[Hm hm hm. How good is the M1K?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Alice
There are a number of philosophical treatises circulated in very, very select circles on the sociology of the kindred. They are amusing little party anecdotes, and the authors are either searching for truth or for final death in a blaze staked out on a rooftop for endangering the masque (what will the lion do when the beasts at the watering hole can distinguish the lion's gold from the grass's? what will the wolf do in gray woods when the deer can distinguish the wolf from the trees before the wind aids?). They are titled obnoxious things, as philosophical treatises always are, but they are also titled precise things, brilliant things, and some of them are written in the diction of another century. Most of them do not count the beast - that which is essentially vampiric, that which binds the kindred into a brotherhood or a sisterhood - as something which seeks out society. As far as it goes, perhaps they're right, and the beast has no patience for friendship, or fraternity, for courtesy or for social mores; and yet, some of these philosophical treatises speak on the subject of coterie; some very daring treatises even touch briefly on the subject of the Sabbat pack, and the bonds that blood will tie around a domitor and her slave; some speak in elevated tones of the mutual blood bond, which cannot be broken, for truly blood is thicker than, and some speak in tones of disdain -
The point is that these philosophical treatises in general have a low opinion of the 'drive' vampires have to speak one with the other, dismissing it almost wholly. Some say that it's a mere hold-over from humanity, something the sun beat into the kindred, and that the kindred are only kindred because they all share a precipice which they all balance on until they begin to fall (which they all also do).
They're not very uplifting, these philosophical treatises, and they'd dismiss what has begun to happen at the arcade museum in San Francisco, with all of its penny-machines, its dioramas, its fortune, which is namely this: Alice and Luce get together to gossip and spend time with someone they (probably) do not disdain; perhaps they get together to plot; perhaps they get together to scheme.
When Luce arrives in the arcade tonight there is music playing over the loudspeakers, tinny, stuttering music from the turn of the century, music with some swagger, music with some plaintive drive to something sweeter, and she finds the Malkavian sitting on the bench set up toward the back, near a game involving tattooed wrestlers and a crocodile, not far from the gilloutine, and she may for one instant think that she has come across a fun-house mirror, something that catches and twists -
Because the Malkavian is her doppelgangar, a gleam of golden curls caught up by a confection of ruddy orange flowers, which flop languidly down and across her smooth forehead. The curls have been gathered at the nape of a long neck, the elegant sweep of which is exposed, as are is the hunger-sharp hollow of her throat. The Malkavian is her doppelgangar, the symmetry of her features cool, nearly alien, flushed with a blush of warmth that makes her sculpted perfection seem (shine [luminous]) real. This is one of the fashionistas. This is one of the glitterati. This is one of the club-going, high-on-something, strung-out royalty. When Luce's shoes click on the ground of the penny arcade museum, she looks up and away from a board game she has been setting up, and smiles, languid in her flawlessness.
Luce probably has to wonder if this is her usual expression: if she also smiles with that air of cocky rebelliousness, of amused remove - or if that's just how Alice is feeling, pleased with her mimicry.
"Hello, ma belle! I have brought gifts from the past to go with the present. Presents for the present and the presence that is present. Heh."
This night last she spent an hour staring at herself in the mirror, searching through the pieces visible for the pieces invisible; whatever was underneath her skin. Whether you could glimpse it from this angle, or that one. Whether she would be required to toss a look over her shoulder, slinging downward, to see what she meant to see. Peeled off her clothing - from the thigh-high leather boots to the pins cinching her hair into place - and burned it all. The metal heels remained; and the rivets of the jeans, though these were warped by the heat. Nevermind how a vampire learns somehow to bear the presence of flame. The Sabbat manage. Certainly someone civilized can withstand their measured dance from a calculated distance.
And here another mirror; a strange one, immediate and perfect and changed, because it does not move with her as she moves; the arch of a long, lean back, the lift of an arrogant chin; the curl of the corner of her mouth, which makes her look as if she were drinking down a secret you were not quite good enough to hear.
"Ciao, bella." This after a moment's survey; admiration for the completeness of the mask. Fascination, perhaps, for the way her body moves when she is not pinned watching it, as Alice greets her. "Or perhaps I should say, bellissima. Would that be too-too self-involved? Still I am impressed, by everything - " her arms opening in a sweep. "except the flowers. Though I suppose we need something to mark us apart."
The twist of her mouth curves wider, sparks a certain gleam in her pale gaze.
"I have a present of sorts, too." Hands on the chain of a long cross-shoulder bag, she shifts it forward and circles, leaning a hip against the wrestlers, still just now in their little diorama. There is the faint jingle of coins from the creature's right front pocket. Tonight, she came prepared.
Alice
Luce knows that Alice is not tall. Most older vampires are not and those who are were freaks (were giants [kings] among men, were notable). Alice is diminutive. Alice is small and compact, but now when she lifts her hand to touch her fingertips to the spill of flowers (they whisper against her fingertips, hushabye, hushabye, like crepe paper, like a high school winter wonderland's snowflake decoration) the eye believes that Alice must reach that high to touch her brow. The eye believes that Alice is tall, leggy, rangy; that her frame is spare, and elegant, and lean, a hound's frame, the shape of someone nearly androgynous, lovely and modern and too thin to quite manage statuesque. She thoughtfully pulls on one of the petals and it unribbons, unravels, falling in a curl of paper or fabric over one eyebrow, circling her blue eye with the same artfulness as a geisha's careful headdress. Alice
"Thank you. I'm practicing being Helen. Though you wound, fanged creature," she says, and her voice is her own, is the beauty of shadow on a shifting sea, of firelight on melted chocolate; it sparks, a cinder, a gloss of cheerful self-mockery: "The flowers make the look, darling," and she lifts her head, casually shaking the trailing curl of paper out of her eyes. They're Luce's eyes, but they're not Luce's eyes. There's something in them when Alice is wearing her face that is not in them when Luce looks in the mirror.
She pats the bench, invitingly, on the other side of the playing board. It's a game of hares and hounds, set up next to a box of tarot cards - much-stained and much-used, worn, smelling of cigarette smoke and perfume dried into baby power, but not quite having shucked all hints of pine and musk and labdanum.
Alice sits up straight and folds the long (endless) spill of her legs at the ankles. She is wearing a pair of suede slouch boots, gray as the fog that rolls in from the harbor, and then she tucks her feet away beneath the bench, her lips slightly parted, her wide-set eyes bright with interest. She looks ready to be pleased, as if whatever vibrance her skin plays a sheath to is about to be drawn.
"A present of sorts? I'm usually wary of the phrase 'of sorts,' especially when coupled with 'a present'; I find it's a phrase beloved of cads, you know? But I'm intrigued."
"You should be wary, of any present I bring. I once brought my brother a beautifully wrapped box full of snapping turtles. One took a chunk out of his cheek. If he's still rattling around in some nursing home, I expect he still has the scar.
"This one - though - is at once charming and harmless. It will either interest you, or occasionally prove to be a minor irritant. Like a stone in the back of your shoe; one that digs into your heel - faintly - during those moments when you cannot drop your sang-froid, lest some royal personage take offense at the sudden curl of your lips."
It is then that Luce folds her spare frame into the seat opposite and unclicks the latch on her bag, which is small and chic, a waterfall of metal discs worked thin as fabric. The reflections dance light across Alice's eyes; highlighting the fall of the paper flower. While the Toreador fishes an iPhone from the bag, sleek and black, she leans over the game of hounds and hare, a note of consideration drawing her brows together as glances over the board, then takes in the stained box of Tarot cards. Soon enough, she has withdrawn the phone from the bag, turns it over in her long-fingered hand like a card-shark might a deck of cards, letting them fall through his fingers in a running gesture of splayed elegance.
The phone requires warmth, a certain human something to make the screen spring to vibrant life. And Luce's does, of course, right in her hand, without after-market tampering by some enterprising little coterie of Nosferatu.
"Here," three little movements of her thumb, and a voice mail message plays a tinny version of Ravel's Ondine. The playing itself is both mad and masterful; the flaws entirely in the crackle of the wireless signal, the limitations of the speakers engineered into the little black box.
"A recent arrival. Your clanmate. Dear little Gwen," says dear little Luce, " - was quite beside herself to check and recheck his credentials, even after he had been granted access to the August halls of the charming PacBell, with its - " pause, she was raised in Paris, you see. Every winter solstice they had a candle-lit ball in chambers at Versailles. The halls of the Louvre opened secretly from midnight to four a.m., for the enjoyment of a select few. And the Queen of San Francisco offers them - " - early 21st century swimming pool. And other assorted amenities."
Ondine stops. Two more movements of her thumb introduce the first movement of the Rachmaninoff piano concerto No. 3. The low, moving first notes, the movement of black clouds across a darkling sky; and blood below, on a winter tide - some precise, rising promise.
Her attention returns to the board. "Do you know, I used to play this game with my Sire."
AliceAlice's senses sharpen; specifically, her hearing. This was always the easiest aspect of the Disciplines for her. Her very first night - her very first moments, un-breathing but waking, when she stared at the wreck of her sire, wracked with all too human guilt, telling her she couldn't leave, telling her things that she found completely unacceptable and so tried to refuse to accept - she heard too much and couldn't stop hearing and if she hadn't already been driven mad (if she hadn't already been mad) by Malkav's lineage lying sluggish in her veins, consciously pushed because the body'd fallen from the habit and had already forgotten how, then it would've driven her mad. In the many, many years since that first night, she's relied on heightened senses more than she'd care to say, relied on them to hear a footfall in the dark, relied on them to hear a conversation whispered around the corner, the sound of a ghoul breathing where no ghoul should breathe, the sound of a neck being snapped, the click of a pistol, the drawing of a knife. And it's always been helpful when it comes to music; you hear it better when you can't hear every aspect of the instrument. Of course, this is music as played through a cellphone.
She doesn't speak until it's quiet done, and her head has cocked to the side, just so, a distinctly Aliceish gesture. The faint (poisonous) smirk during Luce's pause, coupled with the lift of her eyes from Luce's hand, the mild and black-ice glitter something in them, is just the kind of look most kindred would fear from a harpy. It's cruelty, prepared to do great harm with blunt honesty; with arch, sly criticism. It's more effective than words, in its way.
But it fades, of course; the look was for the pause; whatever reaction to the potential pebble-in-shoeness of a clanmate with artistic brilliance she has is subsumed or minute.
"The musician is very good," she says. "And as much as it pains me to admit, admission to the halls of PacBell is not difficult to acquire. Security seems lax, until it is needful," which is double-edged, in its way. "What's his name?"
Luce used to play Hounds and Hares with her Sire, and that causes a smile to bloom; causes Alice's borrowed eyes to gleam faintly. "Did the game favor him or did the game favor you?"
"Mostly they're empty. Those halls. I had not quite imagined how little society there would be here. I suppose that is to be expected on the West Coast - anarchs to the south, the vasty wilderness full of wolves and yetis to the north." This wry; a glance thrown in just the right direction to espy the GOLD RUSH mechanique, sitting still and rusting and silent just now, in the dark they share.
"The pianist is Francis Mercer. He brings the complications of human fame along with him, though perhaps you have not heard of him. They come and go so quickly." This from the creature who has not yet passed her natural lifetime. "I met another, too. Purported to be a Tremere, so I am now told. Though he shares the shadowbinders' affliction, which might explain his terrible state of dress. Or his churlishness.
"I'm less sure of that one. Be wary around him, should he emerge - well, wherever it is the warlocks go, when go they do."
--
Then a shift; a clear-eyed glance back toward Alice, a half-dozen lights reflecting in Luce's luminous gaze. This look, straight on, not remotely coy.
"Always him." The admission is serene, coupled with a narrow curl of narrow shoulders, nearly insouciant. A little kiss of a grin playing at the edges of her mouth. "I was, he told me, always too impetuous. Though he found that charming, or so he claimed. Within reason, of course."
The last brings out the smile on her mouth; curves it wider than it seems like to go. This is a secret of the face they both wear tonight; how wide that grin can go, sudden-like.
"Do you remember Eleanor's loose end?" This, more clear-eyed, the wide grin fading as she glances out over the mechanical menagerie, her posture on the bench shifting as she considers. "The girl I mentioned, wandering around like a bleating sheep, hungry and lost. I'm sending her to him. A little polish would do her good."
Alice"I regret the passing of the fortune hunter's time," Alice says, and indeed, she sounds a touch regretful; "Now they are all ensnared in their webs, content; there is little left of boldness." Her borrowed nose crinkles and she casts a brief glance heavenward, and truly, she could be art - some drugged-out, languorous, carnivorous madonna in gold, some meditation on innocence at the tipping edge of corruption; it's something about the eyes, the slant of her high cheekbones, and she might have been a flower girl, come from California, dreaming on opiates. She might have been -
"Frankly, I am looking forward to leaving this planet when science fiction becomes reality; when the next great thrust toward the marvelous has set fire to man's imagination - " and her lips curve, and she blinks, slowly, then -
Her expression changes at the name. Francis Mayer. "Him! I do know his name! I wonder - " and she holds off, the Hare piece in her long-fingered hands, her eyes distant with trying to remember. Alice hasn't particularly followed Francis Mayer's career, but he has a career; she is trying to remember what engagements he has had, if any of them have begun in the sunlight, and if so, when. She is trying to place his humanity. It is automatic, and is subsumed by a chuckle at the warning of the Tremere without a reflection (ironic, and yet suiting). "His churlishness? Oh dear. What did he say? I wonder if Broderick likes him. If he does, you'll know that he's not a proper Tremere. Do you know that Brody actually embraced a boy just because he'd be unsuiting to his clan?"
Always him. Alice has placed the hare down on her side of the board; has turned the side with the hound pieces toward Luce, has unfolded her long limbs and she draws one knee up to her chest, looping an arm around.
"You're sending her to him? Do you expect him to ghoul her or to help her be less of a potential snaggle?" Alice asks, her wide eyes steady and briefly unblinking, reflective and luminous - water-lily eyes; dream-girl eyes.
"Men still hunt fortunes, I think," returns the Toreador. " - and kingdoms, too. Though they seem more apt to do so with financial instruments, real estate, and the sort of enforces who seem to have actual granite soldered onto their bones at the ends of their rather large chins. And broken noses, many times over.
"The ones slaving over a pack of derivatives, those are the ones we should all fear. What if, after all, I am forced to destitution, or cheap shoes, by someone's financial machinations?" The creature's hair is loose tonight; a long coil of it curved over her right shoulder. She reaches up to tuck a few strays behind her left ear, then reaches down to make a move. Hunting.
Impetuous, rather as she mentioned. Perhaps that is a point of pride. A look at me of the sort her blood are prone to do. "He did not know me from Princess Grace; and yet he demanded of me the location of a book store. One where he could look up myths and legends. I recommended City Lights for light reading, or the University books at Berkeley for more scholarly treatments, and mentioned that there were some specialized places, which I would recommend if he could be more specific about the particular myths and legends he found intriguing.
"As he was unable to supply the particular myths and legends, I directed him to the yellow pages. He found this rather offensive. Unfortunately. I do not know whether that makes him a proper Tremere or not. But that seems remarkable cruel of - " a pause; a sharp twist of her half-smile. "Brody.
"As for the girl, no. I - " a sharp pause, a supple shrug. " - offered her a choice. Bound her myself, in the end. Do you remember, when last we spoke, I asked about whether you had met a skinchanger? I am afraid I have attracted the attention of one. The girl will be safer away from me. And may smooth the way for my return, should I find a swift one necessary."
Alice"Is it hunting if you can pretend that it's all in your head; if you never need leave your armchair?" Alice returns. "And before cheap shoes, there is always thievery, up through the underground; I know you have a cat burglar outfit." Her smile is cheshire (oh Alice; soon to disappear, hm?), without restraint; very nearly a goblin's grin.
Luce makes a move. Impetuous, and perhaps it's a point of pride - or perhaps it's a facade, like so much of what Luce presents; Luce, who reveals her self while hiding herself; Luce, who is an interesting shape to wear, shadow to cast, the mind slides away. Alice studies the board, the smile fading to a more comfortable (still [held]) expression while she listens. "How strange; you hardly look like you'd know anything about myths and legends at all. And Brody is remarkable in his cruelty," this last, murmured. Cream, laced with arsenic.
Alice moves one of her three hounds, the one to the left, and her move is careful; when she draws her hand back, she taps her fingers against her knee, resting her chin on her arm, one two threefour five six seveneight.
She watches Luce's face when Luce shrugs at Tara's fate, at the blood-binding of her, and then she lifts her head, sitting up straight indeed (humanity is a mask [we all wear it]), mouth gone firm with surprise. "Really? Why do you think you have? Did you catch it peeing in the front yard of your haven and howling?"
- there, the slight uplift of one corner of her (Luce's) mouth, which in no way takes anything from what seems to be an impulsive (and unhappy) reaction at the thought of Toreador being stalked by some beauty-loving wolf-monster.
"Most hunting happens in your head. In the place between your head and another's. In this case, in the space between one head ballooning in an armchair, and millions of others, decidedly less considered. The question is - is always - how far you can push before you - " and lo, another curl of her shoulders, resignation or something like it, to the fate of the world, ever dark. Or no. It is there somewhere under the skin of her commentary, like a virus, like an infection -
"Well, a question we, and they, ask again and again and again, as if we had not ever learned the use of a mirror, or the meaning of a circle."
And Alice, sharp-eyed, watchful Alice will see perhaps a certain tension in the Toreador's mouth, a certain forced tone beneath her apparently casual decision to bind the girl Tara. Someone she would never think about embracing. Some relief, too, at the excuse to rid herself of an unwelcome burden. Not a boon: a responsibility. Some people were never meant to be slaveholders.
Alice half-smiles with Luce's mouth; the tension in Luce's frame - in her shoulders and her spine, now evident for the briefly easing of it - loosens, as she laughs once, full-throated and clear and all-too human that. Too adult to be girlish, but young.
"No," mastering herself, a half-moment later. "Nothing like that. Though I believe it has peed on me. It does not seem the wilderness sort. I have been - " a pause, here, thoughtful, " - considering whether they might have an - opposing force of their own kind. Some other skinchanger; something else that wears a human mask."