[Black Market Gimmick] "Not dangerous, Dear Lady. Unpredictable. The bane of merchants everywhere."
A correction, however small. The Trio are led back through the suddenly opening of the brownstone walls, back into the resplendent courtyard with fountain, walls, multi-hued windows and the cleanliness of the well maintained. The monstrous Mr. Click, called Worth and the Organ Turner, slips almost effortlessly through the crafted passage to circle the length of the Brownstone second floor with it's balconies and sealed doors.
The glare of the evening's usual artificial lights has diminished over the rooftops, allowing the sliver of a moon to bare down on their heads. A vague romanticism, the sort of night where lovers meet and assassinations clamber for victims. The rushing movements of Worth, settle once more and that head swims outward from the wall to hover at the Fountain. Water splashes over deep red-almost-black plating as he settles into place, low to the brownstone ground to regard the Trio anew. Brown eyes all, within those compound red prisons.
"If you will kindly approach the fountain and it's waters. You'll find the dispensing of your payment a thing of ease, Lady Maialen." At the words, the water ceases and what remains poised in the air, does not fall but instead hovers in droplets and slow moving sprays that look as if they will take minutes to descend to the fountain's pool. Long minutes. The pool itself is without ripple or disturbance, a perfect reflective.
"You need only press lips to the reflection in the water, twice by your word and divulge a bit of your own Glamorous to seal the principle..."
Worth's attention resides with Maialen, allowing her access to the Pool's surface, drops and splashes of water hanging in the air around it's clear and settled surface.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] The night is cool around them; cool enough to send the supple suggestion of a shiver coiling up the curving line of her spine. The creature suppresses the movement before it is expressed as anything more than a ratcheting of the tension evident in her back, and inclines her dark head to Worth in a lady's brief acknowledgment of his request. Her skirts whisper quietly on the pavement as she walks, and this time she allows them to tumble around her feet as she walks, soft-footed, to the edge of the fountain where Worth has indicated payment is meant to be made.
There she pauses over the rippling gleam of her distorted reflection and leans in, faceted eyes halflashed, her fine little mouth twisted upward at the corners in a quiet note of irony that slips easily into a cool-court smile.
This is the noble's kiss - a graze against either cheek, once and then twice against the reflection - chaste, cool, somehow intimate and impersonal. Touched with a frission of her glamour, sweet and dark as her ebon hair.
[Jeff Brolin] *There is something oddly familiar in his grey eyes, watching the movement of the Sidhe, as if expecting her to devour them all when she stands back up. He takes a hoofstep back. And he looks again, to the 'cap. It seems his fellow commoner is the only one right now that brings him any sort of comfort from the situation. He looks like he is ready to flee.*
[Mean Tommy] In tiny increments Tommy's predatory, hunched over prowl slows.. stops.. only a shadow in the falling light on the other side of the fountain. All that rests between heavy brow ridge and high, sharp cheeks are twin fever gleams. Pinpricks of cold light in eyes otherwise lost to darkness.
His attention is fixed on the Sidhe, ready to keep every moment of her face lowering toward the water. Take those moments and trap them somewhere inside the yawning emptiness of him. What watching a kiss would mean to a Redcap is anyone's guess- though most likely keep their thoughts to more pleasant ramblings.
Still. As still as the moment before a storm breaks. Still like a demon waiting under a bed to seize a child's foot should even a toe poke out from the protection of blankets. That still. His tongue flicks sharply against the corner of his mouth. But otherwise still.
[Jeff Brolin] Per+Alert
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Mean Tommy] Wits+Kenning: 5 dice @ diff 7
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Mean Tommy] Per+Alert 5 dice @ diff 7+1 due to tasting the juice
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 4, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Wits + Kenning
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Black Market Gimmick] A rich purpling, like the swell of a sudden bruise, or the well of arterial blood, surges outward from those twin grazes of courteous affection. Bubbles and teeming clouds, form beneath the surface of waters, swelling until it encompasses the thorough depths of the Fountain.It isn't until Maialen leans back, daplets of water, clean and fresh touching her lips, that the hovering droplets and splashes suddenly fall to re-join the purple whole. The fountain starts up again evenly, dark purple flushing the clarity out and leaving behind a murkiness that is uniform enough. In the right light, one might mistaken it for blood.
"My Thanks, Lady. A precious thing this. I once knew many a commoner who would have been satisfied with the knowledge and sensation of such" Amusement"Equality.."
And the monstrous head of their host, settles into place beneath the Fountain's curtain, needles leaping out from his buzzing maw, to dip into the waters. All at once, a sharp spasm of movement within the soft folds of flesh behind those instruments and the purple begins to drain as swiftly as it had formed. Soon enough the pool is clear once again and their Host is shivering, a strange drift coming to his head. It lasts a few long seconds, before he is re-orienting, human eyes inside compound ones, re-focusing on the trio of Changelings.
"Our transactions for the moment are complete. Is there anything else I might provide for you before you Depart?"
[Mean Tommy] The Redcap doesn't answer straight away. Instead he watches Maialen, eyes roaming across her like stalking wolves. Does she look thinner? Wasted? Does she look like... like... less? He looks for answers before opening his mouth.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] The instant payment is given she pulls back from the water. Some dark-eyed look flashes down toward the swirling waters, narrowed with a certain awareness as she watches the bruise-purple flush out of the ordinary flow. She steps back, so quickly that the the movement is nearly abrupt, a soft white hand rising to her mouth to dash away the remaining droplets (or the sensation of the water, if that is all that remains still on her skin), thumb heavy on her mouth, eyes half-closed with thought.
The look swings back to Worth.
Lingers, still and silent on the many-legged, many-jointed, multipartite nightmare thing, as if she were looking for the hidden joints in his chitinous armor, as if she could read the pattern of his exoskeletan, the ripple of cilia on his half-hundred grotesque legs.
"No indeed, good Worth," she returns at last, her mouth sharpening into an edged little smile. "Not on my part. I shall trouble you no more tonight."
[Jeff Brolin] I'll keep my eyes open for True Love for yeh. *He arches an eyebrow.* That's the best I can promise.
[Black Market Gimmick] "A promise is it then, Dear Hedonist? To deliver what I've asked for?" Something there. Like an 'Oh really?'
[Mean Tommy] First his head, then his eyes swing toward Worth's own.
"Anytin' else yeh lookin' feh?" He chews on something humorous. "Make it sumpfin' in my league, huh?"
[Jeff Brolin] Not a promise to deliver, *he says with a grin.* A promise to try. But you're trapped in this world. You don't know how honestly rare True Love is. But I can see if I can't make it m'self and deliver that t'you. I CAN be charming.
[Black Market Gimmick] "Oh but I am aware of it's rarity. I would not have set such a price without knowing. Done, though Hedonist. To try. Failure or success. I expect to see you again to inform me of which..."
And then he is turning toward the Redcap, those eyes within eyes, clicking open and closed to reveal the black of onyx.
"You wished to discuss employment, yes? I have need of someone who may provide a simple quota each month. I would consider the realms of Annihilation, Terror and Power well within your grasp, Warmonger. Shall we say the provision of any of these three, delivered to me by month's end? A trial attempt to gauge your worth and the price of your talents."
[Mean Tommy] "Agreed." The smile preceeds the word. It grows out from an increasingly wide cavern as Tommy's grin grows bigger and bigger.
"Months end, trial only, Annihilation, Terror, or Powah." Ghastly eyes flicker with amusement. Tommy is for a moment a murderous child who's been told he can go to the carnival.
[Black Market Gimmick] "Done."
It is all he says or has to say on the matter of the Redcap's probationary employ. He turns then to regard Maialen, hovering once more at eye level.
"It has been a great pleasure to play host to you and your entourage, Dear Lady. I find myself hoping to be able to entertain you in the near future. Mayhaps my wares will grow enough to entice some of your more deeper requirements. For now, you need only re-trace your steps to the front. The smoke will see you out..."
[Jeff Brolin] *The permission is all he needs. He's done waiting, almost twitchy, as he goes back the way he came.*
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "Thank you," the Sidhe returns, with all due grace and another faint dip of her head. " - for your hospitality to me and mine, good Worth. I have no doubt but that I will see you again soon." The brief, pretty speech is capstoned by the subtlest of curtsies - a dip of her white shoulders, it seems, just enough to send a few locks of raven-black hair slipping forward to tangle with the ribbons wrapped around her stays - that lasts for the space between to heartbeats before she straightens.
And turns to follow the smoke out.
[Jeff Brolin] Christ, *he says, when he finally exits, from the smoke.* I need a fuckin' drink.
[Mean Tommy] They're outside. Its after the sound of their feet against the ground becomes more clear, more city-defined than dreaming-defined that Tommy eventually speaks.
"Fuck iffat dint go th' way I was expectin..." Turmoil carves its way through Tommy's chest, fueled by the clatter of differing memories. He remembers the taste of that green wisdom, and the patina on his tongue is sobering.
[Mean Tommy] ((Edit: "Fuck iffat din't go all sideways from what I was expectin'))
[Black Market Gimmick] (And I gotta hit the store. I'm done here anyway guys. Appreciate you sticking things out as long as this took. Hopefully I can talk to Mindy and get this SL approved so we can do some other stuff. Meantime, gonna jet for a bit. G'night!)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] The early spring night is cold, a damp chill spreading inland from the lake. The sky is unaccountably clear, though - opening above them now to the dull orange glow of the city's corona. Only the brightest stars are visible through the haze.
She looks up, though. The sidhe; watches the sky as they follow the smoke, wending back through the narrow alleyways until it changes and changes again. There is still tension in her frame, though neither of them know her well enough to be able to read the subtle physical signs of it beyond the most basic of autonomic stress reactions. The flush of stress hormones in her blood, the quick beat of her many chambered heart. Impossible fucking organ, that - chaining her to this mortal form.
The sky changes; the creature closes her eyes once, draws in a deep breath of the filthy air. Feels the grip of the autumn world settle around her and is not grateful for it. She glances at the Satyr, then the Redcap, her eyes drowning dark until she lifts her chin, cutting a look back at Jeff that lilts just upward enough for her gaze to capture and refract some errant shard of light.
"You thought you could skewer a few Chinese dragons and steal their hoard of dross?" Her tone is light, but the faint smile that lingers on her little mouth does not reach her eyes. "I think, perhaps it is not best to discuss our recent host on the steps of his seat of power. Perhaps one or both of you would do me the honor of joining me for tea this night next?"
[Jeff Brolin] *He freezes at that invitation. And he scowls slightly, looking away.* Ahh. I don't drink tea. Sure y'can find some OTHER point-ears t'drink with.
[Mean Tommy] Flat, brutally hard teeth flash in the off light gloom of the Chinatown alleyway. Tommy doesn't seem at phased at her question.. perhaps he still has plans on those little dragons, quest or no.
The offer of tea- the previous glee slips from his blue-grey face, to be replaced with calculation. He's a rough brute- savage angles and worrisome lines to him.. but a far more dangerous intellect waits just beneath.
"Shuwah. I'll drink his tew den." He cocks his head at Jeff, black eyes sliding across the Satyr's face like grease. "Y'shuah? Yah wanna try an' get some idea what she's plottin, owah jus' wait feh da bad shit tah land on yew aftah she's made 'er mind up?" Eyebrow cocked for a moment before he continues on down the alley.
[Jeff Brolin] No, *he hisses.* No, just... I'm NOT goin' out with her.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "I am sure my staff could secure whatever your preferred drink might be, Satyr. Within reason, to be sure." There's a subtle flash of amusement that darkens her eyes, but does not otherwise change the luminous creature's expression. "However, I have no intention of forcing my society on you. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me - "
There are no more curtsies, just a brief dip of her dark head. Before they reach the mouth of the alley, she has fished a small, creamcolored card from a small brocade plaquet cleverly hidden among the pleats and swags of her skirts and offered it to Tommy. There is no name, just a phone number in elegant script - but somehow it conspires to look like a 19th century lady's calling card all the same.
When they reach the street, she takes - perhaps deliberately? some direction entirely opposite of their own.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (thanks for the scene, guys. I'm gonna go to bed!)
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Black Market, cont.
[Jeff Brolin] Wits+Investigation
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Jeff Brolin] *His eyes fill with wonder, slightly. And he grins, a rather cheeky expression from him. And then the grin slowly fades, as he realizes how this creature must have taken these things. He looks back to the creature, and then to the 'cap.* And how many of these did the owners part with willingly? *he says quietly.*
[Mean Tommy] Its unsettling. The memory of his single sip of what Worth has to offer. The confidence and complete lack of regret mingled with the loneliness. Could that be the way younger Kiths see each other in their Grump years? For a moment- a moment Tommy will soon refuse to remember he'd ever courted- Tommy wonders how that's a bad thing. How exactly.
Terror
The word tastes like home. Even unspoken, just flicked across his silent tongue like a piece of favorite candy. Tommy raises a hand to wipe a tell- tale gleam from his thin lips before his eyes swing back to Worth.
He ceases the complex emotional algebra of trying to decide whether it really is better to love and have lost. Belatedly, he realizes his attention had slid from the jar of Terror back toward the fountain. With a will, he wrenches his attention back to Worth.
"Aint gonna be a client, Woyth.." His attention slides to Jeff, and in reply he favors the Satyr with a wide, wicked smile. Somewhere between familiarity and mania.
"Now... sub- contractor? Some kinna..." He drifts razored fingers airily. "Product requisitions agent? Heh. mebbe."
He winks at jeff. Perhaps he has an idea or two in that direction himself.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Maialen looks behind her just once, when the first sound of stone-on-stone begins to close the way behind him. Her pale face, gently rounded through brow and cheek, sharpened toward her chin and slanting ears, still and cool as the moon in the black velvet of some half-remembered, nameless sky. The stalls tug her attention away from their host; soft mouth just parted in though as her fine hands ghost over the display cases, pausing on those pieces that strike her out the most.
Desire.
Annihilation.
The black compact. The screw-top jar.
Her gaze slides back to the compact; she is still beside its display, now, half-turned to glance back at the pair of nightmares - their chitinous host and the redcap, besides - over her bare shoulder, the gentle curve of her neck still as glass except for the movement of her pulse in her throat.
"Your name three times, Worth," quiet, a steely, dark-eyed note of caution in her gaze, mismatched with the soft curve of her little mouth, faintly pink against her pale skin, " - how is that a fair bargain. What would you gain from it?"
[Black Market Gimmick] "Publicity, Dear Lady. The most lasting of things."
A simple admission, outside of the boundaries of the bargain. Worth's attention is difficult to really reach, as the shadows above the Lantern light, which faces mostly downward and at eye level, are thick and prominent. They display outlines at best, of which, Worth is merely a series of movements overhead. Oddly, terribly quiet, those clicking legs a brief thing at the back of the mind.
"Willingness is dependent on situation and circumstance, Dear Hedonist. I capture what may well be lost, with or without the requisitioned's permission. Inspiration is never to be squandered for the sake of petty ethics." A brief pause, what might be considered a sigh "But yes, I see how you may interpret such as wrong. Be assured, that any items procured here are done in the same manner as all favours. Through negotiation. No item was gained without proper recompense."
And finally to Tommy. The monstrous head suddenly appears above one of the lanterns, lowering into view with a smoothness and grace that is disturbing on such a monstrous visage.
"Truly, Warmonger? I believe such things can be arranged. I admit to a decided lack of assistance, since the crash of the former Kingdom here. Few are so willing to purchase much less obtain. The prizes for such things, beyond the acts themselves of course for one such as you, would be beneficial and plentiful. Something to consider..."
And those compound eyes, the human orbs within them, oddly murky, as if closed by human lids, swivel to orient on Maialen a small distance behind them.
"Do you find something of interest, Dear Lady?" A glance then at the Stall she stands beneath: Annihilation.
[Mean Tommy] Tommy eats, and hates, and destroys. Jeff is passion distilled and amplified in every motion and word.
Sidhe? Their power is in simply existing- and a far reaching power it is. Ergo, when Maialen starts talking, Tommy starts quieting down. Long before he realizes the floor is hers, it has been for some time.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] The creature does not look back at the display case when the centipede does. Still, her hand hovers over the display, index finger pointed precisely at the compact. Her attention remains on the moving shadows defined by the beast if she cannot have his eyes, and lingers.
"This one," she returns, her attention steady on his shadows. " - how much?"
[Mean Tommy] "Cheap enough."
Its a mutter. Just a scrape of words that doesn't last long and isn't loud. The only thing to set the phrase aside from a simple statement that the sky is blue is that for a moment narrow, wicked eyes are once again on Maialen's mouth. It could just be her imagination though.
[Mean Tommy] (Sorry! Should have waited! Will slow it down now.)
[Jeff Brolin] *He is just listening for now, though he steps away from the Forget section, to take a look at what the Sidhe is doing.*
[Black Market Gimmick] "That, Dear Lady..."
And the head vanishes into the nexus of dark above once again, only to return a moment later (too swiftly for physics proper to have allowed) to hover just above and to the right of Maialen's choice. Those compound eyes shift and suddenly the murk clears from the human sights within them, revealing pure cerulean iris' in each.
"The Narcissist Gleam. A potent piece of self-assurance. Powerfully content, the powder contained within was taken from a hundred starlets, fancied themselves prepared for Mortal Film and Stage and thought themselves the look of belles and gleaming smiles. A Hundred whispers of self-satisfaction and the appearance of Aphrodisian commodity. Beauty refined to a thought of pleased satisfaction. A hint of the Narcissist himself." A pause. "Highly addictive."
The Head shifts, part of it's body lowering to settle gaze on her once again, massive head swiveling and the needle toothed appearance of those 'jaws' fluttering.
"A steep price for such as this, Dear Lady. I ask a Darling's Modesty. Freely sacrificed and untainted. Innocence with a hint of curiosity, that precious moment between the Sweet and the Sultry."
[Jeff Brolin] *He laughs faintly at that.* Already got enough narcissism in a poin... *He pauses. And he tightens his jaw, realizing he was about to speak without thinking. And the woman is rather terrifying in her own right.*
[Mean Tommy] What worth describes is not so much annihilation as Tommy knows it.. which is just as well.. perhaps it will distract from his slip of the tongue. empty-belly eyes settle on the compact as well.. then flick to Worth and linger there for a while. Slowly, Tommy's eyes fog over. Settle into some middle distance.
Also slowly, a smile ghosts across his face. Growing wider and wider, then impossibly wide. He chuckles a bit, as though he'd just gotten a joke. Finally, his attention settles on Maialen and Jeff intently.. waiting to see if they get it too.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Tommy speaks; the creature gives him a slantwise look that lingers past the limits of the polite, edging into the baleful. Her eyes are dark, her keen features still, the soft, sculpted lines of her face nearly marble in their perfection. The sooty lashes against her cheek like the shadow of a black-winged bird against the moon and the brief, knife's edge twist of the little bow-mouth at which (she imagined) the redcap dared look the only signs of life underneath the flash of a glance.
Then her mouth softens, the corners gentling as she lifts her gaze from redcap to satyr (brief and level here) to shadow-of-the-beast over them.
"I have no patience for self-satisfaction, Worth. Such a very - settled thing. Perhaps you might suggest a better vintage?"
[Jeff Brolin] What about something simpler? A good nights' sleep. Or mebbe you'd be willin' to take a bit of an unpleasant memory for somethin' else. *He looks back and forth.* All of these emotions. These things. These traits that people lose. Gotta be somethin' less positive.
[Black Market Gimmick] "How true, Lady and yet I find myself lacking enough knowledge of you or your station to accurately present you with a proper vintage" It is clear there is a touch of agreeable humour to the use of that word. The large head, easily a match in weight to Tommy and Jeff combined, lifts smoothly back into the shadowy above. Jeff quips suggestions, perhaps for Maialen's own consideration and Worth seems to 'Hmmm' from above.
"Perhaps it would be best for you, all of you and each of you, to describe for me what it is you may be looking for. It need not be specific mind you. A mood. A desire. A quiet reprieve or a very loud moment in time." A brief pause, shifting movement from above. "Dear Hedonist, that may well be arranged too. I am not simply a provider of wishes, but an agent of repurposed goods. What one considers a horrid thing of memory, another may regard as a cherished reminder. You would be surprised at the Puritans that have come through my markets, in search of a Hangman's Despair."
And the head shifts into view over the next Lantern down, a dozen feet and two more stalls (Power and Misery) further up the alleyway.
"Ask what you will of me. I shall endeavor to provide."
[Jeff Brolin] All I want is information, *he says with a cant of his head.* You said you knew about the missing Freehold. About its location. You must have some sort of memory in regards to it. What would you want in payment for that?
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "That is best, I do think, Worth," the sidhe returns with a gliding little half-smile that does not reach her shadowed eyes as she drifts (floats?) in the wake of their host, pausing to glance over the offerings in both booths: Misery, and Power. Lingering - as one may well expect - on the latter rather than the former. Her voice is made in her throat as much as the soft palette of her mouth. " - as I am not sure I would like you to know that much about me, yet.
"In time, perhaps." Here she puts her hand directly down on the display case for the Power offers. "He's right. You and I already have a bargain on that score, Worth. What you know of the Baron's fall in exchange for a noble's kiss."
[Mean Tommy] "Mistress awready paid feh dat one." Sub-vocal, spat to the side at Jeff as the massive Redcap hooks a thumb to Maialen... somewhat belatedly, he gives the Sidhe just a touch of a nod. Just a touch. Redcap respects that promises nothing but a long memory. The funny thing there being that Tommy apparently assumes she'll be sharing the information.
Perhaps he will learn. Not everything Iron Maggie said about Sidhe was simple rhetoric, and the Goblin King may as well find out sooner or later. Elsewise, someone else may well wear the crown.
"I wanna tawk moah 'bout doin a bit o' collectin' feh yah. It can wait 'til I'm elsewheah dough."
[Black Market Gimmick] "I offered what information I had regarding the fall of the Baron prior. The Freehold is another matter entirely and such things would not be cheap, Dear Hedonist. The return of the Kingdom or possible exposure and harm that may do to my own business would be unpredictable at best. A lack of prediction is as sound a coffin nail as it is another market to exploit." There is a pause. Something of consideration from the shadow.
"Were you to find for me True Love. Something personified, not necessarily defined. A taste of glamour, untainted and pure from such a source, I believe i could be persuaded to divulge the information I possess."
And then the voice falls to Maialen and her own decree.
"Yes, in that, we do, Dear Lady. Understand that the Baron and I were not friends. I abhorred the standards in which he ran this city and he in turn, detested my dealings with it's denizens. I did my best to avoid his detections and inspections, barely tolerated as I was and in exchange provided many of his courtiers with their necessary functions and needs. Those sources, however, dried up some time ago. Nearly a year, I would put it, to the day. No great conflagration, no explosive battle that I witnessed or heard. At once, a great source of Pure Dreaming seemed to..."
...and here he lingers, as much as Maia does over the stall for Power where King's Desire and General's Victory, sit in containers labeled 'Flammable', next to black cloth wrapped packages beneath a tiny sign with the word 'Leviathan' in stylized bold.
"...vanish. A terrible thing that, but a wonderful opportunity. Now, I believe I have accommodated your requests and it is time for your own payment." Indeed, the small party of Changelings seem to have reached a dead end wall, just past the Stalls and Lantern light.
"Shall we adjourn to the Garden once more?"
[Black Market Gimmick] "Discussion of Employment and your security deposit for such, can be discussed on conclusion of this transaction, Warmonger."
[Jeff Brolin] *He presses his lips together. Nothing else TO do, but plan, and come back later. He nods slightly, and he sighs, to turn back towards the garden. Who could find True Love so late in the day?*
[Mean Tommy] Terror
There it is again. Empty-belly eyes just pass across the word again, and a raucous, screaming wind whirls through Tommy's insides. Tickles and licks at the inside of his ribcage. From without, it just looks like a shudder. Deep and abiding.
His boots clop and ring as he follows Jeff and the Sidhe back toward the courtyard.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "And yet - " the Sidhe returns, " - as you yourself said, your business has suffered in its absence, dear Worth. I think the return of the place would not be so dangerous for you and your - market - as you would have us believe." She dips her dark head, then, a brief nod of assent, lifting her soft white hand from the case by which she lingers, glancing back down as she does she, studying the contents with the contained, reflexive grace that is her birthright.
There is a low noise of assent formed in the back of her throat, soft and grave. It takes her the time between two heartbeats to pull her faceted gaze away from Leviathan to settle them back on the illiquid, clacking shadow of the nightmare, and then she simply inclines her head in assent, walking back down through the market stalls, listening to the half-formed whispers from within as they return to the garden.
[Black Market Gimmick] (Hey Folks, so it's gettin' a touch late and i know bed's necessary for a couple of you guys at some point. So we're going to pause here. I'm thinking we're actually almost done and another session like tonight will probably wrap us up nice and good. So if folks are around tomorrow or thursday, I can do either of those.)
[Jeff Brolin] ((I'll be around both around these times.))
[Mean Tommy] (Tomorrow around this time works better for me.)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (tomorrow!)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (sorry, I was trancing. :) )
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Jeff Brolin] *His eyes fill with wonder, slightly. And he grins, a rather cheeky expression from him. And then the grin slowly fades, as he realizes how this creature must have taken these things. He looks back to the creature, and then to the 'cap.* And how many of these did the owners part with willingly? *he says quietly.*
[Mean Tommy] Its unsettling. The memory of his single sip of what Worth has to offer. The confidence and complete lack of regret mingled with the loneliness. Could that be the way younger Kiths see each other in their Grump years? For a moment- a moment Tommy will soon refuse to remember he'd ever courted- Tommy wonders how that's a bad thing. How exactly.
Terror
The word tastes like home. Even unspoken, just flicked across his silent tongue like a piece of favorite candy. Tommy raises a hand to wipe a tell- tale gleam from his thin lips before his eyes swing back to Worth.
He ceases the complex emotional algebra of trying to decide whether it really is better to love and have lost. Belatedly, he realizes his attention had slid from the jar of Terror back toward the fountain. With a will, he wrenches his attention back to Worth.
"Aint gonna be a client, Woyth.." His attention slides to Jeff, and in reply he favors the Satyr with a wide, wicked smile. Somewhere between familiarity and mania.
"Now... sub- contractor? Some kinna..." He drifts razored fingers airily. "Product requisitions agent? Heh. mebbe."
He winks at jeff. Perhaps he has an idea or two in that direction himself.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Maialen looks behind her just once, when the first sound of stone-on-stone begins to close the way behind him. Her pale face, gently rounded through brow and cheek, sharpened toward her chin and slanting ears, still and cool as the moon in the black velvet of some half-remembered, nameless sky. The stalls tug her attention away from their host; soft mouth just parted in though as her fine hands ghost over the display cases, pausing on those pieces that strike her out the most.
Desire.
Annihilation.
The black compact. The screw-top jar.
Her gaze slides back to the compact; she is still beside its display, now, half-turned to glance back at the pair of nightmares - their chitinous host and the redcap, besides - over her bare shoulder, the gentle curve of her neck still as glass except for the movement of her pulse in her throat.
"Your name three times, Worth," quiet, a steely, dark-eyed note of caution in her gaze, mismatched with the soft curve of her little mouth, faintly pink against her pale skin, " - how is that a fair bargain. What would you gain from it?"
[Black Market Gimmick] "Publicity, Dear Lady. The most lasting of things."
A simple admission, outside of the boundaries of the bargain. Worth's attention is difficult to really reach, as the shadows above the Lantern light, which faces mostly downward and at eye level, are thick and prominent. They display outlines at best, of which, Worth is merely a series of movements overhead. Oddly, terribly quiet, those clicking legs a brief thing at the back of the mind.
"Willingness is dependent on situation and circumstance, Dear Hedonist. I capture what may well be lost, with or without the requisitioned's permission. Inspiration is never to be squandered for the sake of petty ethics." A brief pause, what might be considered a sigh "But yes, I see how you may interpret such as wrong. Be assured, that any items procured here are done in the same manner as all favours. Through negotiation. No item was gained without proper recompense."
And finally to Tommy. The monstrous head suddenly appears above one of the lanterns, lowering into view with a smoothness and grace that is disturbing on such a monstrous visage.
"Truly, Warmonger? I believe such things can be arranged. I admit to a decided lack of assistance, since the crash of the former Kingdom here. Few are so willing to purchase much less obtain. The prizes for such things, beyond the acts themselves of course for one such as you, would be beneficial and plentiful. Something to consider..."
And those compound eyes, the human orbs within them, oddly murky, as if closed by human lids, swivel to orient on Maialen a small distance behind them.
"Do you find something of interest, Dear Lady?" A glance then at the Stall she stands beneath: Annihilation.
[Mean Tommy] Tommy eats, and hates, and destroys. Jeff is passion distilled and amplified in every motion and word.
Sidhe? Their power is in simply existing- and a far reaching power it is. Ergo, when Maialen starts talking, Tommy starts quieting down. Long before he realizes the floor is hers, it has been for some time.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] The creature does not look back at the display case when the centipede does. Still, her hand hovers over the display, index finger pointed precisely at the compact. Her attention remains on the moving shadows defined by the beast if she cannot have his eyes, and lingers.
"This one," she returns, her attention steady on his shadows. " - how much?"
[Mean Tommy] "Cheap enough."
Its a mutter. Just a scrape of words that doesn't last long and isn't loud. The only thing to set the phrase aside from a simple statement that the sky is blue is that for a moment narrow, wicked eyes are once again on Maialen's mouth. It could just be her imagination though.
[Mean Tommy] (Sorry! Should have waited! Will slow it down now.)
[Jeff Brolin] *He is just listening for now, though he steps away from the Forget section, to take a look at what the Sidhe is doing.*
[Black Market Gimmick] "That, Dear Lady..."
And the head vanishes into the nexus of dark above once again, only to return a moment later (too swiftly for physics proper to have allowed) to hover just above and to the right of Maialen's choice. Those compound eyes shift and suddenly the murk clears from the human sights within them, revealing pure cerulean iris' in each.
"The Narcissist Gleam. A potent piece of self-assurance. Powerfully content, the powder contained within was taken from a hundred starlets, fancied themselves prepared for Mortal Film and Stage and thought themselves the look of belles and gleaming smiles. A Hundred whispers of self-satisfaction and the appearance of Aphrodisian commodity. Beauty refined to a thought of pleased satisfaction. A hint of the Narcissist himself." A pause. "Highly addictive."
The Head shifts, part of it's body lowering to settle gaze on her once again, massive head swiveling and the needle toothed appearance of those 'jaws' fluttering.
"A steep price for such as this, Dear Lady. I ask a Darling's Modesty. Freely sacrificed and untainted. Innocence with a hint of curiosity, that precious moment between the Sweet and the Sultry."
[Jeff Brolin] *He laughs faintly at that.* Already got enough narcissism in a poin... *He pauses. And he tightens his jaw, realizing he was about to speak without thinking. And the woman is rather terrifying in her own right.*
[Mean Tommy] What worth describes is not so much annihilation as Tommy knows it.. which is just as well.. perhaps it will distract from his slip of the tongue. empty-belly eyes settle on the compact as well.. then flick to Worth and linger there for a while. Slowly, Tommy's eyes fog over. Settle into some middle distance.
Also slowly, a smile ghosts across his face. Growing wider and wider, then impossibly wide. He chuckles a bit, as though he'd just gotten a joke. Finally, his attention settles on Maialen and Jeff intently.. waiting to see if they get it too.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Tommy speaks; the creature gives him a slantwise look that lingers past the limits of the polite, edging into the baleful. Her eyes are dark, her keen features still, the soft, sculpted lines of her face nearly marble in their perfection. The sooty lashes against her cheek like the shadow of a black-winged bird against the moon and the brief, knife's edge twist of the little bow-mouth at which (she imagined) the redcap dared look the only signs of life underneath the flash of a glance.
Then her mouth softens, the corners gentling as she lifts her gaze from redcap to satyr (brief and level here) to shadow-of-the-beast over them.
"I have no patience for self-satisfaction, Worth. Such a very - settled thing. Perhaps you might suggest a better vintage?"
[Jeff Brolin] What about something simpler? A good nights' sleep. Or mebbe you'd be willin' to take a bit of an unpleasant memory for somethin' else. *He looks back and forth.* All of these emotions. These things. These traits that people lose. Gotta be somethin' less positive.
[Black Market Gimmick] "How true, Lady and yet I find myself lacking enough knowledge of you or your station to accurately present you with a proper vintage" It is clear there is a touch of agreeable humour to the use of that word. The large head, easily a match in weight to Tommy and Jeff combined, lifts smoothly back into the shadowy above. Jeff quips suggestions, perhaps for Maialen's own consideration and Worth seems to 'Hmmm' from above.
"Perhaps it would be best for you, all of you and each of you, to describe for me what it is you may be looking for. It need not be specific mind you. A mood. A desire. A quiet reprieve or a very loud moment in time." A brief pause, shifting movement from above. "Dear Hedonist, that may well be arranged too. I am not simply a provider of wishes, but an agent of repurposed goods. What one considers a horrid thing of memory, another may regard as a cherished reminder. You would be surprised at the Puritans that have come through my markets, in search of a Hangman's Despair."
And the head shifts into view over the next Lantern down, a dozen feet and two more stalls (Power and Misery) further up the alleyway.
"Ask what you will of me. I shall endeavor to provide."
[Jeff Brolin] All I want is information, *he says with a cant of his head.* You said you knew about the missing Freehold. About its location. You must have some sort of memory in regards to it. What would you want in payment for that?
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "That is best, I do think, Worth," the sidhe returns with a gliding little half-smile that does not reach her shadowed eyes as she drifts (floats?) in the wake of their host, pausing to glance over the offerings in both booths: Misery, and Power. Lingering - as one may well expect - on the latter rather than the former. Her voice is made in her throat as much as the soft palette of her mouth. " - as I am not sure I would like you to know that much about me, yet.
"In time, perhaps." Here she puts her hand directly down on the display case for the Power offers. "He's right. You and I already have a bargain on that score, Worth. What you know of the Baron's fall in exchange for a noble's kiss."
[Mean Tommy] "Mistress awready paid feh dat one." Sub-vocal, spat to the side at Jeff as the massive Redcap hooks a thumb to Maialen... somewhat belatedly, he gives the Sidhe just a touch of a nod. Just a touch. Redcap respects that promises nothing but a long memory. The funny thing there being that Tommy apparently assumes she'll be sharing the information.
Perhaps he will learn. Not everything Iron Maggie said about Sidhe was simple rhetoric, and the Goblin King may as well find out sooner or later. Elsewise, someone else may well wear the crown.
"I wanna tawk moah 'bout doin a bit o' collectin' feh yah. It can wait 'til I'm elsewheah dough."
[Black Market Gimmick] "I offered what information I had regarding the fall of the Baron prior. The Freehold is another matter entirely and such things would not be cheap, Dear Hedonist. The return of the Kingdom or possible exposure and harm that may do to my own business would be unpredictable at best. A lack of prediction is as sound a coffin nail as it is another market to exploit." There is a pause. Something of consideration from the shadow.
"Were you to find for me True Love. Something personified, not necessarily defined. A taste of glamour, untainted and pure from such a source, I believe i could be persuaded to divulge the information I possess."
And then the voice falls to Maialen and her own decree.
"Yes, in that, we do, Dear Lady. Understand that the Baron and I were not friends. I abhorred the standards in which he ran this city and he in turn, detested my dealings with it's denizens. I did my best to avoid his detections and inspections, barely tolerated as I was and in exchange provided many of his courtiers with their necessary functions and needs. Those sources, however, dried up some time ago. Nearly a year, I would put it, to the day. No great conflagration, no explosive battle that I witnessed or heard. At once, a great source of Pure Dreaming seemed to..."
...and here he lingers, as much as Maia does over the stall for Power where King's Desire and General's Victory, sit in containers labeled 'Flammable', next to black cloth wrapped packages beneath a tiny sign with the word 'Leviathan' in stylized bold.
"...vanish. A terrible thing that, but a wonderful opportunity. Now, I believe I have accommodated your requests and it is time for your own payment." Indeed, the small party of Changelings seem to have reached a dead end wall, just past the Stalls and Lantern light.
"Shall we adjourn to the Garden once more?"
[Black Market Gimmick] "Discussion of Employment and your security deposit for such, can be discussed on conclusion of this transaction, Warmonger."
[Jeff Brolin] *He presses his lips together. Nothing else TO do, but plan, and come back later. He nods slightly, and he sighs, to turn back towards the garden. Who could find True Love so late in the day?*
[Mean Tommy] Terror
There it is again. Empty-belly eyes just pass across the word again, and a raucous, screaming wind whirls through Tommy's insides. Tickles and licks at the inside of his ribcage. From without, it just looks like a shudder. Deep and abiding.
His boots clop and ring as he follows Jeff and the Sidhe back toward the courtyard.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "And yet - " the Sidhe returns, " - as you yourself said, your business has suffered in its absence, dear Worth. I think the return of the place would not be so dangerous for you and your - market - as you would have us believe." She dips her dark head, then, a brief nod of assent, lifting her soft white hand from the case by which she lingers, glancing back down as she does she, studying the contents with the contained, reflexive grace that is her birthright.
There is a low noise of assent formed in the back of her throat, soft and grave. It takes her the time between two heartbeats to pull her faceted gaze away from Leviathan to settle them back on the illiquid, clacking shadow of the nightmare, and then she simply inclines her head in assent, walking back down through the market stalls, listening to the half-formed whispers from within as they return to the garden.
[Black Market Gimmick] (Hey Folks, so it's gettin' a touch late and i know bed's necessary for a couple of you guys at some point. So we're going to pause here. I'm thinking we're actually almost done and another session like tonight will probably wrap us up nice and good. So if folks are around tomorrow or thursday, I can do either of those.)
[Jeff Brolin] ((I'll be around both around these times.))
[Mean Tommy] (Tomorrow around this time works better for me.)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (tomorrow!)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (sorry, I was trancing. :) )
Friday, April 1, 2011
The mists.
[Penny] [per/med]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4 (Botch x 2 at target 6)
[Penny] *Penny thinks she sees the bit what will need the most attention, and plump fingers begin wiping and dressing the wound, before she sits like a tailor, humming and stitching upon the grisly fabric of moonlit skin. Its fine work, and it will heal well... if.. only she'd noticed the oozing infection prior to peircing a pustule with her needle. It isn't until the ruddy boggan's back has developped a cramp from stooping, and her arms are tired from pushing steel through flesh that she notices ichor oozing from between tidy threads.
Horror.
She was going to have to do this all over again, and disinfect the lot besides, in whatever nooks and crannies were hiding from view. Were she the type to curse she'd be doing so now, instead she simply looks deeply abashed as the Sidhe's mangled arm is unlaced once more like an illfitting corset.*
My deepest apologies dearest Cedric. I'll rob the third and twice will be the charm. I'm sorry.
[Shiori] Penny's house, a quaint little house that held such warmth, such open invitation. Penny herself had made that rather clear when they had met ever so briefly, Penny had even brought her back briefly to give her some of her heart warming stew. Shiori would never admit that the stew had been tasty, quite tasty infact, she had actually called it somewhat tepid even if the flavors were full. But that was simply her Kith, her kinds way of being, an honest to goodness compliment was a rare thing indeed.
She had returned here tonight, sore and somewhat awkward and looked up at the soft welcoming light that issued fro the front of the house. It was her very specific goal to get some more of that stew, if there was any left, she needed some of the boggan's famous comfort.
She stepped up onto that small porch and rapped long knobbed digits against the soft wood of the door before pushing through into the home.
The Nocker which entered was covered by a voile both appropriate to her kith and distinct enough to be her very own, her shirt, or more likely a coat buttoned up down the right hand side, four heavy brass buttons holding the sturdy but supple fabric together, her pants were slightly poofy, baggy one would say for plenty of movement and freedom of air. The entirety of the voile was coloured a deep green, and a brilliant silvered white, the colours swirling together like milk and coffee, or steam with cooler air. The cuffs of both her feet and hands were unnecessarily long, the ruffled material falling so far as to hide her hands and feet from the view of many.
Her stark white hair rose from her head like a column of flame, defying gravity as she strode into the room. Her face paint, as that is surely what it was, was in the style of most Nockers, except for the cheeks, where they would normally be rosey and bright, they swirled together with the white, much like her voile.
[Shiori] [Addendum, she doesnt go in, she stops at the doorstep!]
[Rue] Upstairs, Penny begins to sew, to with needle and thread put in such stitch as Frankenstein would cringe to look upon. The sidhe knight who Rue has named Cedric does not wake, and for that, mercy; he does, however begin to breathe with more difficulty, and his all-too-revealed muscles twitch, gleam as if they'd move. Neither sidhe nor boggan thought: and what if he should come to consciousness, but be out of his mind; flail? Surely, his strength's enough to black poor Penny's helpful eye. Or worse.
Downstairs, the Ailil is at the door. The blood on the doorstep is drying. Gump, the English bulldog, must watch these goings on with bright eyes, waddley butt a wiggle. Downstairs, the Redcap ceases -- for a breath -- his gorging; turns to look at Rue, and she must feel -- they are nightmares; she is no Fiona, to be impervious to them -- what it is to be a lovely slab of meat. That look. That look is like the first salute of a dance; she knows what move comes next. This: an inch of metal, unsheathed.
But she recognizes him now, Tommy. And while Mean Tommy does not, to Rue, mean safety, Mean Tommy does not mean some fell thing that followed her out of the mist -- only a monster. A monster whose name she knows. The inch of metal vanishes again. There is no sound. Just,
"Ah. Red Tom. My temporary hunting mate. Pray you, remember napkins."
And with that, Rue -- cautious still; a beast is a beast -- goes to the door, which she will open to whatever's there: an Ailil. And a nocker coming, hard behind her. And beyond that: the bulldog, which is her quest. Seriously: it is a quest now. All things can be made into a quest if looked at properly.
ooc: *quickly swaps Nocker to being just behind Maialen?*
[Penny] [Seriously. I'm stitching you up. ...at increased botch difficulty of suck.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 6 (Success x 1 at target 8) [WP]
[Mean Tommy] At the same time Tommy is coming to the realization that there will not be a fight, the package of dry spaghetti noodles is swinging toward his mouth, and the Redcap's brutal form swings back around toward the fridge to meet it.
Crunch!
Ham next. Cheese- cheese too..
He's soon lost, back in the fridge, chasing a feeling he only ever comes close to, with all the intensity of a monk on the side of a mountain somewhere. Just a massive, hunching thing bathed in the soft light of a refrigerator. He'd never turned on the light.
[Penny] *An overabundance of gold frizz is pushed from her forehead, wispy yellow eyebrows slicked back and blood twisted in her hair as the Boggan sets her mind and works with the efficiency her kith is known for. This would be far easier were it a rug or a quilt she was set upon, but every twitch and slip of muscle in response to her probing needlepoint has another ounce of blood draining from features usually lit with a hearth's glowing warmth. Greying as she sets her mind about her task and only her task - knocking and chatter and CRUNCHing registering only peripherally as she pats the wounded Sidhe's stomach comfortingly, and gets on with it.*
[And AGAIN! LIVE!!! WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7) [WP]
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] An Ailil: another sort of nightmare, this one ribbon-wrapped and raven-haired. Flawless. Shiori comes up the walk and the creature turns, her cloak falling back, away from her arms to simply hang from her neck. She glances across one nearly bare shoulder, the golden ribbon a satiny contrast to the moonlit gleam of her cool, pale skin, wrapped up with errant tendrils of inky hair falling in studied disarray down her back. The look is spark, sparked at the edge, dark and assured and assessing.
The door opens before the creature has opened her mouth to offer greeting or command. The hinges creak softly, just that hint of metal on metal stress, and the gentle bow of Maialen's soft little mouth has settled back into a soft little smile. The sort meant for a boggan, not a Gwydion.
There is a stutterstep moment, as if the film of her life had skipped, all flash-bulb clarity, when the soft smile slips into something - well, distinctly sharper, as gleaming-sure as the edge of Rue's storied blade. Then Rue slips by and Maialen slips inside. Stands in the foyer tugging her gloves from her hands with a finger-laced precision, dark head sweeping a glance toward the kitchen with the sound of the redcap's feast.
- she does not intrude, but instead watches the nocker as she, too, crosses the threshold and begins taking in the environs, as if she were a patron at a gallery opening - with that sense of detached admiration evident in her bearing.
[Shiori] Two Sidhe, not just one but two, first the one on the doorstep waiting casually for a chance to slip inside, and then a second, a more powerful, more impressive specimen opened the door and nodded to the pair that was there, as if deigning them fit for entry before she stepped down and away, headed off on some errand that she did not bother to elaborate on. Not that anyone expected her to do so.
She did indeed step inside, stepping through hurriedly and watching both of the sidhe with an air of caution and scrutiny that one might not normally get...not from someone you had never met before. Once within the warm walls of the homestead she gave Maialen a wide birth, moving towards the kitchen, until of course she noted the darkness within, and the nightmarish creature she recognized all to well silouhetted in the fridge light. This stopped her cold, and torn between several bad options, Shiori slid quietly into the living room, finding a seat as she looked around, hoping that Penny was here somewhere.
[Mean Tommy] A package of...something... hangs out of Tommy's mouth as he glances around again. Excitement, upon seeing Shiori- yet again that same look. The odd twist of face.. greedy, haunting. He sees weapons. Blood on snow. Mayhem in terms of mechanics and the machinery only a Nocker can fashion. It twinkles in his eye, and gives further brutishness to already savage, half made features.
Maialen.. this becomes more like trepidation. An eerie resolution to the broad, choppy lines of his form as he turns back around quickly and a slew of crunching noises leaks out from around the edges of his frame. When he hops off the stool whatever had been hanging from his mouth has long since been dropped down his gullet.
Tommy cranks his head back, as though addressing the ceiling.
"OI! PENNY! YAH GOT ... uuuh... whul... PEOPLE DOWN HEAH!"
[Rue] Cedric has paled still further -- his color, lady, it is not good -- when Penny completes her stitchings, and can be satisfied that she did her best. That she did the job well, this time. The stitches will serve, and they follow the lines made by something with teeth like a pike's. Not a wolf's. Not a hound's. Many-toothed, slender, like that. He is also drenched: sweat. He doesn't wake, but after a moment he looks less troubled. There is no more blood. (The blood that hadn't pooled quite right.) Penny's fingers are red, for her craftwork.
Maialen at the door --
A moment passed, before Rue slipped out on her errand, her quest. The look of recognition that flashes across her eyes is not similar to the one she gave Tommy, when he turned. Maialen: she knows Maialen like her bones know the ache of cold. Tommy may be what he is; Maialen is bound to what she is as well: black and silver, a banner, a rival and yet still also of a kind. Thus: that flash of a look, which follows after surprise, is touched by something that knows not whether it is worried or amused.
The look Rue gives the Nocker is a lot more permissive. This isn't Rue's house. Rue's just arrogant enough to deign -- with a glance -- too allow the pale-skinned, pale-haired Nocker entrance, and besides, this isn't Rue's home, and she doesn't forget it. Says, over her shoulder (again),
To Maialen. "The Mistress is upstairs."
Then: which car has Gump? Not the one with the star-eyed mortal. Not the expensive, sleek creature of metal. So: another. Rue peers through windows until she finds it, then says, "Hello, dog. Gump, I've heard you named. Come. Your mistress wants you."
She'd talk to humans just the same.
[Mean Tommy] (*test)
[Mean Tommy] (Posting for the Penny, as she can't get the site to work)
*A furl of breath from hard bitten lips, and Penny rises with a hearty 'Oofta' to her small broad feet. Stained and spattered like a bloody war veteran rather than the giddy play-smith she was known as.
The Sidhe drew ragged breath, and Penny's heart danced joyous. Ragged breath was breath still, and so the fair creature lived. A redcap's voice howls brutish and wicked through the floorboards, and the Boggan spares a moment more to sweep Cedric's sweat damp hair from his brow reassuringly, before bustling to greet her guests.
The voice that answers the nightmare contains barely enough sun to dance dust in, stairs creaking in familiar complaint as the flustered Boggan calls.* And you one of them TerribleTommy! Eat everything but the artichokes I bid you! Is the fairest lady with you? Her companion has been set to rights, best I know how... He sleeps fitful.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] To Rue, Maialen merely inclines her head in a lady's courtesy. The fineness of the gesture does nothing to ease the sharpness of her smile, the intensity of the survey she gives the other Sidhe, head to toe and toe to head, faceted eyes drinking light as they linger on the sheathed blade at the Gwydion's hip.
Maialen's own weapon is no more than ornament: a lady's jeweled dagger, tucked against the tapered waist of her cinched stays, just before her long skirts flare out at the hip.
The nocker goes briefly walkabout, entering the kitchen, daring the gullet noises of a redcap mid-digestion. By the time she has returned, the Ailil has removed one soft kid gloves from one soft white hand, and is working on the second. She's standing, still, cloak thrown back from her shoulders, the hanging from her neck by little more than a gleaming broach. Rue - is a knight-errant, wears her weapons openly, quests for a bulldog named Gump, who is wanted within. Maialen is seems little more than a court-ornament, her function wholly decorative.
Shiori returns and takes a seat in the living room; Maialen - who remains standing - turns and watches the nocker with unerring precision until the latter takes a seat, then returns to the delicate work of tugging off her fitted gloves, one finger at a time. The silence remains unbroken until Tommy's bellow from the kitchen.
The creature looks up, brief, sure, lambent down the long hallway. Considers that the Boggan is lucky the redcap has merely eaten the contents of her refridgerator, rather than the thing itself. Then cants her head and listens to the sounds from above, the bright, ringing response from the boggan to the redcap's bellow.
The truth is, she goes no further than the foyer - the living room - unless bid further in.
[Mean Tommy] As her voice bounces down the stairs, Tommy's eyes swing from Maialen to the door, then back to the ceiling as he makes his way toward the living room. Soon enough, his razors-on-sand voice and the wicked lines of his form join the gathered Fae in the living room.
"DUNNO! s'like... THEAH'S 'COUPLEAH FAIR LADIES- sah... YEAH. SHE'S PROLLY HEAH!"
It grinds from walls and threatens eardrums, but its at least soon over. He doesn't approach Maialen past a certain distance.. would show Rue the same personal space. His black gaze may scatter toward the hem of her dress, might strike against dainty feet.. but such glances are thankfully brief.
[Mean Tommy] ((Notice to players: Punkin's computer won't load the site anymore. So she's out.))
[Rue] ooc: and, alas, punkin's server has conked on her, so punkin says: she greets everybody, Penny washing up and insisting on making everyone french toast, before falling asleep with her bulldog in a kitchen chair.
[Shiori] Safe, for the moment she was safe. Free of Tommy's possessive gaze, and a reasonable distance away from Maialen Shiori sat with her long red digits clasped in her lap as she sat on the edge of the sofa. Beady eyes darted this way and that watchful and wary as she sat in a place she had hoped would be safe, would be quiet for a while, instead it was full of people, people she didnt know, she might have tried to get out again, but the door had so many people infront of it and beyond it, it seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. So for now she remained her gaze cast around the house, assessing, appraising.
Tommy's voice reverberates through the house, hell it reverberates through the waif like woman's bones and causes her to shiver involuntarily. Fragile is the way many people might think of her, easily beaten, easily broken, they might be right in many ways as well...but no one had so far tested her.
She seemed quite happy not to be tested.
[Rue] ooc: JINX, DIRGE.
[Mean Tommy] ((Ha ha! Also, I'm sorry but I too am fading fast. I will have a big day tomorrow so the earlier sleep comes the better. Thanks for the scene folks!))
Tommy, for his part, doesn't hang around for long. At least not right there. In the open.. in the middle of everything. Rather, he withdraws back into the kitchen to wage war on Penny's stock of food.
[Rue] ooc: *cracks knuckles* *uses skillz for next post, SKILLZ*
[Rue] This is what happens, then. Let us cover a measure of minutes, many: Penny, sunshine itself, waddling downstairs, cheerful face etched in weariness -- cheer not faded, yet, yet. Her fingers are bloody, and they are so for a reason: she washes up, she bids Maialen come in and there is no doubting her sincerity. Not Penny's. Not Penny, who owns this quaint cottage in Little Ukraine. Penny is all welcome. Penny does not allow Shiori to stay separated from the rest of the kith: in the dark living room. No; Shiori is gathered up into the kitchen. They're all gathered up into the kitchen, more or less. During this interlude:
Rue returns, the English bulldog at her heels. A good hound, which knows how to obey. At her heels, the fat, squat thing looks indeed like a hound -- like it might reflect some of Rue's splendour back at her; like it might hunt the white hart through woods that are gold of a lost age that will never be seen again and with its teeth make a noble showing. That is illusion; it is indeed reflection, the moon to the sun, the lake to the stars.
Their hostess begins to droop, however: it is obvious. Rue is is arrogant: "Penny, sleep. I'm sure -- " Here, her gaze fixes (skewers) Shiori in place. Pin through a butterfly; how intense she is, the Gwydion. Her eyes are bluer than a dream of far-off skies, understand, a brilliance unsought for years because it is unremembered. Remembered, it would be sought: people would die; people would tear out their hearts. "What is your name?"
The question is not abrupt. It is not even yet ungentle. It just is. While she awaits an answer, that she may finish her sentence, her eyes leave Shiori's. Meet Maialen's, instead. Again. They are different sides of the same coin: the one so bright and sharp, so moon-radiant; the other so dark-loved, so soft and shadowed. For her, a measured moment. Then:
"I would consult your expertise. Such as it is."
[Shiori] Penny had been kind, Penny had brought her to the kitchen where Shiori had thought there might be some food left, even after the redcap was done with the place, but no...the mistress of the house had flagged and retreated off to bed leaving the Nocker trapped in a room with two rather austere and proud looking Sidhe her eyes darting between the pair warily.
"Shiori." She said in response to Rue's question, she does not ask for a name in response, its as if she had been picked up bodily the way she had been sitting in the living room, and brought into the kitchen, she sat on a stool, perched there all leanness and caution hands folded upon her lap as she tried not to hunch over, tried not to become as small a target as possible. "These stools must have been sanded with a wet noodle they are so uncomfortable." She said to no one really, more of a musing to herself.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Time moves. Penny washes off the blood and insists on making French toast. One presumes the abiding hunger of the redcap ensures that he hoovers up all the crumbs from his fridge-raiding escapade. The pair of sidhe do not belong in such a bright, cheerful, domestic space, but there they remain. Somewhere between dark living room and bright warm kitchen, the Ailil divests herself of her velvet cloak and is left in her court-garb, a dress in half-a-dozen half-remembered shadows of gold. The gold of morning and the gold of sunlight-on-dew, the gold of the Asturian hills and the gold of King Midas' broken heart, all these a supple contrast to the black tangle of her hair, the soft, dreaming white of her skin.
There is an art to consuming food while wearing lacings tight enough to compress one's ribs. To crack them. One simply does not.
Before Penny retreats, the Ailil presses an invitation on her. To tea, some spring afternoon.
Rue's eyes are skywon, skyworn; Maialen's are - somewhere at the dark heart of them - blue as well, but they are nothing of the sky. It's earth instead, forged and polished, cut and cut and cut until the light scatters through them like the heart of a perfectly polished sapphire, a dark, distinctive shadow of the ill-remembered dream of that perfect sky, irradiant only when the light finds them; or when her eyes find you.
"Would you?" returns the Ailil, perfectly formed dark brows rising over her faceted eyes. They linger at the apex, a sort, wry curl to the corner of her fine mouth. She draws a breath in, shoulders curving above the hard line of her stays. The smile lingers, a brief, darkeyed glance at the nocker in that moment. Then: Rue. " - then let us walk."
[Rue] Shiori, the Nocker says, followed by the obligatory verbal diarrhea. The comment on the Penny's chair passes by, although Rue's fine eyebrows draw together. There is the distinct possibility that she looks upon Penny as hers, in a way. Hers to protect. Hers to use. Hers. And if so, she finds the Nocker's remark on chairs that might well be boggan crafted to be in poor taste. Nockers are known for artistry, for the flaw that haunts every thing they create, not for taste. Shiori, the Nocker says, and then speaks on. Rue listens, nods gravely, says this:
"Shiori, then. And a carpenter?" The gift of her name is casual. Largesse:
"I am called Rue. While Penny sleeps, you'll be her two hands and give her rest. You'll put these dishes away; will you not?"
Her gaze flicks toward the redcap. Lake-light, dripping off a blade: a star there. Then flicks back to Shiori. There may be assurance there, of a sort; that none would mollest her in this house -- at present. That while she gave Penny aid there'd be no danger. The sidhe are not merely arrogant and haughty, after all. They're the Dreaming's darlings, the Dreaming's kings and queens. They're glory, and they don't try for it: they may seek greater glory through conquest or poison or quest, but they need not try for it. It is there. It is theirs. Even through dislike, it is undeniable.
It is not a kind thing.
"I would," she tells her fellow, her host-sister, the Unseelie lady: carefully, a confirmation. There is the thread of some dark, vibrant thing in Rue's voice. She doesn't conceal it. What Rue conceals is precious little. Her shoulders are still bare, her fine, Gentrywoman's coat drying on the back of one of those chairs Shiori commented on: a sweep of wonder, dense with shadow, the spilling of some thing's blood stiffening its folds. "Let us go upstairs. Not out into the night's airs."
Then: a polite, casual gesture. I follow.
[Shiori] Rue spoke to the woman at last, asking more then her name, more then an expectant inquiry, but sadly that moment of conversation was simply to ask a question...and then to demand action, to expect her to serve here, to see to the Boggans household as she sleeps. The white brows of Shiori's eyes furrow and draw together in a way that might almost be considered comical in the way they matched Rue's motions from only moments before.
"I am as much a carpenter as you are a savante." She said as she responded to the question. "I simply know quality when I see it, or in this case...feel it." She did not however rise, she did not bow and scrape and thank the woman for the opportunity to serve. She simply remained seated and watchful as the two Sidhe considered taking their conversation elsewhere, away from common ears.
A brief frown crosses the Nockers pouty lips as the two plan on making their exit, a glance caste between the two, one light, one dark, but there is no request to remain apart of the conversation. If anything one might think that Shiori was simply waiting for a chance to bolt, to escape these haughty and demanding creatures, beautiful and terrible thought they were.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Listen to the whisper of her skirts on the stairs, soft and susserent as the wind through the leaves of a half-remembered tree. The swaying sort, whip-long arms and fine, deeply cut leaves, gnarled roots knuckled deep into the heart of a still forest pool. Maialen climbs before Rue, lifts her skirts, gives her bright, sharper mirror the view of her back. The tight, tapering laces, the raven's wing tangle of her falling hair, the mirrored memory of their half-forgotten grace. Here they are in a boggan's house, exiles, all still and sure.
The Ailil catches up her soft skirts with a soft white hand; there are circlets of gold - three - interwoven, moving like liquid at her wrist, inset with some dark, glittering stone whose name is long-since lost to all human tongues. And now has a view of the back of her hair, here and there a twist of pearls is evident through the complexly arranged disarray.
The scent of blood is still in the air; and the truth is, the Ailil follows it. Like a shark, you see. There's something broken, close.
[Rue] The proudest house of all the proud houses: Gwydion. Yet: do they not have reason? Shiori dislikes sidhe. Many commoners do, alas. And Rue does not understand it. Does not understand this new age at all: has their mortality polluted them? Will it pollute her, as it polluted the house Scathatch? This is one of her fears, which she keeps close-as-cards to her heart of hearts: doesn't wear that fear on her sleeve, although it might be there for any to find. Rue doesn't wait to see Shiori sigh or grumble or curse as only a Nocker might and clean up after Penny, but she does nod once: acknowledgment of some Thing.
Then she ascends after Maialen. Rue is not wearing skirts. Rue is black-clad: Rue is burning, in her dark clothes; her trousers, her tall boots, the girdle jewelled with something like the iridescence found in some tarnished silvers, but more radiant, and fine: a pattern there, hammered out of old. Before.
Maialen goes straight for blood -- so: she know what room to turn into. The door might still be open. The knight, wan and palely loitering, the smell of burning ozone, silver, an arm over his face now. Rue's a step behind her.
"Do you know his face? Do you know that smell?"
Ah. More of it than just blood.
[Shiori] Shiori glowered after the Sidhe as they made their exit, her hands clasped upon the edge of the seat like some impertinent child her gaze trying to burn a hole through Rue as she walked off, intent on more important things, Sidhe things of course.
But as they left Shiori dismounted the stool at last and moved toward the sink, grumbling as she went. They could hear the water start to run as they ascended the staircase. It would seem that despite her trepidation and fear, even with her doubts and her displeasure Shiori had still moved to fulfill the task set before her by Rue, furious grumbling not withstanding, oh the things they would hear if they had only been in range to hear them.
Its a few more minutes as they secluded themselves before Shiori, glowering and now hands wet, headed for the front door, still hungry after all that as well.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] A sharp glance is made sidelong; the Ailil sweeps her skirts askance and slips into the room. She seems a softer creature altogether, made to recede into the moon's shadow, winterborn, winter's maid. Footsteps soft into the sickroom, stark with the smell of blood and -
- her round face is still as she studies the young knight, impassive, eyes hooded, dark lashes soot against pale cheeks. This is where she hardens: in the soft shoulders, in the curving spine, slipping through the door, stalking through the room soft-footed to the head of the bed. She does not touch the stranger, but she - stands close, half-perches on the edge of the bed. Looks for a cool cloth to sooth him.
Inhales.
Eyes closed with it; as if there were some vintage in the air to be savored.
"No," returns the lady of the Ailil. She does not know his face. But she reaches out, pale fingers cool on the arm he has flung over his head. Gentle. " - and no. What is it?"
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "Who is he?"
[Rue] "He is Cedric of Liam." That's all she says, at first. Allows Maialen to absorb it. Attach the name to the slumbering knight's face, his pained features. His arm has been recently near-devoured. Penny did her job well, after a bungled first attempt that will stay between the bogan and the unconscious knight and the floorboards and the pillow his head lays upon. The stitches look well-made. There is a minimal of swelling, although he is soaked in sweat, his hair, draggled.
Now, Rue and Maialen can't be called friends. Maialen is not a name synonymous with trust (verity [honor]), and Rue knows her beyond this one city. This city that has her -- tonight, at least -- tired. Edged. Her sword might now be sheathed, but she is not: she is an unsheathed thing, now; glory's elegant, coldly radiant weapon. Doubt that the stars burn. Doubt that the birds fly. Doubt that fish breathe air. Before: doubt that she is dangerous, that once upon a time she lead armies and slew dragons.
Her throat works. Her throat is: too slender for the legend of what she is -- too delicate. Too fine, really: and yet. The moment passes, and she adds, voice low, touched by rue: "And I know not. He came from the lost holding. He asked after it as if it hadn't vanished. As if it were still fought-for, as if the fighting were just-now, somewhere. He fell out of a mist -- as you see him. This smell: it was all about, and it stays."
[Shiori] There is a slam downstairs, marking the departure of the Nocker, silence is all that follows as the two continue their conversation over the form of the sleeping, healing fae.
[Thanks for the scene guys!]
[Rue] [Thank you! Sorry again there wasn't more interaction and stuff. Next time!]
[Shiori] [Yep! have fun *G*]
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "You have heard the story of Eonavia de Cantábrica?" Maialen's slight weight depresses the edge of the bed; her fingers graze the edges of the well-mended wound, soft and cool and light against the feverish flesh. Little comfort, there - just a hint of awareness beyond the fevered confines of a wounded sleep that another is without. This is where she belongs, isn't it - the lady of the manor, comforting the wounded, drifting through the corridors, offering the grace of a slip-stream little smile to the fatigued warriors, to -
The creature looks up from her place, back at Rue, the pearls woven into her hair gleaming against the dark tress, dancing with every subtle movement of her slender frame. "A castle, cursed, that appears from the mists once every hundred years. Sometimes men and women - even knights, even barons - wander in, but no one comes out," a brief, narrow twist of her bare shoulders. "untouched. Surrounded by mists. One night every one hundred years. From dusk to dawn.
"He's marked by it." The Ailil remarks, assured in this as she is in - everything. " - whatever took the rest of them. I think it will not let him go so easily."
[Rue] [pausation!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4 (Botch x 2 at target 6)
[Penny] *Penny thinks she sees the bit what will need the most attention, and plump fingers begin wiping and dressing the wound, before she sits like a tailor, humming and stitching upon the grisly fabric of moonlit skin. Its fine work, and it will heal well... if.. only she'd noticed the oozing infection prior to peircing a pustule with her needle. It isn't until the ruddy boggan's back has developped a cramp from stooping, and her arms are tired from pushing steel through flesh that she notices ichor oozing from between tidy threads.
Horror.
She was going to have to do this all over again, and disinfect the lot besides, in whatever nooks and crannies were hiding from view. Were she the type to curse she'd be doing so now, instead she simply looks deeply abashed as the Sidhe's mangled arm is unlaced once more like an illfitting corset.*
My deepest apologies dearest Cedric. I'll rob the third and twice will be the charm. I'm sorry.
[Shiori] Penny's house, a quaint little house that held such warmth, such open invitation. Penny herself had made that rather clear when they had met ever so briefly, Penny had even brought her back briefly to give her some of her heart warming stew. Shiori would never admit that the stew had been tasty, quite tasty infact, she had actually called it somewhat tepid even if the flavors were full. But that was simply her Kith, her kinds way of being, an honest to goodness compliment was a rare thing indeed.
She had returned here tonight, sore and somewhat awkward and looked up at the soft welcoming light that issued fro the front of the house. It was her very specific goal to get some more of that stew, if there was any left, she needed some of the boggan's famous comfort.
She stepped up onto that small porch and rapped long knobbed digits against the soft wood of the door before pushing through into the home.
The Nocker which entered was covered by a voile both appropriate to her kith and distinct enough to be her very own, her shirt, or more likely a coat buttoned up down the right hand side, four heavy brass buttons holding the sturdy but supple fabric together, her pants were slightly poofy, baggy one would say for plenty of movement and freedom of air. The entirety of the voile was coloured a deep green, and a brilliant silvered white, the colours swirling together like milk and coffee, or steam with cooler air. The cuffs of both her feet and hands were unnecessarily long, the ruffled material falling so far as to hide her hands and feet from the view of many.
Her stark white hair rose from her head like a column of flame, defying gravity as she strode into the room. Her face paint, as that is surely what it was, was in the style of most Nockers, except for the cheeks, where they would normally be rosey and bright, they swirled together with the white, much like her voile.
[Shiori] [Addendum, she doesnt go in, she stops at the doorstep!]
[Rue] Upstairs, Penny begins to sew, to with needle and thread put in such stitch as Frankenstein would cringe to look upon. The sidhe knight who Rue has named Cedric does not wake, and for that, mercy; he does, however begin to breathe with more difficulty, and his all-too-revealed muscles twitch, gleam as if they'd move. Neither sidhe nor boggan thought: and what if he should come to consciousness, but be out of his mind; flail? Surely, his strength's enough to black poor Penny's helpful eye. Or worse.
Downstairs, the Ailil is at the door. The blood on the doorstep is drying. Gump, the English bulldog, must watch these goings on with bright eyes, waddley butt a wiggle. Downstairs, the Redcap ceases -- for a breath -- his gorging; turns to look at Rue, and she must feel -- they are nightmares; she is no Fiona, to be impervious to them -- what it is to be a lovely slab of meat. That look. That look is like the first salute of a dance; she knows what move comes next. This: an inch of metal, unsheathed.
But she recognizes him now, Tommy. And while Mean Tommy does not, to Rue, mean safety, Mean Tommy does not mean some fell thing that followed her out of the mist -- only a monster. A monster whose name she knows. The inch of metal vanishes again. There is no sound. Just,
"Ah. Red Tom. My temporary hunting mate. Pray you, remember napkins."
And with that, Rue -- cautious still; a beast is a beast -- goes to the door, which she will open to whatever's there: an Ailil. And a nocker coming, hard behind her. And beyond that: the bulldog, which is her quest. Seriously: it is a quest now. All things can be made into a quest if looked at properly.
ooc: *quickly swaps Nocker to being just behind Maialen?*
[Penny] [Seriously. I'm stitching you up. ...at increased botch difficulty of suck.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 6 (Success x 1 at target 8) [WP]
[Mean Tommy] At the same time Tommy is coming to the realization that there will not be a fight, the package of dry spaghetti noodles is swinging toward his mouth, and the Redcap's brutal form swings back around toward the fridge to meet it.
Crunch!
Ham next. Cheese- cheese too..
He's soon lost, back in the fridge, chasing a feeling he only ever comes close to, with all the intensity of a monk on the side of a mountain somewhere. Just a massive, hunching thing bathed in the soft light of a refrigerator. He'd never turned on the light.
[Penny] *An overabundance of gold frizz is pushed from her forehead, wispy yellow eyebrows slicked back and blood twisted in her hair as the Boggan sets her mind and works with the efficiency her kith is known for. This would be far easier were it a rug or a quilt she was set upon, but every twitch and slip of muscle in response to her probing needlepoint has another ounce of blood draining from features usually lit with a hearth's glowing warmth. Greying as she sets her mind about her task and only her task - knocking and chatter and CRUNCHing registering only peripherally as she pats the wounded Sidhe's stomach comfortingly, and gets on with it.*
[And AGAIN! LIVE!!! WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7) [WP]
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] An Ailil: another sort of nightmare, this one ribbon-wrapped and raven-haired. Flawless. Shiori comes up the walk and the creature turns, her cloak falling back, away from her arms to simply hang from her neck. She glances across one nearly bare shoulder, the golden ribbon a satiny contrast to the moonlit gleam of her cool, pale skin, wrapped up with errant tendrils of inky hair falling in studied disarray down her back. The look is spark, sparked at the edge, dark and assured and assessing.
The door opens before the creature has opened her mouth to offer greeting or command. The hinges creak softly, just that hint of metal on metal stress, and the gentle bow of Maialen's soft little mouth has settled back into a soft little smile. The sort meant for a boggan, not a Gwydion.
There is a stutterstep moment, as if the film of her life had skipped, all flash-bulb clarity, when the soft smile slips into something - well, distinctly sharper, as gleaming-sure as the edge of Rue's storied blade. Then Rue slips by and Maialen slips inside. Stands in the foyer tugging her gloves from her hands with a finger-laced precision, dark head sweeping a glance toward the kitchen with the sound of the redcap's feast.
- she does not intrude, but instead watches the nocker as she, too, crosses the threshold and begins taking in the environs, as if she were a patron at a gallery opening - with that sense of detached admiration evident in her bearing.
[Shiori] Two Sidhe, not just one but two, first the one on the doorstep waiting casually for a chance to slip inside, and then a second, a more powerful, more impressive specimen opened the door and nodded to the pair that was there, as if deigning them fit for entry before she stepped down and away, headed off on some errand that she did not bother to elaborate on. Not that anyone expected her to do so.
She did indeed step inside, stepping through hurriedly and watching both of the sidhe with an air of caution and scrutiny that one might not normally get...not from someone you had never met before. Once within the warm walls of the homestead she gave Maialen a wide birth, moving towards the kitchen, until of course she noted the darkness within, and the nightmarish creature she recognized all to well silouhetted in the fridge light. This stopped her cold, and torn between several bad options, Shiori slid quietly into the living room, finding a seat as she looked around, hoping that Penny was here somewhere.
[Mean Tommy] A package of...something... hangs out of Tommy's mouth as he glances around again. Excitement, upon seeing Shiori- yet again that same look. The odd twist of face.. greedy, haunting. He sees weapons. Blood on snow. Mayhem in terms of mechanics and the machinery only a Nocker can fashion. It twinkles in his eye, and gives further brutishness to already savage, half made features.
Maialen.. this becomes more like trepidation. An eerie resolution to the broad, choppy lines of his form as he turns back around quickly and a slew of crunching noises leaks out from around the edges of his frame. When he hops off the stool whatever had been hanging from his mouth has long since been dropped down his gullet.
Tommy cranks his head back, as though addressing the ceiling.
"OI! PENNY! YAH GOT ... uuuh... whul... PEOPLE DOWN HEAH!"
[Rue] Cedric has paled still further -- his color, lady, it is not good -- when Penny completes her stitchings, and can be satisfied that she did her best. That she did the job well, this time. The stitches will serve, and they follow the lines made by something with teeth like a pike's. Not a wolf's. Not a hound's. Many-toothed, slender, like that. He is also drenched: sweat. He doesn't wake, but after a moment he looks less troubled. There is no more blood. (The blood that hadn't pooled quite right.) Penny's fingers are red, for her craftwork.
Maialen at the door --
A moment passed, before Rue slipped out on her errand, her quest. The look of recognition that flashes across her eyes is not similar to the one she gave Tommy, when he turned. Maialen: she knows Maialen like her bones know the ache of cold. Tommy may be what he is; Maialen is bound to what she is as well: black and silver, a banner, a rival and yet still also of a kind. Thus: that flash of a look, which follows after surprise, is touched by something that knows not whether it is worried or amused.
The look Rue gives the Nocker is a lot more permissive. This isn't Rue's house. Rue's just arrogant enough to deign -- with a glance -- too allow the pale-skinned, pale-haired Nocker entrance, and besides, this isn't Rue's home, and she doesn't forget it. Says, over her shoulder (again),
To Maialen. "The Mistress is upstairs."
Then: which car has Gump? Not the one with the star-eyed mortal. Not the expensive, sleek creature of metal. So: another. Rue peers through windows until she finds it, then says, "Hello, dog. Gump, I've heard you named. Come. Your mistress wants you."
She'd talk to humans just the same.
[Mean Tommy] (*test)
[Mean Tommy] (Posting for the Penny, as she can't get the site to work)
*A furl of breath from hard bitten lips, and Penny rises with a hearty 'Oofta' to her small broad feet. Stained and spattered like a bloody war veteran rather than the giddy play-smith she was known as.
The Sidhe drew ragged breath, and Penny's heart danced joyous. Ragged breath was breath still, and so the fair creature lived. A redcap's voice howls brutish and wicked through the floorboards, and the Boggan spares a moment more to sweep Cedric's sweat damp hair from his brow reassuringly, before bustling to greet her guests.
The voice that answers the nightmare contains barely enough sun to dance dust in, stairs creaking in familiar complaint as the flustered Boggan calls.* And you one of them TerribleTommy! Eat everything but the artichokes I bid you! Is the fairest lady with you? Her companion has been set to rights, best I know how... He sleeps fitful.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] To Rue, Maialen merely inclines her head in a lady's courtesy. The fineness of the gesture does nothing to ease the sharpness of her smile, the intensity of the survey she gives the other Sidhe, head to toe and toe to head, faceted eyes drinking light as they linger on the sheathed blade at the Gwydion's hip.
Maialen's own weapon is no more than ornament: a lady's jeweled dagger, tucked against the tapered waist of her cinched stays, just before her long skirts flare out at the hip.
The nocker goes briefly walkabout, entering the kitchen, daring the gullet noises of a redcap mid-digestion. By the time she has returned, the Ailil has removed one soft kid gloves from one soft white hand, and is working on the second. She's standing, still, cloak thrown back from her shoulders, the hanging from her neck by little more than a gleaming broach. Rue - is a knight-errant, wears her weapons openly, quests for a bulldog named Gump, who is wanted within. Maialen is seems little more than a court-ornament, her function wholly decorative.
Shiori returns and takes a seat in the living room; Maialen - who remains standing - turns and watches the nocker with unerring precision until the latter takes a seat, then returns to the delicate work of tugging off her fitted gloves, one finger at a time. The silence remains unbroken until Tommy's bellow from the kitchen.
The creature looks up, brief, sure, lambent down the long hallway. Considers that the Boggan is lucky the redcap has merely eaten the contents of her refridgerator, rather than the thing itself. Then cants her head and listens to the sounds from above, the bright, ringing response from the boggan to the redcap's bellow.
The truth is, she goes no further than the foyer - the living room - unless bid further in.
[Mean Tommy] As her voice bounces down the stairs, Tommy's eyes swing from Maialen to the door, then back to the ceiling as he makes his way toward the living room. Soon enough, his razors-on-sand voice and the wicked lines of his form join the gathered Fae in the living room.
"DUNNO! s'like... THEAH'S 'COUPLEAH FAIR LADIES- sah... YEAH. SHE'S PROLLY HEAH!"
It grinds from walls and threatens eardrums, but its at least soon over. He doesn't approach Maialen past a certain distance.. would show Rue the same personal space. His black gaze may scatter toward the hem of her dress, might strike against dainty feet.. but such glances are thankfully brief.
[Mean Tommy] ((Notice to players: Punkin's computer won't load the site anymore. So she's out.))
[Rue] ooc: and, alas, punkin's server has conked on her, so punkin says: she greets everybody, Penny washing up and insisting on making everyone french toast, before falling asleep with her bulldog in a kitchen chair.
[Shiori] Safe, for the moment she was safe. Free of Tommy's possessive gaze, and a reasonable distance away from Maialen Shiori sat with her long red digits clasped in her lap as she sat on the edge of the sofa. Beady eyes darted this way and that watchful and wary as she sat in a place she had hoped would be safe, would be quiet for a while, instead it was full of people, people she didnt know, she might have tried to get out again, but the door had so many people infront of it and beyond it, it seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. So for now she remained her gaze cast around the house, assessing, appraising.
Tommy's voice reverberates through the house, hell it reverberates through the waif like woman's bones and causes her to shiver involuntarily. Fragile is the way many people might think of her, easily beaten, easily broken, they might be right in many ways as well...but no one had so far tested her.
She seemed quite happy not to be tested.
[Rue] ooc: JINX, DIRGE.
[Mean Tommy] ((Ha ha! Also, I'm sorry but I too am fading fast. I will have a big day tomorrow so the earlier sleep comes the better. Thanks for the scene folks!))
Tommy, for his part, doesn't hang around for long. At least not right there. In the open.. in the middle of everything. Rather, he withdraws back into the kitchen to wage war on Penny's stock of food.
[Rue] ooc: *cracks knuckles* *uses skillz for next post, SKILLZ*
[Rue] This is what happens, then. Let us cover a measure of minutes, many: Penny, sunshine itself, waddling downstairs, cheerful face etched in weariness -- cheer not faded, yet, yet. Her fingers are bloody, and they are so for a reason: she washes up, she bids Maialen come in and there is no doubting her sincerity. Not Penny's. Not Penny, who owns this quaint cottage in Little Ukraine. Penny is all welcome. Penny does not allow Shiori to stay separated from the rest of the kith: in the dark living room. No; Shiori is gathered up into the kitchen. They're all gathered up into the kitchen, more or less. During this interlude:
Rue returns, the English bulldog at her heels. A good hound, which knows how to obey. At her heels, the fat, squat thing looks indeed like a hound -- like it might reflect some of Rue's splendour back at her; like it might hunt the white hart through woods that are gold of a lost age that will never be seen again and with its teeth make a noble showing. That is illusion; it is indeed reflection, the moon to the sun, the lake to the stars.
Their hostess begins to droop, however: it is obvious. Rue is is arrogant: "Penny, sleep. I'm sure -- " Here, her gaze fixes (skewers) Shiori in place. Pin through a butterfly; how intense she is, the Gwydion. Her eyes are bluer than a dream of far-off skies, understand, a brilliance unsought for years because it is unremembered. Remembered, it would be sought: people would die; people would tear out their hearts. "What is your name?"
The question is not abrupt. It is not even yet ungentle. It just is. While she awaits an answer, that she may finish her sentence, her eyes leave Shiori's. Meet Maialen's, instead. Again. They are different sides of the same coin: the one so bright and sharp, so moon-radiant; the other so dark-loved, so soft and shadowed. For her, a measured moment. Then:
"I would consult your expertise. Such as it is."
[Shiori] Penny had been kind, Penny had brought her to the kitchen where Shiori had thought there might be some food left, even after the redcap was done with the place, but no...the mistress of the house had flagged and retreated off to bed leaving the Nocker trapped in a room with two rather austere and proud looking Sidhe her eyes darting between the pair warily.
"Shiori." She said in response to Rue's question, she does not ask for a name in response, its as if she had been picked up bodily the way she had been sitting in the living room, and brought into the kitchen, she sat on a stool, perched there all leanness and caution hands folded upon her lap as she tried not to hunch over, tried not to become as small a target as possible. "These stools must have been sanded with a wet noodle they are so uncomfortable." She said to no one really, more of a musing to herself.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Time moves. Penny washes off the blood and insists on making French toast. One presumes the abiding hunger of the redcap ensures that he hoovers up all the crumbs from his fridge-raiding escapade. The pair of sidhe do not belong in such a bright, cheerful, domestic space, but there they remain. Somewhere between dark living room and bright warm kitchen, the Ailil divests herself of her velvet cloak and is left in her court-garb, a dress in half-a-dozen half-remembered shadows of gold. The gold of morning and the gold of sunlight-on-dew, the gold of the Asturian hills and the gold of King Midas' broken heart, all these a supple contrast to the black tangle of her hair, the soft, dreaming white of her skin.
There is an art to consuming food while wearing lacings tight enough to compress one's ribs. To crack them. One simply does not.
Before Penny retreats, the Ailil presses an invitation on her. To tea, some spring afternoon.
Rue's eyes are skywon, skyworn; Maialen's are - somewhere at the dark heart of them - blue as well, but they are nothing of the sky. It's earth instead, forged and polished, cut and cut and cut until the light scatters through them like the heart of a perfectly polished sapphire, a dark, distinctive shadow of the ill-remembered dream of that perfect sky, irradiant only when the light finds them; or when her eyes find you.
"Would you?" returns the Ailil, perfectly formed dark brows rising over her faceted eyes. They linger at the apex, a sort, wry curl to the corner of her fine mouth. She draws a breath in, shoulders curving above the hard line of her stays. The smile lingers, a brief, darkeyed glance at the nocker in that moment. Then: Rue. " - then let us walk."
[Rue] Shiori, the Nocker says, followed by the obligatory verbal diarrhea. The comment on the Penny's chair passes by, although Rue's fine eyebrows draw together. There is the distinct possibility that she looks upon Penny as hers, in a way. Hers to protect. Hers to use. Hers. And if so, she finds the Nocker's remark on chairs that might well be boggan crafted to be in poor taste. Nockers are known for artistry, for the flaw that haunts every thing they create, not for taste. Shiori, the Nocker says, and then speaks on. Rue listens, nods gravely, says this:
"Shiori, then. And a carpenter?" The gift of her name is casual. Largesse:
"I am called Rue. While Penny sleeps, you'll be her two hands and give her rest. You'll put these dishes away; will you not?"
Her gaze flicks toward the redcap. Lake-light, dripping off a blade: a star there. Then flicks back to Shiori. There may be assurance there, of a sort; that none would mollest her in this house -- at present. That while she gave Penny aid there'd be no danger. The sidhe are not merely arrogant and haughty, after all. They're the Dreaming's darlings, the Dreaming's kings and queens. They're glory, and they don't try for it: they may seek greater glory through conquest or poison or quest, but they need not try for it. It is there. It is theirs. Even through dislike, it is undeniable.
It is not a kind thing.
"I would," she tells her fellow, her host-sister, the Unseelie lady: carefully, a confirmation. There is the thread of some dark, vibrant thing in Rue's voice. She doesn't conceal it. What Rue conceals is precious little. Her shoulders are still bare, her fine, Gentrywoman's coat drying on the back of one of those chairs Shiori commented on: a sweep of wonder, dense with shadow, the spilling of some thing's blood stiffening its folds. "Let us go upstairs. Not out into the night's airs."
Then: a polite, casual gesture. I follow.
[Shiori] Rue spoke to the woman at last, asking more then her name, more then an expectant inquiry, but sadly that moment of conversation was simply to ask a question...and then to demand action, to expect her to serve here, to see to the Boggans household as she sleeps. The white brows of Shiori's eyes furrow and draw together in a way that might almost be considered comical in the way they matched Rue's motions from only moments before.
"I am as much a carpenter as you are a savante." She said as she responded to the question. "I simply know quality when I see it, or in this case...feel it." She did not however rise, she did not bow and scrape and thank the woman for the opportunity to serve. She simply remained seated and watchful as the two Sidhe considered taking their conversation elsewhere, away from common ears.
A brief frown crosses the Nockers pouty lips as the two plan on making their exit, a glance caste between the two, one light, one dark, but there is no request to remain apart of the conversation. If anything one might think that Shiori was simply waiting for a chance to bolt, to escape these haughty and demanding creatures, beautiful and terrible thought they were.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Listen to the whisper of her skirts on the stairs, soft and susserent as the wind through the leaves of a half-remembered tree. The swaying sort, whip-long arms and fine, deeply cut leaves, gnarled roots knuckled deep into the heart of a still forest pool. Maialen climbs before Rue, lifts her skirts, gives her bright, sharper mirror the view of her back. The tight, tapering laces, the raven's wing tangle of her falling hair, the mirrored memory of their half-forgotten grace. Here they are in a boggan's house, exiles, all still and sure.
The Ailil catches up her soft skirts with a soft white hand; there are circlets of gold - three - interwoven, moving like liquid at her wrist, inset with some dark, glittering stone whose name is long-since lost to all human tongues. And now has a view of the back of her hair, here and there a twist of pearls is evident through the complexly arranged disarray.
The scent of blood is still in the air; and the truth is, the Ailil follows it. Like a shark, you see. There's something broken, close.
[Rue] The proudest house of all the proud houses: Gwydion. Yet: do they not have reason? Shiori dislikes sidhe. Many commoners do, alas. And Rue does not understand it. Does not understand this new age at all: has their mortality polluted them? Will it pollute her, as it polluted the house Scathatch? This is one of her fears, which she keeps close-as-cards to her heart of hearts: doesn't wear that fear on her sleeve, although it might be there for any to find. Rue doesn't wait to see Shiori sigh or grumble or curse as only a Nocker might and clean up after Penny, but she does nod once: acknowledgment of some Thing.
Then she ascends after Maialen. Rue is not wearing skirts. Rue is black-clad: Rue is burning, in her dark clothes; her trousers, her tall boots, the girdle jewelled with something like the iridescence found in some tarnished silvers, but more radiant, and fine: a pattern there, hammered out of old. Before.
Maialen goes straight for blood -- so: she know what room to turn into. The door might still be open. The knight, wan and palely loitering, the smell of burning ozone, silver, an arm over his face now. Rue's a step behind her.
"Do you know his face? Do you know that smell?"
Ah. More of it than just blood.
[Shiori] Shiori glowered after the Sidhe as they made their exit, her hands clasped upon the edge of the seat like some impertinent child her gaze trying to burn a hole through Rue as she walked off, intent on more important things, Sidhe things of course.
But as they left Shiori dismounted the stool at last and moved toward the sink, grumbling as she went. They could hear the water start to run as they ascended the staircase. It would seem that despite her trepidation and fear, even with her doubts and her displeasure Shiori had still moved to fulfill the task set before her by Rue, furious grumbling not withstanding, oh the things they would hear if they had only been in range to hear them.
Its a few more minutes as they secluded themselves before Shiori, glowering and now hands wet, headed for the front door, still hungry after all that as well.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] A sharp glance is made sidelong; the Ailil sweeps her skirts askance and slips into the room. She seems a softer creature altogether, made to recede into the moon's shadow, winterborn, winter's maid. Footsteps soft into the sickroom, stark with the smell of blood and -
- her round face is still as she studies the young knight, impassive, eyes hooded, dark lashes soot against pale cheeks. This is where she hardens: in the soft shoulders, in the curving spine, slipping through the door, stalking through the room soft-footed to the head of the bed. She does not touch the stranger, but she - stands close, half-perches on the edge of the bed. Looks for a cool cloth to sooth him.
Inhales.
Eyes closed with it; as if there were some vintage in the air to be savored.
"No," returns the lady of the Ailil. She does not know his face. But she reaches out, pale fingers cool on the arm he has flung over his head. Gentle. " - and no. What is it?"
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "Who is he?"
[Rue] "He is Cedric of Liam." That's all she says, at first. Allows Maialen to absorb it. Attach the name to the slumbering knight's face, his pained features. His arm has been recently near-devoured. Penny did her job well, after a bungled first attempt that will stay between the bogan and the unconscious knight and the floorboards and the pillow his head lays upon. The stitches look well-made. There is a minimal of swelling, although he is soaked in sweat, his hair, draggled.
Now, Rue and Maialen can't be called friends. Maialen is not a name synonymous with trust (verity [honor]), and Rue knows her beyond this one city. This city that has her -- tonight, at least -- tired. Edged. Her sword might now be sheathed, but she is not: she is an unsheathed thing, now; glory's elegant, coldly radiant weapon. Doubt that the stars burn. Doubt that the birds fly. Doubt that fish breathe air. Before: doubt that she is dangerous, that once upon a time she lead armies and slew dragons.
Her throat works. Her throat is: too slender for the legend of what she is -- too delicate. Too fine, really: and yet. The moment passes, and she adds, voice low, touched by rue: "And I know not. He came from the lost holding. He asked after it as if it hadn't vanished. As if it were still fought-for, as if the fighting were just-now, somewhere. He fell out of a mist -- as you see him. This smell: it was all about, and it stays."
[Shiori] There is a slam downstairs, marking the departure of the Nocker, silence is all that follows as the two continue their conversation over the form of the sleeping, healing fae.
[Thanks for the scene guys!]
[Rue] [Thank you! Sorry again there wasn't more interaction and stuff. Next time!]
[Shiori] [Yep! have fun *G*]
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "You have heard the story of Eonavia de Cantábrica?" Maialen's slight weight depresses the edge of the bed; her fingers graze the edges of the well-mended wound, soft and cool and light against the feverish flesh. Little comfort, there - just a hint of awareness beyond the fevered confines of a wounded sleep that another is without. This is where she belongs, isn't it - the lady of the manor, comforting the wounded, drifting through the corridors, offering the grace of a slip-stream little smile to the fatigued warriors, to -
The creature looks up from her place, back at Rue, the pearls woven into her hair gleaming against the dark tress, dancing with every subtle movement of her slender frame. "A castle, cursed, that appears from the mists once every hundred years. Sometimes men and women - even knights, even barons - wander in, but no one comes out," a brief, narrow twist of her bare shoulders. "untouched. Surrounded by mists. One night every one hundred years. From dusk to dawn.
"He's marked by it." The Ailil remarks, assured in this as she is in - everything. " - whatever took the rest of them. I think it will not let him go so easily."
[Rue] [pausation!]
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Rue [unfinished]
[Esyllt Ruen] The time: night.
The place: a pub -- a club? Almost a club, but not quite -- a place with tables, a place windowed in the front with thick glass, glass smoked with age, glass that gives nothing up of what's happening within. The tables in the front are barrels, and beyond this common place, around a corner, there is a hall precided over by a hanging wood and steel candleholder, and long tables, and a place where an altar may've been installed once upon a time. The ceiling is tall; it could fill with bat-song as easily as it might fill with conversation, laughter; it is filled today with music -- a band with energy.
The pub has a story about how it was a church once upon a time and people who come to drink beer brewed by Trappist monks in monasteries far over the gray Atlantic believe the story, and mock the irreverence of it, and smile at the images on the walls, touch the stones with the palms of their hands, investigate the 'patio' with its dark wooden beams (shit-crusted, white-crusted, where the hose doesn't reach) and no roof to keep the gloaming out. There is a belltower. The belltower has bells; the bells don't have tongues.
This is where Rue is, come night. This is what most people see: a girl with a halo of long, long golden hair, how it catches the light, how flawless she is, how unbearably lovely, how easy in her dusty red coat and how effortlessly poised, and she is not haunting the band, she is not playing dark lady (how could she?), she is standing with one shoulder against the wooden frame of the hallway that'll take you out onto the patio where the night air is haunting. Her arms are folded. The shadow of her jaw is graceful.
This is what most people never see, although it is as true as that other face is not. The red coat, tapestried and long; the tapesry that moves, that is also dusk-gold, the slant of light at the death of day, the scene - some old glory, some ancient, desperate hope or tragedy, how it moves if you don't pay close attention. The gleam of her - that's what most people don't see: what unbearably lovely truly is. Rue: watching the mortals mill about the band, weaving in and out of the hall, stumbling into the confessionals, foolish in their irreverence
and so fragile.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Does she expect to see another here tonight? Some other self, through a mirror darkly. Maialen is dark as Rue is light; she is slighter, somehow. Softly made, but striking, the long twist of her fine black hair pulled smoothly away from the soft sculpture of her rounded features - a high, clear brow, the fine, curving cheeks, the huge, faceted eyes that all speak of impossible youth, given an ageless piquancy by the sharpness of her chin. Even human, she looks like something from another age - one of those big-eyed, staring girls dreamed up by some dutch master, creamy skin enrobed half-in-light, and somehow all-in-shadow.
She is wearing a dress, forgettable, soft and golden, that leads her soft shoulders and long white arms bare. It seems modest, somehow, until she turns, slipping through the crowd toward the patio, noiseless as a ghost, but too remarkable to be entirely by the half-sleeping strangers who shift around her, locked away from their own hearts.
Rue sees more, the slight girl elongated, made more willowy, sharper, her skin more heartbreakingly translucent, her black hair a veil of sleeping black, fine as silk. Intricately laced stays are wrapped with a half-dozen shades of golden ribbon. The flat-front is like near-armor, hard, constricting, pulling against her frame. Long skirts flare out from the hips, an intricate patchwork of lace and brocade that sweeps the floor.
Brought up short by Rue's presence, she stops, still as a starling. And stairs from a half-dozen paces away. As if she had only just awakened, somehow, to the world they share. As if she had been sleep-walking through the night until just that moment.
[Esyllt Ruen] This is true, too. This - that the world has no welcome for such as they. This is true, too. This - that they feel it more keenly than the common fae who've polluted themselves with mortality for hundreds of year, unceasing. This is true, too. This - that such might (must?) be their eventual fate: the clog of living and growing old and rotting and dying, the tedious, wearying loss of wonder, the deedless days, the blindness. And so, this also is true - when they, the host, run across each other, what can there be but a kind of rightness? A spark? A mad hope. They never left. (They did.) They returned. (They did.)
There is a second's silence.
And in that second, Rue does not pretend to have expected Maialen's to coalesce out of the hall, sweet as a shade, nor does she pretend to be less than surprised. Rue is too proud for such deception; it is easy enough to know that. The dark other is paused, still and startled; Rue is taken aback, but she has the advantage of position, the doorframe, the doorway, folded arms to unfold, an elegant eyebrow to, after a beat, raise in arch inquiry (wonder).
Rue unfolds her arms, and her hand (devoted) does not fall to the hilt of a sword hidden behind the folds of her coat. No: not hidden; when she moves, the coat parts, and the gleam of it is there, dark metal and pale horn, unjeweled. At first meeting of eyes, Rue's were lambent - were luminous - the color of moonlight gathered in a silver cup, a twist of honey from some distant star - and their expression was a simmering thing, sharpening, intense. They mellow as the second wears on, the shock fades almost entirely, replaced by something not-wry, but amused.
"You." Beat. And - her voice pitched low, to ford the distance, but find only its target. "Maialen Xaranzana Ofema Beatrix Maelchisarro Girre de Xove y Miasol nic Ailil." Beat. "Lady." The dip of her head is - well; it is haughty, but it is what it is: it is acknowledgment of similarity, of sisterhood in the absence of others closer to her heart. Her hands are at either side, held out; it is not a bow, and would never be a bow, but it is reminiscent of a bow, something polite and courteous and faultless and aloof. Rue, for all her intensity, is a separate-thing, always.
"You are unexpected, but welcome. But - come hence, why? The wild hunt? The horn-song, the - " here, coming out of that almost-but-never bow, straightening, a clean, cutting step taken forward. " - city's tragic mystery? A brave new world?"
Rue never pretends to be anything less than archaic. Pride, again - pride.
[Esyllt Ruen] ooc: ahem. Ofemia Beatriz.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] A Gwydion.
How droll.
The Dreaming does play these tricks.
The Ailil's composure returns by degrees as she wishes it; she must prefer the illusion of surprise for the moment, she allows it to settle around her fine features, to linger in the spark of her faceted eyes, two twist the soft, supple bow of her soft, supple little mouth. A touch of sweetness, there, a honeysuckle kiss.
There is no sword at her side; just a jeweled dagger at her waist that seems to be meant to function as jewelry rather than defense. She has one hand on her falling skirts, pulling them up for ease of movement, just enough to reveal jeweled slippers nearly a match to the dagger, but flat and soft as kidleather.
As some sweet thing, skinned.
"Noble knight of House Gwydion," the other returns, the sweep of her eyes like the edge of a razor made of moonlight. Which is to say: somehow gleaming, sharp and soft. "The Lady Esyllt," like a concession, she returns the not-a-bow with the soft of graceful little curtsy one expects from such a shadow-made thing. One slippered foot behind the other, the faintest little give, the sort that shows her creamy shoulders, soft flesh bound by hard stays, off to elegant effect. She was made to drift around the edges of Court, not hie off to the wilds of nowhere, this one.
Look at those foolish skirts; that singular dagger, more broach than weapon, gleaming against the flat planes of her stays.
Still: however unexpected. "Perhaps I've come to seek my fortune. And you?"
[Esyllt Ruen] "Rue," she says, fair-creature, gentled, gentle, her mouth curving - a casual blaze of a smile. That first step forward -- ; Rue has a long stride. No skirts for her; just that coat, just tall boots and breeches tucked within, a certain insouciance about the belt, and black beneath the red and gold coat, black and black again so she looks like a kindling thing, a thing being kindled, a warning, a dream of stars. Maialen may think Rue means she's here for rue, some sad story; if she does, she is corrected, thus.
" - Rue, now and here, with no court called; Rue when," her gaze flicks, dismissive, toward a cluster of people, sweaty, red-blooded, panting, mortal people, dying all the time and really, sometimes, a lot of the times, she is not enamoured, "thus situated."
; -- but that first step forward. It brought Rue near Maialen, for the ease of conversation. "So: walk with me." Her head: she tips it.
Light chases.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] transcript!
to Maialen de Xove y Miasol
The place: a pub -- a club? Almost a club, but not quite -- a place with tables, a place windowed in the front with thick glass, glass smoked with age, glass that gives nothing up of what's happening within. The tables in the front are barrels, and beyond this common place, around a corner, there is a hall precided over by a hanging wood and steel candleholder, and long tables, and a place where an altar may've been installed once upon a time. The ceiling is tall; it could fill with bat-song as easily as it might fill with conversation, laughter; it is filled today with music -- a band with energy.
The pub has a story about how it was a church once upon a time and people who come to drink beer brewed by Trappist monks in monasteries far over the gray Atlantic believe the story, and mock the irreverence of it, and smile at the images on the walls, touch the stones with the palms of their hands, investigate the 'patio' with its dark wooden beams (shit-crusted, white-crusted, where the hose doesn't reach) and no roof to keep the gloaming out. There is a belltower. The belltower has bells; the bells don't have tongues.
This is where Rue is, come night. This is what most people see: a girl with a halo of long, long golden hair, how it catches the light, how flawless she is, how unbearably lovely, how easy in her dusty red coat and how effortlessly poised, and she is not haunting the band, she is not playing dark lady (how could she?), she is standing with one shoulder against the wooden frame of the hallway that'll take you out onto the patio where the night air is haunting. Her arms are folded. The shadow of her jaw is graceful.
This is what most people never see, although it is as true as that other face is not. The red coat, tapestried and long; the tapesry that moves, that is also dusk-gold, the slant of light at the death of day, the scene - some old glory, some ancient, desperate hope or tragedy, how it moves if you don't pay close attention. The gleam of her - that's what most people don't see: what unbearably lovely truly is. Rue: watching the mortals mill about the band, weaving in and out of the hall, stumbling into the confessionals, foolish in their irreverence
and so fragile.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Does she expect to see another here tonight? Some other self, through a mirror darkly. Maialen is dark as Rue is light; she is slighter, somehow. Softly made, but striking, the long twist of her fine black hair pulled smoothly away from the soft sculpture of her rounded features - a high, clear brow, the fine, curving cheeks, the huge, faceted eyes that all speak of impossible youth, given an ageless piquancy by the sharpness of her chin. Even human, she looks like something from another age - one of those big-eyed, staring girls dreamed up by some dutch master, creamy skin enrobed half-in-light, and somehow all-in-shadow.
She is wearing a dress, forgettable, soft and golden, that leads her soft shoulders and long white arms bare. It seems modest, somehow, until she turns, slipping through the crowd toward the patio, noiseless as a ghost, but too remarkable to be entirely by the half-sleeping strangers who shift around her, locked away from their own hearts.
Rue sees more, the slight girl elongated, made more willowy, sharper, her skin more heartbreakingly translucent, her black hair a veil of sleeping black, fine as silk. Intricately laced stays are wrapped with a half-dozen shades of golden ribbon. The flat-front is like near-armor, hard, constricting, pulling against her frame. Long skirts flare out from the hips, an intricate patchwork of lace and brocade that sweeps the floor.
Brought up short by Rue's presence, she stops, still as a starling. And stairs from a half-dozen paces away. As if she had only just awakened, somehow, to the world they share. As if she had been sleep-walking through the night until just that moment.
[Esyllt Ruen] This is true, too. This - that the world has no welcome for such as they. This is true, too. This - that they feel it more keenly than the common fae who've polluted themselves with mortality for hundreds of year, unceasing. This is true, too. This - that such might (must?) be their eventual fate: the clog of living and growing old and rotting and dying, the tedious, wearying loss of wonder, the deedless days, the blindness. And so, this also is true - when they, the host, run across each other, what can there be but a kind of rightness? A spark? A mad hope. They never left. (They did.) They returned. (They did.)
There is a second's silence.
And in that second, Rue does not pretend to have expected Maialen's to coalesce out of the hall, sweet as a shade, nor does she pretend to be less than surprised. Rue is too proud for such deception; it is easy enough to know that. The dark other is paused, still and startled; Rue is taken aback, but she has the advantage of position, the doorframe, the doorway, folded arms to unfold, an elegant eyebrow to, after a beat, raise in arch inquiry (wonder).
Rue unfolds her arms, and her hand (devoted) does not fall to the hilt of a sword hidden behind the folds of her coat. No: not hidden; when she moves, the coat parts, and the gleam of it is there, dark metal and pale horn, unjeweled. At first meeting of eyes, Rue's were lambent - were luminous - the color of moonlight gathered in a silver cup, a twist of honey from some distant star - and their expression was a simmering thing, sharpening, intense. They mellow as the second wears on, the shock fades almost entirely, replaced by something not-wry, but amused.
"You." Beat. And - her voice pitched low, to ford the distance, but find only its target. "Maialen Xaranzana Ofema Beatrix Maelchisarro Girre de Xove y Miasol nic Ailil." Beat. "Lady." The dip of her head is - well; it is haughty, but it is what it is: it is acknowledgment of similarity, of sisterhood in the absence of others closer to her heart. Her hands are at either side, held out; it is not a bow, and would never be a bow, but it is reminiscent of a bow, something polite and courteous and faultless and aloof. Rue, for all her intensity, is a separate-thing, always.
"You are unexpected, but welcome. But - come hence, why? The wild hunt? The horn-song, the - " here, coming out of that almost-but-never bow, straightening, a clean, cutting step taken forward. " - city's tragic mystery? A brave new world?"
Rue never pretends to be anything less than archaic. Pride, again - pride.
[Esyllt Ruen] ooc: ahem. Ofemia Beatriz.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] A Gwydion.
How droll.
The Dreaming does play these tricks.
The Ailil's composure returns by degrees as she wishes it; she must prefer the illusion of surprise for the moment, she allows it to settle around her fine features, to linger in the spark of her faceted eyes, two twist the soft, supple bow of her soft, supple little mouth. A touch of sweetness, there, a honeysuckle kiss.
There is no sword at her side; just a jeweled dagger at her waist that seems to be meant to function as jewelry rather than defense. She has one hand on her falling skirts, pulling them up for ease of movement, just enough to reveal jeweled slippers nearly a match to the dagger, but flat and soft as kidleather.
As some sweet thing, skinned.
"Noble knight of House Gwydion," the other returns, the sweep of her eyes like the edge of a razor made of moonlight. Which is to say: somehow gleaming, sharp and soft. "The Lady Esyllt," like a concession, she returns the not-a-bow with the soft of graceful little curtsy one expects from such a shadow-made thing. One slippered foot behind the other, the faintest little give, the sort that shows her creamy shoulders, soft flesh bound by hard stays, off to elegant effect. She was made to drift around the edges of Court, not hie off to the wilds of nowhere, this one.
Look at those foolish skirts; that singular dagger, more broach than weapon, gleaming against the flat planes of her stays.
Still: however unexpected. "Perhaps I've come to seek my fortune. And you?"
[Esyllt Ruen] "Rue," she says, fair-creature, gentled, gentle, her mouth curving - a casual blaze of a smile. That first step forward -- ; Rue has a long stride. No skirts for her; just that coat, just tall boots and breeches tucked within, a certain insouciance about the belt, and black beneath the red and gold coat, black and black again so she looks like a kindling thing, a thing being kindled, a warning, a dream of stars. Maialen may think Rue means she's here for rue, some sad story; if she does, she is corrected, thus.
" - Rue, now and here, with no court called; Rue when," her gaze flicks, dismissive, toward a cluster of people, sweaty, red-blooded, panting, mortal people, dying all the time and really, sometimes, a lot of the times, she is not enamoured, "thus situated."
; -- but that first step forward. It brought Rue near Maialen, for the ease of conversation. "So: walk with me." Her head: she tips it.
Light chases.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] transcript!
to Maialen de Xove y Miasol
Friday, March 25, 2011
Black Market
[Black Market Gimmick] (Hey, glad you made it, Fox. Turns out everyone was going to be about a half hour late anyway so we're gonna start in about ten minutes. Just giving Thess' and Pooka a chance to hop on.)
[Emmeleia Uhuru] (oh cool, thanks, happy I'm not late LMAO, I worked over a 12 hours shift, and been up for more then 24 hours. Was afraid I wouldn't make it in time for wake up time after the nap)
[Mean Tommy] (brb guys. one sec.)
[Black Market Gimmick] Alright.
I'm gonna get us started with an Introduction post. If Thess or Pooka show up, I'll see what I can do about fitting them into things but don't feel like you have to wait. Any questions or concerns about the scene should be relayed to me VIA Aim (Klisteban) so as to avoid cluttering up the screen here. I'll be asking for rolls and the like via AIM as well so pay attention there.
Intro post incoming folks...
[Black Market Gimmick] The streets are a medley of Sin and For Sale.
People from both outside and inside the large landscape of Chinatown, isolated as it is from the rest of the city, a great beast they barely understand. From the outside, it seems more like some unknown realm you know is there but never bother to visit beyond the cheap knock offs of american product you can pick up, the occasional chinese ingredient to spice up your Friday night meal and the Tea Shops that each swear by their recipes as the Best for ten blocks in all directions.
Mortal eyes show a bit of trepidition, as the interior is made up of such tightly packed alleys and side-streets, where delivery trucks seem to run a 24 hour schedule, that it is next to impossible to guess at how things run and operate. From the outside, Chinatown is a land of Fable and mystery. A visitor's quarter. A Tourist attraction for those inside their own city.
From the inside, it's immigrint population, Chinatown is just as confusing. The residents live in close quarters, small apartments many North Americans would claim as insufferable, seat and house families of eight or more. Extended relatives with no home to go back to in the Communist regime of China, reside in tolerated hovels and seek out some semblance of freedom that is at once present and yet not at all what they were expecting.
Rumours and whispers follow on their heels, as the elderly and confused try to make amends with the youthful and adaptive, all the while losing sight of where they are, how they are meant to interact and just what this alien landscape says about their culture.
And yet for both factions, the true fear and wonder comes from the well operated and obfuscated Vice Realm that hides in the deeper and darker parts of the landscape. Chinese Triad and Syndicates make their homes in underground clubs and bunkers, completely foreign and impossible to detect by local police. A culture so far removed from everything else, the peddling of Flesh, Drugs and Assorted other unknowns has crafted unique and obtuse imaginings from the simple minds of the population.
Mortals breathe and dreams come to life and here, in Chinatown, imagination has a long leash and a broad perspective.
No wonder the air stinks of Chimerical Gold and the streets run with snippets of dense fog that cloud every alley mouth and side-street as far as a Changeling's eyes can see. Terror and Wonder come in equal parts here.
For those Changelings that have frequented these halls, the one certainty is the presence of Dragons; tiny things, barely the length of Troll's foot, skirt and slither about, hovering mere inches off the pavement. They dart in and around the legs and feet of mortal kind, whiskered and multi-coloured serpants snatching droplets and sprinkles of glamour falling off the shoulders of Tourists and satisfied Immigrints. They vanish, quick as snakes, into the various alleyways and side streets, plunging into the bubbling froth of chimerical fog that spills out from every dark hall between buildings.
Tonight, these are the focus for each Changeling in Chinatown this evening, for each notices something a little different in the movements and actions of the Small Dragon population: Several, not all, but some, dart through the streets and back alleys, holding something in their jaws.
For these Chimera, so used to drinking glamour in droplets? Chunks of indescribable Dross are well beyond the Norm.
[Emmeleia Uhuru] *Things for sale in dark corners, spices, and the art reflecting a romtanized culture. All of it was alive and dazzeling. To an unseelie's eyes it was home. Dark corners, whisps of fog, fear, hate, joy, guilty pleasures run here. Leaving the taist of glamour to roll with the fog that circles around her ankles.
The dragons though were diffrent tonight. They were buisy with something. This intrested in one who belived 'All Glamour is Free'. What were these little scavengers finding? Where the scavengers were, the bigger preditors would eventually home in.
Emm smiled to herself as people moved around her on the streets. Her head twisting to look into fog clogged allies and twisted streets. Bare feet touched the ground and taisted pavement. A silver ring on a toe keeping them warm and protected. Hair and shoulds all the way down to her thighs were covered with a black cloth that draped around her like do many night time pedals with stairs strewen within it's folds. Under the promise of dawn a skirt of pinks, violets, and dusky blues. On one hand she held her staff. Long and weathered strengthing with fire, giving it an ebony hugh, both ends capped with copper with extrodinary carvings and castings of travles and peoples. The face benight the draped fabric, was half pale and half cinnomen, covered in dark tattoos over black night sky eyes with galaxies hidden within. She lifted her nose to the air and took the scent turning this way and that.*
[Mean Tommy] There is a line so fine it is hard to detect between the outer rings of Chinatown's tourist mash and its inner, ironwood core. Those sections ruled by organized crime and the petty gangs that serve them in a nightmarish reflection of a Feudal lord's wet dream.
Its an uneasy thing, Tommy's predatory, brutish senses grabbed by the realities presented by mortals who themselves are in part made of Dreams. Or rather, Nightmares. Nightmares are a thing he knows. Seeing them bent by mortal hands goes far toward removing the chip from his shoulder. Makes him observant. Watchful. Even careful, to a degree.
So rather than battering his way through the ever- tightening crowds, when he's this deep in Chinatown's environs Tommy walks slower. Watches faces, for all that they look the same to him. Occasionally grabs a chunk of wall or alleyway from which to glower at the surroundings- get his bearings.
Its then that he notices the Dragons with prizes in their jaws. His pupils widen into deep pits as he watches. That ever present, inexorable hunger guides his eyes along their paths as saliva fills his mouth. Carefully he watches. Trying to percieve a source or destination- where the dragons are coming from with so much dross- and whether or not they all appear to follow the same path toward the same destination once they have that which he fully intends to take from them.
Its like that. That's the reason he hunches, a grotesque and brutal thing- in an alleyway across from an accupuncturist.
[Emmeleia Uhuru] (percep (intutive speicality) +kenning)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Black Market Gimmick] The pair of them root out the paths of the Small Dragons.
It is not difficult. Both have simply to ignore the crowd and focus on the flitting forms that dance in and out of alleyways. Where one vanishes from sight, another two or three leap from an adjoining alley mouth or a delivery truck lane across the street. Tommy's brutish movements and hulking reflexes, carry over into his Mortal seeming, forcing the thinning crowds of Chinatown's shopping districts to step askew or around him. Oddly enough, few have complaints or insults for his passing. A faceless creature in both respects.
Emm's own passage is somewhat more contested. There is the occasional flicker of something, she doesn't quite grasp, dancing over the heads and shoulders of the crowds. A gimmick or flicker or gleam, that is gone before she can fully focus on it. It is enough of a curiosity and a distraction to pull her attention to and fro and no few times, a Mortal passes her by only to be infected by this dallying misstep of distraction. Emm's path would eventually cross with Tommy's own, but not before leaving an irritable crowd in her wake, jockeying and shoving at one another as their day's negativity increases.
But arrive they do, on the cusp of...something:
The Dragons are a swarm. Not a fleet, or a legion, but a writhing collection of dozens of many coloured and scaled bodies, slithering over a side street the peels off from a main road. Rarely used, the entrance a one-way leading out onto the Main road, choked off by constant pedestrian traffic and a pair of parked cars that sit to either side and as close to the intersection as they can get without Tickets. It would seem like a natural blockage of mortal coincidence...
By changeling eyes, the path ahead all but vomits thick plumes of rolling fog, near as high as Tommy's waist. Above, the arch of hanging clotheslines, connect to either building, framing the street's entrance. From them, hang unlit lanterns of red and yellow, celebrating some festival long since past. Perhaps the coming of spring.
And down that street, a burgeoning black. A shadow that makes each low lit lantern hanging on walls, something of a struggle and a fight. Here, down this unused lane that Mortals didn't so much avoid as...ignored...the Dark had sway and promise and presence. Here, the Dragons vanished into the fog, dipping and curling and swimming. Some, with prizes clutched between wide spread jaws.
And Tommy and Emm stand at the opening, bare toes and boots, tickled by the thickened white smoke pouring from the entrance.
[Emmeleia Uhuru] *Emm stands there for a moment after moving through the crowd. Let them be angry. They themselves would do little worse. They will get over it or go home and bitch about how the arabs were ruining a country where they themselves stuck out as sore thumbs.
She looks down at Tommy dark brows start to raise.*
It seems we meet agian. Always on a long road.
[Mean Tommy] Something animal tells in the way Tommy jerks his head with each twitch of his eyes. Ratcheting back and forth, trying to read what he can from the pitch colored cloud in front of them. Animal- like an aligator. His eyes catch movement, and the instinct to rip what he wants from it drags a colossal jaw after. Then back the other way.
The grind of broad teeth is audible from several feet away. Frustration bled from that ever present hunger. He spares the strange Eshu a glance, but his gaze is miserly. Lingering longer on every piece of dross passing them by.
Rattle rattle clank clank- that is the sound three or four yards of thick grease- colored butcher's chain makes as it snakes from under his coat, through his fingers to puddle on the ground between his feet. At the end of the barbarous puddle is an even more barbarian meat hook- gleaming and wicked and waiting while Tommy waits for a good time to throw. One of the dragons- yes. One of the dragons...
He grunts in agreement, but for a moment doesn't say much else. His eyes taken by the dragons curling and sliding their way along the sidewalk, or across the bricks into that black cloud still some distance away.
"Gonna bring onna them things down heah. I got questions."
He's already wearing the gauntlets. The sound their whispering and click makes against the chain as it passes between his fingers is like some song he can barely remember. Something old. Cruel. He likes it.
"You know whut dat cloud thing is?" It doesn't sound like it matters. The dross matters. The magick.
[Mean Tommy] (uh- change 'coat' to studded leather voile.)
[Black Market Gimmick] (hey folks. Liz is gonna toss her Sidhe into the mix so I'm gonna give her a chance to get acclimated and catch up. Meantime though, keep posting at your leisure. I'll let you know when i got a post incoming.)
[Emmeleia Uhuru] The breath of thousands of tiny dragons, a faery I belive they are called.
*She replies as she watches him. His chain this hook, his very stance. Crude, but could be effective, if he planned to kill the creatures. Knowing a red cap he most likely wanted to eat it to. A pale black clawed hand showed it's self from the folds of her wrap to pet the fabric. She considered what to do with these creatures and the crowd around them. She woundered if the Hsien where here in this part of the city. They were tricky creatures, but rarely left their main land, but one never knew. She would wait to see what happend to the red cap first*
[Mean Tommy] (Int+Dream Lore: 3+1)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Mean Tommy] (Are the two of them some distance down this alley? Or otherwise fairly confident of not being seen or noticed?)
[Mean Tommy] Rumbles, muttering.. half words are all the brutish redcap gives to the air around him, or to the Eshu nearby. The dragons and their growing hoard- that's what commands his attention.
Palms slap concrete as Tommy bends over and scoops up the yards and yards of chain. He doesn't tuck or hide it- chain isn't illegal- but the meat hook isn't readily noticeable as he makes for the corner- the better to cross the street and duck into the alleyway closer to the Shadows and the Dross both.. the better to reach the Dragons and what he wants of them. Preferably before they disappear into the shadows. And if he finds a quiet enough bit of alley that he can drag one down? So much the better.
Now he makes noises. Chuckles to himself, in fact. Also, he sets off without explanation or any apparent rhyme or reason.
[Emmeleia Uhuru] *She walks causally, following him. Making no issue, and trying to behave among the crowd. Her natural curiosity taking the better of her. This was going to be intresting. Might result in a funny story about hungery hunger red caps.*
[Jeff Brolin] *The clop of hooves is quite clear through the streets, like he doesn't know how to be subtle. A cigarette dangles from his lips. He smirks, which causes it to perk with the expression, as he makes his way through the market. Maybe he should be afraid, but he doesn't seem to be. Something invisible to the mortal eye does make him dive out of the way.* Fuckin' hell, watch where you're... *It is quite clear he realizes he's speaking aloud to the creatures. Though he pauses, and he shrugs it off. Trying to be casual now, as he tries to follow the path of the little beastie.*
[Mean Tommy] In a rare moment of forbearance, the Goblin King actually steps around the plebs. Every short and angry one of them. Oh no- tonight wasn't the night to antagonize.. tonight was for taking and keeping.
So, his eyes remain mostly on the alleyway. On the dragons and the precious lumps of dross in their jaws. No fool, he occasionally watches out for too-interested mortal observers as well. One can't be too careful.
With a leery eye on the ink black shadows deeper in the alley, Tommy sidles right in.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] There's another in the crowd; a stranger not simply human - a pale-skinned, black-haired girl too young to be so composed, so watchful, so bright. She's a whisp of a creature by human measure - a teenager so prettily made, so arresting, with her high smooth forehead, rounded cheeks, her sharp little chin - still soft with youth, but already refined. She's a sharper, more luminous thing than any in the passing, faceless crowd could know.
Darting through the shifting currents in the wake of a pair of colorful dragons - then - with skin pale as milk, luminous as moonlight - and inky coils of curling black hair long and fine and loose over her bare shoulders, the stranger - a sidhe, there can be no mistaking it, slighter than many of her kind, with a softness around her cheeks and brow matched by a sharp chin and ears - approaches, soft-footed, dressed in a sort of bastardized finery - well-laced stays criss-crossed with a herringbone pattern of gold ribbons, long skirts clipped up to reveal creamy thighs and calves.
Emmeleia and Tommy are focused on the gathering; Maialen slows when she sees the former through the crowd. Composes herself, smoothing pale hands over her raven's wing hair, breathes deeply, chest rising and falling about the stays as she catches her breath, shakes out her disorders skirts into something more presentable. Her attention is sharpened now, keen on Emmelaia as the other disappears into the mouth of the alley.
She snakes after, a fine hand on the crumbling brick of a facing building as she steps into the alley's mouth, the fog drifting over her well-turned ankles in those soft kid boots.
A redcap. The other hand goes to the hilt of a jeweled dagger at her waist, which seems little more than some folly of adornment against the hard flat plane of her stays.
And watches, wordless.
[Emmeleia Uhuru] *Her staff taps the ground as she stops behind Tommy. Slowly her face turns and black eyes fall apon the sidhe comeing torwards them. A sneer starts to pull at the Eshu's slips showing razor sharp teeth. Her hand grips her staff tighter, and her skirts start to move agressivly. She pushes her lips and looks back down at Tommy. Her ears also pick up the Satyr's steps. Oh god...that one too?*
Red Cap...we have a usless pretty approching and a hoved freak.
[Mean Tommy] (Dex+Melee, diff 7 for dragon catching)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Jeff Brolin] *He is trying to avoid the little beasts. Well... of course, he's a satyr, he moves rather smoothly when they DO get too close. He actually licks his lips, the feel of it pressing on him, the extreme glamour. Not to mention the curiosity of the creatures themselves. He does pause for a brief moment, and clearly tensing. He looks back over his shoulder, and then back forward. Business is the most important thing right now.* ((And am I close enough to hear that?))
[Black Market Gimmick] The quartet (now) move to follow in the Wake of the Dragon march, for what else could it be called (Stampede? Parade?) and it is not long before the Fog at the street's opening has eclipsed even the satyr's hoofed haunches. Maialen and Jeff both push into the alleyway, the former much more hesitant than the latter's brazen personality would allow. Emm and Tommy have already ventured, warned by the Eshu's soft lilt of a voice of the coming of the pair behind them...
...And as each enters, they notice behind them, the sudden distancing of the Crowd and the Mortal world. As if the Fog and the shadow that makes all light here a diffuse thing, were the separating apparatus of Mortal and Fae perspective. No humans, dwindling as the night draws on, turn to watch the four vanish down this side-street nor dip or sway from their own movements on past. No cars turn down here or errant birds, perch within. It is as if the Changelings have passed into some odd little Cul De Sac, not for the unintiated.
Their surroundings are a small assortment of 2 story buildings, the first floor built several feet below street level, stairs on either side prompting one to duck their head to gain entry to the low awning shops that exist down there. Overhead, strings of Yellow and Red and Blue and Green lanterns suddenly illuminate and spread a plethora of colour down on the heads of the four who pass below them, while the strange darkness ahead of them begins to lessen as more and more lanterns flare to life. Heralds of illumination.
The Dragons have dwindled as well. Smaller numbers as more and more flit and dance across the street, dipping in and over the mounds of fog, vanishing over the lip of the stairs that lead into those 'lowered' shops. It isn't until the last of them begin to wind through. lazy and slower than their brethren that a sharp cry erupts.
...And the Red Cap's hooked chain emerges from the Fog, a slender white serpent writhing, spitted on the hook's curved point. Green whiskers and brows flex uncomfortably, while the gnashing jaws snap and clap at the air. Oddly, there is no blood from the wound, simply flecks of gold dust that puff out like pollen from around the puncture.
"Do you mind?! Do you Mind?! Are you Insane?!
It bubbles and hisses and chirps, glaring red coal eyes up at the Red Cap.
[Black Market Gimmick] ...Emm's own attention seems to dance and flit around them, soft murmurs and unintelligible wonder, creeping into her dark appearance and mien. It isn't long before, the Changelings wrapped up in their surroundings, fail to notice the Eshu do what Eshu's do best. She wanders off in search of the Wonders around them and gets lost down one of the small flights of steps, avidly attracted to some glittering shapes in unseen windows. (Player was too tired to continue, consider this her post out.)
[Jeff Brolin] *His eyes suddenly grow slightly cold. And his fist clenches slightly, looking back and forth between the missing city and the slight trap they were now in. He opens up his muth to talk to the Eshu, but she is gone. His annoyance shows itself clearly, and he grumbles.* For the love of... *Things are happening quite quickly. He looks back to the spitted dragon.* What the fuck are y'doin'?
[Mean Tommy] It isn't murder gleaming in Tommy's eyes as the dragon's red ones meet his own. No. Nothing so simple. Nothing pedestrian like that. Rather, it is as if the dragon stares into a window that guides the way to nothing but a yawning, empty pit in Tommy's ever- hungry belly.
So it is that empty-belly eyes are fixed against the Dragon's, and the redcap's scraping butcher's block voice rumbles almost sweetly.
"Shudddup... an' tell me where you got th' swag."
Teeth flash as he snarls at the Satyr. "Less' yer stoppin' me, yer watchin. Now waitaminit." With that, his attention returns to the Dragon, one Gauntlet sheathed fist wrapped tightly around the pale body of the serpent.
(Bully-browbeat roll. -1 diff, man+intimidate 6 dice)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8
[Jeff Brolin] *He scowls at that. And he seems to ponder, stopping the 'cap. His hooves scrape against the ground, animal in nature, as if he simply can't stop himself. Or maybe it's just time for good cop, bad cop.*
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] There.
The world changes; Maialen turns around, still wordless - cutting a lambent glance back toward the mouth of the alley, the receding mortal world. The satyr trots forward after, and the regal little thing spares him, too, a wordless flicker of her huge, gleaming eyes, lifting her pointed little chin at the end of the glance.
Lifting her pointed little chin and the long sweep of her deliberately tiered skirts in the same moving gesture, stepping into the shop-lined alley in that moment with a movement to assured she looks as if she were alighting from a carriage in front of some gloomy, moonlit castle.
The creamy expanse of her bare shoulders squared, the young creature strolls toward the Redcap and Satyr with deliberate grace, her attention steady on them, fixed and alive.
And then she drifts at the last moment, around rather than into them - the redcap, the satyr, the hooked, hissing chimera bleeding gold dust into the still air. There's a certain presence about her, a certain watchfulness as she passes them, a certain deliberate, demure elegance as she continues past - mute - angled toward the shops set into the below street level.
As if she had meant, all along, to come shopping tonight, and nothing else. A new pair of kid gloves. The fever dreams of a dying man. Whatever she might find.
[Black Market Gimmick] As the Dragon's writhing form is tucked uncomfortably in the Redcap's grip, it's tail saws upwards and slinks around and through the tines of the Gauntlet on Tommy's hand and forearm. It coils, as a reptile is want to do and tries to lever itself off the Hook's point, upper body, twisting enough that the hook vanishes, half-out again.
Those exaggerated green brows, furrow and than flare, licks of gold flame catching the corners of it's mouth. A serpent's tongue flicks out, forked and purple and those murder red eyes dance from Tommy's gummed up features toward the Satyr behind him.
"Goin' to Church!" It spits in a near perfect mimicry of Jeff's own voice and brogue. Then it shifts attention back to Tommy and seems to lean upward, sprouting small, three clawed limbs from the flesh beneath white scales to perch on either side of the gauntlet holding it's body.
"Chew 'n spit 'n shit where you want, it isn't mine to say or tell. Isn't mine to sell..."
Tommy's voice and dialect this time, gold flames continue to lick over teeth and curled lips, a flash of two rows of black incisors, cast up at the Redcap's scowling face. The hook slides another inch or two out of the body, half covered in gold dust. A moment of heated resistance and then...
...the Dragon's eyes seem to catch sight of Maialen and the head slowly turns to follow her passage around the hulking Red Cap, a slow sort of pan that keeps in time with her steps. The tongue flicks outward, a flash of gold flame dancing at it's tip before vanishing with a wink.
[Jeff Brolin] *He groans at the vanishing beast. And he shakes his head.* What the fuck, *he mutters. And he looks for another.* Where is he takin' 'em to?
[Mean Tommy] It always manages to be a redefining moment- the one between absolute confidence and the next one when you know the eyes of Lords are on you. Somehow... he feels drab. Less. Its inescapable, as far as Tommy knows..
and he hates it.
Red eyes follow the willowy Sidhe- and so do black ones. In fact, for a moment Tommy holds the serpent like a kid who'd been caught with a dirty magazine. Just for a moment. Just in case she wants it- she might want it-
Air hisses between his teeth and fingers clench tighter around the body of the snake and he snorts.
"Yer really gonna walk right past alla dis Dross? Really? More feh us, izzat it?"
Tommy flicks a quick glance at Jeff- a strangely united one- two commoners alone with a Noble.. dicey.. then he holds the Dragon out toward the brand new, sparkling new, glowing new Sidhe.
"Dis guy knows wheah it all is." He hooks his jaw at the Dragons bringing more, then he holds the writhing thing out to her.
"Likes yew. Maybe he'll gib yew more info den he'll gib me. huh?"
[Mean Tommy] ...and he's handing her an empty fist. "FUCK!"
[Jeff Brolin] *He sighs, and he cants his head.* Mebbe we can just ask the next one questions, mate. You know. Without stabbin' it through the middle. Or just follow it. *His eyes are constantly averted from the Sidhe, as if he just can't look at her directly, though there is both spite and fear in those grey eyes.*
[Black Market Gimmick] (Ack. I seem to have mis-placed a description. That should have read, "a Flash of Gold flame leapt out at the tip of it's tongue, before vanishing with a puff and a wink." The flame vanished, not the Dragon! Sorry about that folks.)
[Jeff Brolin] ((Okay, I misunderstood! The flame vanished, not the dragon.))
[Mean Tommy] ((Okay. I need to calm down. I keep jumping the gun on you guys. *L* Disregard my last post.))
[Jeff Brolin] Hey, liddle beastie, *he offers to the small dragon, then.* Mind tellin' me where you're takin' that horde to? We need t'eat too, y'know. Y'take it all, we'll waste away.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] The creature is a handful of steps behind the Redcap and and the Satyr when the latter curses and the former addresses her. Oh, they're small steps, ladylike. Not quite mincing but nearly so. She stills though, turns around, casts the both of them a shining look across the pale curve of her shoulder - looking first at the Satyr, then the Redcap. Giving the razor-mouthed latter the hint of a sharpened smile on her bow mouth.
"Gentleman - " her voice is soft; the accent elegant - some hint of a romance language laid like a mantle over her english. Beneath that, the well-polished precision of the upper class. Finishing school, someplace with mountains and views. With cliffs, oceans, incalculable fortresses.
One small hand is still curled about the hilt of her jeweled dagger. The other floats like a moth at her side, pale against her golden skirts. Her eyes drop to the dragon, then, in Tommy's hand. "He's not taking it for himself. Whose is it to sell? What price does he charge?"
[Jeff Brolin] (Jeff is trying to be nice. All beware.))
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 4 (Failure at target 6)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] manipulation + persuasion
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[Black Market Gimmick] "Fuck"
Jeff's gentle coddling. Tommy's bullying gaze. There's something to be said for commoner Etiquette or lack thereof. The Dragon snorts a plume of smoke out of one nostril at the two before it's attention seems to swim in Maialen's direction, the soft accent falling around the Three with something like grace and lilacs and other pretty things. Maia's first words have a soothing effect, something like aloe to a burn, or milk to chilli.
The Dragon shrinks visibly in Tommy's grasp and coils further off the Hook, until it pops out fully and swings to clang absently below. Those green brows bunch together, nearly eliminating the red glass eyes. The word of before is uttered, not as some description or act, but as evidence of Maialen's guesswork.
"I'm not made to mention such things. Oaths bind us to blood and blood to life, you know that, you do! Can't tell you 'bout the Mister Click's deal and All but I can tell you sure enough his name is Mister Click. Least the name we call him ourselves." Another plume of Gold fire, skates the rim of Tommy's grip.
"You don't want any of that and his direction though, Young Thing, Noble thing, Sweet Precious Delicious thing. You don't, I mean, Do not. At all. You steer right back the way you came." And then those eyes turn toward Tommy and peek around him at Jeff.
"You two go on ahead, though..." Followed quickly by another flash of those obsidian fangs.
[Jeff Brolin] *He snorts at that, and he looks back to Tommy. Back to the dragon. He does what he's better at.* Fuck you, *he snaps at the dragon.* You don't fucking tell me what to do. Just tell us where the goddamned Mr. Click is, an' we'll make our own fuckin' decisions, eh? After all. I'm not bein' used, like you are.
[Black Market Gimmick] "Why don't you come here and say that to my face?" It tenses in Tommy's grasp, jaws clapping hard and a plume of Gold fire racing from it's nostrils, murder red Eyes glaring at Jeff.
[Jeff Brolin] *He smirks, and he steps forward.* I AM sayin' it to your face. You're a fuckin' pussy, for a dragon. Owned by someone else.
[Mean Tommy] A vigorous shaking- that's what's called for, yes indeed. However, the brutish, hunching bulk of redcap finds himself able to restrict it to one firm jostle.
He thrusts the lashing body of the snake like thing back at the Sidhe- oddly enough, as though he were either trying to focus its attention on her... or he were threatening it with her presence. Her luminous, beautiful presence. Beauty kills in their world.. perhaps he's threatening to put it too close to her beauty. As though it were a fire.
"You jus' talk ta th' Noble, you."
His openly violent gaze swings toward Jeff. "You, shut up. Give 'er time ta work."
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] When the dragon mentions Mister Click, the sidhe cuts a look between the commoners, searching their faces for some twitch of recognition over the name. Finding none, her attention slips back to the beast, mouth curling into a (rather self-satisfied) little moue as the dragon warns her away but urges the others on.
The moue of her mouth sharpens, and the creature's eyes gleam with a banked but darting humor with the exchange between the Satyr and the dragon. She cuts a moving glance between them, but still holds herself back from the pair. Though now she does turn more fully back to them, her her skirts eddying around her in a wide sweep from the narrow V of her bound waist.
"Thank you," to Tommy. A sort of courtesy to it; a gravity that is well above his station. "My question's no different than his," here a dip of her dark, dark head toward Jeff. "Good dragon. I am afraid you're wrong, " she cuts a look over her soft, bare shoulder, the drift of ribbons over her moonlit skin, "I do want all of that, and his direction too. If only," and her she dips her head to the chimera, a sweet, supple acknowledgment of his complimentary warning. " - so that I can find him or not as I please. Mister Click - he's down among the shops there, is he? You and all yours oath-bound to him? Who else has he bound?"
[Jeff Brolin] *Her interjecting herself between Jeff and the dragon works. The satyr side-steps so quickly he might as well have been hit.*
[Black Market Gimmick] Something unintelligibly expletive rips from the Dragon's maw. Like the sound of shattering glass, fireworks and the crack chopsticks make when you first pry them apart, as Tommy jostles it sharply. The Dragon's attention returns to the Sidhe with some reluctance (whether because it isn't finished with Jeff or because it is indeed, fearful of growing to close to Maialen), brow crushing it's eyes from view once more.
"No one else. Doesn't need anyone but us. Mister Click runs part of this town, this part of town. Likes to think he does, does even if I don't-Do Not like it. You go looking for him and he'll make you offers. You go looking for him and you'll...you will be accepting." A tiny dragon's hand, three fingered, lifts to jab at it's chest.
"We get off light. Lighter than you would. You're-...you are exploding stars and Marigolds. Make you a Malt smoothie and drink you over a century. You don't-...do not want to do that, Young thing. Pretty thing." The constant correction of abbreviations seems to be the Dragon's attempt to repeat Maialen's own words and dialect. It writhes somewhat in Tommy's grasp, tail slapping absently at the fingers as if the Redcap might loosen them one of these times.
It takes only a few more seconds of nervous hope, dashed to rocky shores, for the Dragon to wilt in defeat and slither off to one side, hissing at Jeff for good measure. Then it turns and slithers closer to Maialen, rearing with narrowed eyes.
"Keep walking down the alleyway and hum a little tune. Something soft like a lullaby. Don't do it too loudly or he'll stay where he is. Gotta be quiet so he keeps needing to get closer. By the time you're whispering? Well, pretty thing, it'll be too late." And then around on the Redcap without another word.
"Now get this oaf off of me before I'm found late. I like my insides where my insides are"
[Mean Tommy] He doesn't quite hop from foot to foot. Not quite. Instead, boots crunch against the asphalt pebbled underfoot. The roughly stamped demon faces decorating Tommy's armored voile leer a ghostly blue in the strange not-quite-light of this shadowed cul-de-sac. This puddle of dreaming reaching into the mortal world.
He swallows saliva. Pays careful attention.
And as the Dragon's explanation flickers back and forth inside Tommy's head, he freezes. All but that metal- clad hand. The spiked hand. The spiked hand opens..
..and his eyes fasten on Maialen. Flicking across her features haphazardly. Stalking wolves pacing back and forth in his nightmare face.
Holy shit he's thinking.
[Mean Tommy] (Intelligence+Streetwise. Is he referring to who I think he's referring to? Pool 5, diff 5)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 9 (Success x 1 at target 5)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "Your word, dragon, that you will stay quiet about us. Your blood-oath and he will release you, right as rain." So she says, quietly, leaning closer to the dragon, bestowing on him her softest of silken smiles. A few tangled strands of ebon hair slips over her bare shoulder; she's all softness, but contained by the tightly laced baroque-style stays.
"Safe as houses." Here, she reaches out a soft little hand, lends it to the beast as if he were an acquaintance at court, brushes fine fingers through the lingering cloud of smoke leaking from the dragon's nostrils. "Elsewise," nearly mournful, her voice, though there's an underlying sharpness to her presence, "I will be forced let him eat you, Dragon-mine." Here she, she tips her head and lowers her gaze, sooty lashes against the pale curve of her cheek. And continues, as if she were confiding a secret. "It's in his nature, you know."
[Black Market Gimmick] "That's not Fair!"
A flicker of flame reaches out to coil itself around Maia's proferred fingers, though there is surprisingly, very little heat. There is more the avaricious and unique sensation of greasiness, like one might pick up from well handled coins. Greed's excess.
The Dragon bounces from left to right, as if it might physically escape the promise as easily as the Redcap's grip. It lasts a few strong heartbeats, before finally-
"Fine. Fine! Sign your own warrants, fine. Oath of blood, not a word. Not a peep upon release. Simple simon, pretty thing. Not a peep upon release."
[Jeff Brolin] *He grins at that, and he looks back at the little beast. Of course, he can't say much - he is ALSO terrified of the point-ears.*
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Here she cuts a sidelong look at the redcap, straightening rather primly, all contained now - all bound except for the brilliance in the heart of her moving gaze. Brushing her thumb against her forefinger - thoughtfully, feeling the slide - not of heat, but the slick, filthy residue of common lucre on her fine little hands.
"He has given his oath, now. Please let him go," her words are soft, the elegant accent clear. " - but watch him, both of you, until he disappears. And - " a further promise, she's stepping back, opening the way into the alley, turning to flank the pair with a brief, lambent glance toward the Satyr. "If you're still hungry, Redcap, I will find you something else to eat."
[Mean Tommy] Awe is simple.. its right there, in his face. But something else writes itself across Tommy's frame- so filled with waiting speed and hunching, brutish strength. He watches the way Maialen's throat throbs with her soft offerings of freedom or doom, the endless black of his eyes prowls along her shoulder, the gentle swell where stays meet flesh. Her voice curls through him as well.. and the Redcap does what it always does. It hungers. It wants in its blinding, all consuming way. That desire wakes in his chest as though he had already swallowed the snake and there it was, inside him, thrashing around and bruising his insides with this desperate mix of want and hatred.
He thinks he'll explode. He thinks she's too close to him, and he might burn up. As Kithain like her are stars suspended in a night sky, Tommy knows he is the black and emptiness between the stars. For a moment, caught between reaching out and crushing the soft spoken woman or kneeling..
..then he shakes his head. Glowers a blistering accusation at the female. Then lets go of the snake.
Rip her. Squeeze her to death so she will not confound you. Sell you lies. RUN
All that screaming is silent, and lost between the stars. Tommy looks between Maialen and Jeff and hunkers down. Squatting on the asphalt.
"Mistah Click, then."
[Jeff Brolin] *He doesn't look at the Sidhe at all.* Mister Click. Sounds like some sort o'weird sex toy. But if he's takin' all fo the Glamour, mebbe he's hidin' the 'hold too?
[Mean Tommy] (My screen wasn't refreshing. My apologies for the delay.)
to Black Market Gimmick, Jeff Brolin, Maialen de Xove y Miasol
[Mean Tommy] "Nobody feeds me, Sidhe. I aint yer pet."
The look is long and wicked.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Manipulation + Persuasion
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 6
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (Reroll, dif 7!)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 7) [WP]
[Black Market Gimmick] As if to answer the Commoners, the Sidhe's long neck stretches and a tune drifts aimlessly past closed lips and begins to haunt the air before them.
...And the Changelings turn, their business done and the information gathered, beginning the trek down the alley length with a lovely creature of dark suggestion at their head. The street beneath their heels and feet seems to cobble, the further along they go, the architecture turns into that curve and the opening they'd come through vanishes from sight behind them.
The way ahead takes only a few dozen steps, the shops to either side growing lower and lower as more steps emerge. It isn't long before the Awnings are level with the alley floor and there is simply an opening ditch to either side, down which one can adventure. The light within those openings is minimal and the dark, pregnant and not terribly inviting.
The curve in the alley becomes less pronounced and suddenly, the Trio find themselves before a Steel Gate. The alley narrows into red brick walls, which culminate in this plain fence gate, which stands slightly ajar. Beyond the fence:
It is a round square, centered by a fountain. A single Brown spire, like the apex of a water drop in a puddle, jutting upward and spraying a perfect cone of blue tinted liquid into it's pool below. There is little ornamentation or elaboration to the fountain's construction, much like the brown brickwork that makes up the ground and surrounding flowerbeds. The flowers themselves are plentiful, multi-coloured and in no way resemble any species either of the three may well be familiar with. The beds are so thick with their rainbow presentation, as to make the soil beneath them impossible to see.
The buildings are likewise, that odd brown smoothness, with small balconies and windows made from yellows, blues, reds and greens. Opaque and resilient.
Maia's humming has drawn from a piercing sort of saturation to the vaguest of things, by now. It drifts just barely past the Three, guided by nothing short of a Sidhe's fickle fascination.
[Jeff Brolin] *His eyes widen at that, and he looks over the tower.* Jesus f... *The curse is torn from his throat, and he moves up to the gate.* Ahh... we goin' in?
[Mean Tommy] Bile, scorn, a desire for violence, a desire for one smile- One nod from the strange Ailil- not that he knows her house- and a desire to twist her head completely off and caper down the alley with it should she give it.. each tide clashes together and parts in Tommy, and his eyes swivel from the gate, to the Satyr, to the Sidhe... and he knows he won't be the one answering that question. Not tonight. Tonight, they'll follow the Sidhe's commands.. and hate themselves, and her, for it.
The sound of teeth grinding together may be heard from yards away.
[Mean Tommy] "...Want that Dross..."
Belated. Maybe to himself, for all that he at last coughed up his own opinion, as though it weren't already obvious.
[Jeff Brolin] Well. Either way, we've gotta end this guy. *But he's waiting for the Sidhe to speak as well... maybe so he can disagree with her.*
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] I'm not your pet - snarls the redcap. "Certainly not," Maialen agrees with Tommy, terribly calm in the face of his long, wicked look. Entirely contained, the creature, made of moonlight and raven's wings. She favors him once with an appraising glance, lingering on the nightmare hunger in his eyes. And smiles, soft as the rest of her, supple as silk spun from the dreams of sleeping mulberry trees. "And I have never liked leashed things."
Then she begins to hum, a glance to the Satyr a lingering consideration. He's taken all the glamor here, this Mister Click. Maybe he is hiding more, besides. Her boots are soft on the cobblestones, her skirts swish susurrant along the pavement. The creature keeps a firm grip on her little dagger as they walk, her alertness evident in the changing environment, brighter than anything here - with a certain, celestial gravity, no less.
"Fortune favors the bold, gentleman," she returns, an answer to the redcap, a challenge of sorts to the Satyr. It is followed by a sudden, brilliant little grin that shows white teeth fine and luminous as pearls, all in a row. " - of course we go in. We won't have a chance like this one again."
[Jeff Brolin] *He's no pussy. He wanted to tell her no, to go do it herself. And he scowls. He moves up to the gate, then, and he goes to shove it open. Or pull it.*
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Intelligence + Graymayre
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Mean Tommy] Thick fingers- the sort swollen by murder and misdeeds prowl across the chain.. he reels it in, stows it somewhere beneath the leering leather and black studs of his ancient-looking voile. In the same long- practiced motion the whispering, chiming, chanting metal of his gauntlets is pressed together, seating the wickedly spiked things more firmly on his arms.
(INt+Greymare)(wp)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 8 (Success x 3 at target 5) [WP]
[Jeff Brolin] Int+Gremayre+Remembrance
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Black Market Gimmick] The three Changelings push through the gate with Jeff leading the path ahead, hand on the gate. It does not creak or hinge incoherently, but sways with well oiled ease out of their path. They march into the brownstone space of the fountained area, gazes adept and alert, regarding their surroundings and the sensations that come with it.
And each knows. Without doubt or hint of it, the place they are in is more sanctum then assembly. Like some sun room or solarium, for an occupant. They had traveled the alley road with a comfortable sort of leisure and beckoned with the loving little tune that had grown quieter with each step. It was nary a whisper by the time they'd arrived at the Gates and the Dragon had said, the closer the quieter. Perhaps there had been a thought that He would come to Them.
Now, it would seem to be the other way around. Providing them access to his front door.
As they enter, a ripple of something dances across the upper story of the Brownstone buildings, warping the colours of red, blue, yellow and green that make up the windows. The ripple extends all around the flesh of the upper story, forming a broad ring of obtuse distortion that each of them can see almost plainly. Evidenced in their understanding of Arts.
And Redes, the powers Chimera make use of themselves.
"What's this then to beckon with so...tantalizing an offer? Present and be known..."
The voice is silk. The voice is smooth. Calm, like motown and subtlety. It drifts down from on high and at it's end, the gate clanks closed as if struck by an errant limb, the distortion climbing back higher in the process.
[Jeff Brolin] *He cants his head at that, and then lowers it, as if he's protecting himself with his horns.* Is this your territory? Name yourself, first. And know that here and know, I'm citing the rule of Safe Haven. If you refuse, I can always go, an' let the Dreamin' deal with yeh.
[Mean Tommy] Oh he goes in, alright. Right behind the two of them.. though it doesn't seem to be cowardice that slows his feet.. no. Its a look at the gate. Not like a glance.. like a LOOK.
(Intim+Cha) -1 diff
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6, 8
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] The sidhe's steps are still soft as she sweeps in with the pair of commoners, whose names she does not yet know. When the satyr claims the right of safe haven, she squares her soft white shoulders in quiet chorus of his of his claim, and cuts him a narrow, gleaming little look, darkly brilliant. The pleasant, quiet plash of the fountain in the courtyard, the ripple of incandescence across the windows; all background.
"We only know you by some common vulgarity, whispered in the shadows of your streets," her voice rises, a quiet pillar of support for the satyr's demand of a name. Softer, deliberately. " - Mister - " here she pauses, pink tongue against her white teeth, hesitant. Click becomes French, "Clique - was it then? That cannot be your only name. Tell me another, and I'll give you one of mine."
[Black Market Gimmick] (Alright folks. Unfortunately, Dirge has gotta get goin' for the evening. So I'm gonna put up a couple of options for how to continue:
- We can try an co-ordinate times for when folks might be available again via the Forums.
- I can actually put this up in the forums and we can continue it that way if folks feel like we might not be able to meet like this again anytime soon (I'd prefer not to wait a whole other week to continue)
- I can probably separate this into three separate scenes, one for each of you, at this juncture.
So can I get thoughts on which people would prefer to do?)
[Mean Tommy] Personally I like forums. I think it would help liven up interest in the game. Also, I like to showboat and use lots of words.
[Mean Tommy] Although I do like actual scenes. For my part I'm available every day after around 7pm site time.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (why don't we start with forums and go to scenes? I would love to continue IC since I'm better with the push of an IC scene - but I promised blu I would continue Roman's rank challenge tomorrow, and am not around Sunday. So Monday would be the earliest day for a scene for me. :) )
[Mean Tommy] (Let me know. I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open.)
[Jeff Brolin] ((And for me, usually after 7 PST, but I'm dying right now, so we'll have to see what doc says tomorrow.))
[Black Market Gimmick] (I think a Forums scene would work best. I like the idea of promoting the Changeling game via an exposed Scene for folks to keep track of. If the scene in the forums continues on to a logical point where the four of us can meet again we'll finish it that way. I'll throw up my next post in the Forums and you guys can post there at your leisure.)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (thanks harv!)
[Emmeleia Uhuru] (oh cool, thanks, happy I'm not late LMAO, I worked over a 12 hours shift, and been up for more then 24 hours. Was afraid I wouldn't make it in time for wake up time after the nap)
[Mean Tommy] (brb guys. one sec.)
[Black Market Gimmick] Alright.
I'm gonna get us started with an Introduction post. If Thess or Pooka show up, I'll see what I can do about fitting them into things but don't feel like you have to wait. Any questions or concerns about the scene should be relayed to me VIA Aim (Klisteban) so as to avoid cluttering up the screen here. I'll be asking for rolls and the like via AIM as well so pay attention there.
Intro post incoming folks...
[Black Market Gimmick] The streets are a medley of Sin and For Sale.
People from both outside and inside the large landscape of Chinatown, isolated as it is from the rest of the city, a great beast they barely understand. From the outside, it seems more like some unknown realm you know is there but never bother to visit beyond the cheap knock offs of american product you can pick up, the occasional chinese ingredient to spice up your Friday night meal and the Tea Shops that each swear by their recipes as the Best for ten blocks in all directions.
Mortal eyes show a bit of trepidition, as the interior is made up of such tightly packed alleys and side-streets, where delivery trucks seem to run a 24 hour schedule, that it is next to impossible to guess at how things run and operate. From the outside, Chinatown is a land of Fable and mystery. A visitor's quarter. A Tourist attraction for those inside their own city.
From the inside, it's immigrint population, Chinatown is just as confusing. The residents live in close quarters, small apartments many North Americans would claim as insufferable, seat and house families of eight or more. Extended relatives with no home to go back to in the Communist regime of China, reside in tolerated hovels and seek out some semblance of freedom that is at once present and yet not at all what they were expecting.
Rumours and whispers follow on their heels, as the elderly and confused try to make amends with the youthful and adaptive, all the while losing sight of where they are, how they are meant to interact and just what this alien landscape says about their culture.
And yet for both factions, the true fear and wonder comes from the well operated and obfuscated Vice Realm that hides in the deeper and darker parts of the landscape. Chinese Triad and Syndicates make their homes in underground clubs and bunkers, completely foreign and impossible to detect by local police. A culture so far removed from everything else, the peddling of Flesh, Drugs and Assorted other unknowns has crafted unique and obtuse imaginings from the simple minds of the population.
Mortals breathe and dreams come to life and here, in Chinatown, imagination has a long leash and a broad perspective.
No wonder the air stinks of Chimerical Gold and the streets run with snippets of dense fog that cloud every alley mouth and side-street as far as a Changeling's eyes can see. Terror and Wonder come in equal parts here.
For those Changelings that have frequented these halls, the one certainty is the presence of Dragons; tiny things, barely the length of Troll's foot, skirt and slither about, hovering mere inches off the pavement. They dart in and around the legs and feet of mortal kind, whiskered and multi-coloured serpants snatching droplets and sprinkles of glamour falling off the shoulders of Tourists and satisfied Immigrints. They vanish, quick as snakes, into the various alleyways and side streets, plunging into the bubbling froth of chimerical fog that spills out from every dark hall between buildings.
Tonight, these are the focus for each Changeling in Chinatown this evening, for each notices something a little different in the movements and actions of the Small Dragon population: Several, not all, but some, dart through the streets and back alleys, holding something in their jaws.
For these Chimera, so used to drinking glamour in droplets? Chunks of indescribable Dross are well beyond the Norm.
[Emmeleia Uhuru] *Things for sale in dark corners, spices, and the art reflecting a romtanized culture. All of it was alive and dazzeling. To an unseelie's eyes it was home. Dark corners, whisps of fog, fear, hate, joy, guilty pleasures run here. Leaving the taist of glamour to roll with the fog that circles around her ankles.
The dragons though were diffrent tonight. They were buisy with something. This intrested in one who belived 'All Glamour is Free'. What were these little scavengers finding? Where the scavengers were, the bigger preditors would eventually home in.
Emm smiled to herself as people moved around her on the streets. Her head twisting to look into fog clogged allies and twisted streets. Bare feet touched the ground and taisted pavement. A silver ring on a toe keeping them warm and protected. Hair and shoulds all the way down to her thighs were covered with a black cloth that draped around her like do many night time pedals with stairs strewen within it's folds. Under the promise of dawn a skirt of pinks, violets, and dusky blues. On one hand she held her staff. Long and weathered strengthing with fire, giving it an ebony hugh, both ends capped with copper with extrodinary carvings and castings of travles and peoples. The face benight the draped fabric, was half pale and half cinnomen, covered in dark tattoos over black night sky eyes with galaxies hidden within. She lifted her nose to the air and took the scent turning this way and that.*
[Mean Tommy] There is a line so fine it is hard to detect between the outer rings of Chinatown's tourist mash and its inner, ironwood core. Those sections ruled by organized crime and the petty gangs that serve them in a nightmarish reflection of a Feudal lord's wet dream.
Its an uneasy thing, Tommy's predatory, brutish senses grabbed by the realities presented by mortals who themselves are in part made of Dreams. Or rather, Nightmares. Nightmares are a thing he knows. Seeing them bent by mortal hands goes far toward removing the chip from his shoulder. Makes him observant. Watchful. Even careful, to a degree.
So rather than battering his way through the ever- tightening crowds, when he's this deep in Chinatown's environs Tommy walks slower. Watches faces, for all that they look the same to him. Occasionally grabs a chunk of wall or alleyway from which to glower at the surroundings- get his bearings.
Its then that he notices the Dragons with prizes in their jaws. His pupils widen into deep pits as he watches. That ever present, inexorable hunger guides his eyes along their paths as saliva fills his mouth. Carefully he watches. Trying to percieve a source or destination- where the dragons are coming from with so much dross- and whether or not they all appear to follow the same path toward the same destination once they have that which he fully intends to take from them.
Its like that. That's the reason he hunches, a grotesque and brutal thing- in an alleyway across from an accupuncturist.
[Emmeleia Uhuru] (percep (intutive speicality) +kenning)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Black Market Gimmick] The pair of them root out the paths of the Small Dragons.
It is not difficult. Both have simply to ignore the crowd and focus on the flitting forms that dance in and out of alleyways. Where one vanishes from sight, another two or three leap from an adjoining alley mouth or a delivery truck lane across the street. Tommy's brutish movements and hulking reflexes, carry over into his Mortal seeming, forcing the thinning crowds of Chinatown's shopping districts to step askew or around him. Oddly enough, few have complaints or insults for his passing. A faceless creature in both respects.
Emm's own passage is somewhat more contested. There is the occasional flicker of something, she doesn't quite grasp, dancing over the heads and shoulders of the crowds. A gimmick or flicker or gleam, that is gone before she can fully focus on it. It is enough of a curiosity and a distraction to pull her attention to and fro and no few times, a Mortal passes her by only to be infected by this dallying misstep of distraction. Emm's path would eventually cross with Tommy's own, but not before leaving an irritable crowd in her wake, jockeying and shoving at one another as their day's negativity increases.
But arrive they do, on the cusp of...something:
The Dragons are a swarm. Not a fleet, or a legion, but a writhing collection of dozens of many coloured and scaled bodies, slithering over a side street the peels off from a main road. Rarely used, the entrance a one-way leading out onto the Main road, choked off by constant pedestrian traffic and a pair of parked cars that sit to either side and as close to the intersection as they can get without Tickets. It would seem like a natural blockage of mortal coincidence...
By changeling eyes, the path ahead all but vomits thick plumes of rolling fog, near as high as Tommy's waist. Above, the arch of hanging clotheslines, connect to either building, framing the street's entrance. From them, hang unlit lanterns of red and yellow, celebrating some festival long since past. Perhaps the coming of spring.
And down that street, a burgeoning black. A shadow that makes each low lit lantern hanging on walls, something of a struggle and a fight. Here, down this unused lane that Mortals didn't so much avoid as...ignored...the Dark had sway and promise and presence. Here, the Dragons vanished into the fog, dipping and curling and swimming. Some, with prizes clutched between wide spread jaws.
And Tommy and Emm stand at the opening, bare toes and boots, tickled by the thickened white smoke pouring from the entrance.
[Emmeleia Uhuru] *Emm stands there for a moment after moving through the crowd. Let them be angry. They themselves would do little worse. They will get over it or go home and bitch about how the arabs were ruining a country where they themselves stuck out as sore thumbs.
She looks down at Tommy dark brows start to raise.*
It seems we meet agian. Always on a long road.
[Mean Tommy] Something animal tells in the way Tommy jerks his head with each twitch of his eyes. Ratcheting back and forth, trying to read what he can from the pitch colored cloud in front of them. Animal- like an aligator. His eyes catch movement, and the instinct to rip what he wants from it drags a colossal jaw after. Then back the other way.
The grind of broad teeth is audible from several feet away. Frustration bled from that ever present hunger. He spares the strange Eshu a glance, but his gaze is miserly. Lingering longer on every piece of dross passing them by.
Rattle rattle clank clank- that is the sound three or four yards of thick grease- colored butcher's chain makes as it snakes from under his coat, through his fingers to puddle on the ground between his feet. At the end of the barbarous puddle is an even more barbarian meat hook- gleaming and wicked and waiting while Tommy waits for a good time to throw. One of the dragons- yes. One of the dragons...
He grunts in agreement, but for a moment doesn't say much else. His eyes taken by the dragons curling and sliding their way along the sidewalk, or across the bricks into that black cloud still some distance away.
"Gonna bring onna them things down heah. I got questions."
He's already wearing the gauntlets. The sound their whispering and click makes against the chain as it passes between his fingers is like some song he can barely remember. Something old. Cruel. He likes it.
"You know whut dat cloud thing is?" It doesn't sound like it matters. The dross matters. The magick.
[Mean Tommy] (uh- change 'coat' to studded leather voile.)
[Black Market Gimmick] (hey folks. Liz is gonna toss her Sidhe into the mix so I'm gonna give her a chance to get acclimated and catch up. Meantime though, keep posting at your leisure. I'll let you know when i got a post incoming.)
[Emmeleia Uhuru] The breath of thousands of tiny dragons, a faery I belive they are called.
*She replies as she watches him. His chain this hook, his very stance. Crude, but could be effective, if he planned to kill the creatures. Knowing a red cap he most likely wanted to eat it to. A pale black clawed hand showed it's self from the folds of her wrap to pet the fabric. She considered what to do with these creatures and the crowd around them. She woundered if the Hsien where here in this part of the city. They were tricky creatures, but rarely left their main land, but one never knew. She would wait to see what happend to the red cap first*
[Mean Tommy] (Int+Dream Lore: 3+1)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Mean Tommy] (Are the two of them some distance down this alley? Or otherwise fairly confident of not being seen or noticed?)
[Mean Tommy] Rumbles, muttering.. half words are all the brutish redcap gives to the air around him, or to the Eshu nearby. The dragons and their growing hoard- that's what commands his attention.
Palms slap concrete as Tommy bends over and scoops up the yards and yards of chain. He doesn't tuck or hide it- chain isn't illegal- but the meat hook isn't readily noticeable as he makes for the corner- the better to cross the street and duck into the alleyway closer to the Shadows and the Dross both.. the better to reach the Dragons and what he wants of them. Preferably before they disappear into the shadows. And if he finds a quiet enough bit of alley that he can drag one down? So much the better.
Now he makes noises. Chuckles to himself, in fact. Also, he sets off without explanation or any apparent rhyme or reason.
[Emmeleia Uhuru] *She walks causally, following him. Making no issue, and trying to behave among the crowd. Her natural curiosity taking the better of her. This was going to be intresting. Might result in a funny story about hungery hunger red caps.*
[Jeff Brolin] *The clop of hooves is quite clear through the streets, like he doesn't know how to be subtle. A cigarette dangles from his lips. He smirks, which causes it to perk with the expression, as he makes his way through the market. Maybe he should be afraid, but he doesn't seem to be. Something invisible to the mortal eye does make him dive out of the way.* Fuckin' hell, watch where you're... *It is quite clear he realizes he's speaking aloud to the creatures. Though he pauses, and he shrugs it off. Trying to be casual now, as he tries to follow the path of the little beastie.*
[Mean Tommy] In a rare moment of forbearance, the Goblin King actually steps around the plebs. Every short and angry one of them. Oh no- tonight wasn't the night to antagonize.. tonight was for taking and keeping.
So, his eyes remain mostly on the alleyway. On the dragons and the precious lumps of dross in their jaws. No fool, he occasionally watches out for too-interested mortal observers as well. One can't be too careful.
With a leery eye on the ink black shadows deeper in the alley, Tommy sidles right in.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] There's another in the crowd; a stranger not simply human - a pale-skinned, black-haired girl too young to be so composed, so watchful, so bright. She's a whisp of a creature by human measure - a teenager so prettily made, so arresting, with her high smooth forehead, rounded cheeks, her sharp little chin - still soft with youth, but already refined. She's a sharper, more luminous thing than any in the passing, faceless crowd could know.
Darting through the shifting currents in the wake of a pair of colorful dragons - then - with skin pale as milk, luminous as moonlight - and inky coils of curling black hair long and fine and loose over her bare shoulders, the stranger - a sidhe, there can be no mistaking it, slighter than many of her kind, with a softness around her cheeks and brow matched by a sharp chin and ears - approaches, soft-footed, dressed in a sort of bastardized finery - well-laced stays criss-crossed with a herringbone pattern of gold ribbons, long skirts clipped up to reveal creamy thighs and calves.
Emmeleia and Tommy are focused on the gathering; Maialen slows when she sees the former through the crowd. Composes herself, smoothing pale hands over her raven's wing hair, breathes deeply, chest rising and falling about the stays as she catches her breath, shakes out her disorders skirts into something more presentable. Her attention is sharpened now, keen on Emmelaia as the other disappears into the mouth of the alley.
She snakes after, a fine hand on the crumbling brick of a facing building as she steps into the alley's mouth, the fog drifting over her well-turned ankles in those soft kid boots.
A redcap. The other hand goes to the hilt of a jeweled dagger at her waist, which seems little more than some folly of adornment against the hard flat plane of her stays.
And watches, wordless.
[Emmeleia Uhuru] *Her staff taps the ground as she stops behind Tommy. Slowly her face turns and black eyes fall apon the sidhe comeing torwards them. A sneer starts to pull at the Eshu's slips showing razor sharp teeth. Her hand grips her staff tighter, and her skirts start to move agressivly. She pushes her lips and looks back down at Tommy. Her ears also pick up the Satyr's steps. Oh god...that one too?*
Red Cap...we have a usless pretty approching and a hoved freak.
[Mean Tommy] (Dex+Melee, diff 7 for dragon catching)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Jeff Brolin] *He is trying to avoid the little beasts. Well... of course, he's a satyr, he moves rather smoothly when they DO get too close. He actually licks his lips, the feel of it pressing on him, the extreme glamour. Not to mention the curiosity of the creatures themselves. He does pause for a brief moment, and clearly tensing. He looks back over his shoulder, and then back forward. Business is the most important thing right now.* ((And am I close enough to hear that?))
[Black Market Gimmick] The quartet (now) move to follow in the Wake of the Dragon march, for what else could it be called (Stampede? Parade?) and it is not long before the Fog at the street's opening has eclipsed even the satyr's hoofed haunches. Maialen and Jeff both push into the alleyway, the former much more hesitant than the latter's brazen personality would allow. Emm and Tommy have already ventured, warned by the Eshu's soft lilt of a voice of the coming of the pair behind them...
...And as each enters, they notice behind them, the sudden distancing of the Crowd and the Mortal world. As if the Fog and the shadow that makes all light here a diffuse thing, were the separating apparatus of Mortal and Fae perspective. No humans, dwindling as the night draws on, turn to watch the four vanish down this side-street nor dip or sway from their own movements on past. No cars turn down here or errant birds, perch within. It is as if the Changelings have passed into some odd little Cul De Sac, not for the unintiated.
Their surroundings are a small assortment of 2 story buildings, the first floor built several feet below street level, stairs on either side prompting one to duck their head to gain entry to the low awning shops that exist down there. Overhead, strings of Yellow and Red and Blue and Green lanterns suddenly illuminate and spread a plethora of colour down on the heads of the four who pass below them, while the strange darkness ahead of them begins to lessen as more and more lanterns flare to life. Heralds of illumination.
The Dragons have dwindled as well. Smaller numbers as more and more flit and dance across the street, dipping in and over the mounds of fog, vanishing over the lip of the stairs that lead into those 'lowered' shops. It isn't until the last of them begin to wind through. lazy and slower than their brethren that a sharp cry erupts.
...And the Red Cap's hooked chain emerges from the Fog, a slender white serpent writhing, spitted on the hook's curved point. Green whiskers and brows flex uncomfortably, while the gnashing jaws snap and clap at the air. Oddly, there is no blood from the wound, simply flecks of gold dust that puff out like pollen from around the puncture.
"Do you mind?! Do you Mind?! Are you Insane?!
It bubbles and hisses and chirps, glaring red coal eyes up at the Red Cap.
[Black Market Gimmick] ...Emm's own attention seems to dance and flit around them, soft murmurs and unintelligible wonder, creeping into her dark appearance and mien. It isn't long before, the Changelings wrapped up in their surroundings, fail to notice the Eshu do what Eshu's do best. She wanders off in search of the Wonders around them and gets lost down one of the small flights of steps, avidly attracted to some glittering shapes in unseen windows. (Player was too tired to continue, consider this her post out.)
[Jeff Brolin] *His eyes suddenly grow slightly cold. And his fist clenches slightly, looking back and forth between the missing city and the slight trap they were now in. He opens up his muth to talk to the Eshu, but she is gone. His annoyance shows itself clearly, and he grumbles.* For the love of... *Things are happening quite quickly. He looks back to the spitted dragon.* What the fuck are y'doin'?
[Mean Tommy] It isn't murder gleaming in Tommy's eyes as the dragon's red ones meet his own. No. Nothing so simple. Nothing pedestrian like that. Rather, it is as if the dragon stares into a window that guides the way to nothing but a yawning, empty pit in Tommy's ever- hungry belly.
So it is that empty-belly eyes are fixed against the Dragon's, and the redcap's scraping butcher's block voice rumbles almost sweetly.
"Shudddup... an' tell me where you got th' swag."
Teeth flash as he snarls at the Satyr. "Less' yer stoppin' me, yer watchin. Now waitaminit." With that, his attention returns to the Dragon, one Gauntlet sheathed fist wrapped tightly around the pale body of the serpent.
(Bully-browbeat roll. -1 diff, man+intimidate 6 dice)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8
[Jeff Brolin] *He scowls at that. And he seems to ponder, stopping the 'cap. His hooves scrape against the ground, animal in nature, as if he simply can't stop himself. Or maybe it's just time for good cop, bad cop.*
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] There.
The world changes; Maialen turns around, still wordless - cutting a lambent glance back toward the mouth of the alley, the receding mortal world. The satyr trots forward after, and the regal little thing spares him, too, a wordless flicker of her huge, gleaming eyes, lifting her pointed little chin at the end of the glance.
Lifting her pointed little chin and the long sweep of her deliberately tiered skirts in the same moving gesture, stepping into the shop-lined alley in that moment with a movement to assured she looks as if she were alighting from a carriage in front of some gloomy, moonlit castle.
The creamy expanse of her bare shoulders squared, the young creature strolls toward the Redcap and Satyr with deliberate grace, her attention steady on them, fixed and alive.
And then she drifts at the last moment, around rather than into them - the redcap, the satyr, the hooked, hissing chimera bleeding gold dust into the still air. There's a certain presence about her, a certain watchfulness as she passes them, a certain deliberate, demure elegance as she continues past - mute - angled toward the shops set into the below street level.
As if she had meant, all along, to come shopping tonight, and nothing else. A new pair of kid gloves. The fever dreams of a dying man. Whatever she might find.
[Black Market Gimmick] As the Dragon's writhing form is tucked uncomfortably in the Redcap's grip, it's tail saws upwards and slinks around and through the tines of the Gauntlet on Tommy's hand and forearm. It coils, as a reptile is want to do and tries to lever itself off the Hook's point, upper body, twisting enough that the hook vanishes, half-out again.
Those exaggerated green brows, furrow and than flare, licks of gold flame catching the corners of it's mouth. A serpent's tongue flicks out, forked and purple and those murder red eyes dance from Tommy's gummed up features toward the Satyr behind him.
"Goin' to Church!" It spits in a near perfect mimicry of Jeff's own voice and brogue. Then it shifts attention back to Tommy and seems to lean upward, sprouting small, three clawed limbs from the flesh beneath white scales to perch on either side of the gauntlet holding it's body.
"Chew 'n spit 'n shit where you want, it isn't mine to say or tell. Isn't mine to sell..."
Tommy's voice and dialect this time, gold flames continue to lick over teeth and curled lips, a flash of two rows of black incisors, cast up at the Redcap's scowling face. The hook slides another inch or two out of the body, half covered in gold dust. A moment of heated resistance and then...
...the Dragon's eyes seem to catch sight of Maialen and the head slowly turns to follow her passage around the hulking Red Cap, a slow sort of pan that keeps in time with her steps. The tongue flicks outward, a flash of gold flame dancing at it's tip before vanishing with a wink.
[Jeff Brolin] *He groans at the vanishing beast. And he shakes his head.* What the fuck, *he mutters. And he looks for another.* Where is he takin' 'em to?
[Mean Tommy] It always manages to be a redefining moment- the one between absolute confidence and the next one when you know the eyes of Lords are on you. Somehow... he feels drab. Less. Its inescapable, as far as Tommy knows..
and he hates it.
Red eyes follow the willowy Sidhe- and so do black ones. In fact, for a moment Tommy holds the serpent like a kid who'd been caught with a dirty magazine. Just for a moment. Just in case she wants it- she might want it-
Air hisses between his teeth and fingers clench tighter around the body of the snake and he snorts.
"Yer really gonna walk right past alla dis Dross? Really? More feh us, izzat it?"
Tommy flicks a quick glance at Jeff- a strangely united one- two commoners alone with a Noble.. dicey.. then he holds the Dragon out toward the brand new, sparkling new, glowing new Sidhe.
"Dis guy knows wheah it all is." He hooks his jaw at the Dragons bringing more, then he holds the writhing thing out to her.
"Likes yew. Maybe he'll gib yew more info den he'll gib me. huh?"
[Mean Tommy] ...and he's handing her an empty fist. "FUCK!"
[Jeff Brolin] *He sighs, and he cants his head.* Mebbe we can just ask the next one questions, mate. You know. Without stabbin' it through the middle. Or just follow it. *His eyes are constantly averted from the Sidhe, as if he just can't look at her directly, though there is both spite and fear in those grey eyes.*
[Black Market Gimmick] (Ack. I seem to have mis-placed a description. That should have read, "a Flash of Gold flame leapt out at the tip of it's tongue, before vanishing with a puff and a wink." The flame vanished, not the Dragon! Sorry about that folks.)
[Jeff Brolin] ((Okay, I misunderstood! The flame vanished, not the dragon.))
[Mean Tommy] ((Okay. I need to calm down. I keep jumping the gun on you guys. *L* Disregard my last post.))
[Jeff Brolin] Hey, liddle beastie, *he offers to the small dragon, then.* Mind tellin' me where you're takin' that horde to? We need t'eat too, y'know. Y'take it all, we'll waste away.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] The creature is a handful of steps behind the Redcap and and the Satyr when the latter curses and the former addresses her. Oh, they're small steps, ladylike. Not quite mincing but nearly so. She stills though, turns around, casts the both of them a shining look across the pale curve of her shoulder - looking first at the Satyr, then the Redcap. Giving the razor-mouthed latter the hint of a sharpened smile on her bow mouth.
"Gentleman - " her voice is soft; the accent elegant - some hint of a romance language laid like a mantle over her english. Beneath that, the well-polished precision of the upper class. Finishing school, someplace with mountains and views. With cliffs, oceans, incalculable fortresses.
One small hand is still curled about the hilt of her jeweled dagger. The other floats like a moth at her side, pale against her golden skirts. Her eyes drop to the dragon, then, in Tommy's hand. "He's not taking it for himself. Whose is it to sell? What price does he charge?"
[Jeff Brolin] (Jeff is trying to be nice. All beware.))
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 4 (Failure at target 6)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] manipulation + persuasion
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[Black Market Gimmick] "Fuck"
Jeff's gentle coddling. Tommy's bullying gaze. There's something to be said for commoner Etiquette or lack thereof. The Dragon snorts a plume of smoke out of one nostril at the two before it's attention seems to swim in Maialen's direction, the soft accent falling around the Three with something like grace and lilacs and other pretty things. Maia's first words have a soothing effect, something like aloe to a burn, or milk to chilli.
The Dragon shrinks visibly in Tommy's grasp and coils further off the Hook, until it pops out fully and swings to clang absently below. Those green brows bunch together, nearly eliminating the red glass eyes. The word of before is uttered, not as some description or act, but as evidence of Maialen's guesswork.
"I'm not made to mention such things. Oaths bind us to blood and blood to life, you know that, you do! Can't tell you 'bout the Mister Click's deal and All but I can tell you sure enough his name is Mister Click. Least the name we call him ourselves." Another plume of Gold fire, skates the rim of Tommy's grip.
"You don't want any of that and his direction though, Young Thing, Noble thing, Sweet Precious Delicious thing. You don't, I mean, Do not. At all. You steer right back the way you came." And then those eyes turn toward Tommy and peek around him at Jeff.
"You two go on ahead, though..." Followed quickly by another flash of those obsidian fangs.
[Jeff Brolin] *He snorts at that, and he looks back to Tommy. Back to the dragon. He does what he's better at.* Fuck you, *he snaps at the dragon.* You don't fucking tell me what to do. Just tell us where the goddamned Mr. Click is, an' we'll make our own fuckin' decisions, eh? After all. I'm not bein' used, like you are.
[Black Market Gimmick] "Why don't you come here and say that to my face?" It tenses in Tommy's grasp, jaws clapping hard and a plume of Gold fire racing from it's nostrils, murder red Eyes glaring at Jeff.
[Jeff Brolin] *He smirks, and he steps forward.* I AM sayin' it to your face. You're a fuckin' pussy, for a dragon. Owned by someone else.
[Mean Tommy] A vigorous shaking- that's what's called for, yes indeed. However, the brutish, hunching bulk of redcap finds himself able to restrict it to one firm jostle.
He thrusts the lashing body of the snake like thing back at the Sidhe- oddly enough, as though he were either trying to focus its attention on her... or he were threatening it with her presence. Her luminous, beautiful presence. Beauty kills in their world.. perhaps he's threatening to put it too close to her beauty. As though it were a fire.
"You jus' talk ta th' Noble, you."
His openly violent gaze swings toward Jeff. "You, shut up. Give 'er time ta work."
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] When the dragon mentions Mister Click, the sidhe cuts a look between the commoners, searching their faces for some twitch of recognition over the name. Finding none, her attention slips back to the beast, mouth curling into a (rather self-satisfied) little moue as the dragon warns her away but urges the others on.
The moue of her mouth sharpens, and the creature's eyes gleam with a banked but darting humor with the exchange between the Satyr and the dragon. She cuts a moving glance between them, but still holds herself back from the pair. Though now she does turn more fully back to them, her her skirts eddying around her in a wide sweep from the narrow V of her bound waist.
"Thank you," to Tommy. A sort of courtesy to it; a gravity that is well above his station. "My question's no different than his," here a dip of her dark, dark head toward Jeff. "Good dragon. I am afraid you're wrong, " she cuts a look over her soft, bare shoulder, the drift of ribbons over her moonlit skin, "I do want all of that, and his direction too. If only," and her she dips her head to the chimera, a sweet, supple acknowledgment of his complimentary warning. " - so that I can find him or not as I please. Mister Click - he's down among the shops there, is he? You and all yours oath-bound to him? Who else has he bound?"
[Jeff Brolin] *Her interjecting herself between Jeff and the dragon works. The satyr side-steps so quickly he might as well have been hit.*
[Black Market Gimmick] Something unintelligibly expletive rips from the Dragon's maw. Like the sound of shattering glass, fireworks and the crack chopsticks make when you first pry them apart, as Tommy jostles it sharply. The Dragon's attention returns to the Sidhe with some reluctance (whether because it isn't finished with Jeff or because it is indeed, fearful of growing to close to Maialen), brow crushing it's eyes from view once more.
"No one else. Doesn't need anyone but us. Mister Click runs part of this town, this part of town. Likes to think he does, does even if I don't-Do Not like it. You go looking for him and he'll make you offers. You go looking for him and you'll...you will be accepting." A tiny dragon's hand, three fingered, lifts to jab at it's chest.
"We get off light. Lighter than you would. You're-...you are exploding stars and Marigolds. Make you a Malt smoothie and drink you over a century. You don't-...do not want to do that, Young thing. Pretty thing." The constant correction of abbreviations seems to be the Dragon's attempt to repeat Maialen's own words and dialect. It writhes somewhat in Tommy's grasp, tail slapping absently at the fingers as if the Redcap might loosen them one of these times.
It takes only a few more seconds of nervous hope, dashed to rocky shores, for the Dragon to wilt in defeat and slither off to one side, hissing at Jeff for good measure. Then it turns and slithers closer to Maialen, rearing with narrowed eyes.
"Keep walking down the alleyway and hum a little tune. Something soft like a lullaby. Don't do it too loudly or he'll stay where he is. Gotta be quiet so he keeps needing to get closer. By the time you're whispering? Well, pretty thing, it'll be too late." And then around on the Redcap without another word.
"Now get this oaf off of me before I'm found late. I like my insides where my insides are"
[Mean Tommy] He doesn't quite hop from foot to foot. Not quite. Instead, boots crunch against the asphalt pebbled underfoot. The roughly stamped demon faces decorating Tommy's armored voile leer a ghostly blue in the strange not-quite-light of this shadowed cul-de-sac. This puddle of dreaming reaching into the mortal world.
He swallows saliva. Pays careful attention.
And as the Dragon's explanation flickers back and forth inside Tommy's head, he freezes. All but that metal- clad hand. The spiked hand. The spiked hand opens..
..and his eyes fasten on Maialen. Flicking across her features haphazardly. Stalking wolves pacing back and forth in his nightmare face.
Holy shit he's thinking.
[Mean Tommy] (Intelligence+Streetwise. Is he referring to who I think he's referring to? Pool 5, diff 5)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 9 (Success x 1 at target 5)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] "Your word, dragon, that you will stay quiet about us. Your blood-oath and he will release you, right as rain." So she says, quietly, leaning closer to the dragon, bestowing on him her softest of silken smiles. A few tangled strands of ebon hair slips over her bare shoulder; she's all softness, but contained by the tightly laced baroque-style stays.
"Safe as houses." Here, she reaches out a soft little hand, lends it to the beast as if he were an acquaintance at court, brushes fine fingers through the lingering cloud of smoke leaking from the dragon's nostrils. "Elsewise," nearly mournful, her voice, though there's an underlying sharpness to her presence, "I will be forced let him eat you, Dragon-mine." Here she, she tips her head and lowers her gaze, sooty lashes against the pale curve of her cheek. And continues, as if she were confiding a secret. "It's in his nature, you know."
[Black Market Gimmick] "That's not Fair!"
A flicker of flame reaches out to coil itself around Maia's proferred fingers, though there is surprisingly, very little heat. There is more the avaricious and unique sensation of greasiness, like one might pick up from well handled coins. Greed's excess.
The Dragon bounces from left to right, as if it might physically escape the promise as easily as the Redcap's grip. It lasts a few strong heartbeats, before finally-
"Fine. Fine! Sign your own warrants, fine. Oath of blood, not a word. Not a peep upon release. Simple simon, pretty thing. Not a peep upon release."
[Jeff Brolin] *He grins at that, and he looks back at the little beast. Of course, he can't say much - he is ALSO terrified of the point-ears.*
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Here she cuts a sidelong look at the redcap, straightening rather primly, all contained now - all bound except for the brilliance in the heart of her moving gaze. Brushing her thumb against her forefinger - thoughtfully, feeling the slide - not of heat, but the slick, filthy residue of common lucre on her fine little hands.
"He has given his oath, now. Please let him go," her words are soft, the elegant accent clear. " - but watch him, both of you, until he disappears. And - " a further promise, she's stepping back, opening the way into the alley, turning to flank the pair with a brief, lambent glance toward the Satyr. "If you're still hungry, Redcap, I will find you something else to eat."
[Mean Tommy] Awe is simple.. its right there, in his face. But something else writes itself across Tommy's frame- so filled with waiting speed and hunching, brutish strength. He watches the way Maialen's throat throbs with her soft offerings of freedom or doom, the endless black of his eyes prowls along her shoulder, the gentle swell where stays meet flesh. Her voice curls through him as well.. and the Redcap does what it always does. It hungers. It wants in its blinding, all consuming way. That desire wakes in his chest as though he had already swallowed the snake and there it was, inside him, thrashing around and bruising his insides with this desperate mix of want and hatred.
He thinks he'll explode. He thinks she's too close to him, and he might burn up. As Kithain like her are stars suspended in a night sky, Tommy knows he is the black and emptiness between the stars. For a moment, caught between reaching out and crushing the soft spoken woman or kneeling..
..then he shakes his head. Glowers a blistering accusation at the female. Then lets go of the snake.
Rip her. Squeeze her to death so she will not confound you. Sell you lies. RUN
All that screaming is silent, and lost between the stars. Tommy looks between Maialen and Jeff and hunkers down. Squatting on the asphalt.
"Mistah Click, then."
[Jeff Brolin] *He doesn't look at the Sidhe at all.* Mister Click. Sounds like some sort o'weird sex toy. But if he's takin' all fo the Glamour, mebbe he's hidin' the 'hold too?
[Mean Tommy] (My screen wasn't refreshing. My apologies for the delay.)
to Black Market Gimmick, Jeff Brolin, Maialen de Xove y Miasol
[Mean Tommy] "Nobody feeds me, Sidhe. I aint yer pet."
The look is long and wicked.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Manipulation + Persuasion
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 6
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (Reroll, dif 7!)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 7) [WP]
[Black Market Gimmick] As if to answer the Commoners, the Sidhe's long neck stretches and a tune drifts aimlessly past closed lips and begins to haunt the air before them.
...And the Changelings turn, their business done and the information gathered, beginning the trek down the alley length with a lovely creature of dark suggestion at their head. The street beneath their heels and feet seems to cobble, the further along they go, the architecture turns into that curve and the opening they'd come through vanishes from sight behind them.
The way ahead takes only a few dozen steps, the shops to either side growing lower and lower as more steps emerge. It isn't long before the Awnings are level with the alley floor and there is simply an opening ditch to either side, down which one can adventure. The light within those openings is minimal and the dark, pregnant and not terribly inviting.
The curve in the alley becomes less pronounced and suddenly, the Trio find themselves before a Steel Gate. The alley narrows into red brick walls, which culminate in this plain fence gate, which stands slightly ajar. Beyond the fence:
It is a round square, centered by a fountain. A single Brown spire, like the apex of a water drop in a puddle, jutting upward and spraying a perfect cone of blue tinted liquid into it's pool below. There is little ornamentation or elaboration to the fountain's construction, much like the brown brickwork that makes up the ground and surrounding flowerbeds. The flowers themselves are plentiful, multi-coloured and in no way resemble any species either of the three may well be familiar with. The beds are so thick with their rainbow presentation, as to make the soil beneath them impossible to see.
The buildings are likewise, that odd brown smoothness, with small balconies and windows made from yellows, blues, reds and greens. Opaque and resilient.
Maia's humming has drawn from a piercing sort of saturation to the vaguest of things, by now. It drifts just barely past the Three, guided by nothing short of a Sidhe's fickle fascination.
[Jeff Brolin] *His eyes widen at that, and he looks over the tower.* Jesus f... *The curse is torn from his throat, and he moves up to the gate.* Ahh... we goin' in?
[Mean Tommy] Bile, scorn, a desire for violence, a desire for one smile- One nod from the strange Ailil- not that he knows her house- and a desire to twist her head completely off and caper down the alley with it should she give it.. each tide clashes together and parts in Tommy, and his eyes swivel from the gate, to the Satyr, to the Sidhe... and he knows he won't be the one answering that question. Not tonight. Tonight, they'll follow the Sidhe's commands.. and hate themselves, and her, for it.
The sound of teeth grinding together may be heard from yards away.
[Mean Tommy] "...Want that Dross..."
Belated. Maybe to himself, for all that he at last coughed up his own opinion, as though it weren't already obvious.
[Jeff Brolin] Well. Either way, we've gotta end this guy. *But he's waiting for the Sidhe to speak as well... maybe so he can disagree with her.*
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] I'm not your pet - snarls the redcap. "Certainly not," Maialen agrees with Tommy, terribly calm in the face of his long, wicked look. Entirely contained, the creature, made of moonlight and raven's wings. She favors him once with an appraising glance, lingering on the nightmare hunger in his eyes. And smiles, soft as the rest of her, supple as silk spun from the dreams of sleeping mulberry trees. "And I have never liked leashed things."
Then she begins to hum, a glance to the Satyr a lingering consideration. He's taken all the glamor here, this Mister Click. Maybe he is hiding more, besides. Her boots are soft on the cobblestones, her skirts swish susurrant along the pavement. The creature keeps a firm grip on her little dagger as they walk, her alertness evident in the changing environment, brighter than anything here - with a certain, celestial gravity, no less.
"Fortune favors the bold, gentleman," she returns, an answer to the redcap, a challenge of sorts to the Satyr. It is followed by a sudden, brilliant little grin that shows white teeth fine and luminous as pearls, all in a row. " - of course we go in. We won't have a chance like this one again."
[Jeff Brolin] *He's no pussy. He wanted to tell her no, to go do it herself. And he scowls. He moves up to the gate, then, and he goes to shove it open. Or pull it.*
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] Intelligence + Graymayre
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Mean Tommy] Thick fingers- the sort swollen by murder and misdeeds prowl across the chain.. he reels it in, stows it somewhere beneath the leering leather and black studs of his ancient-looking voile. In the same long- practiced motion the whispering, chiming, chanting metal of his gauntlets is pressed together, seating the wickedly spiked things more firmly on his arms.
(INt+Greymare)(wp)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 8 (Success x 3 at target 5) [WP]
[Jeff Brolin] Int+Gremayre+Remembrance
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Black Market Gimmick] The three Changelings push through the gate with Jeff leading the path ahead, hand on the gate. It does not creak or hinge incoherently, but sways with well oiled ease out of their path. They march into the brownstone space of the fountained area, gazes adept and alert, regarding their surroundings and the sensations that come with it.
And each knows. Without doubt or hint of it, the place they are in is more sanctum then assembly. Like some sun room or solarium, for an occupant. They had traveled the alley road with a comfortable sort of leisure and beckoned with the loving little tune that had grown quieter with each step. It was nary a whisper by the time they'd arrived at the Gates and the Dragon had said, the closer the quieter. Perhaps there had been a thought that He would come to Them.
Now, it would seem to be the other way around. Providing them access to his front door.
As they enter, a ripple of something dances across the upper story of the Brownstone buildings, warping the colours of red, blue, yellow and green that make up the windows. The ripple extends all around the flesh of the upper story, forming a broad ring of obtuse distortion that each of them can see almost plainly. Evidenced in their understanding of Arts.
And Redes, the powers Chimera make use of themselves.
"What's this then to beckon with so...tantalizing an offer? Present and be known..."
The voice is silk. The voice is smooth. Calm, like motown and subtlety. It drifts down from on high and at it's end, the gate clanks closed as if struck by an errant limb, the distortion climbing back higher in the process.
[Jeff Brolin] *He cants his head at that, and then lowers it, as if he's protecting himself with his horns.* Is this your territory? Name yourself, first. And know that here and know, I'm citing the rule of Safe Haven. If you refuse, I can always go, an' let the Dreamin' deal with yeh.
[Mean Tommy] Oh he goes in, alright. Right behind the two of them.. though it doesn't seem to be cowardice that slows his feet.. no. Its a look at the gate. Not like a glance.. like a LOOK.
(Intim+Cha) -1 diff
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6, 8
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] The sidhe's steps are still soft as she sweeps in with the pair of commoners, whose names she does not yet know. When the satyr claims the right of safe haven, she squares her soft white shoulders in quiet chorus of his of his claim, and cuts him a narrow, gleaming little look, darkly brilliant. The pleasant, quiet plash of the fountain in the courtyard, the ripple of incandescence across the windows; all background.
"We only know you by some common vulgarity, whispered in the shadows of your streets," her voice rises, a quiet pillar of support for the satyr's demand of a name. Softer, deliberately. " - Mister - " here she pauses, pink tongue against her white teeth, hesitant. Click becomes French, "Clique - was it then? That cannot be your only name. Tell me another, and I'll give you one of mine."
[Black Market Gimmick] (Alright folks. Unfortunately, Dirge has gotta get goin' for the evening. So I'm gonna put up a couple of options for how to continue:
- We can try an co-ordinate times for when folks might be available again via the Forums.
- I can actually put this up in the forums and we can continue it that way if folks feel like we might not be able to meet like this again anytime soon (I'd prefer not to wait a whole other week to continue)
- I can probably separate this into three separate scenes, one for each of you, at this juncture.
So can I get thoughts on which people would prefer to do?)
[Mean Tommy] Personally I like forums. I think it would help liven up interest in the game. Also, I like to showboat and use lots of words.
[Mean Tommy] Although I do like actual scenes. For my part I'm available every day after around 7pm site time.
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (why don't we start with forums and go to scenes? I would love to continue IC since I'm better with the push of an IC scene - but I promised blu I would continue Roman's rank challenge tomorrow, and am not around Sunday. So Monday would be the earliest day for a scene for me. :) )
[Mean Tommy] (Let me know. I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open.)
[Jeff Brolin] ((And for me, usually after 7 PST, but I'm dying right now, so we'll have to see what doc says tomorrow.))
[Black Market Gimmick] (I think a Forums scene would work best. I like the idea of promoting the Changeling game via an exposed Scene for folks to keep track of. If the scene in the forums continues on to a logical point where the four of us can meet again we'll finish it that way. I'll throw up my next post in the Forums and you guys can post there at your leisure.)
[Maialen de Xove y Miasol] (thanks harv!)
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