
The darkling (changeling) eyes flicker up, following the sweep of Teagan's arm before returning to settle on the young woman herself. "Let me guess - Toreador or Brujah?" Perhaps it's the leather, perhaps the silver, perhaps it's nothing at all. Perhaps (the curve of her mouth betrays a sliver of knowledge, some secret-held-close behind the shuttered eyes) there was nothing, nothing at all.
Teagan O'Braonain
Thu 11:47PM CST
::A flash of something registers behind the eyes and there's a sudden gasp of unneeded breath, that rolls out the soft laughter. She shakes her head emphatically and the young face almost wrinkles up in distaste. She does find her smile though. Such arrogence. Darkness. Shadows. Has a history full of sad eyes and darkness. Teagan slips her hands down the front of her coat, petting the faux fur collar::
"No no. Not either. You lose this round. But shall I tell you anyway what I am? Malkavian. And you are?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Thu 11:54PM CST
"La vie en rose."
Life is rosy. The creature offers the idiom with perfect, modern detachment that says, in fact, that life is anything but: distance, speculation, the arrogant posturing of all that is contemporary (we are too good for happiness) society (and far too good for woe. "Easy enough," dark eyebrow hitching upward, the slow sweep of her gaze down. "...mmm?"
Teagan O'Braonain
Fri 12:01AM CST
::Teagan's brow furrows a moment as she stares. Her lips compress down in what some might call a somewhat childish pout before she smiles once more and raises a finger. Rocking slightly on her heels, shifting the weight from foot to foot::
"I know. I know what you are. The voices sing with it. No light but you remind of..."
::Insane. Nonesensical ramblings. She begins to move around Marie as if she were an object to be studied. Which indeed because of her bloodline, was what she proceeded to do with every kindred met. It was such a game and her features were alight with it::
"You remind of another. And they were...To-rea-dor."
::She casts an inquisitive look at her face, hoping to read the reaction. She was quite certain she was correct. After all...Miss De Lorme was so similar.::
Marie-Hélène Alette
Fri 12:13AM CST
Arms crossed just so around her lean hips, lean, angular body in a picture of disdain and repose, the Toreador watches the crazy girl circle her. The creature's dark eyes have fallen half-closed, hooded with reserve, and her face is an impenetrable mask - as if she accidentally turned off the "pretend-you're-human" button.
Marie-Hélène tracks the girl's pace until she can no more, then quickly flickers her gaze nearly three-sixty degrees in the other direction. There's something low and cold in the regard that slithers back (reptilian) into its chosen hole-in-the-heart/mind/head when creature finishes her circuit.
"You are correct." The nostrils flare. The cigarette has burned down to ash, almost, to nothing, and the Toreador barely moves to toss it in the nearest receptacle. "But you shouldn't make such judgments, childe. Once you begin to relate one thing to another so quickly and easily, you start to lose focus. I remind of another: but I am not another. Do not confuse the two."
Teagan O'Braonain
Fri 12:17AM CST
::The smile fades. As so does the odd light that burns away in the dark eyes. She moves to stand before Marie again, her lips red and shiny with gloss. The hands come to rest behind her back and the posture changes to boost her height. It's almost..respectful. Always show respect. Don't be such a fool! Be gracious. Never assume.::
"Of course, you are right Madam. I judge you too quickly. I apoligise for my transgressions. You've caught me in a singular mood. I was on my way to visit the library. Care to join me?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Fri 12:28AM CST
"I am not married, M'selle O'Braonain. I am not old, either. Marie-Hélène, Alette, or, if you must, M'selle Alette, but certainly I am not worthy of a Madam." It's quite a little speech, and it sounds like one she's given before. It sounds like something she may have memorized, offered rotely, without particular inflection or design.
"As for your apology," bare shoulders rise in an insouciant shrug and the Toreador's sharp nostrils actually flare in mild expression of disgust. "I won't accept it. I wasn't reprimanding you for some perceived fucking slight." Even now - even with the unexpected and perhaps unnecessary lapse into vulgarity - the creature's voice remains essentially flatlined: the essence of continental ennui leavened by the faintest of conspiratorial, tooth-baring smiles. "I wasn't offended. In fact, I think I would prefer to be underestimated. But - "
She glances toward the library, shaking her head in a facsimile of regret. " - I'm afraid I cannot join you. My regrets: I must have some errands to complete before the sun rises. Good evening, Teagan O'Braonain."
Another bow, not so deep as the earlier curtsey, but still perfectly executed, and the Toreador turns on her heel, stalking out of the Elysium much the same way she stalked in.
Teagan O'Braonain
Fri 12:34AM CST
::A shadow passes over the young girl's face at the feedback her changing demenour recieves. Indeed, being underestimated is something other Kine have been very quick to deal to Teagan. There's a narrowing of her gaze at the suspected rejection. Her little hands form fists behind her back, even as her voice trills a pleasant farewell::
"Good evening, M'selle Alette."
::A curious smile settles over her features and she turns, hands still clasped behind her back, and begins to hum as she strolls::
Thu 10:46PM CST
::She's still edgy. The past day and evening were rough on the Malkavian Fledging and she still found the tremors moved her hands when she thought too long on the memories. They would grow dim eventually, she was sure. But now, having risen in the Church feeling much more at ease, she's taken a stroll and ended up at the Estate. Remembering the Seneschal's offer to spend as much time as she wished in his library, she pushes the buzzer at the gate and waits for the Ghoul to admit her. As the gates creak open, she tugs her red coat tighter about her, turning up the collar and begins to walk toward the door::
Marie-Hélène Alette
Thu 10:52PM CST
There's an old car in the driveway. It looks like so much nothing in the inky shadows: nothing from the modern nights, nothing particularly interesting from past nights, either, the lines obscured by shadows, the gleaming paint job obscured by dust from the road and a fine smattering of freshly spattered insect bodies.
Yum.
Behind Teagan, another form and a whispered conversation with the ghoul. Were they expecting her? Why - yes, they were.
The clothes match the car: worn bellbottoms with frayed, mudspattered cuffs, jackboots and a spaghetti-strapped black camisole, hardly the attire of a fine, upstanding society lady. It doesn't seem to phase the creature. She practically stalks inside in Teagan's wake, lighting a cigarette with a flameless lighter as she flickers her lambent gaze over her surroundings.
Teagan O'Braonain
Thu 11:04PM CST
::As the front door is opened and she casts the Ghoul a friendly smile and a nod, she feels the presence slinking in on her heels. Indeed she turns on her way to the library, coat sliding over her leather pants. She likes them black and the silver buckle shimmers in a way she finds pleasant. The sable eyes are painted smokey and study the unknown female intently. Eyes like fine needle points. The stench of cigarettes. Her fine nostrils flare.::
"Good evening Madam."
::The accent is English, a hint of Irish::
Marie-Hélène Alette
Thu 11:13PM CST
The creature's mouth hooks upward. It's just one corner. It's not really a smile, so much as it is an interesting return on the social investment of the greeting. The cigarette dangles negligently from the other corner of her mouth, and after a moment she presses her lips together, lifting the smoke to a 45 degree angle upward rather than downward before she removes it from her mouth entirely with one long swooping movement of her long swooping arm.
"Charmed." Expressionless, for a moment, but then she sinks into a perfect intimation of a deep (though never subservient) curtsey (and perhaps she means it, after all). "Marie-Hélène." She's holding out her right hand, fingers pressed precisely together, like nothing so much as a furled fan. "Alette. de Sausanne d'Allais."
The survey follows, quickly. Up. Down. Return to settle just so on Teagan's face, the practiced gaze of an Elysium regular, who never meets another's eyes (so unwise) but makes no show about the avoidance, either. "And you?"
Teagan O'Braonain
Thu 11:34PM CST
Arrogence does not become a lady. The voices scatter around her, singing of the light and trying to distract her from her task. The lips slid upward in one corner. A crooked smile that does seem to meet her eyes, though they are glittering in a strange light. They drop to the hand. There's a moment's pause. ((A woman's place is the kitchen...not even the rain...shake hands with the Father...come to show you the light...)). She slips the small pale hand into the other lady's. The dark eyes shutter ever so slightly::
"Teagan O'Braonain. Pleasure to meet you. Shall we?"
::she gives a sweep of her arm. A smirk playing over her lips after a moment. Two can play this game. Yes. Yes they can.::
Marie-Hélène Alette
Thu 11:42PM CST
"Dance?" Slouching, a hip-centered slouch that seems all attitude and no substance, the Toreador flashes Teagan a grin that, while vicious, perhaps even serrated, is far from shuttered. "I don't think so. I gave it up for Lent."
The darkling (changeling) eyes flicker up, following the sweep of Teagan's arm before returning to settle on the young woman herself. "Let me guess - Toreador or Brujah?" Perhaps it's the leather, perhaps the silver, perhaps it's nothing at all. Perhaps (the curve of her mouth betrays a sliver of knowledge, some secret-held-close behind the shuttered eyes) there was nothing, nothing at all.
Teagan O'Braonain
Thu 11:47PM CST
::A flash of something registers behind the eyes and there's a sudden gasp of unneeded breath, that rolls out the soft laughter. She shakes her head emphatically and the young face almost wrinkles up in distaste. She does find her smile though. Such arrogence. Darkness. Shadows. Has a history full of sad eyes and darkness. Teagan slips her hands down the front of her coat, petting the faux fur collar::
"No no. Not either. You lose this round. But shall I tell you anyway what I am? Malkavian. And you are?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Thu 11:54PM CST
"La vie en rose."
Life is rosy. The creature offers the idiom with perfect, modern detachment that says, in fact, that life is anything but: distance, speculation, the arrogant posturing of all that is contemporary (we are too good for happiness) society (and far too good for woe. "Easy enough," dark eyebrow hitching upward, the slow sweep of her gaze down. "...mmm?"
Teagan O'Braonain
Fri 12:01AM CST
::Teagan's brow furrows a moment as she stares. Her lips compress down in what some might call a somewhat childish pout before she smiles once more and raises a finger. Rocking slightly on her heels, shifting the weight from foot to foot::
"I know. I know what you are. The voices sing with it. No light but you remind of..."
::Insane. Nonesensical ramblings. She begins to move around Marie as if she were an object to be studied. Which indeed because of her bloodline, was what she proceeded to do with every kindred met. It was such a game and her features were alight with it::
"You remind of another. And they were...To-rea-dor."
::She casts an inquisitive look at her face, hoping to read the reaction. She was quite certain she was correct. After all...Miss De Lorme was so similar.::
Marie-Hélène Alette
Fri 12:13AM CST
Arms crossed just so around her lean hips, lean, angular body in a picture of disdain and repose, the Toreador watches the crazy girl circle her. The creature's dark eyes have fallen half-closed, hooded with reserve, and her face is an impenetrable mask - as if she accidentally turned off the "pretend-you're-human" button.
Marie-Hélène tracks the girl's pace until she can no more, then quickly flickers her gaze nearly three-sixty degrees in the other direction. There's something low and cold in the regard that slithers back (reptilian) into its chosen hole-in-the-heart/mind/head when creature finishes her circuit.
"You are correct." The nostrils flare. The cigarette has burned down to ash, almost, to nothing, and the Toreador barely moves to toss it in the nearest receptacle. "But you shouldn't make such judgments, childe. Once you begin to relate one thing to another so quickly and easily, you start to lose focus. I remind of another: but I am not another. Do not confuse the two."
Teagan O'Braonain
Fri 12:17AM CST
::The smile fades. As so does the odd light that burns away in the dark eyes. She moves to stand before Marie again, her lips red and shiny with gloss. The hands come to rest behind her back and the posture changes to boost her height. It's almost..respectful. Always show respect. Don't be such a fool! Be gracious. Never assume.::
"Of course, you are right Madam. I judge you too quickly. I apoligise for my transgressions. You've caught me in a singular mood. I was on my way to visit the library. Care to join me?"
Marie-Hélène Alette
Fri 12:28AM CST
"I am not married, M'selle O'Braonain. I am not old, either. Marie-Hélène, Alette, or, if you must, M'selle Alette, but certainly I am not worthy of a Madam." It's quite a little speech, and it sounds like one she's given before. It sounds like something she may have memorized, offered rotely, without particular inflection or design.
"As for your apology," bare shoulders rise in an insouciant shrug and the Toreador's sharp nostrils actually flare in mild expression of disgust. "I won't accept it. I wasn't reprimanding you for some perceived fucking slight." Even now - even with the unexpected and perhaps unnecessary lapse into vulgarity - the creature's voice remains essentially flatlined: the essence of continental ennui leavened by the faintest of conspiratorial, tooth-baring smiles. "I wasn't offended. In fact, I think I would prefer to be underestimated. But - "
She glances toward the library, shaking her head in a facsimile of regret. " - I'm afraid I cannot join you. My regrets: I must have some errands to complete before the sun rises. Good evening, Teagan O'Braonain."
Another bow, not so deep as the earlier curtsey, but still perfectly executed, and the Toreador turns on her heel, stalking out of the Elysium much the same way she stalked in.
Teagan O'Braonain
Fri 12:34AM CST
::A shadow passes over the young girl's face at the feedback her changing demenour recieves. Indeed, being underestimated is something other Kine have been very quick to deal to Teagan. There's a narrowing of her gaze at the suspected rejection. Her little hands form fists behind her back, even as her voice trills a pleasant farewell::
"Good evening, M'selle Alette."
::A curious smile settles over her features and she turns, hands still clasped behind her back, and begins to hum as she strolls::
jeudi, avril 15, 2004
la vie en rose
15 April 2004
10:03 p.m.
Intersection of South Byrne Road & Detroit Avenue
Maumee, Ohio
Sometimes, life is just a gift. Sometime it's just like a beer commercial: chicks and cars, cars and chicks, each more effing gorgeous than the last. Sometimes you don't even know where to look and Christmas morning makes an unexpected appearance on tax day.
Or, so thought Ronnie Ward, the night clerk at the Speedway at the corner of South Byrne Road and Detroit Avenue, in the shadow of I-80. He didn't notice the car at first, obscured as it was by the glare of fluorescent lights against the safety glass of the big display windows, but a couple of local kids in for cigarettes and beer mentioned it. He pressed his face against the window between a pair of posters advertising Marlboros, cupped his hands to further shut out the bright white lights, and narrowed his eyes in focus.
It was sweet.
1970 Plymouth Barricuda 440, with that long, low-slung profile looking like... like a f'ing viper about to strike, man, black as sin. The windows were rolled down, and the chick was leaning against the back-end in one of those hip-jutting poses found only in Playboy and fashion magazines, dialing a flip-phone as she casually pumped gas. It was just like living in his television, the sun and the road and the bottles of beer or cola sweating condensation, fresh from a barrel of ice.
Like most of his customers, the chick made some barbed comment about gas prices when she wandered in to pay, as if Ronnie had anything to do with them. Unlike most of his customers, she didn't head to the back of the store to grab a couple of cokes or some cheap beer, but rather just browsed the tobacco products while talking some foreign talk on her phone.
«Papa, comment ça va? -- Extérieur Toledo. -- Non, Toledo, Ohio.»
Ronnie glanced up, looked around, blinking against the glare. She was fingering the Blunts, just idling there while having her foreign conversation. There wasn't anyone else waiting, so he turned back to that beautiful 'cuda.
«Vous savez ceci.»
She sounded aggrieved; the way he did when his moms called him at Brenda's and started asking all kinds'a stupid questions when he was high, querulously demanding that he bring her a pack of Dorals whenever he came home, wondering what he saw in that slut, Brenda. He didn't take kindly to anyone calling his Brenda a slut, not even his moms. Even if she was probably right, it was the principle of the thing. It was all about respect.
«J'arriverai en Chicago avant la nuit plus de -- Oui. J'ai appelé. J'ai l'adresse. Naturellement, je respecte les traditions. Ils ne sont pas les sauvages complets, ici.»
Chick was still talking, ( «Non - naturellement - je pas - mais naturellement.» )one of those halting one-sided half-assed interrupted conversations that might not make sense even if you were listening in on both sides of the conversation, even if it happened in an actual language that people actually talked in, and not that Spanish crap, because it was all about what the people who were talking weren't saying. It was all about how they shut each other up, and how they knew what would come next.
«Ah, attente.»
He sensed movement. His second sense, his sixth sense, developed during his three years on the nightshift at Speedway : animal instinct, eyes in the back of his head. The chick was headed down the aisle toward the counter, a pack of cigarillos in one hand, phone still firmly planted in the other, held a couple of inches away from her ear. Reluctantly, he stepped away from the window with its little oval of fog from his hot breath and shuffled over to the cash register. She was still on the phone, not talking anymore, but rolling her eyes, half-smirking at him, the way people do when someone just won't shut up. Sometimes Brenda was like that, too, listening to her mom complain about her dad, smirking at him and rolling her eyes, crawling into his lap without letting up with the phone, thinking they could start getting busy while she was still talking to her mother, which wasn't ever going to happen because that was just gross, that was just creepy, man. Ronnie had no idea what was up with that girl's head when she pulled that shit. It made him go all cold.
«Vous vous cassez vers le haut. Non, je dois raccrocher. Non, je dois.»
The chick sidled up to the counter - there wasn't any other word for it, that sidelong gait she had, swinging through the hips and then scissoring down those long, long legs all the way to the floor - and tossed the cigarellos onto the counter. She started digging around in her hip pocket, dislodging a crumpled condem package, a lighter, and an empty Marlboro soft pack before finally fishing out a twenty and a ten which followed the cigarellos onto the counter. He started to ask for ID, but she gave him this knowing little wink that got him a bit flustered, and he figured (later) it didn't matter anyway, cause the Maumee P.D. wasn't like to be employing underaged foreign chicks in its fucking department of fucking convenience store sting operations. (Don't even get him started on that bullshit.)
«Pere, je ne peux pas vous entendre! Au revoir ! Non - pas - au revoir.»
Spanish, or maybe Russian. Who effing knew? He rang up the gas and the cigarellos and started to make change, but she waved him off with one of those beauty-contestant high-falutin' finger waves and sauntered out the door while flipping the phone closed. Half-dreaming, half-drooling, Ronnie shuffled back to the window to watch the chick climb into the car and the car pull away. He pressed his face closer and closer to the gas, watching as the 'cuda turned right onto the entrance ramp for I-80 westbound, taillights dwindling until they were just specks of red light merging with other specks of red light in an endless, evermoving continuum of red light until they were nothing, nothing at all.
Twelve hours later, pouring himself a Bud Light (...he's doing the low carb thing, yo. Brenda thinks he's getting a beer gut and pats his belly and makes fun of what used to be his six-pack) and yammering to his shit-faced roommate about the encounter, Ronnie won't remember any details about the girl (aside from: she was hot man, she was f'ing hot and I really think she dug me. Probably wanted to take me back around behind the - ), but he'll remember everything about the car.
10:03 p.m.
Intersection of South Byrne Road & Detroit Avenue
Maumee, Ohio
Sometimes, life is just a gift. Sometime it's just like a beer commercial: chicks and cars, cars and chicks, each more effing gorgeous than the last. Sometimes you don't even know where to look and Christmas morning makes an unexpected appearance on tax day.
Or, so thought Ronnie Ward, the night clerk at the Speedway at the corner of South Byrne Road and Detroit Avenue, in the shadow of I-80. He didn't notice the car at first, obscured as it was by the glare of fluorescent lights against the safety glass of the big display windows, but a couple of local kids in for cigarettes and beer mentioned it. He pressed his face against the window between a pair of posters advertising Marlboros, cupped his hands to further shut out the bright white lights, and narrowed his eyes in focus.
It was sweet.
1970 Plymouth Barricuda 440, with that long, low-slung profile looking like... like a f'ing viper about to strike, man, black as sin. The windows were rolled down, and the chick was leaning against the back-end in one of those hip-jutting poses found only in Playboy and fashion magazines, dialing a flip-phone as she casually pumped gas. It was just like living in his television, the sun and the road and the bottles of beer or cola sweating condensation, fresh from a barrel of ice.
Like most of his customers, the chick made some barbed comment about gas prices when she wandered in to pay, as if Ronnie had anything to do with them. Unlike most of his customers, she didn't head to the back of the store to grab a couple of cokes or some cheap beer, but rather just browsed the tobacco products while talking some foreign talk on her phone.
«Papa, comment ça va? -- Extérieur Toledo. -- Non, Toledo, Ohio.»
Ronnie glanced up, looked around, blinking against the glare. She was fingering the Blunts, just idling there while having her foreign conversation. There wasn't anyone else waiting, so he turned back to that beautiful 'cuda.
«Vous savez ceci.»
She sounded aggrieved; the way he did when his moms called him at Brenda's and started asking all kinds'a stupid questions when he was high, querulously demanding that he bring her a pack of Dorals whenever he came home, wondering what he saw in that slut, Brenda. He didn't take kindly to anyone calling his Brenda a slut, not even his moms. Even if she was probably right, it was the principle of the thing. It was all about respect.
«J'arriverai en Chicago avant la nuit plus de -- Oui. J'ai appelé. J'ai l'adresse. Naturellement, je respecte les traditions. Ils ne sont pas les sauvages complets, ici.»
Chick was still talking, ( «Non - naturellement - je pas - mais naturellement.» )one of those halting one-sided half-assed interrupted conversations that might not make sense even if you were listening in on both sides of the conversation, even if it happened in an actual language that people actually talked in, and not that Spanish crap, because it was all about what the people who were talking weren't saying. It was all about how they shut each other up, and how they knew what would come next.
«Ah, attente.»
He sensed movement. His second sense, his sixth sense, developed during his three years on the nightshift at Speedway : animal instinct, eyes in the back of his head. The chick was headed down the aisle toward the counter, a pack of cigarillos in one hand, phone still firmly planted in the other, held a couple of inches away from her ear. Reluctantly, he stepped away from the window with its little oval of fog from his hot breath and shuffled over to the cash register. She was still on the phone, not talking anymore, but rolling her eyes, half-smirking at him, the way people do when someone just won't shut up. Sometimes Brenda was like that, too, listening to her mom complain about her dad, smirking at him and rolling her eyes, crawling into his lap without letting up with the phone, thinking they could start getting busy while she was still talking to her mother, which wasn't ever going to happen because that was just gross, that was just creepy, man. Ronnie had no idea what was up with that girl's head when she pulled that shit. It made him go all cold.
«Vous vous cassez vers le haut. Non, je dois raccrocher. Non, je dois.»
The chick sidled up to the counter - there wasn't any other word for it, that sidelong gait she had, swinging through the hips and then scissoring down those long, long legs all the way to the floor - and tossed the cigarellos onto the counter. She started digging around in her hip pocket, dislodging a crumpled condem package, a lighter, and an empty Marlboro soft pack before finally fishing out a twenty and a ten which followed the cigarellos onto the counter. He started to ask for ID, but she gave him this knowing little wink that got him a bit flustered, and he figured (later) it didn't matter anyway, cause the Maumee P.D. wasn't like to be employing underaged foreign chicks in its fucking department of fucking convenience store sting operations. (Don't even get him started on that bullshit.)
«Pere, je ne peux pas vous entendre! Au revoir ! Non - pas - au revoir.»
Spanish, or maybe Russian. Who effing knew? He rang up the gas and the cigarellos and started to make change, but she waved him off with one of those beauty-contestant high-falutin' finger waves and sauntered out the door while flipping the phone closed. Half-dreaming, half-drooling, Ronnie shuffled back to the window to watch the chick climb into the car and the car pull away. He pressed his face closer and closer to the gas, watching as the 'cuda turned right onto the entrance ramp for I-80 westbound, taillights dwindling until they were just specks of red light merging with other specks of red light in an endless, evermoving continuum of red light until they were nothing, nothing at all.
Twelve hours later, pouring himself a Bud Light (...he's doing the low carb thing, yo. Brenda thinks he's getting a beer gut and pats his belly and makes fun of what used to be his six-pack) and yammering to his shit-faced roommate about the encounter, Ronnie won't remember any details about the girl (aside from: she was hot man, she was f'ing hot and I really think she dug me. Probably wanted to take me back around behind the - ), but he'll remember everything about the car.
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