Stories From a Cat

Drabblings

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:02:41 GMT

Also, another thing.

Many of my gaming friends have it, so I suppose I'll put it up here as well; it's already up on my other journal, but no harm in spreading the love. If you know one of my characters, are in the same game as they are, comment here and choose a prompt or two from the drabble chart. I'll write drabbles with your characters and mine, using the prompt you choose.

001.	Beginnings.	002.	Middles.	003.	Ends.	004.	Insides.	005.	Outsides.
006.	Hours.	007.	Days.	008.	Weeks.	009.	Months.	010.	Years.
011.	Red.	012.	Orange.	013.	Yellow.	014.	Green.	015.	Blue.
016.	Purple.	017.	Brown.	018.	Black.	019.	White.	020.	Colourless.
021.	Friends.	022.	Enemies.	023.	Lovers.	024.	Family.	025.	Strangers.
026.	Teammates.	027.	Parents.	028.	Children.	029.	Birth.	030.	Death.
031.	Sunrise.	032.	Sunset.	033.	Too Much.	034.	Not Enough.	035.	Sixth Sense.
036.	Smell.	037.	Sound.	038.	Touch.	039.	Taste.	040.	Sight.
041.	Shapes.	042.	Triangle.	043.	Square.	044.	Circle.	045.	Moon.
046.	Star.	047.	Heart.	048.	Diamond.	049.	Club.	050.	Spade.
051.	Water.	052.	Fire.	053.	Earth.	054.	Air.	055.	Spirit.
056.	Breakfast.	057.	Lunch.	058.	Dinner.	059.	Food.	060.	Drink.
061.	Winter.	062.	Spring.	063.	Summer.	064.	Fall.	065.	Passing.
066.	Rain.	067.	Snow.	068.	Lightening.	069.	Thunder.	070.	Storm.
071.	Broken.	072.	Fixed.	073.	Light.	074.	Dark.	075.	Shade.
076.	Who?	077.	What?	078.	Where?	079.	When?	080.	Why?
081.	How?	082.	If.	083.	And.	084.	He.	085.	She.
086.	Choices.	087.	Life.	088.	School.	089.	Work.	090.	Home.
091.	Birthday.	092.	Christmas.	093.	Thanksgiving.	094.	Independence.	095.	New Year.
096.	Writer‘s Choice.	097.	Writer‘s Choice.	098.	Writer‘s Choice.	099.	Writer‘s Choice.	100.	Writer‘s Choice.

[Cinead] - Background - One Day In the Woods

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:49:05 GMT

The woods of upstate New York are chilly in the late afternoons, even in summer, but the boy doesn’t notice. He's too full of youthful fire to get cold, whether he’s plunging through icy streams or running in the December snow. And on a day like today, he walks along a fallen tree trunk in a fraying t-shirt and grubby jeans and is perfectly content. Ordinarily he’d be out with Celie, or Mary, or Sammy, or especially Andy… but today fate was nudged, and he’s alone. Just as well, he thinks with a grin, I can explore the-

“Boy.”

The voice startles him, and he skids off the moss-covered log and into a patch of prickly ferns. Fighting his way out of them, he looks over the log, expecting to mouth off to an adult and go tearing off into the trees. Instead, he is transfixed, arrested with mouth half-open. He has never seen this woman, and Lake Placid isn’t big enough for him to have missed someone like this. Later, he will try to describe that first sight of her, but all he will remember is the eyes, large and luminous and tawny gold. He will try to compare them to a lion he once saw in the zoo, but a lion’s eyes are pale and dull next to these.

“Lovely boy, out in the deep woods. Art thou not afraid?”

He stands up straight, still stunned but recovering his natural confidence. He barely notices the strange turn of her speech; it seems proper coming from her. “No," he says, and then, because he is what he is, "these are my woods.”

She laughs at that, a beautiful ringing laugh that makes him feel good. Too good, almost; it reaches into his soul and plucks strings that no child should ever feel vibrate, and his entire young body shivers to their chord. “So confident. How delicious. Though the hour grows late.” And indeed the shadows are lengthening, though he would have sworn that it was no later than three-thirty only moments ago. “I will bring you home, if you will come with me.”

His will is not truly his own, but even so, he senses he has a choice. But she is lovely, and he wants to know who she is… and this does not seem like the kind of woman an eleven-year-old refuses, not even a young tiger like him. And home, after all, is barely half a mile away. So he nods acquiescence, which is of course all she needs. She is standing by his side in that instant, and of course she must have traversed the space between, but he does not see how. It’s rendered unimportant when she takes his hand.

“What is your name, sweet boy?”

He answers her as they start to walk. Years in the future, he will scream and sob his frustration that he cannot remember what he said.

[Gideon] - Better This Way

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:34:07 GMT

There’s a light shining in Gideon’s eyes, and it hurts him.

He stirs fitfully, rolls over, and tries to muffle the light with a pillow, but it’s no good; it’s one of Lara’s pillows, and her scent is in his nose. It stirs him, brings him more awake. After a moment of lying still under the pillow, hoping to drift off again, he gives it up as a bad job and sits up in bed with a low grumble, squinting against the shafts of morning sunlight that leak through the blinds.

He shades his eyes with a hand, but doesn’t turn away; the light, painful as it may be, helps to banish his dreams. This time it had been the ones about Kenichiro again; the involved, bizarrely detailed ones that made the whole ordeal seem immediate, instead of weeks ago. He can still almost feel the cold concrete under his feet, smell the scents of that phantom-Tokyo, hear Ken’s eerily calm voice in his ear. Kenichiro, he corrects himself. It was someone else who called him Ken.

He shivers and reaches for Lara by reflex, but of course she’s gone; she’s been getting up early all week to do some humanitarian law project, something Tomo had gotten her into. Though he’s happy she’s finding her niche again, it didn’t make waking up alone any more fun. The numbers 9:03 blaze insolently at him from the alarm clock, and he scowls at them. “Me being awake is clear evidence that someone has it in for me,” he mutters, and rolls out of bed to find some pajama bottoms.

Finger-combing unruly blond hair, he follows the smell of ginseng green tea out to the kitchen. There’s a note leaning against the warming pot, in Lara’s fresh, flowing handwriting:

Ran out early, as usual, but ought to be back for lunch today. You get some work done in the meantime. Left you some tea, but only because I love you. ~Lara

He grins as he fills a mug, considering what to paint. The portrait, maybe... it was really coming along, and he knew she’d adore it when it was done. It captured parts of her that most people would never see. Another couple of hours’ work... he turns the thought over and decides to let it wait a while more; he isn’t quite awake, and he wants the portrait perfect. Some angels (flicker) instead, perhaps. The new series was doing amazingly well in the galleries. He sips at tea and ambles toward the dining room, stopping to punch at a blinking button on the answering machine.

“Gideon, how are you?” Kristen Bender’s voice could sound smug even over a recording. “I’ve got some new numbers for you, but really, you need to come up to New York this weekend. There’s going to be a –“

Gid clicks the stop button with a shake of his head, and deletes the message. Sooner or later Kristen would learn to stop inviting him to these things; he hadn’t gone to a one since returning from Japan. Fortunately she’d been less pushy since Lara had laid into her... less pushy and better at marketing his art. Whatever Lara’d said to her, she’d been sticking closer to her job lately, and whatever else there was to say, Kristen was a good agent. If somewhat on edge. Remembering Lara’s fierce, satisfied smile when she’d hung up his cell phone makes him grin again.

He looks hopefully at the answering machine for another moment, but there is only the one message; still no responses from Adele or Villanie. “Both busy girls. Oh well.” He shrugs and resets the machine; they’ll get back to him in their own good time, as usual.

Gideon gathers up a few towels from the kitchen cabinet to catch the blood (flicker) that inevitably accompanies any painting on religious themes. Bloodstains were hell on the hardwood of his studio; despite all the fallen paint, it was the blood that was hardest to get out of the boards when his dropcloths didn’t catch it. He was amazed at how blase he’d grown about the curse, but one could only bleed from the wrists (...es) so much before getting used to it. It didn’t hurt much... it was just messy. He shakes his head, clearing sudden cobwebs from his mind.

Juggling towels and his mug of tea, he makes his way back to the studio, at ease and humming, already thinking over themes. He’d had an idea about an angel seen only through the fingers of its outstretched (flickerli...) hand, silver skin gaunt. Its flaring halos and half-visible wings would almost obscure its face. Only the empty eyes (flickerflicker) would really be clearly visible...

There’s a twinge, and the blood springs up from his wrists, though he hasn’t yet lifted a brush. (lies.) He swears, struggles not to spill his tea while stemming the sudden crimson flow of the stigmata (flickerliesflicker) as the wounds start to flow in earnest. “Fuck me, why? I haven’t even started the motherfucking painting (LIES!) yet...”

Gideon sways on his feet, arrested by the vision of the angel’s outstretched hand. His mind works, trying to grasp something immaterial and just beyond his reach, something he’s too stubborn to let go of. (Something is wrong. Lies. It’s all lies!) The mug slips from his fingers and he flinches back from the explosion of pottery and hot tea... an explosion which never comes. The world lurches, flickers, and drops away around him.

Sudden heat blasts his skin, oppressive, dry as grass in a drought year. Next to him, Rosie falls to the parched earth and vomits up very little of substance, dry-heaving after she’s empty of feeble liquid. She sobs helplessly, tiny awful sounds from the back of her throat. Dr. Dupree is on the other side, standing stiffly upright though he sways. He holds his head in both hands, muttering something about stress-induced hallucinations and medication.

Beyond them... is nothing. He looks farther afield, and there’s nobody else; the ground is flat and featureless to the horizon. The sun blazes white, centered in a pale blue sky unsullied by cloud. The earth as far as he can see is bone-dry yellowish clay, cracked and pitted, featureless... No... there's something... All he can pick out at first is lines, lines across the cracked, barren earth, the tracery of some vast design.

He follows the lines as he turns slowly, and his artist’s eye makes sense of it quickly; it’s a hand, a great massive hand traced out in deep furrows, surrounded by spreading lines that venture far off across the clay. There are fingers and thumb... and where the palm would join the wrist, there’s a figure standing, a small, slight woman dressed in an abaya and veiled with a hijab. She leans on a clay-crusted stick and stares at them, dark eyes bright above the veil.

Gideon realizes he’s on his knees and rubs at his eyes, unconsciously smearing blood across his face from the still-weeping wounds on his wrists.

“I could not reach the third.” The woman speaks, and Gideon pairs the voice with the piercing eyes. Samirah.

Ally. Lara. Oh, God, oh God... He struggles to put together his mind, but his thoughts seethe and boil. This is the real world. We’re gone, we’re out... and they’re lost to me, both of them. Alexander is sitting in the dirt now, still muttering to himself, and Rosie is curled in on herself and rocking, making a tiny sound of loss over and over again. He shuts his eyes for an instant, and tears slip out to mingle with the blood on his cheeks. Then he struggles to his feet, the better to face Samirah.

It’s better this way. It is. I'll find another way to get to them. It's better, it's better. Sweet God preserve me, better this than a lie.

[Etienne] - Reunion

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:26:07 GMT

It’s nearing midnight when I ease through the doors of La Basilica de Notre Dame de la Garde.

I meant to come earlier, to keep more of the night free and open in case... well, in case any number of things... but I found myself obsessing over details in a way that amazed me. What I would wear, how I looked, whether I should feed first. Should I straighten my apartment, should I bring this or that along, should I, should I... I finally realized what I was doing, got thoroughly annoyed with myself, and lit out from my tiny sanctuary in short order.

The Basilica sits on a high hill in the city, with many a wandering path leading up to it aside from the main avenues, and it was one of the smaller paths that I found myself taking, a meandering route of many stairs. I spent the climb thinking over what I was about to do, of possible consequences... but most of all of M-A. Memories, reflections, moments frozen forever in my mind’s eye.

“See anything interesting?” She leaned in the library doorway, splendid in burgundy and black, and all I could think was how infernally I’d misstepped, how fascinated I was by her things, how delectable she looked. No room in my head for savvy, not in that instant. Amazing she kept me around, with how much I stuttered during that first talk.

Her red-gold hair fanned over the sheets, waves of it unbound. Her serpent wrapped all around her, stark contrast to skin like pale cream, ridged and rippled with scars. Seeing her nude surprised me, that first time, but only for a moment. Her body was always been so perfectly an extension of her mind... no wonder I could never tire of exploring it, testing it.

“You’re changing, I told you,” she cried over the wind and the surf. ”Let it happen...” I remember her voice while my body died, the misery in it. A part of her always hated what she did to me, and that kept me from truly hating her for it. She took so much from me... but she tried so hard to give back in equal measure, and it made all the difference in the world.

I climbed higher, vignettes spooling themselves out in my thoughts, until I reached the plaza that stretches in front of the Basilica. As any human climber might have, I paused there as if to catch my breath, but what I was collecting was equilibrium, focus; bringing myself up from the distant past. It was difficult with the soft pulse of her in my head, the knowledge sure and certain that I would find her close at hand. Other moments leapt to mind as I passed them by.

The library, with M-A folded into it in a hundred ways; curled into chairs, leaning on shelves, bent over the tables, sprawled on the floor. That room was her as much as any place could be said to be; a collection of knowledge, and snippets from a hundred places. Ironic that she wasn’t as well-travelled as it first suggested.

Our endless talks, on subjects as varied as one could imagine. My second education; as whimsical and sometimes fragmented as she herself. I could wish she’d been a little more thorough... but that’s part of growing up... both times. Learning that your parents aren’t infallible.

Her rituals, her faith. The greatest part of her, which she so often kept hidden behind flippant demeanor and ribald image. More fools, the throng of Invictus and Lancea who believed that mask; to think her only a callow socialite or a slightly mad witch was the gravest of underestimation. To feel the forces she called and influenced, to know the strength and clarity of her belief... that was to know her as something primal and powerful, as exactly what she was meant to be.

I’d looked up at the stone facade of the church, lit here and there by the lights of the plaza; up at the high tower with the golden statue gleaming atop it. It crowned Marseilles like the beacon it once was, with the city spread beneath it in a blaze of light. I know why they built here, why she came here. I lifted my left hand to my mouth, slashed open my palm, and shed my blood there in the center of the empty plaza. Watching it seep into the stones, I felt an unexpected sense of reverence, and I spent a few moments standing still in the breeze. Then I walked purposefully for the front doors.

Slipping through them now, I’m arrested by the ancient church. The stonework is old but strong; solid and powerful in its architecture, soaring into delicate carvings. Where once there were candles and torches, now electric wall sconces illuminate the inlaid marble, the frescoes and mosaics. But far beyond the construction or the art is the sense, as with every church of real age, that here is a place of faith. A place where countless people have come to offer their words and hearts to something intangible. As I pass through the entry hall and into the hushed murmur of the nave, I start a murmured prayer of my own.

“Lady of the mountain and the shrine and the church; maiden today, mother before, and crone before them both. Accept one who came to you first a child, and comes back grown and diminished and grown again.”

I walk to the font, and dip my fingertips gently into the water, letting it trickle down my fingers and mingle with the dribs of blood from my torn palm.

“Grant me my sacrament, accept my offering in the coin of my kind, and bless me with your good will.”

Suddenly calm, I start to move down the central aisle, letting my eyes fall where they will among the pews, and find her almost immediately. A figure in scarlet, she sits sideways in a pew, one booted foot up on the bench, looking carefully through a mess of papers in a double-thick cardboard filing box. Her hair shimmers gold in the muted light, falling about her like a veil as she sits bent over the box. The position would have made any human woman move after moments, stretching the aches from strained muscles, but I doubt Madeline-Antoinette was even conscious of it. I suspect she’s not even moved since she sat down, but to look at the next document. Some habits don’t change.

“Take my thanks for granting your aegis to a priestess and welcoming her to your home. Take my thanks for guiding me, like a ship to harbor, here to find my home again.”

I sidle down the pew, step soft and voice stilled. The rest of the church has disappeared. Were I human, my heart would be pounding fit to burst my ribs... but I haven’t been that for a long time. I sit, some ten feet down the pew from her, and join my hands together, letting my sacrifice drip between my palms to the marble floor between my feet. My eyes trace over her golden hair and then flick up to the altar as I complete my prayer, this time allowing my voice to carry.

“And thank you, Lady, for watching over we lonely travelers, as we make our way through the night.”

Amen. M-A’s posture changes, a thrill running down her spine just as one runs across the bond. Her head raises, and she turns slowly to look for my voice. I can feel myself smile despite all my efforts at nonchalance. I could no more stop it than stop the sun from rising.

It takes her a long moment, but when she finally speaks, her voice is collected, tone even. “How long have you been in Marseille?" There’s a part of me that wants to be hurt by the casualness of the question, as if twenty years had vanished and we were sitting down on the terrace over coffee. A more rational part notices how careful the question is, watches her tug at her scarf and fidget with the file she’d been reading.

I smile, cover the anxiety with my pleasure at seeing her, layer on a bit of cockiness and a little tease. I’m being careful, too. "Two nights. I got settled and made myself known to the Hound, and then just imagine what I found out from the first Acolyte who crossed my path?” Well, the fourth, technically.

She arches her eyebrow, precisely as she always did. "I suppose you're going to tell me," she says, a note of wry humor in her voice.

I make a contemplative sound and tap my finger against my lips. As I do, I catch a glimpse of the blood still streaking my palm, and lick the wound closed before I forget about it again. My eyes turn upwards as if in deep thought. "Was it the second or third rumor she told me? She was very excited to tell me about the other visitor, the one who came to learn and research some of the city's history." I lean against the pew she’s sitting in, shrug casually. "I pressed for a few details."

Madeleine-Antoinette snorts, amused. "Oh, I'll bet she gave you an earful. 'And do you know what she said to me? She told me that she was researching the Notre-Dame de la Garde cults. Isn't that something? Well, I told her that if there was anything to be found about them, they would be in the Basilica - they keep all sorts of information there, but you have to be careful about those Lance.'" The imitation of Angela’s conspiratorial tone is uncanny, and makes me chuckle.

"Pretty close. Perky little thing. Enthusiastic." Under any other circumstances I might have shown her some of what she wanted. But now... I let myself look over my sire carefully, study her changes in fashion, the small details of expression. "How long ago did you get here?"

"Marseille? A few weeks. I've been in France for a bit longer than that." She shrugs, flicks her eye around the grandeur of the nave. "Have you been here before?"

"Quite some years back. My parents brought me up here a few times when I was young." I follow her look, eyes tracing the fine lines of the galleries and the delicate arches in the ceiling. Parts of me are girding themselves for this to be painful... we’re both playing a cautious game. "It's a beautiful church."

"It is, at that. Christianity builds some beautiful buildings." She lapses into silence for a moment, then smiles serenely at me. "There are some rather interesting similarities between the reverence of the Notre-Dame de la Garde and Iemanja. It's the basis of my research."

Ah, of course it is. I ought to have guessed. I find myself smiling despite discomfiture, as we fall inevitably back to at least this old pattern. "I've done some similar research myself lately, looking into various places Christianity has borrowed symbols, imagery and ritual from. There are quite some number." I’ll tell you of all I’ve learned, but...

She returns my smile and interrupts my thought. "Have you seen the crypt yet?"

"Only a glimpse, when I was young." Long galleries, lined with ex-votos. I don’t remember much of it.

She nods, starts to rise, nodding to the box she was looking through. "C'mon. I need to return these to the office and it's worth seeing when you can appreciate it."

I stand to match her, move down the pew until I’m no more than a few feet away. In the intervening years, I’ve perfected the politician’s mask, the interested, slightly amused face that I now wear all the time when among other Kindred. It feels as natural as my own skin, most times... but now I actually have to work at keeping it up. It threatens to crumble in the face of genuine interest and a foolish outpouring of emotion. Keep it, if not for her, then for the Sanctified who are surely watching. That thought sobers me neatly. "Lead on."

She lifts the box of files to her hip and moves on without further comment, going through an unobtrusive pair of doors to the side with me shadowing her. The box is deposited in a darkened office, and then we keep on down the hall, to the stairwell at the end, and down several steep, narrow flights until the worked stone opens up into the crypts.

This is one of the oldest parts of the basilica, and suddenly I remember the brief look I had when I was young. I was curious then, but had time for only that glimpse before I was brought away by my parents’ schedule. It’s a long, low room, branching off into others, and packed with innumerable things. Candles by the dozen, which shed the only light. Handwritten notes, engraved plates, chiseled stones. Sculptures, paintings, small models of ships and airplanes. Even clothing; there’s a succession of football jerseys on one wall. All the old votos left at the shrine, over hundreds of years, are gathered in the crypts, and it’s a truly magnificent collection. Madeleine-Antoinette pauses on the threshold and looks up at me, but I let my eyes trace slowly over the room.

Even as it feels like nothing has changed... everything has. She may seem much the same, but I’d be a fool to assume that’s the truth of it. I’m so terribly different myself, even than when I left her last. I’ve been through other teachers, other trials, learned new magics and old secrets. How could we not be wary around each other now?

I let myself turn to look at her. The candlelight glimmers in her hair, flushes her pale skin a rosy gold. My heart lurches, and I decide just then that caution can be damned. "Hello, M-A."

“I’ve missed you, love.” She reaches out sideways, opening her hand for mine, and I knit our fingers together. The pulse of the bond as our skin finally touches makes me shut my eyes for a moment, wanting to roll in the feel of her like a cat with catnip.

"I missed you too, cherie. Letters aren't quite the same, are they?"

"No. I- I'm not certain what to say, really." She smiles ruefully. "And usually I'm so good at words."

You and I both. I tug lightly on her hand, pulling her towards me, and to my relief, she doesn’t resist. "Sometimes they're a bit overrated. Let's start here.” I draw her against me and wrap my arms around her, and she winds hers around my waist and molds to my chest.

She lets out a small sigh, and murmurs, "Let's never do that again, shall we?"

Tiny alarms go off in my mind, nagging voices that keep me from agreeing to that as blithely as I want to. I rest my cheek on her hair and smile ruefully. "Can't see that it'll be necessary again. But I don't think that's a promise either of us can make."

She keeps talking into my chest, and now there’s a tiny pleading note. "Just... talk to me. Always keep talking to me. Please."

"I won’t pull so far away again.”

"Thank you, Etienne." She squeezes gently, then pulls away a little, waving at the panoply of votos. "I love this place."

The crypt is beautiful, but its mystery and intrigue are both overshadowed by her, by the sound of her voice, the feel of her skin on mine and her scent in my nose. I want to do something more drastic, right where we stand, but we’re too exposed at the bottom of the stairwell. I nod further into the crypts, take her hand again. "Walk with me. It's been too long since... anything, where you're concerned."

"As you like."

We walk further in, standing close enough to press a line of our bodies against one another. We move together simply, easily, and I wonder at it before I realize that this is just how we used to move. Without thinking about it in the slightest, we’re still falling into old habits, old niches; fitting ourselves one against the other.

We walk slowly, past the countless votos both ancient and new. There are objects both mundane and extraordinary, a beautiful menagerie of devotion. It is a testament to faith and diversity, a composite sculpture with a single beautiful form. How fitting that I walk through it now, with M-A by my side again at last. Apart for so long, now knitting back together... we’re become votos ourselves, part of this tableau.

We finally reach the end of the crypt and slow to a stop. The candles here have mostly burnt out, and we’re shrouded in darkness and silence. It’s a long moment before she breaks the quiet with a question. "Penny?" she asks softly.

Unlikely that anyone is watching us here, and damn them if they are. "What could I possibly say? I thought of you under strange stars; in bright cities, in cold deserts and on mountaintops. I missed debating and talking with you... lying tangled up in one another and reading until dawn... your eyes, your lips... I just couldn't seem to forget about you out there in the world."

Her cool fingers come up to trace my jaw, pale brands in the dimness. What light there is limns her profile, and her private smile is just as I remember; beautiful and strong and somehow winsome all at once. "You've always been in my thoughts, love. Always, always."

God. I flick my eyes over room swiftly, almost cursorily. If anyone really is watching, they’ll be hidden. The hell with them all. I grab a fistful of M-A’s Oxford shirt right at the small of her back, drag her into me, and kiss her as I’ve been wanting to since I first saw her sitting alone in that pew. No. Since the first night I woke up alone on the Filha do Mar, sailing away from Sao Paolo.

She molds against me, crushes her lips to mine with a throaty alto chuckle, and tangles our tongues together a heartbeat later. I’d been nervous, but she met me halfway, willing and strong, and I find in myself a strength to match hers, a passion that shreds my prior worries and carries them away like dry leaves in a hurricane. For a while, I stop paying attention to things other than the kiss, and the feel of her cool lips heating against mine.

It’s a long while, as it happens. You can kiss someone awfully long and deep when you don’t need to breathe. The bond throbs and pulses and threatens to rob me of my reason completely, but I’m not a stripling anymore. Michael taught me better, and so did Sigrid and Engel. The kiss is hungry, and my right hand is still tight in her shirt, but my free hand moves with langorous purpose, tracing from her cheek to her thigh in a slow investigation. I explore the feel of her with a new perspective; when I left Madeline-Antoinette in Sao Paolo I was in every way her childe, her student, hers. Now I’m my own, and that may change everything between us.

I finally pull back a little, and it has more to do with checking the rising tide of heat than anything else. I want more, I want to shove her against the nearest table and... but no. Not here, and not now. Instead, I bank my hunger like a bed of coals, shift it in my mind until it pulses and throbs against the bond. Our foreheads touch, and there’s a silent moment. You feel just the same, but that’s a pretty trap for my will and my volition... one I’ve no intention of falling into, no matter how easy it would be on me. I want to know you again, everything about you, everything that’s changed, but I’ll do it on my terms, as well as yours.

"You're different," she finally murmurs. Her eyes are closed, and she’s poised as if she’s scenting me, or maybe listening.

“Yes.” Oh am I. I can hardly wait to show you.

M-A nods, slowly opens her eyes again. Her pride crackles across the bond, along with a sense of anticipation like summer lightning in the air. "Good. I want to know this new you. There's a bar on the waterfront that I like. Join me for a drink?"

I reach up and trace a fingertip over one of her golden eyebrows. I’m feeling marvelously possessive, and I allow myself to, for a while. It makes me suggest something giddy, something that would never have occurred to the reserved young man she knew. "I have no intention of letting you go until you do. Walk to the terrace, run the rest of the way?”

“If you like.” She grins, and I wrap my fingers around hers. It’s a beginning, and far from disaster or pain, I feel almost buoyant.

“I like.”

[Etienne] - A Scent of Home

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:06:32 GMT

News of my parents’ death brings me to Marseilles, and I feel her the moment I arrive.

I step off the plane I chartered and onto the windy tarmac, draw a breath of fresh Mediterranean air, and there it is. At first it’s only an intuition, a prickling at the edge of my mind. But then, I’ve learned over the years to listen to those subtleties. Despite what the majority of people inside and outside the Circle seem to think, the gods don’t often speak to us with grand visions and prophecies in fire. They just give us a little push and want us to figure it out our own damn selves.

So I pay attention, examine the sensation as I go about my Kindred business. I speak briefly with the Hierophant, and then with the Hound. By ease of manner - and the grace of knowing the right people - I’m granted audience with the Seneschal later the same night. Each meeting is brief, productive; I explain that my presence in the city is temporary, but that I’ll be an able friend to the Circle and the city whilst I’m here. I charm them, I dance their little dances, each one subtly different from the others. Blessings are given, courtesies exchanged, and I’d find myself insufferably bored were it not for my distraction, the insistent tingle at the edge of my mind’s eye of something somewhere saying here I am. As it is, by the end of the evening’s diplomacy, I’m preoccupied enough to find myself glancing at the young, young slip of an Acolyte girl that the Hierophant detailed to guide me around, and wondering if she’d be worth more than an hour’s entertainment. Maybe if she managed to stay quiet for thirty minutes. Unlikely.

I’m laughing over this as I leave the Seneschal’s office building, and I happen to glance up to the Basilica, still bright-lit and lovely atop its high hill. That’s when it happens. A flare in my blood, tingling from heart to loins and back. The faint question in my head becomes a slow throb, a heartbeat, and I recognize it now, though it’s been long, long years. M-A.

I take a few moments, standing stone-still in the street, to luxuriate against the familiar touch. I purposefully keep blank my mind for a few moments; thought will lead inevitably to what I want to do about it, and I don’t know the answer to that question, not just yet. Instead, I just pause in the early morning chill, still as a statue, letting the bond thrum against me.

My guide intrudes on my reverie after a nervous moment. “Monsieur Vaillant? Is there... anything else I can do for you?” I flick my gaze to her and she’s wary, but clearly still eager for my favor. This won’t be hard. I make an almost perfunctory motion which gathers her to my side as effectively as a cast net, and sweep her along with me as I set off at a brisk walk for the waterfront.

By sunrise, I’ve sated myself on blood and gossip. I’ve set my mind in order, organized my thoughts, and am planning the next few days, sure of my course... except for the occasional brush of my sire against the edge of my mind. That, I still don’t know what I will do with, so I push it aside, if only for the moment. I wonder if she’s felt me yet. Soon...

As soon as I wake at sundown, I start moving. This night, my first full night in the city, there are necessities to take care of.

The first stop is to see my parents’ factor, a Monsieur Lusignon, whom I call upon with all the requisite apologies for the hour, claiming grief and travel. He is suspicious at first, but after I produce all the proper documentation he becomes eminently tractable. I’ve just come into a lot of money, after all, and here is a man who knows just where his allegiance lies. He goes so far as to excuse himself from his family, walk me down to his office, and lay out the various paperwork then and there. After a brief conference, I set him on the proper course of actions, he promises me all requisite assistance, and I never have to bend his mind in the slightest. The sheer power of privilege never ceases to amaze.

The second stop is another meeting with the Heirophant, or Heira as she prefers. My young guide from the previous night delivers her invitation with such alacrity that she must have been out running through the streets scarcely after the sun had set. Such a thing is not to be ignored, of course, so I take a few moments to arrange myself and then attend on the head of the local Circle.

An impressive Kindred of an age to make my blood freeze, Heira Veronica Alighieri is nonetheless perfectly genial. She welcomes me to her sanctum beneath the Musee des Beaux-Arts, grants me one of her servants to take the edge from hunger, and then we sit down for a long discussion. She surprises me by inviting two others; a tall, thin Italian man with a lined face and a very dignified head of silver hair, and a slight black-skinned girl, perhaps eleven, with arms that look as though they were once severely broken. They are introduced to me simply as Marcello and Anza, a Father and a Crone, and if the Heira’s age makes me ache, then these two, particularly Anza, make my Beast give vent to a terrified snarl. Once more I’m grateful for the training that lets me hold my reactions inside. Instead, I’m cordial and respectful as I deliver news from other cults, tidings from Iceland and Norway, and also from Britain and Scotland. Heira Alighieri leads most of the conversation for the locals. Marcello speaks little but to ask penetrating questions; Anza speaks not at all, but regards me with unblinking eyes like polished onyx. I’m careful never to lie.

Despite the unexpected interview, the last stop is most difficult. After the Heira releases me, having put Angela (right, of course, the little Maiden, THAT was her name) at my disposal again, I set off for the western edge of the city. The factor had presented me with the key to my parents’ old home, and I find it just where I remembered, a few miles outside the city limits, high on one of the western hills. I leave Angela – for tag along she had - waiting for me in the front yard, explaining myself but briefly. Then, of course, I spend a long time simply standing at the door, organizing my thoughts with eyes unfocused. I spent much of my human childhood here... I can’t help but wonder what might come to light, going back. Only when I actually hear my guide’s fidgeting am I spurred to irritated movement. I swing the door open, eye the darkened interior, and slowly step inside, intending to pause again in the foyer. For all my delays, though, once I’ve taken my first steps, I can’t seem to stop moving. It’s as if I’m drawn along on a chain, like moving through a dream.

Room by room I walk through the old place, pacing on beautiful old wooden floors and expensive rugs, trailing my fingers over sheet-covered furniture and shelves full of books and curiosities. Everywhere there are artifacts from my childhood, sights locked into my memory from summer after summer of childhood, sights tied ineffably to the parents I will now never see again. Why is all this simply flowing over me? I don’t understand, not really. It should crush me with the weight of personal history and meaning, but instead I find a vast and terrible gulf between me and it. I explore it as I continue to drift, examining it as I was taught, until I begin to see. No facade of uncaring, this is a distance born of time and tragedy and sheer difference, one that first yawned into being out in the jungles of Brazil, but was made truly irrevocable by my sire’s fiery blood passing my lips.

M-A. Merciful gods, to find you now.

I stand in what was once my parents’ dining room, with its picture windows, its views of the sea and the light-flecked city. I’ve kept myself closed off carefully all night, but here, wrapped in careful solitude and the privacy of my distant past, I open wide and very deliberately let myself feel her again. It’s distant, with her all the way back in the city, practically indistinguishable. There is a pause, and then I give a brisk shake of my head and reach, reach out my being for the blood tie... and it feels as if it reaches out and finds me in turn, trying to make up for lost years.

Thrum. A slow beat, not ponderous but deliberate. Thrum. Shivering through my body, reacting to me, to me, blood to blood and heart to heart. THRUM. I catch myself on the edge of the heavy antique table, brace against the pounding that suddenly feels like it should shake down the house... and then it’s lost and distant again.

I find myself with the wild urge to go to her, to disdain propriety and timing, to cast aside what’s come before, to chase that throbbing beat and cast myself into it, into her, like a moth to a flame. I take a moment to be amused at my own over-dramatization... but there is truth in it. It is dangerous, but I have to see her, and soon. It doesn’t matter if logic says enough time has passed; every shred of me wants her near me again. Angela told me where to find her, most nights. I could just... I glance out at the moon, already hanging low in the sky, edging towards dawn. No. Tomorrow.

I look helplessly around my parents’ home, and close my eyes on the thought that none of this holds any sort of human meaning for me. Not anymore. But that’s why I’ve travelled, what I’ve worked so hard to find. I have a different place in the world, a different purpose to being, and as such everything has new meaning.

I dip my hand into an inner pocket of my jacket, shift what I find there through my fingers, and then cast a handful of wooden runestones onto the empty tabletop with muted clicks. Four runes stare up at me, black against the white cloth. Raido, leading directly to Hagalaz, which is crossed by Ansuz, with Berkana beyond them all. Tribulation brings enlightenment... thanks a lot, you hoary bastards. I eye the spread a moment more, absorbing subtler meanings, then sweep the stones back into my pocket with a grimace.

There will be time to find my new truths in this place, in all of this. After I’m... less distracted. I run my tongue lightly over my teeth, lingering as I occasionally will over the razor points of fangs. From nowhere, the thought swims up unbidden. What if she won’t see you?

No. Just a little more patience. Abruptly I turn for the door, putting on a genial smile for the young Acolyte who, blissfully unknowing, is waiting for me outside.

[Anthony] - Warmth

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:20:21 GMT

He’d had to promise Joule that he wouldn’t hurt himself if she left, before she would. She was obviously unwilling to leave him by himself, and she kept her eyes on him like a disapproving hawk, frowning at his every attempt to stir past the lightest activity. And yet he’d watched her scrape her cupboards clean the previous day to feed the two of them, and watched her preparing to live another day on the dregs. So he’d steeled himself and convinced her.

When she’d finally gotten herself out the door – after having provided for his every conceivable need and left a cellphone for him to call her, presumably, in the event of a magical holocaust – he’d been left alone, and the temptation to stretch his limits had redoubled. But he’d promised Joule, and promised himself the previous night, and so he’d drawn on hard-learned discipline and stayed where he was. The tea she’d put out for him was weak, but aromatic and warming, and he’d read his way steadily through a local newspaper and the beginning of Ender’s Game.

Anthony looks up from the paperback at the rattle of the front door of the shop; the stomps and muffled mutter that announce Joule’s return. She makes her way up the narrow staircase with many an incongruous clunk and bump. He’s watching her curiously even as she comes into view, and her eyes seek and settle on him in turn, the moment she gains the top of the stairs.

Her knit stocking cap and dark wool coat both have snow dusted liberally over them, and she’s carrying several shopping bags in each hand. The burden accounts for her noisy ascent, and by reflex Anthony starts to get up to help her, only checking himself at a harsh twinge from his torn stomach. He slumps back, frustrated, merely watching as she puts down the armloads of bags next to the table. Her attention, momentarily distracted, returns to him as soon as the bags are set down. The careful scrutiny breaks down his frustration into an amused smile. “Hi.”

She eyes him once more, then looks around, making sure everything’s still as she left it. Her coat and hat come off and are hung on nails. A quick motion of her fingers free her hair from its binding, and gratefully she shakes out the dreads. "How are you feeling?"

A little better, and already way too cooped up. But no sense complaining. "Only run over by a car, not a truck. Things are looking up." He closes the book on his finger, regards her with interest. "Bring back anything fun?"

Joule gives her hair one last shake, and her nose wrinkles in that intensely adorable way. "I suppose it depends on your definition of fun. Food that isn't just intended to be nuked. Here." Bending next to the heap of things she carried up, she separates a couple of large department store bags from the groceries. As he looks on curiously, she brings them over to the bedside.

"Hey, real food is nothing to sniff at," Anthony says lightly, peering at her burdens.

She kneels by the low bed and opens the first bag. "I thought you might appreciate this," she says, and pulls out a bundle of dark green terrycloth; upon a moment’s inspection, a robe.

Anthony’s eyes widen a little, and he accepts the garment without thinking, his mouth curling into an absurd smile. I haven’t had a robe in... oh god, this is beautiful. He turns the robe over in his hands and realizes that she’s pulling more things out of the bags, her cheeks pink. Underwear, shirts and jeans, socks and a sweater, even a pair of slippers. He moves on from pleased surprise into complete astonishment, tries to say any number of things. I couldn’t... You didn’t have to... But he can’t manage any actual words.

"I think you're going to be here for a little while," she says faintly. "I couldn't salvage everything, so these should mostly take care of you for the time being. You have really broad shoulders, so finding a coat to fit you is tricky."

He’s still unable to find words, but his face is evidently expressive. She watches him for a moment, then her blush deepens, and she starts to repack the bags, industriously putting things away until they’ll be needed. Anthony looks down at the robe still in his hands, and rubs it through his fingers, enjoying the softness of it for a moment, and the warmth in his chest that the thought of it brings. It’s been so damn long since someone gave me something just to be nice... And suddenly warmth gives way to a deep, lonely ache. "Thank you, Joule," he murmurs, unable to keep a small catch out of his voice.

She either senses his change in mood or is once again blushing at the kind words; either way she stands up, awkwardly brushing a little remaining snow off her pants. "You're... welcome. I'll put the groceries away."

Joule starts away to the kitchen, and again, Anthony makes an aborted motion to help, stopping himself this time before any actual pain. Unable to do anything useful to distract himself, he keeps his eyes on her gift, and just works at swallowing back the unexpected emotion it raises.

Anthony sets his jaw and falls back on long training, breathing steadily as cupboards open and close and jars rattle faintly. He centers himself, draws his awareness out wider and more distant, falling into the calm of meditation with a practiced ease. He lets the pain swirl through him, the loneliness, gathers it up and turns it over to look at it from other angles. Recognizing, accepting, and understanding; those were the steps he’d been taught so often. So a part of him examines the pain, old and new, as he has been for days. Another part explores the material of the robe, his robe, absorbing the intricacy of sensation through his enchanted fingers. And a part watches Joule putting groceries away and prepping a pot of oatmeal, watches her stealing glances at him and worrying.

He brings himself back when she lifts the pot and starts pouring the oatmeal into bowls. The immediacy of the moment hits him then, as it sometimes does when he comes quickly out of a meditative state. He turns his eyes out the window, studying the gray morning, as he carefully walls away the emotion, the cool thoughts. Joule startles him with a dry tone. "Do you take anything in your oatmeal, or does your asceticism extend that far?"

He grins at the sudden cheek, and changes what his answer might have been. "Heh... no, I think some brown sugar wouldn't go amiss."

She brings him a bowl with some milk and a heap of sugar, which smells like a simple sort of heaven after the day of thin soup and crackers. "Can you manage?"

"I think." Anthony draws his legs up and crosses them, careful not to use his trunk muscles or to brush the dressing on his thigh too hard. After settling the bowl in his blanket-covered lap, he reaches out and accepts the spoon gracefully, sparing half a thought to make sure his powerful fingers don’t bend it. It’s halfway to his lips, full of sweet-smelling goodness, when he realizes she’s watching him sharply. He glances to her with oatmeal just brushing his upper lip and lets his smile widen, giving her the skeptical sort of look that asks clear as day whether she’s going to wipe his chin for him. Her smile is more rueful than embarrassed, and she goes to fetch her own bowl and curls herself into the armchair, giving him several moments of quiet to savor mostly solid food.

When she breaks the silence, she surprises him once again with a question, this one far more serious. "Why the Arrow?" She asks it innocuously enough, between spoonfuls of oatmeal, and it makes him consider his answer a little more carefully than he might have, giving his oatmeal a few stirs while he puts together a short answer that’s still honest.

"Because..." Careful, now... "Because once upon a time, they saved my life, took me in, and wouldn't let me die."

Joule’s silent for a long time, taking a spoonful of her oatmeal and staring at it, rather than stare at him while she thinks. He takes another bite of his own while he waits, and finally she asks, "So you've followed that path out of...?"

He thinks back to a hundred lectures out on the terrace of Lung Tien monastery, to the snow drifting across the solid gray stone, and to the quiet voices of his masters carrying over the ever-present wind. The easy answer is so much bull, and you know it. Don’t lie. "Once, I would have said gratitude. But, I think... it's because they're doing..." he hesitates for a moment, "Trying to do... the right thing."

A simple nod. "I see."

Anthony feels his lips curl in a wry smile. "Do you? Can you tell me what it looks like, then? I'm still not sure."

Joule takes a bite, still thoughtful. How can oatmeal, with sugar and milk, be a contemplative food? "It is my experience that most people join orders out of habit. They don't understand, really, what an order does or stands for." She frowns into her bowl, opens her mouth, then closes it again.

All right, enough of this ‘burying what we really think’ stuff. "No, c'mon, what was that last?"

“Your order seems more prone to it than most."

She looks him in the eye when she says it, so she couldn’t miss the flicker of indignation at the remark. A hundred times it had been explained to him that other mages found the Arrow off-putting, and what was wrong in turn with each of their viewpoints. Couldn’t muster a lot of conviction for it then, and what do you know? I still can’t. Instead, he finds his wry smile creeping back.

"That's... easiest to do in a military organization." Clearly this requires some thought. More oatmeal. He takes another mouthful, regarding the spoon as solemnly as his own humor will allow. "As long as you can point toward some ideal, no matter how vague, and offer lost people a place and a purpose, then they'll follow." He sketches a salute with the spoon as though it were a dress sword.

"Are you one of the lost ones?" Joule asks, shifting to a more comfortable lounge in the old armchair.

He thinks about it for a moment, but can only shrug. "I... don't know what you'd say I am. I guess I was lost once. Sure didn't have any idea where to go."

"That's fair."

She carefully scrapes at the bottom of her bowl, lifting a last spoonful, and Anthony realizes with a small shock that he’s that quickly devoured his own as well. He runs his spoon carefully around the outer edge of his own bowl, collecting the last bits of it meditatively. "I don't know if it is, really. It's just what I have."

She sighs, puts her empty bowl down. "You will either do very well in the Arrow, or very poorly, I think."

"Master Xiaou Zhu was always very pleased with my discipline. Less so at my tendency to question what he told me." He contemplates his last spoonful for a moment, then pops it into his mouth and murmurs around it, "Why d'you say that?"

"For precisely that reason. Military organizations tend to prize discipline and prefer their soldiers refrain from asking questions. Rarely do those manage to do well, but when they do, they do very well."

After a moment’s pause, Anthony carefully removes the spoon from his mouth, and lays it in his bowl, thinking seriously. It’s true enough, and truer probably than she knows. I can’t tell her any more about this. "When that organization is as dedicated to secrecy as the Adamantine Arrow... it's even rarer." Please take that hint...

Either she does, or is dropping the subject out of other grace or amusement. Joule rolls her eyes just a little, and shrugs expressively. "'S'truth." She rises from her seat with her bowl, gestures to his. "How's that sitting?"

He glances to his stomach, letting the feel of it sink in. Tender still, especially with even a gentle prod... but no trouble keeping the food down, thank heaven. "A gurgle or two. Otherwise fairly solid."

"Good. We ought to get that cleaned up then, then perhaps try that robe on. This afternoon, we'll try some rice and vegetables. Does fish count as meat?"

He smiles, lifts his bowl into her outstretched hand, and watches her start moving again. It’s when she gets any kind of bit in her mouth, any purpose to run off on, that she transforms so completely. "Typically, yeah, but it's what I most often break that tenant with." Please tell me I have no choice.

"Protein. Your Montana protein options are highly problematic if you don't happen to eat beef." As he privately and guiltily rejoices, she shrugs, then surprises him yet again. "The Arrow was a bad choice for me. I could tell at the outset. I ask too many questions. I like knowing how things work and people who are afraid of telling me how they work are... well, they find me as difficult as I find them."

Even more than they found a stubborn rich kid from California, probably. "I can imagine. Also, you don't seem to have much,” he hesitates, then says mockingly, “passion for the fight." Thank heaven I did. Master Sun Kai never, ever shut up about it. "When did you deal with the Arrow?"

Joule cocks an eyebrow and snorts. "A few years ago, I shopped around my Order options. It was," a significant pause, "suggested to me that I ought to find an Order. I'd had about all I could handle of not being quite Free Council enough, so I started asking questions." She smiles over her shoulder as she sets the dishes in the sink.

Anthony makes a careful effort and swings his legs over the side of the bed. She starts up at the creak of the frame, and covers the intervening space quicker then he would have believed she could, but his bare feet are already on the floor when she reaches his side. She purses her lips, but doesn’t move to offer assistance, and there’s a pang of gratitude for that. He looks up at her wryly. "For some reason I can't think of anyone that could suggest something to you that you'd listen to very willingly. You must have been pretty done."

"It was a very direct suggestion," she says dryly.

People pushed you around, live wire? You? "Blade at the throat, gun to the head, sort of suggestion?" He glances down, colors, and twitches the blanket back over a long exposed line of scarred thigh.

She doesn’t seem to be paying attention, though; her fingers rub unconsciously at the back of her neck, and her eyes are distant. "Close. Guardians aren't subtle, as it turns out." She raises an eyebrow and gives a mirthless smile.

He’s inescapably reminded of the three Guardians who tried to take him into custody after Jiang Lu’s atrocity, of Jarvis’s talon-like fingers on his arm, and the chips of pale gray ice that Siobhan used for eyes. Subtle they weren’t. "No, not really. I've only ever met three of them, and two were complete bastards. The third might have been too, but he never talked." Bastard is too easy a word. Matsuo’s stare was like the silence after the grave dirt has been tamped down.

After a long, uncomfortable pause, Joule clears her throat and says, "Here, let's take a look at that robe, shall we?"

Robe. Yes. Good distraction, but bad timing... "Thought we were going to clean the dressings?"

Joule looks taken aback, and again the color climbs up her cheeks and throat. "Right. Of course we are. A moment." She hops up and disappears into the bathroom.

Anthony calls out after her, a dry edge to his voice. "Not that I'm really looking forward to having all those wounds probed at, you understand. Not really my thing."

The last bit catches her emerging with her dinosaur-sized medical box. She shoots him an apologetic look as she snags the last shopping bag from the floor, and then sets them down next to the bed. "I never deal with this part, really. Forgive me."

The absurdity of that statement draws a rolling laugh from him. "Forgive you? Fortune help me, Joule, I'm not ever gonna be able to repay you for all this, and you ask me to forgive you?" He chuckles again, unable to help it, while she wrinkles her nose at him and then turns away. In silence she collects a few towels and a bowl of hot water from the kitchen.

She sits next to him, putting her supplies within easy reach, but keeps still for a long moment, looking at her lap. Then finally, she murmurs, "Nothing done. You need help and I'm in a position to provide it. I've needed help before, and I will again. These things have a way of working out." Her eyes turn to him, first willing him to understand, and then flicking over his injuries. "Back first, I think."

Anthony smiles at the explanation, shrugs. "Work out? Yeah, maybe it will at that. We'll see." He stretches his neck, and then leans carefully forward, looping his arms around his knees and thus stretching his back out for her inspection. His eyes rest on the far wall, falling gently out of focus.

She peels away the dressing low on his back, murmurs the words of her magic, and traces fingers delicately around the long scratches. The light, cool touch is sharp contrast with the fiery sting that remains in each long slash, a burning he allows himself to feel for a moment. "Still hurts quite a lot,” he murmurs. “They didn't seem deep enough for that."

Joule makes a disapproving sound, and digs a large bottle out of her bag of new purchases. "You've some hangers on." She snaps on a pair of surgical gloves and picks up a clean towel, which she douses liberally with sharp-smelling antiseptic. Anthony has an instant to think, this will be hard to concentrate through, and then he’s proven right. She presses the towel against the first of the claw wounds, and pain erupts, far beyond what he was expecting, drawing a hiss from him.

"Shit." He takes a breath, makes himself think, and swiftly realizes why it hurts as much as it does. Outsiders... son of a... He gasps, “Outside infection. That's why antiseptic burns so much on those." Words are stolen from him as Joule reapplies the towel, working it through the next long furrow with an engineer’s attention to detail. He fights for his focus and gains it back slowly but surely, hampered by the antiseptic burning like acid in every inch.

"And here I thought you were just a pansy," she says off-handedly.

What!? His carefully-marshaled concentration breaks in his surprise and he barks a laugh, which only makes everything hurt more fiercely. It takes him a long moment to get his focus back and overcome the pain, but finally he manages to gasp out, "Oh, you'll pay for that."

"Really?" She snorts and moves the towel to the next of the claw-marks.

Anthony is ready this time, and thanks his stars for it, as this one burns yet more fiercely, his malignant ‘hangers-on’ fighting for their tiny lives. His muscles are knotted like steel, but he manages to talk fairly normally, with only the occasional grunt. "Yeah. In spades. I'll... I dunno... rearrange all your tools... or make creative notes in your textbooks..."

"You wouldn't," she says, but there's uncertainty in her voice.

He winces at another dab. "Maybe I'll just tease you until your face catches fire instead."

She freezes at that, and he can imagine the blood flaming in her cheeks. Finally, she makes a disgruntled sort of noise and goes back to cleaning the wounds with a vengeance, applying the antiseptic-soaked towel with more zeal than is perhaps strictly called for. He stays quiet, sparing himself the effort of talking, but he breathes as evenly as he can, and manages to keep a small smile. Vengeful little firebrand, you are.

"Almost done," she says as she wipes down the last furrow. "I refuse to let this be any more infected."

This kind of infection? Hell no. "Probably... not a good idea, no. If it goes much further... we'll just have to sear the wounds. Now THAT... leaves a fuck of a scar." I have one already, let’s not shoot for two.

"The little blighters were looking rather the worse for wear when I started. I don't think we'll have to resort to that. Cover this, and on to the next." She extracts a fresh dressing from its package and applies it gently to his back, tearing tape with her teeth.

"Don't worry. I wouldn't really write in your textbooks." He glances over his shoulder at her as best he can.

She carefully smoothes the tape, wrinkles her nose at him, and again it’s cute, as so little about her is. "Thank you."

He looks away to hide his laugh. "Now the rest of the stuff, I'd do."

She slides across the bed to sit next to him again, a certain light in her eyes. I’m pretty sure that’s amusement. I hope. "A woman's tools are sacred." Smartly, she flips the blankets away from his wounded thigh, and gives him a challenging look.

It makes his eyebrows lift in surprise and embarrassment, but he tries to cover it with humor. "I've never been terribly good at respecting the holy. Still learning, you know." How are you so damn casual around that much flesh, when you blush at a stray compliment? He eyes her curiously, watching as she folds the blanket to hide all but the bandaged area of his thigh.

She suddenly glances up, meets his curious eyes. "What?"

Caught. Er... He shrugs unconvincingly, looks down at his lap. "I'll tell you when you don't have to concentrate on so delicate an area."

Joule rolls her eyes and sighs, a flash of irritation in the set of her lips, but goes about re-bandaging the wound briskly. This one is healing far better than the others, and her ministrations are brief. When she finishes, she sits back on her heels and eyes him directly. "Now will you tell me?"

Oh ho, you don’t like secrets any more than me. "Oh, was it still on your mind?" Anthony grins, shrugs, and meets her eyes, then speaks hurriedly before the spark of murder he sees there can grow any brighter. "I was trying to figure what embarrasses you. Some things seem to do it pretty easily, but then you casually do some things that'd make most people blush." Like poking and prodding an inch or so from my...

"I-" She shakes her head, a quick motion which sends her coppery dreadlocks dancing, wires glinting as they do. She searches for words for a moment, then finally says, "I think you underestimate my capacity for curiosity. Shoulder or stomach first?"

Look, a shiny subject change. "Fair enough. Shoulder, I think. The stomach might be nasty.” And I don’t really want to look at it yet. He holds himself up carefully with his left arm, keeping his right relaxed and loose to help her at her task. The floral sling comes off in a trice, the gauze packing with more care. Anthony watches her work at it, studying her set and intent expression. Of course she’s not going to react to things like that like I do. I was stuck in the monastery for four years, and the rules were more rigid even than in the rest of China. No touch outside of training or the doctors. She wouldn’t be as wary of it, or feel as strongly about it. I just hope she’s not... On impulse, he murmurs, "I don't mean to offend, you know."

She doesn’t even look over at him, simply draws the last of the gauze away. Her eyes are on his shoulder wound, unfocused, and her reply comes after a small delay. "I know. I'm not offended."

"Good." Craning his neck just a little, he peers at the shoulder himself, forming his left hand’s fingers into the shu jin symbol and letting his vision find the truth of Life. "Looks like the bullet did a bit of damage on its way out,” he murmurs, eyes following the familiar contours of muscles, picking out the ragged edges that define the wound. Something small arrests his attention, a motion where there should be none. “...bleeding just a little internally." He barely notices Joule’s small disapproving murmur, thinking over the wound. "Not much to be done about it, unless... hmm." Yes... that might work.

Joule makes an inquiring noise, but his concentration is drawing to a pinpoint, finding the exact correct spot, the dispersal point in the joint. His metal fingers form another sign, then another, and he stiffens his fingers as tiny, subtle Forces begin to gather in his joint, just at the proper point. "Wish I'd paid a little closer attention in that lesson. This is a delicate bit of treatment." He shuts his eyes, knowing exactly where his strike is going to go, and after a moment’s concentration, his fingers fly in a graceful arc across the intervening distance and impact his shoulder. The delicate bow of Forces is released, dispersing precisely through the joint and its tissues, pinching off the damaged blood vessels in a dozen tiny spots. "I think... that... will hold it..."

Anthony’s eyes open to find Joule fallen back from him. Her eyes are wide with surprise, but quickly narrow in concentration and then slip out of focus as before. A line appears in her forehead as she studies what he’s done. "Huh," she grunts, an odd noise, with both disapproval and admiration. "I suppose it's better than hoping for the best.”

"A little, yes. Trick you pick up in training, if you get hit a lot."

Her eyes refocus, and she glances at him apologetically as she soaks another towel in antiseptic. He gives half a shrug, makes a quick motion of his head to encourage her, and she presses the towel to the bullet wound while her other hand curls around his shoulder in support. "I try to avoid circumstances where someone is trying to hit me," she says, wiping away crusted blood and new with the stinging towel, leaning in close to examine it.

"Didn't have the luxury, myself." He smiles calmly; the antiseptic still stings, but compared to the agony when it hit the Outsider’s infected claw-marks, the pain from the bullet wound lacks panache.

"You get into a lot of fights when you were younger?"

It’s a loaded question, and she must know it. Anthony glances down at the old scars across his right hand, remembers countless fights in many different schools, surprising countless arrogant bullies who thought the aloof wealthy kid was too smug, or too well-dressed, or just an easy target. "Yes, that too."

She glances sideways at him, opens her mouth as if to speak, then bites her lower lip firmly, pressing her lips together and swallowing her obvious question. She drops her towel on the floor next to her and reaches for the gauze.

I thought we agreed not to do that... "C'mon, Joule. You've mopped up my blood, remember?"

She looks up again, wrinkles her nose at being found out. "I have a talent for asking uncomfortable questions."

"I've noticed. Do I look bothered so far?"

Joule daubs the wound with more antiseptic, packs layers of gauze against it, and tapes down the lot. A quick glance up at him, then she smoothes down the fresh bandage and quirks her lips. "No. So why do you wind up in places where someone wants to press their knuckles into your jaw?"

"Most recently, 'cause it was part of Arrow training. Before that... well, it was a long time ago, but that was the sort of kid I was."

She nods, examining her handiwork. "And what kind of kid is that, anyway?"

Smartish, arrogant, headstrong. Kind of a little ass, really. Goes to show you. He laughs wryly. "Bit spoiled. Got into a lot of fights because I was sure I was always right. Ended up in some bad places."

She smiles at that. "You seem to have survived the experience, though. Stomach?"

He grins, nods. "I'm hard to kill." Leaning carefully back on his magical arm, he arches to give the best access he can to the dressing on his stomach. "This ought to be something." He looks down at his abdomen with a little trepidation.

Joule takes a deep breath, then begins to peel back the dressing, her face creasing in worry as she does. The tape tears out hair from Anthony’s stomach, but other than a small wince, he makes no exclamation, only watches as the wound is exposed. It carves a long, slightly crooked path almost directly across his stomach, just above the belly button. The wound itself is still livid, and the skin around the rough sutures is reddened and angry. There is no smell that might indicate infection, but that’s the best that can be said. God, that’s... pretty awful...

Joule drops the soiled bandage to the floor, eyes unfocusing yet again as she murmurs regretfully, "I should never be allowed to stitch living flesh. Ever. For any reason."

Anthony swallows his moment of dismay philosophically, manages a grim smile. "Excepting perhaps if the patient in question has only one good arm, and has been almost eviscerated?"

"Not even then," she snorts. "Well, it's not... quite as bad as I was fearing..."

He traces his fingers gingerly along the path of the wound. Not as if I’m otherwise free of scars. "I wasn't gonna win any swimsuit competitions anyway." Meditatively, his fingers find other, older scars on his torso, come up to his cheek, then follow the years-old furrow from his cheekbone, down his neck, and over his maimed shoulder. Joule, meanwhile, has torn open a new dressing, and holds it up.

"Hold this while I wash this, will you?"

He takes it without much attention, keeping his breathing even and letting his mind drift over old injuries as Joule cleans the last of his serious wounds. Finally, she takes the dressing from his fingers, watching him curiously as she carefully lays it in place.

"Penny?"

He looks up slowly, taps his fingers together with a metallic click. "Thinking about scars."

"What about them?" She holds the dressing in place with one gentle hand while she draws and tears tape.

"An old sensei of mine told me that scars are like pieces of memory. We keep them until we're ready to forget." Sifu Quien was gentle, off the training floor. Voice like old paper, fingers like steel bars.

"Do you believe that?"

"To a point, yes. The bigger the scar, the greater the injury that caused it, usually. And ready as we may be to move on from those moments... we shouldn't forget them. And the mind and heart scar less easily than the body. That says something."

"The capacity for healing is great." Joule smoothes the last piece of tape into place, and then smiles up at him. "All set."

A mercy it covers everything up so well. Maybe I’ll just keep wearing one of these. "It's much prettier than the scar's gonna be."

Joule ducks her head and blushes again. Strangely, she looks genuinely pained, her hands wringing in her lap. "I'm sorry."

He reaches out to cover her twined hands with his, wrapping hot metal fingers over her chilled digits. He finds himself, for an instant, enjoying the act itself, and blinks. I shouldn’t be touching her. "Don't worry about it. I'm still alive enough to be a smartass, I'll count my blessings."

He means it for teasing encouragement, but she shakes her head, looking unconvinced. "It's not really my forte. I'm much better with autos. I'm sorry," she says again, by then sounding thoroughly miserable.

Where on earth did this misery come from? I shouldn’t... but... He takes his hand from hers, bringing his fingers up instead to cup her cheek. He smiles, tries to be comforting, while some part of him guiltily revels in the touch. "I would've had to see it to believe it. An auto mechanic takes in a half-dead martial artist she barely knows, patches up his scrapes, buys him clothes... and then says she's sorry for not doing a better job." He leans forward, ignoring the twinge from his freshly-bandaged stomach, and touches his forehead gently against hers. The contact is absurdly comforting, with as long as he’s been without it. Stop it, Mark, or it’s about you, and not her. Reassurance, no more. "You did a damn fine job on this."

She flushes brightly yet again, but looks vaguely as if she wants to crawl into a dark hole. "It could have been better," she says faintly.

Come on, Joule, just take a compliment. Anthony breathes a laugh, and murmurs, "Joule? Shut up. You done good."

After a moment’s hesitation she pulls slowly away, the color still sharp in her pale skin, and swallows. He lets her, controlling his own urge to maintain the comforting touch. She opens her mouth, stammers out, "We should try that robe on."

Guess that was... maybe a bit much. Shit... get hold of yourself. Anthony lets his hand slip back to his lap, nods. "Yeah, probably so.” He clears his throat. “Getting up's gonna be interesting."

"You'll have to sooner or later. If you lean on me, we can get you upright." With something else to focus on, her color is fading already, her usual efficiency reasserting itself. He smiles his amusement, looks down at the blankets still draped around his waist, and shrugs.

"Right then. Guess we'll give it a shot. The worst that can happen is a few popped stitches, right?" He gathers the blanket as best he can around his waist, carefully not thinking about the horrible things that too much strain could actually do to his body. He pins the blankets – his only chance at any decency – against his hip with his right arm, then extends his other hand to Joule.

She opens and closes her mouth, evidently thinking the same disastrous thoughts, and merely says, "Yes." She positions herself under his left arm. "Here we are, then."

Anthony carefully closes his hand around her shoulder, concentrating now on not mistakenly tightening his grip. He gets his feet properly underneath himself, tenses his legs. All right. "One, two... three."

There’s a confusion of pushing and pulling, and Joule grunts, "Lean against me if you need to." Anthony hauls himself upright despite a considerable amount of pain, staggers a step into her when his wounded leg throbs, and almost loses his grip on the blanket. As it is, he wobbles, and actually has to lean on her before he finds his balance... at which point he reaches down with his left hand and hitches his blanket back up to cover himself. He can feel his own blush creeping over his cheeks.

Joule, after a moment’s pause, bites her lip over a smile. "Robe. Keep you from any further contortions to spare your delicate nature."

He reaches to the bed, grabs the robe up, and holds it out to her, glad for the out. "D'you mind helping me on with that? I think me trying to get it on with one working arm would be funnier than I could stand to be."

Joule takes the robe and unfolds it, shaking her head. "Not at all. Let's see what we can do to get you properly covered, shall we?"

It’s hard to resist being sardonic, but Anthony’s been heavily practiced in stoicism. He gingerly extends his right arm, and dryly says, "Let's."

After a series of slightly awkward movements and another close call for his modesty, Joule’s gotten him into the robe. She brushes her hands over his back gently, smoothing the garment over him, and moves around to examine it. "Better?"

He manages to tie it with a minimum of fumbling, and then stands luxuriating for a long moment in soft, warm fabric. He nods, letting his smile show, and rubs his cheek against the terrycloth covering his shoulder. "It's a wonderful thing." Joule’s return smile is brilliant, lighting her face and softening all her sharp angles. She’s about to say something more, when she’s interrupted by a sudden shrill of noise.

Anthony’s body reacts instinctively, tightening as much as it can while so injured and shifting to a more balanced, ready stance... all in the instant before he recognizes the source of the sudden noise.

Joule picks up the cordless phone with an apologetic look, hits the button on it. "Prescott Foreign Auto... can I put you on hold for a moment?" Her accent is back to the flat, generic American she used on their first day, and it sounds odd now to hear her talk that way. She presses another button, sets the phone down.

”Work calls. Let's put you back to bed."

Right. Bed... this whole standing thing got me exhilarated enough to imagine I wouldn’t have to go straight back to laying. Oh, well. “Someone's got to be useful around here." He uses her shoulder as a balancing point, taking a couple of slow, short steps back to the bed. The simple effort tires him unreasonably, and by the time he’s eased himself back to a sitting position, his objections for being in bed are buried under a wave of general exhaustion. All right, all right, body. You’re not healed yet, I get it. With the covers tucked securely over his legs, he’s reaching for the book again when a thought suddenly occurs to him, and he grumbles, "Dammit."

Her hand on the phone, Joule looks sharply up at his curse. "What?" she asks, her look of sudden alarm as comical as it is endearing.

Anthony shrugs, glancing back to her. "I was going to take the cot, make you take your bed back. This robe distracted me." He leans back against the pillows with a tired wink.

Joule, for her part, wrinkles her nose, tapping the phone against her thigh. "Absolutely not. That cot takes up too much room. As long as you're here, you're taking the bed. Now, if you'll excuse me..." When Anthony gives a very fake, long-suffering sigh, and waves her off, she sticks out her tongue at him, and answers the phone at last. "Thanks for holding... Oh, I'm absolutely open. If there's work, I'm working... What do you have? Corolla? 96? Sure. Bring her in this afternoon, we'll take a look."

Over the top of the book, Anthony watches her move across the little loft while she talks. She clatters down the steep stairs after a last glance at him, and once her coppery head has vanished from sight, he sets the book down again, glancing up at the ceiling.

Absently his fingers brush across his new robe. The right hand is flesh, blood, and bone, its movement hampered by the sling; the left is all magic and metal, and moves as smoothly as it ever has. Each gives different sensations, his magical hand feeling every stitch and variation in the cloth, while the other feels only the soft warmth of the terrycloth. He sorts through the sensations in his head, an exercise he’s performed ever since he realized how drastically different the sensations were in his magical limb. His quiet mind contrasts the perfect sensory experience of the one with the basic human input of the other; meditates on the differences and appreciates both, with the certain knowledge that the two describe the same thing. Thoughts of touch, though, lead him unwillingly back to his host, the only really compassionate human touch he’s known in years. Swiftly, he makes a similar exercise of it in his head.

Joule’s got the same difference in her. On one hand, all the facts and observations; her tumultuous past and facility with strange subjects, her halts and stammers and skirting subjects. On the other, the feelings; her uncomplicated warmth, sharp humor, and the relentless caring that not only made it impossible for her to turn from a stranger in need, but prompted taking care of him in the best and most generous way she knew. Both are her, without a doubt. Whatever harshness drove her out here, I only wish I could do something about it. Maybe in time.

Once more, Anthony rubs his cheek against the robe’s shoulder, again letting himself have the simple joy. It occurs to him that he’ll almost certainly need a shave sometime soon. And of course, I didn’t have her get razors. Well, that will make things interesting. He settles himself more firmly against the pillows, luxuriates in the warmth, and opens the book again.

Within minutes, he’s dozed off, the novel propped open on his chest. He doesn't even stir, later, when Joule gently takes the book away.

[Paolo] - Intro - Alito del Mare

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:05:30 GMT

It will all be so very different. Leaving my home of bright sun and busy streets, of the smell of oranges and olive groves, of the pomp and pleasure of the court… to be exiled to a cold, rainy country of uncivilized heathens, all because of Vittorio’s paranoia.

There’s probably a good song in that somewhere. Let me think…

Paolo started at the sharp call of a sailor, and straightened, looping the rope an extra time over his shoulder and bracing himself freshly against the gunwale. Muscles tightened all up his back as he held the rigging taut, and his face burned with embarrassment at his distraction.

Making a place for himself on the Santa Lucia had not been easy. The captain had made it clear from the outset what he thought of the bastard aristocrat that had been foisted onto his ship, with no small implication that the amount of his payment was barely sufficient to keep from tossing his charge over the side as soon as they were out of sight of land. The crew had shunned him or been outright insulting. Paolo could only assume that this was Vittorio’s doing as well, and add another mark to the tally of his half-brother’s debt.

It had been a rough voyage in many ways, having set out so late in summer, and the autumn storms had come early, just days after they passed beneath the grey glower of Gibraltar. Sickness flared up amongst the crew, not so bad as it might have been, but bad enough to kill two weak men and keep half a dozen more to their hammocks. The crew was tense and strained, they needed every able hand, and to their surprise, Paolo had pitched in without complaint.

He was no stranger to work; before his father had acknowledged him, he’d spent part of his youth, when he was not being educated, working on the country villa. He would move from task to task, helping in the olive groves, or the orchards, among the grapes, or on rare occasions, when there were no guests in attendance, working in the villa itself. After his change of station, there had been other tasks, helping with business and trade. He thanked God for the rare but cherished sea voyages Father had sent him on. The skills he’d acquired on those trips meant that Paolo knew enough to lend a hand here and there, wherever on the vessel it was needed, and to keep well out of the way the rest of the time.

Slowly, over the weeks, he’d won them over, first with hard work and then with cheer. He had always been good with people, and here was no exception. When the pace was less frantic, he inquired with the captain about many subjects, until he finally broke the man’s sour demeanor with talk of fine art. The captain hoped to bring a scupture of fine Spanish marble home to his wife in Florence, and Paolo gave him the name of a merchant in Cadiz. Among the crew, he turned insults to jests and made them laugh, and sometimes sang while he was on deck, to lend the work a good quick tempo. He ate with them and sweated with them, until at last they forgot their animosity.

It took time, but it was not the worst situation Paolo had ever improved, and compared to the dance of the aristocracy, the sailors had been simple and easy to know.

Now the salt wind whipped at him as he leaned hard on the ropes, while men aloft tied down the sails. Paolo thought of how Vittorio’s face would twist in smug disdain if his half-brother could see him now, and decided he did not care; there was sea spray, bracing against his cheeks, and a rare day of late-autumn sun that made the gray waves glisten.

On a voyage fraught with hardships he had found his happiness, much as in the rest of his life. But all his satisfaction now was dulled, by knowing it must soon end. The Santa Lucia was days away from its arrival in England, where Paolo would be thrust into the company of strangers who, like him, had been banished to this far-flung ‘honor’ of an embassy.

His cousins were there, he took solace in that. Slim Luciano with his swagger and his constant swordplay; bluff Cherubino with his rare grins. He had seen neither of them in years, and was sure they remembered little enough of him, but they were a beginning, a hope. Neither had scorned him like Vittorio and Lorenzo always had.

He tied off the rope briskly, casting his mind for the hundredth time over the other names his uncle had given him, important personages he would need to win over in order to prosper in his new position. The Duca and Duchessa, of course. The several dons and donnas who comprised the embassy. The castellana; he'd learned long ago that one could never prosper if the head of the household took a dislike. And the leader of the military men… a military Paolo would be expected to join, nevermind that he knew little of such matters. Vittorio had rather acidly suggested the clergy as an alternative (and Paolo mentally added the highest-ranking attendant priest to his list of important people), but he would never give his half-brother the satisfaction... or the peace of mind.

Besides, English women can’t possibly all be as homely as they say. And not everyone in the embassy can be married, can they? It’s an inhospitable sort of country; perhaps they’ll all be glad of a little more cheer.

Paolo looked aloft at another call from one of the sailors, following the man’s pointing arm to a line that had come loose in the aft rigging. With a grin, he leapt into the rigging, scrambling gamely up to the offending rope and bracing himself while he tightened it and tied it back into place. He allowed himself a moment’s pause, up there in the sun and the breeze, to look north. North, towards where he supposed England would soon be showing itself.

Vittorio gave me this 'honor' to be rid of me, and God help me if he didn’t show some creativity for once. I’m farther afield than I’ve ever been, and it’s a long way home. But…

He started back down the rigging, slower on the descent, and once more glanced north, a smile tugging at his lips.

I’m sure there will be enough to occupy my time. And if there’s sun to be found there, amidst the rains, I’ll find it.

I wonder if Luciano will teach me the blade.

[Anthony] - Interlude - Rei

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:29:28 GMT

Two days have passed slowly, time flowing like molasses on a cold morning.

Anthony sleeps when he can, when grief and pain will allow him. Otherwise, he spends a lot of time meditating deeply, pulling his focus together and keeping his mind clear. In the moments when he can talk with Joule, when they break through unfamiliarity and awkwardness and actually exchange a few words, Anthony finds some measure of relief and distraction. But those times are few enough.

His host lingers, watches like an eagle over her nest. She seldom stirs from the oversized armchair, generally to stretch her legs, or fetch another book from the overflowing shelf on one wall. Occasionally, awkwardly, she helps him to the flat’s tiny bathroom. And a couple of times a day, she’ll busy herself in the kitchen nook, to make a meal, or more often a fresh pot of tea. The food, gleaned from Joule’s scant cupboards, is simple and spare, which Anthony ruefully admits is all to the good; his stomach heaves at even the thought of anything more than bland food and hot tea.

He finds himself increasingly restless. If he moves more than a little, he can feel the strain on his torn body, and yet staying quiescent and quiet is driving him quietly mad. Mad enough that sometimes, when he can’t gather his focus enough to calm down, he tries getting up on his own. Inevitably, Joule is there in a flash, gentle but firm, keeping him in place and looking at him with that strange mix of admonition and amazement.

Sometime during the third night, when his stomach is itching and burning and keeping him awake, Anthony stubbornly pushes himself to one elbow, and finds himself looking over at Joule. She’s asleep on the folding cot she dragged up from somewhere in her garage, curled under a sleeping bag and an extra blanket. Her dreadlocks fan over her twined arms, glinting in the wan gleam from the streetlights outside the window. Her eyelids tremble, and her face is set in a concerned, nervous expression. Clearly, he’s not the only one whose dreams are less than pleasant.

He’s thinking around the burning from his wound, thinking on how much of a crazed disruption he must be in Joule’s life, and how adroitly she’s kept her watch over him, when it abruptly occurs to him that the more he’s restless, the more he’s just making himself part of the problem. He’s being a greater burden on her than he needs to be, and the thought brings him a moment of guilty clarity. Flushing in the dark, he eases himself back down to his side. Using his wakefulness to good effect, he turns his focus towards settling the idea firmly in his mind; that he needs now to be calm and still, to not tarnish his host's diligence or disrespect her care, by accidentally undoing her work.

Eventually, more resolved, he dozes. Real sleep wanders around him, just out of reach, touching him for brief, nightmare-laced moments. Present and past join forces to keep him from rest. Snapshots of snow and blood, howling and fire are at odds with peaceful granite walls and the drone of chanting. Black, frostbitten hands and mad laughter blend seamlessly into orange eyes and a cold, scarred smile, the flash of a long blade. Pain erupts from his stomach, sudden and real, or from his left shoulder, the ghost of torture long ended. Each time brings his eyes open in the dark, and his breathing eases only slowly.

By morning, he’s woken many times.

[Paolo] - Drabble: Waiting

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:51:53 GMT

The skies grew leaden, and the frost on the Embassy windows came and went and came to stay. We worked at the usual tasks, watching them both.

When it began, Marcello and I ran into a swirling white evening, the better to break a swift path. We spirited the midwife away like robbers, wrapped her in our cloaks, delivered her like a prize to the women.

Luciano was hiding in the chapel, and so the Bande drank for him. When he sprinted upstairs, we let him go alone, and fell silent. And when the laughter came, we roared and toasted.

[Anthony] - Waking

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 09:00:34 GMT

Anthony is dreaming.

At first, he is back in the snow, in the chaotic and bloody aftermath of the battle. He picks himself up from the ruin of the Madman’s body, lets fall the frost-rimed shards of Master Kaminari’s sword. He is looking dazedly around at the burning trees, at the wide banks of steaming fog slowly re-condensing to water, at the still-twitching pieces of the Outsiders, bereft of their energy and gradually dissolving into poisonous dust. He is stumbling to Kaminari’s still form, kneeling next to it, hoping against hope that the old man somehow survived, but the Madman’s final strike was simple and thorough. One bright blue eye stares upward from the charred remains of his face, never again to melt back to its usual penetrating black. He raises his head to the sky and is stung by wind-whipped snow as he cries out his denial, his anger.

His anger rings off the stone walls. He is in the monastery near Lhasa, kneeling on the hard stone of the terrace. Master Xiang Lung is glaring at him for his unseemly exclamation, but he doesn’t care; he is fed up with the constant rigor, the discipline, the asceticism and reserve of the other students. He gets to his feet, staggering as his equilibrium is once again thrown off by having only one arm, and stumbles into the slight Brother Kian, who takes him quietly by the shoulder to help him away. Anthony is too near tears to refuse him, leaning on the diminutive monk and burning with shame.

Shame is all he can feel as his sister Adele hugs him desperately in LAX, saying how the trip will be good for him, the time away from everything, the experience of another culture and another country. They can work out the issues of college when he gets back, she says, and Dad and Mom will have finished with the lawyers and gone their separate ways by then; everything will be less crazy and less tense. She’s trying to reassure him, and he knows she’s covering up disappointment at how he’s running away, leaving all the hard things to her. He knows she wants him to stay, but she’s the strong one, and instead she just pushes coppery hair out of her eyes and presses an absurd green-and-white scarf into his hands, a scarf she obviously knitted herself. She talks over his feeble protest, saying it will keep him warm, telling him through tears to call when he lands in Beijing, no matter how late it is.

It is very late when he wakes, and his copper-haired benefactor is drowsing next to him in a beaten old armchair, with some engineering journal open across her knees. He looks around the dark room, caught by the indefinable sense that something is wrong, tasting in the air some aura of crawling malice that feels horribly familiar. He is frozen in place by a darker shadow that moves behind Joule. It reaches out to grasp the back of her chair and at first it seems to have the bizarrely-jointed appendage of the Outsider, all ragged nails and black, crawling skin. But then light shifts and kindles, and it is a sharp-faced Chinese man with scars around his lips and flaring orange eyes, who smiles horribly as he raises a rune-bladed willow sword for a great downward slash.

Anthony tears himself awake in truth, shouting a denial in Japanese, clenching his magical hand in a desperate attempt to block the attack. Facts register quickly; the room is drenched in wan winter sunlight, he cannot feel even a whisper of Jiang Lu’s vile aura, and Joule is there, kneeling softly next to the bed, a look of trepidation on her face.

“Heya, love,” she murmurs quietly.

The events of the past day flash bright and painful through his mind with sudden clarity. His first thought is, Oh, teacher, no… and then, I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t involve her with any of this, nor with what might follow. And damned if I have any choice right now. “Don't mean any offense,” he says quietly, “but I was hoping last night was all a nightmare."

She smiles, a good, concerned smile, full of relief. He realizes it’s probably the first one he’s seen from her. "None taken. I was hoping that myself."

“You have a nice smile." He tries to echo it, reassuringly, manages a pale imitation. She was so brusque when we first met... now I’m ‘love’? "I was wondering, yesterday morning, if I smelled funny."

She colors, somewhat charmingly, and then says something unintentionally cutting. "You do... just not the way that most people can smell it."

He can’t control the reaction; he curls the artificial arm close to himself and glances away from her, stung by the reminder that even by mage standards, he’s not at all normal. She clearly catches it, and there’s more of her initial demeanor in the sharp, “Don’t,” that she quickly adds. It makes him look back at her, caution in the set of his mouth and angle of his shoulders, and she sighs, pursing her lips while she looks for words. "I'm not good with people. I'm really not good with other mages. Just... don't draw away like that. This is... uncomfortable. For both of us. But now... We've managed to invoke Hospitality. And I don't take that lightly."

Joule meets his eyes, asking without saying another word. It was an accident, and that was the one place she might have stung you. Hell... for all you know, her story is even worse. Give her a shot. Slowly, he shifts, and extends his left arm – the magical construct that so sets him apart – from under the blankets, opening his hand in invitation. Her eyes widen a little, but she barely hesitates, slowly taking his hand in hers.

As almost every time he touches something new, Anthony is freshly amazed by the tactile sensitivity of the magical digits; he can feel every callus in Joule’s hand, every work-graven line, every beat of her heart through the light pressure of long fingers on her wrist. He realizes it’s distracting him and blinks, keeping the sensations near the edge of his awareness, instead nodding soberly to her. More open-minded than most. "I won't pull away, then. It's... I know what I look like to extra senses." Carefully, he loosens his grip just enough that she could take back her hand if she wanted. "I don't know why you opened that door, but... you saved my life."

Her eyes wander, seem to light unconsciously on the magical limb, and she stares, transfixed. She’s not the worst sort, the ones who look with disgust, but she’s staring in fascination, and those people have been plenty bad in the past. After long moments, she tears her eyes away and looks him in the face. "I couldn't let you die."

"Sure you could have. It would have been easy." He gives her fingers a little squeeze of gratitude. "But you didn't.” And it was a good answer anyway, even if you stare.

She wrinkles her nose, and it turns her somewhat severe face - dare I even think it? – cute. "No. I couldn't have." Her other hand comes up to scratch at her hairline and draws his eyes there; the kerchief she has covering the dreadlocks today has half-fallen away. Her hair is wispy, copper-red... and there, woven in through the orderly dreadlocks, is actual copper wire. Wire, that’s right. I saw those last night. Is it an affectation, or...?

"Then you're better than...” Many of the Adamantine Arrow? “...than many I've known." He lets his eyes flicker deliberately over her hairline, enough to tell her it’s showing, then looks back to her face and gives what smile he can muster. "Thank you, Joule."

She blushes again and looks down; he’s not sure she got the hint. But her nose wrinkles a slightly different way, and she squeezes his metal fingers experimentally. He’s taken aback for a moment with the sensation of it; it’s been a long while since anyone held his hand this long. "You're welcome," she mutters. Her eyes are on his metal arm again, and he can see questions burning in her engineer’s gaze. Are we about to start the inquisition, then? To his surprise, though, she shrugs off her inquisitiveness and lets his fingers go, instead drawing a queer gold coin from her robe’s pocket. “We should see where sleep put us,” she says, sounding as if she’s looking for a lifeline.

After a second he realizes she must be talking about his injuries, and at the thought the dull aches and pains become more poignant. Anthony flexes his metal arm, hoping it has full range of motion back, and presses it into the bed to hoist himself up to a sitting position, letting blankets fall to pool around his waist. Swiftly he explores the feel of his own body, drawing on his training, and takes stock of himself, assessing his wounds. “Everything... feels much the same, I think." In some bizarrely-conscious portion of his mind, he realizes he’s naked in a strange girl’s bed, and fumbles to make sure the errant blankets are keeping him decent, touching his bracelet of wooden prayer beads as a means to cover the self-conscious motion.

Joule tosses the coin, murmurs a few words and catches it neatly. Atlantean make, or I’m a fool. ...Maybe both. Her eyes slip out of focus as she reaches for his shoulder, then pulls back before touching him. "May I?"

He almost laughs at her asking permission to touch him now, but keeps it to a smile. “It'd be pretty stupid of me to say no..."

Her blue eyes still unfocused, she gives a small smile and puts her hand lightly against his shoulder for a moment, then draws it down to the edge of his stomach, touching the taped-on dressings in each spot. "We'll change these in a bit, I think."

Anthony concentrates on taking his mind off the highlights of pain, off the warmth of her fingers and the chill of the air in her loft, and especially off how long it’s been since he’s been touched. He shuts his eyes, letting his breathing fall into a more meditative cadence, and walls away those portions of his mind, letting himself relax into the careful ministrations. She’s not a bad doctor, really. Bedside manner might need a little work... maybe some practice with sutures. I wonder where a mechanic learned advanced first aid. Her hands move to his back, trace over the dressing there, and he obligingly leans forward, folding his hands in his lap. Only one way to find out... but let’s not pry too hard. "The old man used to say," he murmurs, voice carefully neutral, "that fixing one kind of thing wasn't so different than fixing another. It was all in the outlook, not the knowledge." The memory of Kaminari’s crisp Japanese as he lectured is a subtle but sharp pain.

“Mmm. An interesting point, but more philosophically than literally correct." She moves toward his thigh, and he carefully flicks the blanket back enough to expose the wound. When she’s had her look there, she returns her gaze, focused again, to his face.

"You're not exactly proving him wrong, you know."

She leans back in the old armchair next to the bed – just like in my dream - and regards him curiously. "My knowledge is hard learned and there are significant gaps in it. Machines are easier than flesh. When a machine breaks down, there's a reason for it - a well defined reason for it. Living creatures... they're different. And much, much more difficult. I suppose it's the divide between man's creation and whatever god-aspect you happen to worship."

She tries to sound nonchalant, and her last sally is clearly an effort to change the subject. Anthony considers pursuing the topic for a moment, but lets it go with the calm that was drilled into him at the monastery, following her lead instead. "Is there really such a difference, do you think? Or is it all just a matter of complexity?"

"I'm not sure, actually. I used to think that the body was merely a machine of flesh, but I don't know anymore. It has aspects of the machine. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that the machine has aspects of it." Joule pulls the silk kerchief from her head and shakes out her hair. It looks like something she doesn’t do much, and he can immediately see why; there are a dozen or so copper wires, all in all, some woven into her dreads while others hang loose. She folds the cloth almost nervously, lays it over her knees. "What do you think?"

I think we’ve both got our oddities. He straightens his back and starts a gentle series of stretches, testing his range of motion without moving his right shoulder and without straining any of the bandages. After a moment, he gives a considered answer, trying not to overload her with Buddhist ideology. “I think the body is something made to house the soul. It's a pretty thing, amazing detail work, but impermanent." Hope that doesn’t throw you off.

She merely nods, asks her next question out of seeming curiosity. "What do you think of attempts to make it more permanent?"

The fact that this artifact is currently adorning my maimed ass says that making the body more permanent doesn’t work in the end. Maybe you meant exercise and clean living. Sure. "They can work. The body can always be improved. But if it's a real attempt to make the body last, then it's just spitting in the wind." He shifts the arm a little in mute demonstration.

"God or fate or life marches on, regardless of what we do." She smiles genuinely, and it softens her sharp edges into something approachable and open. "And sometimes, we march on regardless of what God or fate or life hands us."

Might almost think that point was important to you... "Everything changes. And we keep going if we're ready. Ability really has little enough to do with it." I wonder, does that mean you’re ready to talk about you? Let’s see. He cocks his head. "So how does this apply to fixing things, whether they're people or machines?"

"Only in the sense that perseverance has little to do with ability. I'll agree on that point. However the knowledge one has does not always apply..." She looks away, thinking, chewing absently on a thumbnail.

Anthony takes advantage of the small lull to probe at his right shoulder a little, exploring the tenderness of the joint. After a moment, when she hasn’t said more, he tosses out, "That's why people like us are blessed. Specific knowledge and skill isn't as necessary when we can see so clearly."

Her eyes come back to him, touch on the metal arm and the point where it meets his scarred torso. "I think your old man has a point in the wherewithal to fix things. It's... it's a compulsion, a need. There are those who destroy and those who repair. Each have their purpose."

His hand comes away from his wounded shoulder, lays carefully over one knee, Anthony beginning to become engaged. "It can be that simple, I guess. If... if Master Kaminari were here, I'm thinking he'd ask how you tell the difference." All right, that’s not going to stop hurting any time soon.

"Between?"

“Repairing and destroying. Seems pretty cut and dried, until you think about it a little while."

"Sometimes destruction is the only course, the only thing that can be done to bring some semblance of... oh, let's say balance, although nothing is ever really balanced, least of all life." She raises an eyebrow and her lips quirk a smile. "But the two are siblings, born of the same mother."

Her poetic phrasing surprises him, and draws a smile part amused, part skeptical. "She fixes cars, she patches wounds, and she talks philosophy in metaphor. Who is this girl, anyhow?" This time she blushes clear to the roots of her hair, and looks down, stuttering over whatever she was going to say. Adele used to blush just like that... they’re similar in some ways. Which is kinda awkward. Let’s keep to easier ground for both of us. He shrugs his unwounded shoulder and steers back towards comfortable philosophy. "They're two sides of the same coin. Addition and subtraction, being and non-being. Basic frame of the world. Computer scientists have this great talk about the numbers one and zero when they're really tired or drunk."

She looks up when he continues, gratitude competing with trepidation in her expression. "Do you believe that such a duality is universal?" she asks softly, color still across her cheeks.

He looks down at his hands to stop from comparing her to his sister, and smiles to cover up the stab of remorse. "There's almost nothing to believe. It's plain enough to see anywhere you look. Nothing is permanent. My only hitch in the idea is... well, I don't know if it's really a duality. I'm still trying to figure out if there actually is such a thing as non-being."

When he looks up, she meets his eyes squarely. "There is. I think it's only our fear that drives us to seek an alternative. What are we before we are created?"

I asked that same question a few times... and I’ll give you Brother Kian’s answer, rather than Master Xiang Lung’s. He grins at the thought, pain and discipline eclipsed by amusement. "Something else."

Joule smiles in response, a wry expression. "Can you define the 'something else'?"

The moment of joy fades under the weight of what’s happened, and he shrugs tiredly. "No, honestly. I think it varies for each of us. But maybe our idea of non-being is simply being something else... that we're not equipped to understand."

"Or maybe it's simply non-being, and we are ill equipped to understand that."

That’s one of the things I thought, too. Shame there isn’t a concrete answer. "Could be."

She levers herself out of her chair and takes a few steps into the tiny kitchen, and Anthony shifts, slowly, to watch her, fetching the blanket more securely around his waist when it threatens to pull away. She clicks on a burner on the gas stove and puts on a kettle to boil. He decides to pursue her a little further, see what shakes out. "Even the Outsiders are a sort of being, just radically different from what we know here. It's hard to imagine a state of total nothingness." Even if your teachers wish you could.

Joule opens a cabinet and rummages, finally pulling out a box, then retrieving a spoon from the drainboard. "I think it is harder for some than others. Contemplating the void is a fascinating exercise that every mage should engage in at least once."

"Emptiness," he murmurs, turning his metallic hand up and opening it flat. Now we’re really getting towards philosophy-overload territory. Hope you’re as patient as you seem. "There's certainly something to that. But I feel it means something different than I think most do."

Joule scoops tea from the box into a chipped china teapot with roses painted on the side. "Tell me."

"Form and being aren't permanent. Everything always changes into other things... loses identity, so nothing actually has consistent identity. Thus, nothingness. Emptiness."

"How very existential," she remarks, leaning against the counter, folding her arms across her chest.

"It is a little over-philosophical. I told the first person to tell me that that it sounded nihilistic." And boy was Master Xiang Lung pissed. You’d think nobody had ever talked back to the strict old bugger.

Joule snorts, amused. "But you found it had some merit, nihilistic wanking aside?"

He raises an eyebrow, quirks his lips in amused response to her term. "Yes, once you get what that means. The identity of each thing, whatever it has, is tied into the world around it. Dependent on everything else."

"I'll accept that for the moment. Ours is a mutable world." The kettle whistles and she turns, pouring boiling water into the teapot.

"Always." His right shoulder twinges and he tries to stretch it a little, frowning. “I think this is going to want a sling. Don't suppose you have anything that would serve?"

She glances over her shoulder, takes in his meaning adroitly. "Always." She walks the teapot over to the bedside table and sets it down along with two cups. Carefully she considers him, eyeing the arm, before turning and whisking into the tiny bathroom. He hears cupboards rattling and forces himself to wait serenely, sniffing appreciatively at the teapot, which wafts the mingled scent of green tea and brown rice amiably in his direction. After a few moments, she returns with what was obviously a sheet in a former life, decorated with faded pink posies. "This should do the trick. Apologies to your manhood."

He looks over the posies, almost snorts laughter, and schools his face to the deadpan calm that one of his teachers demanded he be able to produce at will. It made for a good poker face. "I'm Buddhist. You don't get to be one if you're not serene in the face of adversity."

She stares at him, then laughs, perching on the side of the bed while she tears the sheet. "Of course you are," she says, chuckling.

He smiles wryly, pleased to hear laughter, and simply watches the motion of her hands, forcibly keeping his thoughts once more in the present.

Joule holds the long strip of cloth an arm's length out, twists her lips. "This ought to do nicely. Here, let's see how we're going to do this." She puts a hand out to his arm, hesitating just over him, eyebrow raised, clearly either afraid of hurting him or nervous again about touching him without permission. Anthony shifts enough to give her better access, bringing to mind his own first aid training and the many improvised slings he’s worn.

“I'd say loop the breadth of it under my right arm, and tie a knot over my left shoulder." he refrains from pointing out the perfect dip in the metal joint where a sling will comfortably rest, instead simply saying, "It won't even rub too badly."

She blinks and follows the suggestion, frowning a little as she settles the cloth around his arm. "Am I right in assuming you're Arrow?"

He shrugs the sling into a slightly better position, and adjusts the knot with his left hand until it’s as comfortable as it’ll get. "Seems like the only guess you could have made, unless I were a really hardcore Mysterium."

His mind supplies a few other possibilities even while Joule fills some in herself. "Or a stupid Guardian, or a left of center Ladder or a Libertine who needed some serious help." She shrugs and sits back to pour the tea. "It's a bit weak, but that's all to the good right now."

He reaches out, accepting a porcelain cup with great care. Heat blossoms in his metal fingers, and the extraordinary delicacy of the cup takes him aback for a moment, sensation rolling up his arm. Recovering himself from that, he spends a moment breathing in the steam, relishing the smell of it, and he smiles appreciatively for her. Odd tastes you’ve got for a Montana mechanic, not that I’m complaining. "Wouldn't have expected to find... tea like this... in Montana." He tries to keep the pauses small, hoping she’ll notice and expound, keeping an eye on her through a veil of good-smelling steam.

“A friend of mine knows my taste and sends me civilization from time to time."

Ah, well. "Privacy has its downsides." He closes his eyes, takes a slow sip from the cup, and makes a pleased noise.

"I move around a bit. I don't think I'll be wintering anywhere that has an annual freeze again, though."

“Not a fan of ice and snow, eh?" He twists at mid-torso and glances to the window, contemplating the gray light. "I admit, it took me a little by surprise, too." It’s even deeper out there. Last time I saw snow like this was in Tibet.

"I'm used to snow. I'm not used to... this." She waves her hand in a gesture that indicates not only the room, but the warehouse garage, and the whole of Great Forks outside.

"What exactly is... this?" He mimes her gesture, slowly, the teacup in his hand making a slow swirl of steam.

"The snow that starts in September. The freeze that forces people to practically hibernate for six months. The lack of good curry. I like aspects of Montana. I like not feeling like I'm forced to talk to anyone. I like being alone, free to do whatever I damn well please." She shakes her head, and her dreadlocks flash copper. "I also, occasionally, like being able to find a sushi bar with fish that hasn't had to be shipped a thousand miles." She sips at her tea and folds one foot underneath her on the bed.

Anthony smiles at that thought, balancing the cup on the tips of his metal fingers. Sushi… god, I’m a bad Buddhist. "It's never as good when you're away from the ocean." It’s still a bad idea for her to be involved… and it’s got to be a strain on her privacy, her routine. Wonder if she’s just being nice about it. "You're not, you know."

"I'm not what?"

“Under any obligation to talk to me, if you don't want to.” Joke, Anthony, in case you’re being an idiot. "I once kept silent for a week. One of my teachers said it was good for the soul."

Joule gives a surprised snort of amusement, and he’s gratified that he was, apparently, being an idiot. "I'm an introvert, not anti-social. There is a difference. Besides, if I don't talk occasionally, I'll forget how."

He buries his momentary embarrassed smile in another drink of tea. Subject change. "Fair enough. You know my affiliation. Gonna tell me yours?"

"I'm not. Affiliated, that is." She winces before the second part, and Anthony wonders for a moment if she’s really been around people who are so easily offended.

Without an order… I wonder how that came to pass. It’s rare enough that someone with her obvious control goes so long without being discovered… but that means she was either kicked out or quit… probably not the best subject to broach. He carefully doesn’t look at her, schooling his expression to calm acceptance. "That usually means an even harder story than anyone else's."

Joule looks down into her teacup, and there’s something behind her eyes, a long and difficult something. She lets it go, though, and when she finally looks up, it’s with a kind smile. "My mentor was Free Council. After he died, I decided that wasn't the way I should go. None of the others appeal. We learn through experience." She shrugs as if to dismiss the whole thing, but the shift of shoulders makes Anthony suspect a great gulf of pain in her.

He meets her eyes in sympathy. "That we do. I'm sorry about your mentor."

"It happens." Yes… apparently it does. She makes an aborted motion, raising her hand as if to brush her hairline, then dropping it abruptly. Anthony’s eyes are drawn to the wires again, knowing she’s conscious of them. Maybe I should just bring them up and get it over with.

"Yeah." He tips back the rest of the cup of tea and takes a slow breath, quelling his questions and his own pain over his lost mentor. For a few moments, his thoughts dwell on Kaminari, on the clipped words, brusque wisdom, and rare, surprising hints of compassion from the aged master. When he looks up, Joule is just glancing up herself, her smile a bit sad.

"How do you feel?" She asks to change the subject, and Anthony is happy enough to do it.

He glances down, at himself, takes a slow accounting of his body and its ills. The cut on his thigh is smaller than the other major wounds, and he hardly gives it a thought, its pain entirely secondary. The scratches on his back still burn insistently, the wound in his shoulder barely noticeable until he chances to move it, at which point it erupts in fresh agony for a few moments. His stomach still aches horribly, a throbbing tenderness that might catch fire at any wrong move. He smiles grimly. "A little like I actually did have my guts ripped out." And like I lost someone important. The smile tints with sadness. "But also desperately alive."

Joule simply nods, seems to cast about for words, and finally says, "You are a man of impressive endurance."

He shrugs with only his metal shoulder. "Do you think? I'm told it's normal to feel exhilarated after you've come so close to dying." At least, when you come through it in shape enough to feel anything. This is better than before.

"I think that anyone who holds a lucid philosophical discussion the morning after... well, after that, is."

Anthony glances at his empty cup, contemplating it, briefly touching on a metaphor Master Xiang Lung once gave him, of a vessel waiting to be filled. "Would it do me any good to wallow in pain? Or grief? To spin it over and over in my head until my stomach turns and my eyes blur?" He shakes his head. "I did that once. Once was enough." That’s not true. Once at home, after Mom and Dad, and once after Jiang Lu. He bites his lip, then gives half a smile. "Twice."

Joule colors again. "I... I suppose not. I'm..." she trails off, looks into her empty teacup. Embarrassed again… ah, hell with it, let’s push the issue. I need something to fill the vessel with, and we’ll never manage it if we both keep trailing off like this. I guess I’m going to be here a while, as bad an idea as that may be.

He barks a laugh, a quick amused exhalation, and looks up at her. "Hey Joule? Make you a deal."

She looks up in her turn, eyes wide and startled. "What?"

“I'll do my best not to be self-conscious about you seeing me naked, crying, and..." he gestures with his mechanical arm, "well, exposed. And you do yours to not worry about those wires, and promise to tell me if I step on any subjects that are bad. What do you say?" Like fishing with dynamite…

Her jaw drops and for a long moment or two she can’t seem to speak. Anthony’s cheeks have started to burn from dropping such a bomb when finally, she ducks her head a little and says, "I- alright."

He quirks a grin, relieved. "I, ah... I might not be the most subtle person in the world." And the Himalayas might not be all that short.

She laughs, quick but genuine, gives a quick shake of her head and sighs. "Then we're in excellent company."

"I knew that anyway." He lets his gaze rest on her hair for a few moments, deliberately, studying the way the wires weave in and out of the dreadlocks and the indentations where they burrow into her skull. Then he shrugs. We both have our oddities… and somehow, that helps. "At least yours go nice with your hair."

She ducks her head a little, but doesn't quite blush. "I- when... at first I couldn't stop shocking myself with them. It took me awhile to figure out how to dampen the charge." She shakes her head ruefully. "I've never told anyone that."

Anthony laughs, thinking back on his own training with his new arm, wondering which horror story to tell first. "You want to compare stories? I dislocated my own wrist the first time I tried to train with this.”

Her eyes widen. "Really?"

He recalls vividly the sensation of breaking the hold he’d been put in, how effortless it had been for a moment, and then realizing with the onset of pain that he’d yanked his own bones out of alignment with the absurd strength of the magical limb. "Yeah. It's a lot stronger than... you know, than I am otherwise."

Joule lets her eyes linger on the arm, spends a while studying it like she’s been wanting to all along. "I got that impression. What's it- I'm sorry." She wrinkles her nose and gives him a rueful smile after cutting off the obvious question.

No you don’t. "C'mon, ask. I know you want to."

Emotions war across her face - embarrassment and curiosity, along with things less easily recognized. Finally curiosity wins out. "I'm sorry. I'm just... what's it made of?"

Figures I don’t know the answer to your first question. He examines the arm himself, turning it over before him, marveling as ever at the intricacy of it, at the subtle designs worked into the metal, which only show themselves at certain angles. "None of my teachers know. Some of them say it's adamantite, some say it has electrum inside it. I've even heard someone use the word mithril. Nobody seems to be able to identify it, and some of them give different answers when they describe the structure." He contemplates the fabulously complex clockwork inside the elbow joint, the only place where the inner workings are truly visible. Somehow having another see it so clearly was making him look at the arm in a fresh light as well.

Joule whistles low, tilts her head a little as she regards it. After a few long moments of her struggling to not keep asking questions, she tears her eyes away from the construct and looks back in his face. "Thank you." I’d push you for a little more, but the questions will keep.

"Anyone who mops up my blood can ask me whatever they want." I wonder… He puts the teacup down on the bedside table, still being careful with it, then extends his hand to her, curious how she’ll touch it, if she’ll touch it. She doesn’t disappoint; her eyes widen a little, and she swiftly sets her own cup down on the floor, then lightly reaches out and puts her fingers into his palm, watching the shining metal carefully.

"I'm not sure if I want to poke it more, or if I want to know how you came by it."

She glances back to him, obviously chagrined, in time to see his eyes cloud a little, his smile dim. Jiang Lu. No… not yet. "You don't want to know how I came by it, and I don't really want to tell it."

She nods, straightens and meets his eyes squarely. "I had a feeling. I think you underestimate my curiosity, though. But this..." She looks down, traces her fingers lightly over his palm, across his metal fingers. "This is not a story you need to tell."

"Thank you for understanding." He’s briefly distracted again by the sensations coming through the magical limb; the gentle pressure of her fingers, the slow brush of skin as she explores his hand. Without really thinking about it, he murmurs, "I can feel it, you know."

"Feel which?" She frowns slightly, taken aback.

He nods toward her fingers. "The touch." How could I possibly explain the difference?

"I know." She seems to think of something, and squeezes his fingers gently before letting go. "I should make some stock. Can't live on weak tea forever." She stands, and gives a bright smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. So many buried troubles… what did I step on now? "Dietary restrictions? Assuming I manage to avoid salting it with cat dander?"

"I do my best to avoid meat, in all honesty. But this is Montana, and I'm a realist."

She snorts. "I'll see what I can do to accommodate. You should rest. I'll see to scrounging up actual food."

"Thanks." More questions another time. God, I hate being an invalid. She hesitates, raises an eyebrow, clearly catching his hesitation, but he lets himself back down onto his metallic elbow and shakes his head. He's suddenly cognizant again of being exhausted. "Just being stupid. Resting is good."

"Resting is good," she agrees with a smile, and moves to the small refrigerator.

Anthony watches her movements from under his blankets, trying to resist the slow lethargy, the insistent drifting of his weakened body towards sleep. Minutes later, still stubbornly aware, his nose catches the first scents of boullion cubes dissolving to make broth. Warm and tired, Anthony realizes that he trusts this strange, lonely mage implicitly… and on the heels of that realization, he dozes off into a light but dreamless slumber.

[Anthony] - Drawn From the Snow

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 08:38:37 GMT

Anthony has been running through the snow for a long time, though some interminable while ago, he knew it had been five hours.

When he began, he’d carefully put himself into a meditative trance. He’d shut out the searing grind of his right shoulder, the flayed feeling of his torn abdomen, the dull, creeping burn from the slashes across his back. He’d wrapped himself tight in what layers he could salvage, and set magic flowing through his veins, carefully marshalling the heat in his blood and making sure it flowed all the way out to the tips of his fingers and toes.

He’d also started reaching out to his perfect sense of time every fifteen minutes, making sure his mind stayed awake and alert. He kept it up through the first hour, and the second. By the third, it had gotten harder, the strain of keeping calm and focused far worse. It got harder and harder to concentrate enough to reach for Time, and he started checking every twenty minutes instead… and then in the fourth and fifth hour, every thirty. He’d meant to keep that up as long as it took, but he somehow missed his marker the next time, and when he tried to reach again, he almost lost his crucial grip on the Forces magic keeping his blood warm. He had to stop moving and stand shuddering at the crest of a small hill for several moments before he managed to get his concentration back, and from that point on his strained meditative focus stayed on simply putting one foot before the other, moving in a straight line, and keeping himself from dying.

His unconscious mind, freed of constraint and discipline, began to wander. First to Kaminari’s ancient face lined with determination, then to the insanity of the stranger they had met in the mountains, and the shuddering icy horror of the Outsider. His wandering thoughts replayed the battle in snapshots, lurid flashes, frozen frames of noise and bloody motion.

Then even that went away, and his mind blundered through a soothing dimness that slowly darkened.

He barely notices the asphalt beneath his feet or the sullen gleam of streetlights through the blowing snow. Running into a telephone pole barely shocks him out of his stupor, and most probably saves his life. He blinks, his eyelashes crackling with ice, and looks through a gray veil around him, to find that he is almost exactly where he’d been aiming for. He gathers what tatters are left of his will and stumbles on, down a half-remembered street, falling several times and heaving himself back to his feet by main stubbornness. He falls the last time in the middle of a short drive, and finds that he can’t get to his feet.

After several false attempts, he tries to move his left arm, but can’t; it is rigid and almost entirely cold, the barest flicker of animation left in the elbow joint. Instead he starts crawling with only his right arm, and the first motion of the shoulder sends pain shooting from neck to fingertips, destroys his fragile concentration, and blows the last shreds of his carefully-held magic away. Suddenly shivering brutally, he hauls himself along with small whimpering noises, as he has not the energy to snarl, until he bumps his head on the door he’d been aiming towards. The realization is a cold and desperate one; he can go no further.

Leaning heavily into the door, he takes a moment to pray, focuses himself as best he can, and then raps as hard as he can with his right hand. It produces a pitiful sound, hardly any noise at all, and he clenches his jaw. One more time. This would be the end of it, one way or another.

Carefully he marshals the last of his will, and draws all but the final remnants of magic out of his arm. He draws back his arm, slowly and deliberately, focuses his mind into the realm of Forces, and raps on the door with what strength he has left, letting out his will and power at the same time, to focus and carry the sound. There is a satisfying thunk, which he can hear echoing through the shop and into the apartment. There was a light. Please don’t let me have imagined it, there was a light.

He slumps against the door, numb and hurting, dizzy from pain, but somehow not cold anymore, not cold at all.

He’s started to close his eyes when there is a light that comes on in the office window next to him. He makes a soft sound of protest and looks up at it, blinking as it carves into his stinging eyes. The next moment, the door is hauled open, Anthony collapses, and his world dissolves into agony.

There is someone next to him, touching him, and warmth is flowing out around him, seeping from the space inside. Some corner of his mind understands that his choice is now life or death. He plants his right arm through a blaze of pain from his shoulder, and kicks numb legs in the snow. The motion forces him gradually through the door until he’s no longer laying half-outside, and then he rolls to the side so the door can close. He tries to draw warmer air into his lungs, but he can’t seem to control his shuddering breath, and his scarf is frozen to his face. Panicking, he claws at it with his one working hard, and finally rips it partially away from his face in a scattering of frozen blood.

Someone is there, saying something, touching him. Joule. Went to… Joule. Have to explain. He tries to talk, but can get no words out through chattering teeth and shivering breath. He keeps trying. Something presses against his forehead, something warm. Warmth… It’s warm inside the office, warmer anyway, and it hurts when it hits his skin, his nose and face, his fingers… Are those my fingers!? They’re white as chalk…

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck." Joule’s voice penetrates the sluggish fog over his mind, kinder than he’d heard her before. "Anthony, can you hear me? I need to get you upstairs, all right? Do you understand me?"

Finally he manages to string a few coherent sounds together through his chattering teeth. "S-s-s-sor-r-ry. D-d-didn-n't know w-where el-else... s-sor-ry, J-j-j-" Joule. Sorry. Upstairs… right, need to walk more. Anthony fights his way to his knees, and is stopped there by the pain burning across his stomach.

He grasps for the edge of the counter, trying to get to his feet, and he smells an electric tang just before Joule gets under his right shoulder and hoists him to his feet, staggering toward the stairs. His face is against her hair, the thin dreadlocks coarse and hot against his face. Copper. She smells like copper, and heat… and soap. Something gentle. He bends his mind back to keeping his heart beating and blood flowing, and lets her guide his stumbling steps as she will, simply forcing his muscles to move along with her.

There are stairs, which are torturous, and then a short walk across a creaky floor, and then he’s sprawled onto a warm bed, getting warmer, pain surging through his limbs as feeling comes back to them.

Joule is there in front of him, her coppery hair shining in the lamplight. Wait, no, that’s actual copper. Those are wires. Her hands are moving around his feet, and suddenly there’s warmth there too. It hurts, a desperate, stinging pain. Frozen leather is peeled away from his feet, and then rigid denim from his legs. Pain drives away the last of the fog in his thoughts, finally, and lets him focus a little, get himself centered as much as he can. She might not know how to treat hypothermia. With effort, he bends the same magic that has kept his blood flowing, and circulates the heat more through the core of his body.

"Get you warm first, love. We'll worry about the rest in a bit." Joule’s voice is warm, warmer than the nearby heater, and reassuring. Anthony uses it as a focus, lets his mind settle into the rhythm of her words. Slowly he reaches up with his violently shaking right hand and tugs the scarf fully away from his face and neck, listening to the ice crackle as he does. The heat has penetrated his left arm a little, and he feels the joint unclench, the fingers clutching the overcoat relax. He shrugs to loosen that greatcoat, the one he stripped from Kaminari’s scorched body to keep himself a little warmer, and his eyes sting afresh.

His feet are wrapped, one after another, in warm towels, and there is now ice melting all over his body. He begins to be lost in a haze of pain, but Joule’s soothing tone comes again, "Talk to me, love. Tell me what happened." Her deft fingers remove the snow-crusted overcoat, unwrap it from his shoulders, and he knows what she’ll see.

The sleeve of his own coat had been torn off by that thing; he remembers the shriek of its claws rasping against metal, against the magical arm that had been joined with him years ago. She’ll stare, as everyone stares, but he feels too raw, too vulnerable; he doesn’t want to see her doing it. He averts his eyes instead, and feels Joule’s magic parting his ruined denim jacket at the seams, and the sweater beneath. She doesn’t say anything as she peels them away, not even confronted with the full spectacle of his scarred body. After a moment, he makes himself look at her; rather than his arm, her eyes are focused instead on his stomach, on the cruel slash across it, crusted with bloody red ice.

She looks away, reaches around him, and pulls a warm blanket over his shoulders, her fingers gentle. Finally, his horrible shivering begins to subside. And slowly, haltingly, he gets words out. "I'm s-sorry... figured you didn't want trouble at your d-door. C-couldn't go t-to the hospital with..." He grinds his teeth with effort and flexes his metallic fingers.

Her smile has something of amusement. "Too late for that, love. I'd send you to hospital... But I think that might be a bit hard to explain." She nods at his shining left arm. Anthony realizes vaguely that her voice has changed; flat and American before, now it’s sharply accented, British by the sound. He tries to smile, thinks he manages something close.

Her eyes are back on the tear across his stomach, where blood is starting to flow again. "I need to close that, and I can do it, but it won't be pretty. I'll leave a fuck of a scar."

Anthony regards the scar, and manages a nod, still trembling from the cold. One more scar… why not? Shame I can’t deaden the nerves yet. "I've g-got plenty more. K-keep it c-company. Not quite t-that far along in L-life, myself."

She snorts. "Getting the kit, all right?" She vanishes into another small room off to one side, and comes out a moment later with a blue metal case the size of a heavy toolbox. He gives her his first look of real amusement at the size of her medical kit. “I can't do much for pain," she says apologetically. "Lie back, I think." She takes a couple of sealed packets from the box. Oh. This… this is going to hurt a lot.

While she snaps on a pair of surgical gloves and opens a suture kit, he tests his left arm for motion, finds that the ice has mostly melted out of it. Wearily, he leans on that elbow, trusting the greater strength of his magical limb to hold him upright, then arches his back gently, stretching his stomach just a little so she can get at it from the best angle. He permits himself a moment to be amused at how often he’s had to be stitched up, to know the best angle for it, and then begins to ease himself into a meditative rhythm of breathing. It takes him a few moments, but after he achieves the proper timing, he lets himself begin to speak, the words falling as if from someone else’s lips. "We were... investigating a report. A seer brushed against something in the mountains."

Joule massages the area around the wound gently, warmth and magic seeping from her fingertips. She threads her needle and snaps on the gloves, a worried look in her eyes. "Keep going." Here we go. He draws in a hissed breath at the first pass of the needle. Just keep talking, keep the breaths even. "Master Kaminari and I... went to see. The seer wasn't sure what she'd felt... whether it was latent, a node, or a mage. So.... we went out, carefully. It was a node... never seen anything like it... Cave must have been recently uncovered... a rockslide or something. Someone else... beat us there."

A slightly errant jab of the needle draws a grunt from him, and he takes a moment to refocus his mind while her hands hover. After a moment, his breathing steadies and she continues. Joule nods, a small furrow creasing her forehead. "Did you find them?"

Insane laughter, a man unconcernedly naked in the snow, and a casual lift of his black-fingered hand that presaged that… abomination bursting out of a snowbank. "Found... us. Must have used the node... as a conduit. Don't know who he was, but... Crazy bastard called something. Outsiders." He shudders, and then flinches as her needle slips.

"Fuck. Try not to twitch, will you?" The pass of the needle is slow, deliberate, a slow stabbing of pain at each stitch. His right hand clenches in a tight fist, then relaxes.

"Doing my best. It's... fucking hard to keep focus through that." Control. Keep it together. Breathe.

She sounds slightly skeptical. "Nearly done, here." Two more stitches, then she ties the suture off. "You weren't planning to run any marathons any time soon, were you?" Bless you for that.

He takes a moment, pulls his focus back together, and calms his breathing. "We fought. Thought we killed the guy... tried to banish the demons." I swear he was dead. A hole burned straight through his guts. Demons almost did for me the same way. His right hand waves weakly at his stomach. "Master Kaminari forced them back through the rift... had it almost closed. Bastard got back up and shot me. What mage uses a gun?" Me. Master Kaminari insisted I bring it. Damn thing got torn away before I ever fired it. Would it have been different if I hadn’t? Or if I’d not hesitated?

He sags against the support of his mechanical arm, eyes casting upwards, trying to maintain a semblance of composure through pain both physical and emotional. He remembers Kaminari’s look of frustration, the swift, utterly economical gestures the old man used to force the gibbering Outsiders back and seal the rift shut. He drew closed the wailing slash in the air slowly, but as easily as sealing a Ziploc bag, and didn’t move through the scorched and frozen Madman bore down on him. "Damn old man closed the conduit before he turned to defend himself. That's why that asshole could sucker-punch him. No way he could have taken the old man, if he hadn't..." A flash of Arctic air, and then fire… gouts and blossoms of fire, while that walking corpse of a mage ranted and screamed in some bizarre language, and Kaminari writhed and tried to fight it…

He turns his face away, grief overcoming discipline, but too stubborn to cry so openly in front of her.

"I'm sorry, Anthony," Joule says after a long moment of awkward silence. "Sit up for me, will you? Let's get this bandaged." Her voice is soft, surprisingly gentle.

Grateful for the excuse, he reaches to push himself upright with his right arm, unthinking. The pain from the bullet-wound in his shoulder almost pitches him straight to his back, and he catches himself with his left arm, letting out a strained sound of agony. Joule doesn’t help him, and he’s absurdly grateful for it, pressing himself upright with the metallic arm and trying to recenter himself through the waves of pain from stomach and shoulder… and back, he realizes dully. The claws. They did connect after all.

Joule shakes her head as if to clear it, takes a sterile dressing from the box, and presses it lightly against the stitched abdominal wound, glancing up as she does so. It stings, but Anthony takes another slow breath, and eases his fingers over hers, to hold down the dressing. "You should... use both hands to tape this... probably." He meets her eyes, holds them. What on earth lends you such grace, I wonder? Lets you accept me here so coolly? Her eyes widen slightly, and suddenly she looks away, with another shake of her head. It brings attention to the wires, where they weave through her dreadlocks and are… driven into her skull, in small indentations. Oh. That… might explain part of it.

She’s cutting medical tape into lengths when he looks back, and puts all her attention into applying the tape evenly to the edges of the dressing. There is a long moment of quiet between them, and then she straightens, drawing the blanket – now bloodstained – away from his right side. "Let's take a look at that shoulder, shall we?" She gives him a brief smile, a bare twist of lips.

Anthony remembers back, searching through the haze of his long run, recalling his original, hasty diagnosis with his own Life magic. "The bullet's... lodged just under the joint. Scored a rib and fetched... up against the scapula. Or at least, it was. I doubt it's gone anywhere."

He shifts, gently flexing neck and left arm, trying to find his range of relatively painless motion. Her eyes flick to the metal arm, then back to his opposite shoulder, and they unfocus for a moment. "Still there - doesn't look like it's moved much. It's going to be a bear getting it out, though." Her gaze sharpens and she meets his gaze again with another apologetic twist of lips. That’s putting it lightly. Stitches without anesthetic weren’t enough? Gods…

His eyes ease shut with the thought of what’s to come, then open again slowly. "Yeah. It will. I'm so... damn drained... or I could get it.”

"Then don't. Rest. I've got this."

"No rest... for the wicked." If you can be graceful, I can be funny. He smiles, or tries to, and his breathing deepens again into the same slow, deliberate rhythm he used before. He reaches for Life and Forces very slowly, applying gentle pressure to his own shoulder and helping the blood flow around the wound rather than out it.

She steps away for several minutes, tinkering with something on the workbench, and he remains aware of her only peripherally, concentrating his dwindling will on maintaining even breaths and centering himself away from pain. When she comes back, she’s holding a tool, deftly created; a wire-wrapped rod that’s plainly an electromagnet. He lets out a soft laugh as he realizes how she’s going to get the bullet out, and how much it’s certainly going to hurt. After meeting her eyes again – ocean-colored, just think of the waves in rhythm – he shuts his own eyes tightly, and carefully moves his right arm out wide, to spread the wound and relax the joint as much as possible. He deliberately wraps his metallic fingers around one of the bed’s heavier supports.

"I am never going to be a subtle mage," Joule mutters, then intones a word in High Speech. There’s an actinic light, and a crackle of electricity, with the increasingly familiar coppery scent. The rod in her hand whirs softly, for a moment there is nothing… and then a sickening tug comes from his shoulder.

His right hand clamps helplessly into a fist, from pain and stray electricity. The pain doubles as his muscles clench, then redoubles as the bullet begins to squeeze its way laboriously out. Each measured breath comes out on a groan, between his set teeth. The bedframe shivers and creaks under his magically powerful left hand. The pain mounts, and mounts, until the bullet finally tears its way out of his shoulder, drawing a short, truncated cry from Anthony’s lips. Joule catches the bullet neatly, sets her tool aside and presses a towel over the freely-bleeding wound, while Anthony sags, shudders, and finally drops flat to his back.

Joule comes with him, hopping up to the bed to follow his movement and keep pressure against his shoulder. Whether as a warding gesture or for support, or possibly both, he clamps his right hand over her own shoulder and squeezes tight. "Easy, love, easy." She makes comforting noises, shushing him while his breath comes in shaky sobs, three of them before he regains a little control and steadies his breath. Slowly the grip of his hand loosens. Thank you for that… thank you… His fingers spread on his back, slide over her shoulder blade in a brief caress, before his mind catches up and he whips his fingers away. You don’t know her, what the hell are you thinking? You can’t afford that, not any more.

His eyes snap open to find her leaning over him calmly, her face clear, as if nothing had happened. "Easy. We're through the hard part." She reaches back and fishes in the medical box without looking. "Hard part's over." Bless you, live wire…

Anthony’s voice is strained and harsh from holding back cries, barely above a whisper. “Next time you... won't be so quick to open the door." Still can’t really believe you did it at all.

She barks a surprised laugh. "Perhaps," she says quietly, replacing the towel on his shoulder with another clean dressing. He doesn’t even try to help with this one, simply letting himself lie still, smoothing his hand slowly over the rumpled bedding. Joule makes short work of the wound, though, packing gauze tightly against his shoulder and wrapping it with surety and delicacy. Her smile is wide and real, warmly encouraging. "Nearly done."

Quickly, he meets her eyes again, then directs his gaze over her shoulder. Her easy confidence with the wounds and treatment, her calm in the face of the injuries, both lead him to certain suspicions, but he doesn’t want to corner her. "Wouldn't have taken you for a combat medic."

She gives a snort and leans close to his shoulder, tearing the tape with her teeth. "I'm not."

Why do I get the feeling you’re dodging? Anthony carefully stretches his magical arm out straight, relieved to find it with a full range of motion after being frozen and thawed. He slowly flexes it, testing the motion, and grazes her shoulder with his fingertips. Privately, he revels in the feeling of warm, soft cloth and her firm muscle, pleased as every time that sensation travels in such heightened fashion through his enchanted limb. He brings himself forcibly back to the question at hand. "Could have fooled me."

She ducks her head and there’s an astonishing blush that she doesn’t quite hide, red from chin to hairline. "I'm a mechanic, really."

He swallows a chuckle, leans his head back, and shuts his eyes. "Picked that up on account of how you fixed the truck." You don’t have to tell me. Don’t worry.

There's another long pause, then Joule speaks again, faintly. "You've a graze on the leg and some marks down your back. We should see to those."

All business. Marks on my back… claws… oh, god, those things and their claws. I hope that slime… "The... the claw wound will want a lot of antiseptic. Whatever you have. Those things were filthy." He doesn’t try to sit up, but traces metal fingers across his leg, stopping when he hits the gash on the outside of his thigh. "God. I don't even know how that happened."

She draws the blanket back gently, looking carefully at the wound while he gives it another experimental prod. It’s nowhere near as painful as either of the others. He shifts his metal hand away so she can see more clearly, then pauses to wonder about how his jeans came off, and how he happens to be clad in nothing more than a blanket, now almost to the point of indecency. "Er. My clothes... did you...?"

She takes up yet another clean towel and opens a small bottle, pouring some of the contents out into the towel and applying it to his thigh. It stings sharply. "They'll be repaired," she says absently, dabbing the graze and reaching for another dressing.

Controlling his flinch at the sting of the antiseptic, he reflects ruefully that the pain is probably a good distraction, with both her hands pressed firmly against his thigh. "Okay."

The package on this dressing gives her a bit of trouble, and she glances up while opening it. "You don't have any allergies to any medications you'd like to admit to, do you?"

Allergies, really? "Not unless they use cat dander in medicine in Montana."

Joule snorts again, and Anthony decides this time that her snorts are cute, and that he will never, ever tell her so. "I don't keep antibiotics on hand, so I'll have to go pick some up. This isn't precisely a sterile environment." She shakes her head as she tapes the dressing into place. "Back next. We need to sit up for this."

He’s not at all sure he’ll be able to get up, until she slips an arm under his shoulders and helps him. "Gently, now."

"Right." With her aid and the strength of his left arm, he manages to lever himself upright without seriously straining his abdomen. The topmost blanket peels away from the lower left side of his back, and he winces a little. God, her stuff is going to be lousy with my blood. "I think I owe you a new blanket..."

She shakes her head. "Blood comes out. Let's see what we've got here." She leans around him, looking carefully at his lower back, and gently traces down the long furrows. A long moment later, she murmurs another word in High Speech and traces a symbol with one finger, regarding the wounds carefully. Joule's brow furrows. "They weren't fucking around when they marked you."

She pours the antiseptic liberally over another towel and then presses it to his back. It catches him by surprise, and burns far more than antiseptic should; he can feel the sudden searing lines of the six wounds as the tiny, malignant lives within them are snuffed out. He seizes the bedframe again, clenches his jaw and tries not to bend or break her bed. "Shit... dammit... ahhh." Hell... made me forget my language again, twice now. Master Xiang Lung would give me such a look...

There's an amused snort from Joule as she finishes washing out the scratches. "Let me cover these, and I think we're done for the night."

He laughs, and there’s a touch of hysteria to it, of being utterly wrung out. "I was done for the night... about halfway through the run back here."

There’s no response to this quip for long moments while she unpackages another, large dressing, and presses it over the wounds, tapes it in place gently. Then she moves on the bed, moving around to face him again, and quietly asks, "How far?"

I don’t know. I lost track of distance. At the end of training I could run a marathon in two and a quarter hours… almost break an Olympic record. But in the snow, over hills, wounded… I have no idea how far it was. He sits with his eyes closed, thinking. "I... don't know exactly. Probably about twenty miles. Maybe a little more." At least thirty-five, and you know it.

Her hand finds his shoulder, and the touch feels tentative. "Lay back, love."

He resists the miniscule push, staying upright with head bowed. "If I lay down again, I'm not getting back up anytime soon." He cracks his eyes in time to see her nod, smiling sadly.

"I know. And right now, I think that's best."

He looks up fully, takes in her expression, then looks down at his lap. Don’t look at me like that, Joule, or I’ll start to cry. Please don’t. I need to… need to… "I don't... want to sleep. I spent too much of the last few hours trying not to sleep, 'cause I'd die if I did."

Joule leans closer and catches his eyes solemnly. Her voice is quiet, but firm. "I've got you, Anthony. You came here because you thought I could help. And I did and I can. And now, you need rest."

"You did." He holds her gaze for a long moment, then looks away. I don’t want to lose it, not now… and I don’t want to sleep. Something practical… "You don't have to worry... nothing's coming after me."

She smiles ruefully. "Good. Then you should sleep. I'll be here when you wake."

Dammit. "You're stubborn. Anyone ever tell you that?" He shifts, almost falls, and ruefully eases himself down to his left side.

"I'm told it's one of my more noteworthy traits," she says, and her smile is wry. She takes the towels, clears the mess from the bed and draws the blanket up over him. He moves his arm as if he’ll stop the blanket at his chest, but a shiver rolls over him and he thinks better of it, clumsily helping her pull the blanket all the way over his shoulders. She tucks a corner, a detail that pulls a tiny smile from him, and he moves until his hands are free of the blanket, until he can see his wrists, one flesh and blood, one silvery metal. Magical fingers find his prayer beads still around his wrist, and he lets out a small breath of relief. Quickly, he counts a silent sutra, metal clicking on wood as he shifts the beads.

After a long moment of quiet, of warmth seeping into him and cradling him, Anthony breaks the silence. "I'm sorry, Joule."

Her eyes widen. "Whatever for?"

His gaze returns to the bracelet, and to the slow cadence of the prayer beads, shifting one after another, lulling familiarity. His eyelids are heavy, inexorably sinking. Because I’ve destroyed your careful solitude. "Because everything about this place... and you, this morning, says that you like your privacy."

Joule kneels down next to the bed, rests her elbow on the edge and props her chin up with her fist, expression hard to read. Her nearness is comforting like nobody’s has been in a long time. "I do."

His eyes flicker shut, then open, and he can feel sleep pulling him down, but he wants to get the words out. "So I'm... sorry... I brought this to your door."

Soft words penetrate gently to his drowsing mind. "Be sorry later. Be well now."

Anthony shuts his eyes then, with the tingling warmth of her fingers against his face. His voice is heavy with exhaustion, a barely-audible murmur. "Might not be able to oblige you... either one..."

Her breath is warm near his ear. "I've got you, Anthony. Sleep now."

His fingers curl into the covers, and unconsciousness claims him at last.

[Anthony] - Intro - Early Frost

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:42:51 GMT

Anthony tries his best to ignore the master sitting next to him, keeping his eyes out the window of the battered old truck. Great Forks, Montana didn’t impress him at first glance; in terms of size and style, it had nothing on San Francisco or L.A. All the same, the sight of a city covered in snow is unique to him, and it’s held his eye. Apparently in Montana, winter blows in early and hard. Early November, and there must be six inches of snow on the ground.

The truck lurches as it rolls onto a street bordered by an industrial row. Reflexively he looks at the directions he wrote out earlier, but they seem to be on the proper street. Flicking his eyes over the buildings, he spots the small sign and the address number near the end of the street. His hand comes up to point, but Master Kaminari is already turning into the small drive in front of the big bay doors. Well, of course he memorized the directions at one read-through. Silly of me.

Anthony glances at the aged man as the truck rattles to a stop. His master is thin as a willow-wand, with skin like heavy parchment and a near-permanent scowl. His balding head is hidden under a heavy wool cap, and he’s wearing gloves and an old greatcoat, almost as beaten as his vehicle. As soon as the truck gasps to a halt, he turns sharp, incongruously blue eyes to his protégé. “Antony.” His voice is crisp, with an accent hanging on certain syllables. It’s the first word he’s spoken to his student in over a day. “I am going to find something to eat. Make sure truck is taken care of.”

Anthony wrinkles his nose at the missed word, and the continuing inability to quite pronounce his name right. “Listen, maybe you should wait for the mechanic. We can leave it here and get directions to some place…”

“Nonsense,” the old man cuts his off. “I will find a place, and you will stay with the truck while it is being repaired. I bring you back food.” He tries to object again, but his master continues straight over him. “And you will keep your eyes open. All sorts of strange things in Montana.” With that, he shoves the driver’s side door open, admitting a blast of freezing air. Kaminari hops out and starts off down the street, spry as a youth and implacable as a glacier, and before long is halfway down the block.

“Freaking weirdo old coot.” Anthony shakes his head and rummages through the sports bag at his feet. He pulls his old scarf fondly through his fingers, then winds it around his neck and shoves his hands in fleece-lined pockets, muttering a few choice oaths about mysterious mages and their conundrums. Then he shoves his way out into the snow himself, and quick-steps up to what looks like the office door, rapping smartly and cramming bare hands back into his pockets. Gloves. Next time I go someplace snowy, there’ll be gloves.

It takes a bit, but eventually a woman answers the door. She’s got a faded down vest on over a dark thermal knit shirt, and it takes Anthony half a moment to sort out the pants; coveralls, with the arms wrapped about her waist. She’s tall, nearly of a height with him, and athletic. His appraising glance sorts out her expression last; more than a little grumpy, with a touch of impatience flaring in sea-green eyes. Tough, and touchy. Maybe even feisty. Right then.

She waves him in, and he knocks the snow crust off his boots before skirting past her and into the much warmer office. She stays by the door for a moment, peering outside, and Anthony takes the time to shrug the chill out of his shoulders and tug the scarf away from his face. Too late, he has the thought that it might have been better to leave it. Not used to having this scar around normal people. Oh well, no helping it now. "I wasn't sure anyone would be open. The heavy snow is a little unexpected this time of year."

She arches a coppery eyebrow, and it’s almost lost under the black knitted tube that wraps her head. Reddish-copper dreadlocks spill out the back of the tube, with glints of metal in them, and this unfamiliar style draws Anthony’s practiced eye for a moment, almost making him lose her brusque greeting. "If there's work, I'm working. What can I do for you?"

He offers her a warm smile that he hopes the scar doesn’t make too ghastly, and waves a thumb out towards the truck. "The old beast out there has been rattling for the last thirty or forty miles. My uncle swears you'd have to shoot it to kill it, but I made him bring it in." I still feel silly saying he’s my uncle. Criminy, all people have to do is glance. But, the old man gets the story told the way he wants it.

The woman takes him in with a long look up and down, frank in her appraisal. Hoo… I haven’t been weighed like that since my last physical. "Let me open the doors and bring her in, alright?"

Anthony shrugs and merely offers her the keys. "All yours. Hopefully it likes you enough to move." Wretched old thing barely even starts for me. I’m almost convinced the old man told it not to.

Accepting the keys, the odd mechanic gives him another look up and down, then nods slowly. "Wait here. There's coffee in the carafe and a hot water thing for tea there." She nods towards a mini-fridge and then is out into the garage proper.

He makes tea in a leisurely sort of way, pleased to find half-decent green tea in Montana, listening to the garage door clank open. While it steeps, he casts a slow glance around the office, noting details here and there, taking a moment to applaud quietly to himself when he hears the truck’s taciturn old engine turn over. He steps into the doorway with a mug of the steaming tea to watch the woman rattle the old battleship into the garage, park it, and close the bay doors again behind. By the time the snow is again sealed outside, he’s glad of the hot mug.

The woman steps over to her space heater and twists a dial, and it kicks on with an audible thrum. She regards Anthony over the top of it. "Sounds like you've knocked somewhat loose in there." Another long look, largely unreadable. "I'll see what I can do about getting you on your way."

He nods, and eyes the rising glow of the space heater before starting to unbutton his winter coat."Much appreciated. D'you need a credit card or anything before you get started?"

Her eyes narrow; Anthony’s not even sure she’s aware of it, but something there hit a nerve. Short, perfunctory words snap like brittle metal. "There's a clipboard on the counter in the office. Just fill out the paperwork there."

He gives her a quick skeptical look, then shrugs philosophically. You’re the boss, live wire. "Will do." After a brief pause, "Thanks for the tea." Never hurts to be polite. There is something picking at his mind, a suspicion unfounded but for pure instinct.

He’s turned and is two steps into the office when his skin tries to crawl off his body. Magic, and not terribly subtle either, but it feels too tenuous to be anything but an aspect of the Sight, or something incredibly minor. His back stiffens for an instant. Mage. I was wondering. Confront her…? No. Let’s see where this goes. He keeps moving, seating himself at the table with the garage door only in his peripheral vision, and starts filling out paperwork with about half his attention. Could she be involved with the thing in the mountains? Possible, but… something says no. A little bit of patience, here…

He works his way through the forms, pausing midway to strip off the heavy jacket and toss it onto a chair. In the corner of his eye, he can see the woman dreadlock-deep under the truck’s hood, poking and prodding to the tunes of… Is that Ani DiFranco? My god, haven’t heard that in a few years. He pauses for a few moments, hand poised to write, while he sorts out the sudden electrical tang in the air, then grins to himself and ignores that, too. Unconsciously, he explores the shielding around his left arm, finding it reassuringly solid. She would have seen something, certainly, but she’d have little to no idea what, and that was enough for his pride and peace of mind both.

He drinks tea, jots down numbers, and taps the pen in unconscious syncopation until he’s finished, then tucks the clipboard under his arm and goes to stand in the doorway and resume his study of the garage. Orderly tools, generally clean. A Subaru with its hood up sits in the other car bay. Unconsciously, training takes over and he begins to note and catalogue exits and entries, potential weapons, chokepoints and places where combat advantage could be had.

Her quick, slightly aggravated tone draws his eyes back to her, to find her leaning on the fender and looking at him, still with that direct, searching gaze. "There's nothing here that ten minutes with a wrench and some nudging won't fix."

"Really? I was hoping so. If we can get on with ourselves today, it'll be all the better."

She shrugs. "I'll have you out of here in half an hour if you leave me to it."

Anthony raises a hand in a sort of surrender. "You're a miracle-worker." And really treasure your alone-time, seems like. Well, no trouble... I don’t need to invade your life any more than this. "If you want your privacy, I can try to see where my uncle got off to."

"Do that. It's bleeding cold out there." She turns back to the truck, glances under the hood again, and sings a little snatch of whatever Ani song is playing now.

Well, I’ve been pretty effectively dismissed. He pushes himself out of the doorway, deposits the clipboard on the desk. "Hope the old man hasn't frozen himself to the sidewalk. Thanks, I'll see you in half an hour or so, Ms...?" He trails off, hoping she’ll at least provide a name.

There’s a beat, but then her voice comes from under the hood. "Joule. Like the measurement."

Anthony makes an amused and interested sound. Shadow-name if ever I’ve heard one. Cute, too… and two can play that game. He collects his coat, grins. "Anthony. Like the Roman," he says, and then shuts the door firmly behind him. Probably didn’t even get a laugh. Tough crowd.

He wraps his old scarf firmly over his nose and smiles at a memory; his sister snarling at him when he teased her about knitting it. He thinks briefly about the copper-haired mage working on his master’s truck, shakes his head briefly at similarities, and has a brief moment of wondering whether Kaminari planned this from the outset. It would be the typical sort of labyrinthine crazy-old-mage scheme he’d pull on me. He contemplates it for a moment, then works his hands a bit deeper into fleece-lined pockets and crunches off down the street, following his master’s footprints in the new snow and hoping there’s a restaurant at least somewhere nearby.

As it happens, there is, and Anthony finds his rail-thin teacher meditatively cleaning a plate of bacon and eggs. As he sits down, the waitress puts down another plate in front of him without explanation, and a brief but intent debate arises, in Japanese, about seeing the future and how creepy it is to do it casually. As usual, Anthony comes out of it with more questions than he went in with, and Kaminari comes out maddeningly unruffled and unconcerned. They make a silent and contemplative pair as they trudge back up the street to the lonely little garage, where the truck sits parked outside the bay doors, slowly acquiring a dusting of snow.

Joule glances up from the desk as they step into the office. With a brief nod for the older of them, she tears off carbon copies and shoves a handful of folded paper at Anthony. Kaminari looks at her like an auger boring through soft pine, and then turns wordlessly back out the door to examine the truck. Anthony looks vaguely embarrassed, and accepts the forms without a second glance at them, folding them again and shoving them into a pocket. He’s opened his mouth to say something when the hair rises on the back on his neck, and a slight tingle of magic washes past him from outside.

Glancing reflexively over his shoulder, he sees Kaminari staring in the window, scrutinizing Joule for a moment. The old man nods, and to Anthony’s utter shock, gives a smile that creases his aged face like tree bark. Then he hops into the cab of the truck and shuts the door. Well. Didn’t expect that.

Anthony clears his throat, looks back at Joule with a bemused expression. "You got a smile out of the old man, anyway. That's more than most." And a sight better than I usually get. Not bad, live wire...

She gives a shrug, a strangely graceful lift of shoulders, and quirks a smile of her own, the first he’s seen from her. It lights her face, makes her something other than tough and sarcastic, a sudden bit of sunshine in the cold office. "I'm good at what I do." There’s no boasting to it, only simple statement, and it makes Anthony smile. He’s about to turn away, when she adds, almost spontaneously, "Good luck."

He looks at her fully again, raises his hand and fans his fingers in a half-wave. "Thanks. Hopefully we won't need it." Even if there’s a storm coming, and we’re driving out into its teeth. I’ll just feel good that we’re leaving her out of our problems. If I had to guess, she doesn’t need any more. He shrugs amicably, glad with how this has gone. "Though with the weather, we might. Take care, Joule."

He takes a last look at the woman leaning on her desk, lets himself wonder about her for a moment, then smiles and walks out the door. With any luck, that’ll be the last you hear from the Adamantine Arrow, Joule from Montana. Fortune favor your door.

He climbs into the truck’s cab, and Kaminari precludes conversation by starting the old engine and backing out of the drive. I’ll be. The old beast sounds almost new. Once they're a few blocks away, near the city limits, Anthony turns his eyes to Kaminari, who is staring unconcernedly ahead.

“…did you do that on purpose?”

Kaminari snorts. “Do what? Throw you in with strange mage, or make you interested?”

Anthony glowers. “Either one.”

The old man flicks odd blue eyes at him, then back to the road. His face betrays not a flicker of emotion. “No.”

There is a moment of silence, then Anthony ventures, more contemplatively, “Do I look odd today? Have something on my face, or something?”

“A scar and a nose. There are lemon drops in glove compartment. Give me one.”

The snow starts coming down harder as the old truck plows its cautious way west.

[Etienne] - Caught Up in the Tempest

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:49:37 GMT

February 14th, 1969.
Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Warmth. Salty heat against my lips, in my throat. So cold… that heat feels wonderful.

I swallow, weakly, and it hurts. My throat is ravaged, raw. Sea water? Whatever it was sears my throat. I cough, spit up cold salt water and bile, but I barely notice. Gone for an instant, that heat is back against my lips, and I swallow again. It hurts less… and tastes… good. Oh, God… so good…

It ignites a fire in the core of me, and that quickly I can feel my arms. One hand doesn’t work – why not? – but I grasp with the other, weak as a kitten, curling my fingers around whatever is feeding me this trickle... this amazing trickle… I want it… no… I want more.

My tongue probes roughly, and I’m rewarded with more, more heat, more life flowing into me. It’s exhilarating, and suddenly I have legs again - strong legs. I stand straight, heedless of small things that seek to push me off balance, pulling the vessel closer so I don’t miss a drop. Vessel? Wrist.

There’s a voice in my ear, and a voice in my head, but I can’t make out words; all I can hear is a pulse - my pulse? - thundering all through my body. I grasp harder, with both hands. Both hands…? But I only had one… how… My tongue searches deeper, draws more, and it’s better than any water or any wine. It’s liquid gold searing me, moonlight and ice distilled and poured down my throat. I would laugh, but it would interrupt this incredible draught.

Sudden thoughts, sensations, settle insistent and strong at the edge of my awareness. Affection, love… guilt, so much guilt. Why do I feel so guilty? Enough, love… I brush away the stray thought, but then whatever I’m drinking from is being drawn away from me, gently at first, then harder. Love, that’s enough. I clasp down to keep it, a crushing grip, strength I had no idea I had. I can feel the draught tingling and burning in my fingers. There is a hand at my shoulder, an inexorable pressure even greater than I can counter, but I fight it, every muscle bent to the task, taking as much as I can, as deep as I may… Etienne, enough!

And then I’m flung backwards to stagger in the surf, staring in shock and incomprehension at Madeline-Antoinette. She looks pale and drawn, and no longer holds the knife – what about that knife…? – in her left hand. She’s speaking, but I hear only about half of it, something about the orixa, and going home. I blink in the stinging salt and driving rain, trying to make sense of it, and I can hear her chant the closing, the dismissal.

"Exu of the crossroads, send them home. Send them away that we may call on them again. Send them home that we may give our offerings once more. Exu of the crossroads, return and have our thanks."

The wind dies down for a moment as she finishes, the waves around us slow their crashing dance. She holds out a hand to me, and says, quietly, "Come love. Let's go home."

I shake my head in the calm, flinging hair from my eyes, and wipe at my lips. I stare at her hand, remembering what this gesture means and wondering why it seems so dangerous, but I can’t think why, so I take it, slowly. Her smile as I do is sad… the sort of smile you give someone when you’ve done something incredibly painful that will be better for them.

We walk back to the shore, and as we turn, the storm surges back against us in fury, but it doesn’t seem to touch me. The crush of the waves and the force of the wind are trivial things, easily ignored. The surf sinks to our knees, lower… and then I’m suddenly torn by pain. My stomach cramps hard, and it doubles me over, teeth gritted. The second cramp throws me to my knees in the surf, the third doubles me again, and my hand grips M-A’s, viselike. I look up at her in sudden confusion, fear. What is this? My whole body jerks, twists, and pain screams up from my abdomen again. What’s going on? I cough, hard, gag, and cough again, a racking spasm that forces some awful liquid up my throat. I spit into the sea, and every muscle from my chest down suddenly contracts brutally.

“It is well, love,” Madeline-Antoinette is saying miserably, somewhere close. “It is well. Let it go, let it happen.”

My hand crushes down on hers, and my back bows, throwing my head back. I arch my face to the sky and there’s shards of wicked ice slicing through my mouth. “What’s happening to me!?”

Her arms slip around me, hold me, and even that hurts, but my muscles are too rigid to fight her away. "You're changing. I told you," she calls over the rain. "Let it happen, love. We've been at this for centuries."

My muscles relax for an instant, then squeeze even harder, and I can feel my body voiding itself, painfully. At the next lapse, I surge forward with all my strength, trying to get away, from what I don’t know. She holds close to me, and I drag us both as if she weighed nothing, flinging us a half-dozen yards to the very edge of the foaming surf. I hit the sand and can’t move, all I can do is wait, and sob with no tears, while the pain comes again… again… AGAIN… and then dies away. A twitch of my muscles, a shudder as I breathe out a rattling breath. And then I wait, a still eternity, holding my breath until I realize I don’t need to breathe.

I don’t need to breathe.

I turn to look at M-A, who’s kneeling next to me looking as though she might weep. Slowly, I sit up in the sand and the water, and run my tongue through my mouth. My incisors are longer, wickedly pointed. Fangs. Her hands finds the side of my face, and at the edge of my mind I feel relieved, so incredibly relieved. I do? No. She does. She feels relieved. I trace my tongue over my teeth again, more delicately.

“Careful, love,” she says quietly. “Those are sharp.” Her hair is limp and wet around her face, and she watches me carefully. I want to reach toward my mouth, but instead I reach for hers, because I have to see, have to know. I run my thumb over her lips, and am momentarily distracted by the feel of them… and by a surge of affection that’s subtly different than mine. She kisses my thumb, and then I slip it between her lips, parting them, opening her mouth gently. They’re there, dainty and lovely, a set of white fangs to match the ones in my mouth.

I stare at them for a moment, strangely transfixed, and then suddenly jab my thumb sharply against one. I’m rewarded with a sliver of pain, a trickle of blood when I’ve pulled my hand back.

"Come on, Etienne. Don't you think you've bled enough for one night?" Her voice is dry, and she takes my other arm in her hands, urging me to my feet. "Let's go home and dry off. You have questions and I have answers."

With her help, I rise, staggering, then shrug off her hands and stand on my own. My limbs feel strange, like they bend slightly different than they ever have before, and it takes a moment to get used to. You’ve bled enough for one night… "Looks like enough for all nights," I murmur, still wrapping my head around the idea, not quite daring to speak it aloud. Instead, I hold her gaze, look for truth in her eyes, and before long, I find it.

Without a word I turn toward the jungle path, still holding her hand, and start to walk.

She walks beside me, and we don’t speak; she somehow understand my wish for quiet… a relative term, as we walk in the midst of the howling storm, weaving through the flora and avoiding the treacherous places in the path. I look at her occasionally, needing the visual to help organize my thoughts while I put everything together, just the way she so ably taught me. My fingers are still twined in hers, and I spend a few minutes of our walk thinking about how they feel now, the way I’ve no need to move them at all if I don’t wish. But I don’t speak, not as we pass under the arch, or through the gardens, not as Roberto meets us at the door with thick, warm towels.

I catch his eyes, though, as he presses warm terrycloth into my hands. I don’t know what was in my face, but his flickers with something like fear and something like pity, and it drives a cold knife through my stomach.

M-A thanks him and leads me to her bedroom, moving directly into the bathroom and beckoning me to follow. I pause in the doorway, towel held to my chest, and let my eyes rest on her as she moves about. Finally, I give it voice, the now-organized stream of thoughts. My voice sounds cold.

"I understand now. Your blood, that was what I drank. You barely eat, and I've only ever seen you at night. Your strength, the chill in your skin when you're not ready for me to touch you. Your fangs. The way you fed at me that first night we..." I raise my thumb to the light, the tiny trickle of blood from where I cut myself on her teeth. My eyes meet hers briefly. "Vampire. Is the word." I flick my gaze to the blood for a moment, then deliberately lick it away, shivering at how wonderful it tastes. "Isn't it?"

"You're dripping on the carpet." She gestures me further into the bathroom and strips the sodden robe from her shoulders, leaving her pale and nude. "Vampire is relatively correct, but you'll find certain dissimilarities between what we are and what you read in Camilla or Dracula or any of the myriad folktales. We prefer the term 'Kindred.'"

It’s true. It can’t be true… but I feel it. How can it be other than true? I sag slightly, and only then look down at myself, at the soiled and sodden robe I’m still wearing. I can barely stand it as soon as I see it, and I pull it over my head with a shudder, dropping it on the counter when no better place presents itself.

"Dry off. You aren't going to catch your death from cold, but I guarantee you'll feel better." She takes her own advice, toweling herself dry with short, sharp strokes that remind me of how she wields a knife. A thought strikes me at that and I turn my arm over, looking for where she sliced me. I can remember it now, the two slashes, the agony of steel grating on bone, but my arm shows only a single red weal, like a shallow cut that has been days at the healing.

"You get used to it after awhile." Her voice comes from under her towel as she ruffles it through her hair, and I lift my own towel at last, soaking in the warmth of it, brushing away the water with smooth, meditative motions. I catch a glimpse of my back in the mirror as I turn, of the tattooed branches spreading over my shoulders, and I feel more centered, solid. Then I look lower, see the remnants of my rudely-released bowels, and I’m embarrassed afresh. I wet a washcloth, studiously not looking at M-A, and clean myself as thoroughly as I can, discreetly dropping that soiled cloth in the sink. She, displaying that perfect understanding she sometimes does, occupies herself tidying and rearranging cosmetics on the counter until I’ve finished and toweled myself clean and dry.

She hands me a bundle of midnight-blue silk without a word; it proves to be a dressing gown when I shake it out, sized for me. It feels and smells brand-new, never worn. I sigh over it, over what it says about her planning and her hopes… and then suddenly it crashes over me that breathing, sighing, isn’t a thing I do anymore, and I stop in mid-exhalation. My hands drift to my chest, pressing the blue silk over my heart, and I let the rest of the breath out on a laugh that sounds every bit as bitter and painful as I feel. I pull the robe over my shoulders, slipping into it like a lovely dream, close it and belt it. And then I murmur, harsh and quiet, "Yes... this is certainly going to change things."

She slips into her own dressing gown, the familiar green paisley, worn and faded and lovely against her coloring. She winds her hair into a bun, biting her lip as she does, and thrusts a pen through it. Then she finally looks at me squarely. "I wish there were another way. This way, you'll be protected for a time."

Protected. "From these others." I can’t stop examining myself, and I’ve just noticed how pale my fingernails are, without blood flowing as it should. I suddenly don’t want excuses, I just want truth. Facts. Facts are easy. "Another sect within a society... I believe you about that part. Right now... tell me the very basics. What of the stories is true?"

She moves out of the bathroom, urging me on ahead of her, moving over to the bed and pulling herself up onto it. She sits crosslegged there, and pats a spot near her, towards the foot of the bed. I almost refuse, just to be contrary, but I need to hear her explanations right now, so I sit, arranging the new robe carefully. She flashes a quick smile, quips, "I was afraid you were going to start quizzing me on politics first.” I barely restrain myself from snarling at her; I think I manage a cool regard instead. “So. As a Kindred, which is analogous in many respects to a vampire, vulgar word that it is, you are, for all intents and purposes dead. There are a variety of theories on the metaphysics of this, but we'll go into that later. As it is, we drink blood to continue surviving. As a note, try not to drink any other Kindred's blood after tonight."

"Blood. All right." I glance again at my thumb, source of the last miraculous taste I had, and let my eyes stray to the livid marks still on her wrist. "It tastes... god, how blood can taste that good..." …more… I wrench my gaze away from her wrist, hurriedly past her throat, and hold her eyes. Her eyes are safe. I look for a question. "Why not drink from others... like us?"

"Our attraction to blood is both physical and supernatural. Part of the supernatural component is that our blood is addictive, especially to kine - mortals. What you were up until tonight. Additionally, it is..." she pauses, clearly searching for words. "A bond between two Kindred can form when one drinks the blood of the other. A taste will not do it, but to drink enough to feed - as I allowed you to do tonight - will create an unnatural affection, something that is akin to love, but so much more powerful. It is something that you have no control over. To feed once will do almost nothing. To feed twice will form a lasting bond. To feed thrice will enthrall you to another and enforce subservience. It is a slavery worse than physical chains. It is the sublimation of your soul to another."

This takes me a moment to process, but I nod, slowly, wanting her to go on. "And it's worse for humans?"

"It can be. I don't generally approve of ghouling humans - that's the act of feeding a mortal your blood and binding them to you. Roberto has been an exception to my rule in this; we've been together for a very long time."

"Ah... okay." I find my eyes drifting back to her throat, but shake my head a little. I’ll need better control than this. More questions. “Obviously the sunlight thing is correct. I'm going to guess from having seen you just after sunset that the box of dirt thing is bullshit. Garlic? No, we've eaten garlic." Eaten… wait a second… I throw her a curious glance. "You've eaten."

"I have. And god, I love food. We're capable of eating, and with a little bit of effort, we can keep food down long enough to appear human. However, my post dinner trips to the bathroom are to vomit."

Why… oh, of course… food isn’t blood. If I eat I have to vomit afterwards. God. Although … "I see. No bile, though, is there? I can't imagine it's that terrible.” Another question occurs to me, thinking about things we’ve done. “We can eat. I've seen you do... other things that vampires aren't supposed to be able to. Can I still...?"

She grins, wicked and sensuous. "Have sex? Yes. You've thankfully been embraced in the prime of your life and, I might add, your sexual prowess, which is as much a benefit to me as it is to you, I promise."

It pulls a grin from me, both her smile and her compliment. "We can debate the height of prowess later." If there’s going to be a later. I suppose everything’s later now, including… oh god. My work. That thought wipes the humor away, as quickly as it came. My eyes rest in my lap, and I spend a moment in silence. "So then. We drink blood. We sleep during the day. That... that will more or less do away with my career, I suppose." I want to cry at having it said, to rail and hit her and vent my pain at this… the loss of all I wanted for the future, and so much of what I was. Remember the others. It’s not her fault, some part of me says, and is quickly answered by another, aching voice. I don’t care.

Her voice is quiet. "That is an unfortunate consequence, yes, although if you would like to continue with your political aspirations, the need is here within society - and the world is not barred to you - it is simply not as readily accessible."

Not as readily accessible, no kidding. Politics in this society? Maybe, but… god help me, everything I worked so long for... I take a deep breath against the turmoil, and realize the futility of breathing again as I’m about to exhale. I let it out, shuddering with pain and anger, and pound my fist sharply again the bed; I have to let it out somehow. "I keep forgetting I don't need to breathe now." My eye burns, and I turn away from her; I don’t want her seeing me cry.

She plucks a handkerchief from her robe’s pocket, hands it to me without comment, and I work on collecting myself while she answers me quietly. "I wouldn't completely lose the habit. You get used to it. I'm saying that a lot, aren't I? But in truth, it is important to keep our condition a secret from mortal society. We feed on them and many of us become monsters in the process. It wouldn't do to have them hunt us down while we sleep and burn our havens to the ground."

“That sounds... a bit rote. Are there rules?"

"Every society lives by them, and so do we. The ones that we generally all agree on is that we shouldn't let mortals know about us. That's called the Masquerade - I know, I know, it's a terrible name, but it translates across cultures universally. We shouldn't create others of our kind. This is the most frequently disobeyed Tradition - see exhibit A." She motions at me, quirks a faint smile. "The last one gets into a strange bit of vampiric metaphysics, which is that we shouldn't commit an act called diablerie. You're in no danger of committing it at this stage, so we'll skip that one for now."

Three rules, one still mysterious. Why am I not surprised? But there’s structure, and rules, and she broke one of them… generally the fewer rules, the worse it is to break one. The thought of losing her to some arcane vampire judgment makes my skin crawl and a chill rush up my spine. Apparently what she’s done hasn’t stopped what I feel for her. I wasn’t sure. "Okay. You're not going to be in... in trouble for... this?" I gesture at myself, pull the robe a bit closer around me.

She’s supremely unruffled. "Not from the powers that are. Many domains - a geopolitical boundary, usually centered around a city or a metropolitan area - will allow its residents the privilege of creating another Kindred if proper permissions are obtained. I am in no trouble from the one who rules this area. I'm in for some political backlash from those who were sniffing around you and attempting to manipulate you. I've taken their game piece off the board and added it to my collection. And the game I play is so different from theirs, that they don't even know what the board looks like, let alone understand the rules." There’s a certain grim satisfaction in her voice, but on the edge of my mind, I can feel worry. I wonder if she can feel me the same way. And what the hell has she gotten me into… domains, societies, sects and games; god, there’s so much...

"These others again. I... I suppose I should ask about them, I just..." I fold my arms over my chest, and squeeze my eyes shut, processing, ordering it all on top of what I’ve already learned, but... "This is so much to take in."

I feel M-A’s hand gentle on my knee, and my eyes snap open. I want to cover her hand in mine, but I can’t bring myself to touch her. It’s too monumental a choice she’s made for me, too vast a thing she’s suddenly thrust onto me. I can’t think about it, or her, fairly. "I know, love. Let's get through how to be Kindred tonight. Tomorrow we'll start talking politics. You're a bright boy, love. I'd not have chosen you if you weren't. And know that you are my choice. I'd not have allowed anyone else into my life as I have you. We play games because we are interminably long-lived. It doesn't mean that I'll allow them to be played with you until you are ready to face them yourself."

"Your choice, yours. Just like you asked me, just like I said." Slowly, I meet her eyes; I’ve thought of a thing I don’t want to know, but have to. "How old are you, Madeline-Antoinette?"

She raises her eyes to the ceiling. "Eighty-eight. Eighty-nine in June. I am young by our standards."

I laugh, and it sounds forced and rueful even to me. "Eighty-eight? My god, no wonder you call me boy. I must seem like a child..."

"And childe you are as I am your sire-" she breaks off and shakes her head. "Those are the words for our relationship. I created you, so you are my childe. That's spelled with an extraneous 'e' at the end. The creator is called a sire, regardless of gender."

I choke out another little laugh, this one genuine. "Vampires fond of being overblown, are they?"

She rolls her eyes. "You have no idea. Part of surviving with your wits and sanity intact is to keep a sense of humor - and then don't let anyone know you have one. It's part of my problem, really. I laugh too much and tell them what I think. It doesn't make me particularly popular."

"I've noticed that about you." I smile, but it’s hard. I’m starting to feel stretched, racked.

"What's on your mind, love?" I don’t look at her, and at last she pulls her hand slowly away from my knee.

"I... shit, it's finally starting to hit me. Everything... everything is different. Even you. I can't... it's hard to process it all."

M-A shakes her head sadly. "I know. There... is always a choice in these things. I've taken the one that I think is the best. You..." She trails off, bites her lower lip, nervous again. "You have so much potential. I couldn't see it ruined at the hands of the Invictus, who would keep you under their heels for so long that you would stop being who you are. The Movement wouldn't have been much better- oh, forgive me. There's too much here and I talk too much." She hesitates, reaches out for me. Her hand hovers between us, palm turned up, mute appeal. "You will love and hate me by turns. It is the way of these relationships. You will rail against me for bringing you to this and you will later bless me for having the foresight to give you what I have, possibly in the same breath. I don't ask for forgiveness for what I've done to you, but I will ask that when the time comes, you give it good thought." She is serious, all her humor gone now, and her sadness throbs gently in my mind as her hand waits for mine.

I want to touch her. For a moment I want nothing more. I could take her hand, curl into her arms. I could lose myself in her lips and her body and the beauty of her embrace, and not have to think about this anymore. No. Instead, I brush my fingers over her palm, then lowers my hand back to my lap.

"That much I can promise. I... can't really tell what I'm thinking just yet. There's too much." I look away from her, afraid that if I don’t I’ll rail at her, or possibly start to cry. My eyes find the tall windows, watch the rain lash at them for a short time. I need… I need to think. "Can I have some time alone, please?" I don’t really pause for her answer, pushing myself to my feet, away from her. The heavy silk robe slithers over me, and again I wrap it close against my chest, taking small comfort thereby.

Her hand lowers, and she nods. Her face is peaceful, but again, there’s a spike of worry, of hurt, on the edge of my awareness. "Roberto's prepared a room for you. You're welcome to the house, as much of it as you need."

I don’t respond, only walk to the doorway, feeling her worry keenly with each step. But as I reach it, a thought comes to me, and makes my gut wrench with its intensity and pain. "M-A," I say, leaning in the doorway and not looking back, "I have one favor to ask."

Her voice is subdued. "What is it, love?"

Please. "Don't leave me. You're all I have right now." With that plea, I walk on, leaving her door empty and her still sitting on her bed.

I do my best to shut away the sense of her as I move down the hall. At each door, I pause for a moment, thinking of a suitable place to go. At first, I’d thought the library, but I realize I don’t want to be in that room that’s seen so much of our intimacy. As I wander through the house, I notice Roberto discreetly nearby, and I have to admire M-A’s tenacity even as I vaguely resent his presence. He offers no comment or opinion, and it doesn’t help my search. In the end, I finally settle in the long-unused parlor, where I pull a heavy armchair over near to the windows, surprising myself with how easily I move it. I make sure it looks out on the garden, still largely obscured behind the sheeting rain, and then climb into it, curling carefully into myself.

And then I think, for a long time.

I let my mind wander where it will. It doesn’t linger anywhere for long; that will come in future nights, if a future I decide there will be. No, I run over all the simplest ideas instead, try to forge myself a coherent foundation to stand on. I think about vampires, putting together the few basics I’ve been told and extrapolating from there. I think of drinking blood to stay alive, of never again seeing sunrise.

I force myself to think for a while about my life - my previous life, I have to correct myself, my mortal life; about what this change will mean for it, what it will take away, what I can salvage. I piece together the ruins of my dreams, and it hurts. It hurts horribly.

I think of Madeline-Antoinette, of all she’s given me and all she’s taken away, all she’s been to me and all she seemingly still is.

I’m there for some time, undisturbed. I’m sure Roberto looks in on me at least once - some sense of air movement, or the phantom smell of his blood, alerts me – but he does so in silence. I can only imagine how I must have looked to him, sitting statue-still myself, my new pallor making me ghostly in the dark room, a lone dark streak tracing its way down my cheek. Perhaps not so strange. He’s been with M-A for a very long time.

Gradually, the rain lessens, eases back to a light but steady fall.

Hours have passed, slipping by one after another in a solemn march, when I finally glance at the room’s clock. Dawn is near very near, and as I lift myself from the chair slowly, I can feel it. My subconscious expects the fiery pains that would usually have erupted in me, had I sat in that curled position for hours, but they’re absent; I rise as fluidly as I sat. Instead, there is a pressure on me, a great weight settling gradually onto my shoulders. I know without knowing how that could I see the eastern horizon, it would be graying now, with a line of subtle light tracing across it.

For a moment, I think about going to watch it. But I’ve made my decision.

Madeline-Antoinette is in bed when I step into her doorway, under the covers with a book. The drapes are all drawn, and she reads by lamplight, her copper and honey hair in a loose braid. She looks up at me, over her reading glasses, and I can’t tell what she’s feeling.

It takes me a moment to speak; I don’t know where things lie between us now. Between the exhaustion of the night and the threat of dawn, I’m spent, drained to the dregs. "I don't want to..." I look away, then back to her, straightening my back. I still have my dignity. And I still have her. "Do you mind if I stay the night with you?" Dammit. The night is almost over. I bite my lip. "The... the day, I mean."

She smiles and flips back the covers next to her to reveal her goldenrod sheets. "C'mon, love. You're always welcome to bed down with me."

I’m relieved, thankful, so much so that another lump rises in my throat and I have to swallow. I walk up to the bed, reach for the tie on my new robe, and stop, watching her carefully, wondering if she actually remembers the significance. "This... would be the first time."

She nods, and the bond between us – for so it must be – sings of her affection. "It is."

That’s enough for me. I drop the silk robe over a chair, and climb in beside her. After a hesitant moment, I wrap an arm over her waist, and then find myself curling up to her, holding her to me like she’s all that’s warm or precious, all that’s worth anything in all the world. For me, this lone night, it’s true.

I listen to the rain, and M-A strokes my hair, leans to kiss me. She breathes in as if to speak, but I don’t hear her; in that instant I’m lost, sunk into a dreamless darkness, gentle as death.

[Etienne] - Storm Breaks

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:49:07 GMT

February 14th, 1969.
Sao Paulo, Brazil.

I leave the office that evening harried, angry, and confused.

I’d had mysterious meetings for half the day, including two scheduled with smug strangers of vague association, who seemed more interested in the affairs of the embassy than was warranted. They dodged around my efforts to make them get to the point, dithering on local politics and national affairs alike. One, a Mr. Quirano, asked that I come to a social event later in the evening and meet some other local fixtures who I no doubt was unfamiliar with. I did my best not to scoff at the invitation, managing polite ambivalence instead.

My surprise when Ambassador LeBlanc - and when did I stop thinking of him as Devan? - called me and ordered me to attend that ‘social gathering’ was manifest. He told me not to argue, that very important people had asked for a representative, me in particular. I knew him well enough to read worry, even fear, behind his brusque tones, and I was too stunned to question until he’d already hung up. My secretary had the details for me; a time and an address, orders to be stylish and presentable.

The rest of the day had trudged by in veiled tension, and a horrible job of work trying to arrange more meetings with local officials. To a man, they were either too caught up in their duties, or too afraid to step out of their guarded offices. The guerillas were in theory well-contained, but everyone felt their shadow, and it made my efforts at reaching out hellish. The news had begun to give storm warnings at two o’clock, warnings which had grown steadily more dire as the afternoon advanced.

I finally manage to get myself outside when it is well after dark, snatching up an umbrella against the threat of the weather. Outside, it is warm enough, but the air is heavy and tingles against the skin, legacy of the storm that’s trembled all day on the edge of breaking. There’s an electric thrill to it, a bite and a threat. I hurry out to the sidewalk, turning my collar up and slinging the umbrella over a shoulder in readiness for a downpour.

The streetlights make pools of light and darkness. I look left, right, wary of the emptying streets and the hunched figures of people hurrying to their destinations. I force my mind to details, figure if I can get home quickly, I’ll have time to grab some food, get cleaned up, and still make it to this infernal party. With any luck I can find…

I almost drop my attaché case in startlement when I see her; M-A is just across the street, leaning on the hood of a pretty little Puegeot I’ve seen in her garage, but never on the street. She’s dressed simply; jeans and a sweater, her hair gathered into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. Glancing up and down the road quickly, I hurry across to where she’s standing, but as usual, she beats me to the question.

"Things are happening faster than I would like. Do you still trust me?" Her voice is strange, edgy and tight with some nameless emotion. Oh, god, it’s good to see you, but I don’t have time for puzzles, not now…

“I… yes. But your timing is…”

"Probably terrible. What are you hurrying off to?" That’s what’s wrong with her voice; it’s too crisp, too quick. Her tone, usually smooth and at ease, is clipped and almost nervous. What…? No, no time, I just have to get on with tonight.

"Home. Things have gone more than a little crazy. There's a social event later I've been ordered to attend, some kind of diplomatic thing, the invite was vague as hell."

Her eyes narrow unaccountably. "You don't want to go to that function. Get in. I'll explain it all, but we need to hurry." She rounds the side of the car, heading for the driver’s side door.

I smile at her insistence, and it feels odd; I’ve not smiled much these last few days. "Not as if you needed to tell me that." A glance at my watch to check the time, and I run fingers through my hair. If she’ll drive me home, I’ve got more than an hour extra. Maybe that bit of relief will keep me from laughing in anyone’s face tonight. All right, fine. "I've got a little while before I have to be home, I guess."

"Come on, then." She ducks into the car, not quickly enough that I miss her biting her lower lip fiercely. I look back at the administrative annex, glancing over the few lighted windows, and swear silently to myself for a moment. Then there is a rumble overhead, and I draw myself into the car just in time.

The storm breaks at last, with a roll of thunder and a howl of wind. Rain pours down heavy and hard, pounding on the little car as she begins to drive, and for a minute I let myself forget everything that’s going on and just take it in, this fabulous deluge. I find myself hoping it will let up by the morning, or Carnival will be a very wet affair indeed. Carnival, grand celebration, great release of tension and stress that it is… I realize that I can’t wait for it. All the pressure has to go somewhere, or I feel I’ll rupture and burst. One more night to get through first. If only I believed it were going to be that easy.

I dwell on it for a little while, my pleasure in the rain abruptly forgotten. All the little things that have been accruing over the past weeks are stacking up in my head, forming patterns that feel threatening and sinister.

We’ve passed south out of the city now, along the familiar route toward her house. She hasn’t spoken, just watched the road carefully and occasionally shot me a worried glance. I open my mouth to tell her that I don’t have this kind of time, and we need to go back, but something breaks inside me, and the words that come are much different.

"M-A... something is happening around me. And it's driving me crazy, because I can't quite get the shape of it. I've had my nose to the ground the last few weeks, and there's some... god, I don't know. Some purpose behind everything that's happening lately. That mess in Brasilia that kept me here, the government clamping down on media sources... even the new spurts of guerilla activity. It sounds crazy, but I swear, it's all pointing at something. I just can't see what.” The next part, I can barely believe I’m saying even as it comes out of my mouth; I must be more weary than even I thought. "I swore, you know... after the jungle, I swore I wouldn't be afraid again. Not after that. And I haven't been, not til... not ‘til this. This scares me, M-A." I also swore I’d never speak that promise to another living soul. How do you make me break every goddamn one of my rules?

She doesn’t respond immediately, but she’s thinking about what I said. I can see her brain working at it, turning over what I said… or what she’s going to say. Finally, "You should be scared. I have an idea of what is happening to you, and I'm going to protect you from some of it, from as much of it as I can. I'm... I have a degree of influence in what happens here." Definitely thinking over what she was going to say. She glances at me briefly, keeping her attention on the road, but I can see the worry in that swift look. "I promise that I'll protect you."

I stare at her for a few minutes, trying to make sense of what she’s said. ‘I have a degree of influence...’ ‘…an idea of what’s happening to you.’ ‘…I’ll protect you.’ You and your damned secrets… My subconscious working at something intently, I stammer over a response. "To... me? But... how do you..? You'll protect me from..." Then it catches up with me, and my mind goes into a frenzy of activity. Me. That’s the thread it’s all had in common. Keeping me here. Upsetting the embassy around me and casting doubts on me. All this ridiculous social pressure. "Oh god. Me. That's... but... it couldn't be."

"Talk to me, Etienne. Tell me what you know is happening. Then we'll talk about what you surmise. Then we'll put it all together. Alright?" Her voice is calm, rational, and what little gets through only pisses me off. I shake my head, my thoughts still flying.

"No. It... I can't be the common link. It makes sense, but... then it makes no sense. Who would care enough? It's got to be some..." I can feel a throbbing headache sneaking up on me, and I drop my face into my hands, massaging at my temples while I think. "I need to talk to Devan."

"Talk to me, love. Tell me."

I look up swiftly, overreacting in my disorientation. Through the downpour, I glimpse the pillars that flank her driveway as we turn off the main road. Tell you? No, that’s not how this is going to work. "Why don't you talk to me instead? A second ago you were talking like you knew what this was all about, and it had something to do with me, now all of a sudden the walls are up again. Tell me what's going on."

She looks pained, genuinely pained. Is it just because I’m finally not going to let you slip away from an answer? "It sounds crazy."

"Then it sounds like everything else I can think of, M-A!" I realize I’ve yelled, and I don’t particularly care.

She pulls the car up opposite the main doors and kills the motor with a brisk gesture. "C'mon. We have a ritual we need to do tonight and it can't wait." Madeline-Antoinette’s out of the car before my eyes can do more than widen in anger, moving towards the door and a figure waiting inside – Roberto, no doubt. I throw my door open and get out myself.

“Get back here!” I’m yelling in earnest now. “What the hell is wrong with you?” The roar of the rain swallows my shout and soaks me to the skin in seconds, and I slam the door shut and run after her, my case and umbrella forgotten. I’m streaming water by the time I cross the threshold, and I brush by Roberto without a glance. "Dammit, M-A! This isn't a game!"

She turns abruptly to face me, her expression grave. "It is, but not the sort that you are equipped to appreciate right now. I'll talk to you while we prepare. Is that fair?" Fair? Of course it’s not bloody fair, damn you.

"I have two hours until I have to be at that event. I can't..." I lose the thread of speech, and stand staring her down, quivering with my anger and frustration, hands clenching uselessly at my sides. Why are you doing this? That though is almost too much, that my friend, my last support, is toying with me now. I swallow a painful lump in my throat, and I’m trying to put together words, for what purpose I don’t know, when she reaches out and takes my hands in hers. Her fingers are cool and strong, wet as mine are, holding mine gently and reassuringly.

"Come with me, love. I swear I will explain everything."

She tugs at my arms, just slightly, and I resist the pull. Everything. Right. How much haven’t you told me? How many volumes are you going to relate to me in this brief span? Why now, why would you do this now? I think about the party I’ve been ordered to go to, the smug glitter in the eyes of the man who invited me. I think about the storm outside and the woman in front of me, and a sudden absurd rebellion takes hold of me. I’ll give you one more chance, M-A. One more chance for all. "This is going to screw me, but right now I don't care."

Her shoulders sag, her eyes flicker, and her lip trembles as though she might cry, but she pulls herself straight. "I asked you if you trusted me, and you said yes. And when I told you that what would happen would change you, that you would not be the same person, you told me that you were already a different person. Do you remember that?"

My resistance let go, I don’t have the energy to hold up pretense, and my answer comes out short."Yes."

"I can answer your questions. I can tell you what is happening. But it comes with a price." She pulls me deeper into the dark house, towards her bedroom, and in the occasional flickers of lightning from outside, I can see her biting her lip again. Thunder shakes the ancient colonial.

Prices. I’ve paid and paid. I draw my discipline up over the pain, harden myself to it. "I... damn it, I'm yours already. You should know that. What will you have of me?" How much is it going to cost me, to love you?

"Do you mean that? Do you truly mean that you're mine?" She opens the door to her bedroom, ushers me inside. In the half-light, there are two pale swathes on the bed; robes. I go to them, look at them, but I can feel her watching me, almost looking through me. I glance back, and I’m sure I look fey in the shadows.

"As much as a free man can be." Or am I deluding myself about that?

"Put that on." She nods, gestures at one of the robes. I lift an edge, feel fine-woven white cotton. "I belong to a society of people who believe that they can manipulate the world to their liking. Some of them are more interested in politics, others finance - in my case, I'm fond of the high society crowd. Right now, you're in a position where several subsects of our society have decided that you are in a ripe position to either be manipulated for their gain - or brought into the society under them, which will ultimately be uncomfortable and possibly fatal to you."

Even as she starts to speak, I shrug the coat from my shoulders and begin peeling my sodden shirt off. I turn as I move, letting her see my back deliberately, giving her a full view of the magnificent tree that adorns my skin. It’s a symbol, her symbol drawn and inked, but it’s thoroughly mine, and I will her to see the symbolism in that as I strip away my other wet clothing.

"I was hoping that merely marking you would be enough to tell others to stay away, but I underestimated your importance and position. I can protect you more directly by bringing you into the society as my ward." She speaks clinically, like she were reading from a paper, recounting facts simple and undeniably true rather than bizarre conspiracies that seem unbelievable. I can hear the sound of her disrobing too, and for the first time I can think of, I don’t want to watch her nude. Trust that you haven’t earned after all… or maybe it's just that I haven't.

I close my eyes deliberately, and turn towards her. The robe goes over my shoulders, and I stretch high to let it fall and settle around me, trying to keep my mind on what she’s telling me, not on anything emotional. "This can't be other than true. You wouldn't play such a trick on me. Who are these people?"

"It's a large society - no one really has any idea how many people are involved. We are... god, I don't even know how to explain it, exactly." I open my eyes in time to see her lift her ritual satchel and sling in over her shoulder. "If I bring you into the society, it's a one-way trip. If you tell me to go hang now, I'll take you home. I'll leave you to your own devices, we'll never speak of this or anything else again. When I tell you that your life will change, I mean it in the most literal possible sense. You will not be able to go back to living your life the way you have."

I’m tempted to do just as she said. To tell her here and now to leave me alone, leave me out of her games. To wash myself of pain like this. But I watch her for a long moment while my mind works at what she’s said. Over and above the anguish it would be to walk away from her, there’s a problem. "I want to ask how my life will change. But you tell me there are others, who will do this to me anyway?"

"They would do it in a way altogether different than I will. I will care for you and protect you as much as I can. They would... they would use you for their own ends. And at this rate, neither sect will make a move on you for years to come, and will leave you hanging in the middle of it, twisting in the wind until they've squeezed everything useful out of you." She looks at me, and for once her eyes are unguarded; there’s pleading there, hoping. "You're too smart to not know that you're being manipulated. Knowing it and not being able to do anything about it will kill you."

It makes an awful kind of sense. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Cold logic, but there it is. If she’s been honest, then the choice is much different. I stare into her eyes from a foot away, and pray, hard, for them to keep showing me everything for an instant more. "Promise me that what you've told me is the truth."

She reaches for my hands, holds them with fingers chilled by the rain and the empty house. Her eyes stay locked with mine, still open. "Every word, Etienne."

I have to look down for a moment. Then the choice is between you or some faceless strangers. Despite all this, that’s not a choice at all. I meet her gaze again. "You’re saying my life is going to be uprooted. That everything is going to change." I pull one hand free, and brush a finger over her cheek, her lips. God, you’re so cold. "Then I would rather be with you."

She nods. "Good. Thank you. Let's go and get this over with."

Thank you. A stiff thank you. Would it be asking too much for you to show a breath of emotion when I say something like that?

I follow her, wordless, out of the bedroom and through the servant's entrance of the house into the back garden. Again, we are soaked in seconds, and I wonder what the point of the robes was. I almost avert my eyes from the lines of her body, under that now-translucent white drape, but instead I watch her almost defiantly as I follow.

M-A leads the way into the teeth of the storm, through the gardens, out the barred gate, and into the jungle. I remember the path, but in the darkness, the pounding rain, the roll and flash of thunder and lightning, I am swiftly uncertain. She is not. She moves straight and true through lashing rain and shifting foliage, never missing a step or hesitating, and it is all I can do to follow. Occasionally we find a small break in the trees, and I turn my face up to the rain, letting it wash me, clean me. I think I cry, sometime during the long walk, but I honestly can’t tell.

Swiftly, we reach the beach, that long stripe of white sand. I pause at the treeline as we have before, and study the sky; the storm is huge and powerful, still gathering its full fury, blowing in from further out to sea. There will be damage all through the region before dawn, and it is no night to be out in the fury of the elements.

I turn my eyes away from the flickers of lightning in the clouds, only to find that she hasn’t stopped. Hurrying to catch up with her, I barely draw even with her by the time she reaches the ocean, and still she barely pauses, only holding out her right hand for me to take. The surf surges around our ankles, and the waves crash mere yards away. The water is warm, but as she draws me forward, the ocean begins to batter at us, punishing the poor humans who dare to trespass on such a night.

"Open yourself to what comes," she calls over the sea and wind and rain.

I already have. I tighten my grip on her hand, brace myself against the turbulent sea, and spread my other arm in a ritual gesture, turning my face up to the boiling clouds and the brilliant dance of lightning. The lightning, when we two are standing in the sea. It should worry me. It doesn’t.

I can hear her hum, blending with the wind, and she suddenly has a ritual knife in her other hand, a wickedly sharp dagger. Her voice rises, syllables laden with power and need. "Exu of the crossroads, come and call. Allow us the way that we will come. Let in your brethren and show us the way. Open the paths and come."

The knife flashes to slice open her own arm, and I raise my voice to harmonize with her, echoing the words where I know them, the tune where I do not. I know I will be giving blood too, and I let my mind be wrapped up in the flow of the sounds and words. It is easier that way.

"Ogoun come, bring your fire. Bring your weapons. Guardian of families, come and show us your wrath. We come for you, we bring you our blood. Ogoun come." Over and over comes this chant, harsh and violent, louder and louder against the crashing of sea and storm. Lightning streaks the sky as she puts another cut in her arm, then presses the knife to mine. I expected the cut, but not how deep she makes it. It hurts less at first, and then much more; the knife certainly bit into muscle. My hand spasms involuntarily, but her grip is still steely hard, and it helps me bear up with the wound. I falter for an instant in the chant, but only an instant.

I can feel the focus change before she does it, and swing my rhythm along with hers. "Iemanja, come. Give us your wisdom, your water, your life. As the orixa were birthed from you, so too do we seek our rebirth. Iemanja, come. Give us, your children, your guidance. Give us your love, your wisdom. Iemanja, come."

A large wave, the strongest yet, breaks across our chests, and the undertow pulls us staggering forward. M-A drops to her knees, and her grip on my hand pulls me down with her. The salt water surging through the open wound is excruciating, and I cry out, trying to make it part of the invocation, lending my pain to the sacrifice. I am losing myself in it, in the rising power of the rite and the still-growing fury of the storm. I scarcely know if I am still with her; now I can no longer hear her calling out the words.

She struggles to face me, still on our knees in the waves, and I still can’t hear her, but I see her clearly in the glare. Something is wrong. There’s something else in her face, her eyes. Lightning stabs the sky every few seconds.

Something happens in that instant. The crash of waves, the roar of the sheeting rain, the continuous rumble of thunder; all of them recede suddenly into background noise. My world shrinks at the edges, narrowing down to a tiny space of flickering light and rolling water, and her. I can hear her perfectly in that instant, and she says, "I'm sorry."

Her strike is quick and hard; the bite of the knife against the meat of my arm is deep and screamingly painful. I can feel the blade snick off the bones, feel my hand go limp and useless somewhere in the midst of shattering agony. I scream, jerking at my arm, but she’s abominably strong and I can’t wrench away. I grasp her shoulder with my right hand, digging fingers in until I feel her tendons strain, and shove at her, but it’s a useless gesture; all I can do is cry out my pain and fury, let them mingle with the renewed cacophony around us.

Holy gods, what have you done to me!? This is beyond anything, beyond belief! I can feel my blood pumping out into the ocean, and already I feel fainter. I have to get this bound. I have to get it seen to, or this could kill me… kill… My mind reels; my eyes, already stinging from salt and full of the rain, blur with hot tears. Kill …was this why … was this all of it … a sacrifice, after all of this … didn’t want to believe it…CAN’T BELIEVE IT…

I thrust myself against her, flinging my whole body weight with all my remaining strength. It’s hard enough to rock her, stagger her even on her knees, and a wave crashes over our heads, swamping us both for a moment. We sprawl in the water… but her grip does not slacken, and after a choking moment she draws me back into the air and the storm-light. I have nothing left, not even words; my heart is still pulsing, the blood still throbbing its way out of my arm. All I can do is stare at her, her beautiful lips still moving in prayer, and let her see in my face what she’s done to me, even as dizziness surges over me and everything blurs.

...don’t… betrayed me, too… god, no… don’t let it… not like this… why, Madeline-Antoinette, why…?

Salt water rushes into my mouth, and I don’t remember going down again, but I can feel her holding me down.

I can’t see, can’t think anymore. It’s all blackness, shot through with lightning, the bright gleam of her eyes somewhere above me as I tumble into nothing.

[Etienne] - Drabble: Clouds

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:36:49 GMT

January-February, 1969. Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Something was happening.

There were strange currents all around me, movement in subtle social and political channels.
I sought the cause, eyes open; asking questions, searching out answers in my spare time. I was lost in it, consumed by this mysterious happening, but I couldn’t find the shape of it, no matter how I looked.

It wore on me terribly. It was harder and more stressful to do my job each day. I slept less, and fitfully; fell asleep even when talking with M-A. I was ever distracted, couldn’t concentrate.

A man in the hurricane’s eye cannot see the storm.

[Etienne] - Hints of Rain

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:35:32 GMT

February 3, 1969. Sao Paulo, Brazil.

I’m lost in the jungles. Rain pours down around me, roaring in the foliage, silvery curtains that obscure everything past a dozen yards. I’m looking for a path, but the rain has washed it away. I know, if I don’t find it soon, that there will be trouble, consequences most dire. People will be hurt if I don’t find my way.

I become aware that I am not, as I thought, alone out in the rainforest. It’s a sensation that sneaks up on me, that at the corner of my vision things are moving, marking me, coming closer in the jungle. Now and then I think I see a man standing in the shadows and staring at me, or something crouched and sleek prowling behind a tree. Every time I turn to look, however, there is only the rain battering relentlessly at the foliage, wind shifting fronds and vines, and water drizzling down from above.

I spin, as I have before, But this time, something strikes me, slamming into my shoulder and spinning me around. I look wildly around, and there is a sudden rustling all about me, a lashing of vegetation that has nothing to do with the rain. I turn to flee, stumbling blindly now, reason forgotten, and things flickering by all around in the heavy undergrowth.

The world begins to move in nightmare flashes. I trip, twist, and land heavily on my back. There are men standing all around, tall men in suits or uniforms, faceless in the storm. There is something crouched above me, graceful, lithe and scaled. I scramble. It pins me.

It reaches for my face with dripping black claws.

I wake to a touch on my face, a gentle touch I know so well, but it makes my breath seize in my throat. I start, violently, and jerk upright. M-A, somehow maintaining her gentle hand on my cheek, smiles teasingly at me. Only a dream… thank god.

“I… oh, god, I fell asleep. M-A, I’m sorry, I…”

She stops me with a finger on my lips and a widening smile. She’s perched on the arm of the chair I dozed off in. “It is well, love. But you’ll be no good to me dropping on your feet. Go get some rest.”

I pull myself more upright, rub at my eyes. “What time is it?”

“A little past two,” she says, glancing at a clock on her desk. “But no arguing. You’re off to your own bed and some real sleep.” Bending, she kisses me on the forehead, and pulls me to my feet with surprising ease. I mutter, resist, but there’s nothing for it. Her mind is made up, and soon enough I’m stepping out the front door towards my car that Roberto’s brought around for me.

The sky is striated with clouds; thick, dark masses silvered by the moon. I look over my shoulder at M-A, who’s standing in the doorway with fond eyes on me.

“It’s going to rain soon.”

She nods, smiling, but she’s biting her lip, and I know what that means. I open my mouth to ask, but she blows a kiss, gives a truncated wave, and then the door is shut and I’m nothing to do but drive back into Sao Paulo alone.

What's happening?

[Etienne] - First Seduction

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:14:18 GMT

It’s always strange, when only after having given up hope for a thing does it actually occur. Sometimes, it’s a blessing in disguise; you find that with time and consideration, the thing you wanted has paled, or your wish for it has faded. Then again, sometimes it’s otherwise. Sometimes hope and desire flare up again like a wick held to a flame, and burn all the brighter for the time they waited.

The lightswitch in the storeroom, when I finally found it, was one of the ancient round ones, a simple button. Pressing it coaxed one dusty lightbulb to life, up near the rafters, and that muted light fell over a room brimful of cardboard boxes, wooden packing crates, old chests and pieces of furniture, and the occasional shapeless, tarp-wrapped bundle. I remember looking at M-A skeptically after my first glance around, but she just gave me one of those impossible looks of hers, cheerful and enthusiastic, and moved right on in.

My reluctance was part showmanship, of course. Of any room in the house, this one was the most likely to yield up both fascinating treasures and clues as to my blond counterpart’s history. Getting to explore it would be a rare treat, I thought, even if we were looking for shrunken heads. (And I suppose it was a measure of just how far I’d come, that I took her saying that in stride and merely asked how she came by them.) After thirty seconds at most I left the room and stripped to the waist; the shirt I’d worn that night was too nice for a crawl through a grimy storeroom. I had a thin tanktop underneath, which sufficed for decency; and from the approving looks M-A gave me when she thought me distracted, apparently it looked just fine.

From there, time lost meaning.

The first thing we did was clear a corner of the room and spread an old tarp there, and an amazing amount of junk went onto that tarp at her word, to be gathered up later and thrown out. Oddments of every shape and description she dismissed, tossed onto the heap which grew steadily. I saw it begin to bother her, the detritus of her past, and soon after she stopped looking at it, and simply began handing things to me to throw away. I did, noting what passed through my hands, surmising what I could… when I had the time to think on them.

That storeroom was packed to the eaves; with treasures, with junk, but mostly with stories. Only M-A knew what she wished to save, what she no longer wanted, and what might offer a clue as to the location of her lost collection. So I moved boxes, opened crates, listed off strange things beyond number, and held items up for her inspection. Some I put back. Others I threw away. And sometimes, she told me stories.

There was never a way to tell; this thing or that might spark her memory, and she would tell some tale. These were the dried eagle’s talons an ancient vaudun priestess had given her in Louisiana. This was a graceful vase which one of her family had sent to her from Siam, from the hand of a master potter. Here were books that some ancient little man from China had sold to her in San Francisco, carefully preserved against the day she could read them. And there, a bundle of feathers, improbably golden, from some Caribbean isle without a name whose people had befriended her. The stories went on and on, each improbable, each fascinating. I listened, and I helped as she directed… and I watched her as she moved.

It was perhaps something about the dim light, or the pleasant exertion, or the cramped intimacy of her storeroom, but I found myself noticing her as I hadn’t in some time. The long line of her back, and the muscles along her shoulders as she stretched high. The way her hair escaped the ponytail and curled in red-gold strands about her face. The strength of her legs and thighs as she lifted boxes or bundles with me. She was not beautiful in the sense of the day; not hers, the long-legged, willowy grace of the pinup girls and fashion models. Hers was a far more classic beauty, lush and supple and deliciously curved. And it sang in her smile, her infectious energy and enthusiasm for the task. I hadn't allowed myself see her, desire her this way for weeks now, convinced nothing was going to come of it... but that night my awareness was simply there again, wild and wanting, and I couldn't keep my eyes from her for long. More than once I almost did myself harm with my distraction.

What happened was perhaps inevitable.

My eyes lingered over her while I leaned against a stack of boxes, watching her pry open another crate and peer inside. "Oh, I think this may be- no, no. More rodent skulls. How many muskrat skulls does one woman need, anyway? Oh! A vase!"

She held up a frighteningly ugly thing, lopsided and clearly made by an amateur with a pottery wheel. I regarded it with an indulgent smile. "Oh, very nice. Ming Dynasty, I suppose? The amazingly historically valuable first offering from the hands of an obscure Chinese fellow who grew to be the greatest sculptor of his age?"

She shot me a look, then frowned at the vase. "No, I think this was a gift. One of those things that you keep and put out when the offender comes over. Put this in the pile over there, will you?"

"I see why. Hideous thing, but made with great love." Handing it off, she turned to put the lid back on the crate, and I swiftly set the vase onto the junk pile in the corner, which was beginning to overflow the tarpaulin. "You know, obviously we're going about this in the wrong way. I've come to the conclusion that your poor mislabeled collection is going to be found in the single most inconvenient place in this entire treasure trove." From there, I regarded the room, mentally cataloguing what we had already done. "Which either means at the bottom of that pile," I said, pointing towards a stack of crates which had all proved to be absurdly heavy, "or somewhere in that one," and waved at the two huge shipping crates stacked one atop the other.

She wandered over next to me and sat down, absently reaching out a hand to me while she considered the two spots I’d pointed to. "It's probably in that one, then," she said with a gesture at the larger crates. "Those mostly have animal bones too large to fit into smaller boxes, a human skeleton, and..." She trailed off, and I took her offered hand with a grin, going into an easy crouch to stretch my legs a bit.

"And? Don't tell me you need a moment to make up something suitably spectacular?"

She squeezed my fingers and answered my smile with her own. “Ah, Etienne. Would you believe I don't remember? You are very good to an eccentric woman for putting up with all of this."

She surprised me then, raising my hand to her lips and kissing my knuckles. I laughed at it, but it was a laugh meant to cover a surging of my blood as her lips brushed my skin. God, how do I so-suddenly want her again? I covered the thought with words, a slightly different truth. "Not at all. I could go on about good honest work, but seriously, the stories in here are legion enough to fascinate me forever. It's almost hard to believe all this stuff fits in your lifetime." I pulled my hand away, not trusting myself fully while she touched me, and surveyed the two huge crates.

"Oh, I've packed quite a bit into my life. Besides, the world is built on hard work.” She stood up, just behind me, so close I could feel her over the intervening space, and pointed over my shoulder at the higher of the two. “So. That one?"

"That one. I might as well just open it up there, though. No way we're moving it, unless we want to drag Roberto down here to help and maybe rig up a pulley or two." I picked my way over to the crates, mind working at logistics, and tested a smaller crate off to one side as a foothold.

"Oh, god, Etienne. Do be careful, there." Her voice as she offered me a steadying hand betrayed her sudden worry, and it made me smile recklessly. Finding a handhold, I boosted myself to the lid of the bottom crate in a single motion. A quick shuffle secured my footing there, and I examined the crate as best I could in the wan light.

"Label's torn off this one, it figures.” I tested the lid, half-expecting what I found. “Oof, top's nailed on, too. Where did we leave that crowbar?"

She hunted for it, found it hanging off another box, and handed it up to me. "Careful, there," she repeated, clearly not expecting me to listen. I managed to avoid rolling my eyes until I was standing straight again.

"I'm often careful." I muttered it just loud enough for her to hear, knowing she’d catch the reference to another day. Just not where you’re concerned. A puff of breath blew a cloud of dust off the box, far more than I’d expected, and set me to coughing. "Good god, M-A, how long has this been up here?"

She laughed at that, her lovely, silvery laugh, and it made me glance at her for a moment. "Not that long. I only moved back this year."

"Beautiful." My hunt along the edge revealed a few likely targets, and I worked the crowbar into the first seam and heaved. It took several tries before I found a spot with good leverage, and then I set up a terrible noise of squealing nails. It took several minutes of prying and pulling before the lid came up on one side, and I set my hands underneath it, careful of the nails, and wrenched it up higher to peer inside. Packing straw, and two lines of… something… I moved to the side a little to let more light in, and looked closer… then whistled. "No heads, I'm afraid, but what look like some damned nice plates."

She craned up, interested, and it bared a lovely line of her throat as I glanced down. "Oh? Let me see."

How could I refuse? Well, maybe to make you stretch a little further. Shut up, Etienne… "Sure, if I can..." I shuffled, then leaned over the side of the crate, reaching in to lay my fingers on one of the lovely pieces, done all in red glass and gilded in complex traceries. "Got it." I started to stand, drawing my upper body carefully out of the crate, and that’s when I slipped.

There was a confusion of movement, and I remember thinking absurdly that I was damned if I was going to break that plate. Something drew a line of fire across my scalp, one foot was over open space, and then my flailing left hand caught the edge of the box with almost my whole weight upon it, and erupted in agony.

M-A clearly missed what happened. She reached up for the plate I was holding out, miraculously unharmed, put her other hand out to steady me. "A plate isn't worth your life, love. Come down from there."

I couldn’t think past the burning in my hand, and I couldn’t find purchase for my other foot. My voice was unintentionally harsh. "Take the plate, M-A, so I can use that hand."

She obliged me without bothering to look at it. "What's wrong?"

I ignored the question and heaved myself up using my right hand, until I could feel for secure footing and achieve it. "Nothing, just... bumped my head." I glanced down, carefully uncurled my left hand from its agonized grip, and simply jumped, not able to think enough to climb. I landed next to her in a crouch, suddenly dizzy. I could feel a warm trickle down my forehead. "I... ai, merde..." I reached up with my right hand and pulled myself straight, supporting myself as best I could and trying to hide my left hand from her, but she grew statue-still.

"Show me," she said, in a voice which brooked no argument.

I hesitated, then stepped a few feet back, to let the light fall more fully on me… and I lifted my hand for her to see. I couldn’t look, myself; I knew it would hurt more if I saw it, and the pain transfixed me already. There was a patter on the floor, and I realized it was my blood, and wondered how badly I was hurt. M-A simply stared, her eyes too wide, her hands frozen halfway into reaching for me. I tried to summon a smile, a rueful grin to reassure her, but I think I failed miserably; every pulse of my heart was making my hand throb anew.

After a short eternity, her eyes fluttered closed, and she drew a deep breath. For a moment it seemed she was savoring the breath, but that must have been pain distorting the truth; she was bracing herself, I thought, against the shock of it. At last, her eyes snapped open and she took my hand, firm but surprisingly gentle. "Oh, love. C'mon. Let's get this taken care of." It hurt too much for me to argue, and I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded.

Somewhere on the way out of the room, she found a dust rag we’d been using earlier and pressed a reasonably clean portion of it over my palm to staunch the flow of blood. I’d been trying to catch the patter in my other hand, and when I reached for the rag, I grazed her fingers with mine, covered in blood. It left a bright crimson smear on her pale skin, and I stammered an apology.

"A little blood never hurt me none. Here we are, let's go to my bathroom - it's closer." There was worry edging her eyes, I thought, concern in the lines of her face. She’s winsome when she worries, I thought incongruously.

She led me to the double doors at the end of the hall, into her bedroom. My fingers were spread wide by that point, rigid and white-knuckled. I barely saw the bed, in all its glory of damask canopies and dark-polished wood. With the heavy curtains covering the tall windows, the altar in the far corner was almost lost in shadows. She pulled me toward another set of double doors, and I tried for levity. "Hah... I finally get to see your bedroom..."

I’d caught her by surprise; she looked up sharply, her lips parted, her eyes gleaming in the soft light from the hall. God…

For a moment, she seemed lost, and then she looked away and tugged me into the bathroom, flicking on the more modern lights. "I- there's some peroxide under the sink. Sit there," she pointed to the toilet and crouched to rummage beneath the sink, still carefully not looking at me.

I brushed past her, close as I dared with my hand still bleeding in slow rivulets down my arm, and sat on the edge of the huge claw-foot tub instead, my heart hammering. Stop it, dammit. This is stupid. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, and she’s… she’s… But I couldn’t think, not with the pain only just beginning to numb, and not with her looking over her shoulder with eyes full of concern. She produced a plastic bottle, a clean wash cloth and some cotton bandaging, soaked the cloth in the sink and came to kneel gently in front of me on the blood-spotted tile. "Here. Let's get this cleaned up, hmm?"

She reached for my hand, and I pulled the filthy cloth away slowly, wincing as it stuck to the wound. Blood welled again when the pressure eased, and I dabbed ineffectually at it, finally extending my dusty, blood-wet hand in resignation. She took it gently and looked at it, turning it in the light to see it better before pressing the damp cloth into the wound. The pain was fresh and searing bright, obliterating my reason and bending me forward at the waist. It took all my will not to writhe and scream; I contented myself with a harsh grip on the tub and a gasping groan. When I opened my eyes, hers were inches away, and she leaned her cool forehead against mine.

"Shh. It will be well."

She brushed the cloth over my wound, reached with nimble fingers to pluck wood splinters out of it. My breath came quickly, shallowly, but I did my best to laugh, mostly so I wouldn’t cry. "It was a... ha-aa... a very nice plate. If I'd known you were... willing to tor... torture me for it..." I winced at a particularly hard press of the cloth, and she raised up slightly and kissed my forehead before leaning close to look at the jagged wound again, her eyes intent and intense.

“Here,” she murmured quietly, and kissed my wrist, and that brush of lips over my pulse undid my control, bringing my breath in a shaky sigh. She drifted past my torn palm and laid more kisses on my fingertips. Don’t, Etienne, I thought frantically, but my fingers betrayed me, pressing lightly against her lips, then more firmly, drawing a fresh well of blood from the wound.

Her sharp intake of breath did amazing things to her chest, but I had only instants to notice it; her face bent even closer and her tongue darted out over my skin, throwing my head back and my eyes shut. She licked across my palm, and then into the wound, her tongue only barely touching the skin… and it hurt deliciously, wonderfully, a mix of agony and ecstasy. She sighed deeply against my skin, and it drew another sharp breath from me, this one less of pain. The fingers of my other hand were somehow on her shoulder without covering the intervening space, digging through the t-shirt to press hard against her skin.

I looked down and she looked up, and there was blood on her lips… but she didn’t look repulsed.

She licked her lips slowly, drew back enough to whisper, "We should wrap this."

For an instant, I’d forgotten the wound. I looked down at my hand, then met her eyes again, but something in me still didn’t hear her. My fingers stole past the edge of the t-shirt to graze her neck. I managed words, somehow. "You're... probably right..."

She pulled a little further away and fumbled, opening the bottle of peroxide. I knew this would be even worse than the cloth, and though I hissed when the first splash doused my palm in a stinging and bubbling surge, her smooth skin under my other hand somehow made it more bearable. She held my wounded limb still in her strong grip and bit her lip, holding the bottle and watching the peroxide sear at me.

Somehow I got my breath back with the liquid still hissing on my hand, and caught her eyes with mine. "Either do it... or put that bottle of acid down and stop drawing it out." I smiled, trying for flippant and coming close, and she gave me an unreadable look. I could fall into those eyes and drown…

She leaned in and kissed me.

I think a surprised sound escaped me, but I really had no idea. I was stunned for a moment, and then returned the kiss, my pain momentarily forgotten. It was a simple kiss, pure and sweet, rich with subtleties of meaning I couldn’t begin to piece together. My fingers slipped behind her neck, and I sighed into her, my lips opening slightly.

She pulled away an inch or so then, leaving me gasping. Her smile was full of mischief. "That wasn't what you meant, was it?"

I fumbled for a response to her maddening grin, and found a blush creeping up my cheeks instead. "I... no. That was not what I meant."

Her gaze went down to my hand, and she picked up the roll of bandages, brushing her lips over the inside of my wrist again. "We'll have to be gentle with this," she breathed as she began to wrap it. I laughed, traced her ear with my good thumb, and teased.

"I fear I... may not be much good for moving more boxes tonight." Go ahead… suggest something else.

She completed the bandage more quickly than I would have thought, tucking the ends of the cotton neatly and precisely. "Mm. Those heads can wait." She touched my cheek, tracing a line with her fingers from jaw to collar, brushing further down to hover over my chest.

A flex of the bandaged hand hurt, of course, but then I met her eyes and found desire there, finally uncovered after weeks and months. All my rue vanished under a tide of longing, but I still didn’t know, and I couldn’t let myself presume. I clung to a shred of caution, a drowning man to a straw. "In favor of...?" If you’re playing with me now, I swear to God…

She pushed forward again, brushing her cheek against mine, and kissed me just under the ear, then against my jaw. She breathed against me, "I have something that I think will fill our time nicely." Another kiss, further down my jaw.

The hell with it. I slid my fingers back along her neck, behind her ear and into her hair, tightening them against her scalp. I turned my head into her, kissed her temple, just behind her eye. "Stimulating debate? Research?"

She rocked back on her heels and looked up from beneath lowered lashes, and I didn’t know whether to melt or catch fire. "I had... something else in mind." She pulled me towards her, but rather than go down as she wanted, I stood up, pulling her along with my grip in her hair and molding her against me in a long, heated line. One of her hands was on my chest, and my heart thudded against her cold fingers.

"Tell me... but not too many words."

Her hand snaked around my neck, and she pulled me down to her even as she rose on tiptoes, locking lips with me again. This kiss was more, so much more, pretense and propriety stripped away; a burning expanse of probing tongues and soft sounds. When she finally pulled away, she arched a red-gold eyebrow inquiringly, that singular expression I’d come to so adore. My hand pressed hard into her lower back, keeping us pressed full against one another.

I fought for breath. "What are you wondering, cherie?"

"Just wondering if I need to use any words now."

Words were exchanged, after that. It was the two of us, that was hardly a surprise. Here and there we spoke, in witty banter and breathless exhalations, gasped exclamations and a few exquisite shivering cries. But in truth, no words were needed. We spoke volumes to each other without ever voicing a syllable; spoke in caresses, in the brush of lips and the heated pressure of gazes, in the surging rhythm of bodies moving together.

No… no need for words.

Words can come later.

[Etienne] - Blood in the Water

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:21:46 GMT

I’d been waiting for her most of the night. I’d come a couple hours after sunset, hoping to talk and not entirely sure what I was going to say, but needing to have something out. After greeting Roberto, who told me she wasn’t there, I took a book and a few candles out on the terrace to sit, read, and watch for her. Thankfully it was a clear night… though there was something in the air, a stirring and a foreboding. I leaned closer to my candles and did my best to ignore the feeling.

I end up sitting out there for quite a few hours, long enough to get engrossed in a rare account by a Haitian vaudun priest. By the time I stand up and stretch, it’s getting close on dawn, and there’s still no sign of M-A. I draw a few conclusions, feel freshly put out, and decide to walk home. I have things to put into place anyhow; it couldn’t hurt to start. I realize I’m hungry – ravenous, really, how many days since I fed? – and resolve also to eat before dawn.

Book returned to its place, I gather up my jacket and set out. Really, I should know better.

I get to the end of the drive, my shoes crunching on the gravel, and glance at the road by habit. There, also on foot and coming from the direction of town, is a familiar figure. Perhaps I’ll get that talk after all. "M-A? What are you-?" And then, I cut off, because I can see the blood soaking her shirt, her shoes and coat in her hands and her feet leaving bloody prints behind her. A sudden rush of concern hits me, and I call, louder, "M-A?!"

She looks up at me, and it’s the non-recognition on her face that both makes me run to her, and makes me stop before I touch her. She’s well dressed, but worn. Bloody tears trickle down her cheeks, smeared by her hands… blood is all down her blouse, on her cuffs, in her hair. How long have you been crying? What’s happened to you, and why would you walk home? It must be something to do with St. Julian, but... "...what happened?" I don’t get an answer; she only shakes her head and hugs her shoes and coat close.

I quash whatever anger flares in me at that, instead step into her and put my arms around her. She’s my sire, my closest friend; what else can I do? There’s a tiny part of me that notices the blood soaking into the cream-colored linen of my suit, and how good it smells. A larger part’s waiting for her to shove me away, but instead, she dissolves, folds herself against me and sobs in earnest against my shoulder.

It’s that which makes me do as I do; that complete release, the helpless crying. It’s a thing I’ve never once seen in her, not in four years, and I sweep her off her feet, cradling her against my chest. I forget how small she really is. She always seems taller. I nestle her against my shoulder and she clings there, burying her face in my neck, crying hard, wracking tears. I whisper French into her hair, the French of my childhood, tiny comforting things that my mother murmured to me when I was a crying boy. I sing, just a little, rocking her gently in my arms, and walk up back up the long drive to her front door. I get it open with my hip, nudge it closed with a foot, and then I’m hurrying cautiously through the halls toward her room.

I collect Roberto with a glance, though perhaps it’s M-A held in my arms that commands his attention; no matter, he follows me. I try never to presume on his obeying me; he belongs to her, not me, and he’s made that plain on rare occasion, in private. But tonight, I don’t even think about it, I simply fire orders at him in Portuguese, and he does as I say, moving off into the master bathroom to draw the hottest bath he can. I put my sire down on the edge of the bed, keeping her legs – and her lacerated feet - elevated with one arm.

Finally, Madeleine-Antoinette looks up, and seems to register where we are. Though her shoes are still firmly in her grasp, her coat slips out of her fingers, falling across her knees. Her voice is wondering, confused. "It's almost dawn."

I take the coat from her gently, toss it aside, and cover her fingers with mine. Her skin actually feels warm, and I realize how hungry I am, that my own skin must be freezing cold. "Sunrise is perhaps half an hour away. And your curtains are thick." God, what did he do? Could it have been someone else, or is he dead…? No, anything serious and she would have called. This is all emotion, which means it’s all his goddamn fault. I uncurl her fingers from the shoes, take them from her and drop them to the side as well. She looks alarmed when I take them, as if surprised she were still holding on, and then her eyes widen.

"Oh! What happened? Are you all right?" She points at my chest with a bloody finger, worry in her voice, and it takes me a moment to realize that she’s talking about the blood, her blood, all over my suit. She doesn’t know she’s crying? I wet a fingertip in my mouth, and rub it over her cheek, collecting a bit of her bloody tears, and hold it up where she can see. "Oh," she says, hollow-voiced and wide-eyed. "Oh. I'm sorry." She looks away. Damn it, what is this? She’s never like this…

I move that finger and cover her mouth, a feathery touch that unconsciously smears blood on her lips. "Shh. No apologies from you."

I look over my shoulder and Roberto is standing there in the candlelight from the bathroom. He looks stricken and worried, and I pull away from M-A to speak with him in quiet Portuguese. “Roberto, please, let me see to her.”

“You may be part of the problem, senor,” he says. “I’ll see to her, and you should go if you’re to have any hope of getting to your own home tonight.”

He’s right, but that doesn’t change my determination. “I’ll stay in a guest room if I have to. Please, Roberto…” I make a snap decision, and quietly say, “I may not be with her much longer, but you will. Please let me mend this.” He looks at M-A, gives me a glance that says clearly how it worries him, and then nods and withdraws stiffly from the room.

I relax the tension in my shoulders, and move to kneel next to her, my hands going to her bloodstained blouse. Another time, such a thing might have stirred me, but tonight, there is little enough time and no inclination. I want only to get her clean, and safe… to not inflict anything more on her than she’s already gone through. At his hands, you know it. His hands that she turned to in trust, damn it all… I dismiss my anger again, tug gently at her clothing. "Let's get these off of you."

She helps me with the jerky motions of a marionette, performing the action by troubled rote, but the buttons seem to confound her, and soon enough I simply move her fingers away and do it for her. The shirt, the pants, her undergarments; I remove it all with gentle, efficient motions, not letting her feet touch the floor, and after that first hopeless effort, she just sits there and lets me. Occasionally another tear will trace its slow track down her cheek. Her silence, her helplessness, worries and wounds me more deeply than I can say.

I lift her bodily again, carry her into the bathroom, where Roberto has drawn a steaming bath and lit a candle for illumination. Kneeling with a small grunt of effort, I lower her carefully and gently into the hot water. It soaks my sleeves and shirt, but I can’t be bothered to care.

I strip my coat off, and note the blood all over it as I do. I may be able to save it, but it will take a lot of cleaning. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I drop the coat, and the shirt is even worse; soaked with her blood all down the front. I start to roll the sleeves up, and suddenly the Beast snarls inside me. It all boils up in an instant; St Julian, M-A, all my fear and anger and jealousy tears at me. I rip the shirt from my shoulders, tearing cloth and popping buttons in my sudden fury. I drop it and stare at M-A for a moment; she’s cringed back into the bath water and her face crumbles in fear. After a confused, angry second, I realize what I’ve done, and also that I’m about to cry, the blood gathering in my eyes as it hasn’t since just after my Embrace.

I spin away, groping for a washcloth on the counter. Stop, Etienne. The talk is going to have to wait. You’re here for her now, or you should have let Roberto do it. Calm. For her. When I turn back, kneel beside her, the crimson mote is gone from my vision and I’m composed. "It's well, dear one." And she winces, but nods slowly.

The cloth is soft, light, not too rough of texture. It will serve. I soak it under the water, and glance to M-A apologetically. I have some idea how much this will hurt. I lean close, lift one of her legs; her long walk has left the pads of her feet abraded and torn, has ground dirt and flecks of rock deep into the wounds. I curse Christopher St. Julian in the privacy of my head, keeping it out of the bond as I have learned to do, and gently press the cloth to her foot. She tenses, and at the first cleansing stroke, she hisses in pain. Thereafter, she’s quiet, and only flinches occasionally. I wince sympathetically as I clean the wounds, slow and as gentle as I can be, and by the time I’ve moved away from her feet, the cloth and water are both tinged pink.

Dawn cannot be far now, but I take my time at this, cleaning the dirt from her legs, moving up to her thighs and stomach. Most of the blood that caked her upper body has come free in the hot water, but I’ve let myself become engrossed in this, in the simple ritual of cloth over skin. I realize at some point, distantly, that I’m doing this for myself as well. It shadows my face as I think about why. I try hard not to think on how lost her face looks, and how distant. Instead, I wear my sympathy and caring as best I can.

Finally I have to edge up the tub to reach her better. My arm slips behind her head, raises her face more to the candle’s light, and I brush a freshly wetted cloth over the blood on her pale cheek. The water is cooling by then, only warm, and here I am even more careful. She turns her eyes, at long last, to look at me after only one stroke.

One of her arms comes up to catch my wrist, and she moves with the same slowness I have been; in a lethargic sort of time she turns my hand over and rests it against her cheek. Her eyes find mine, and I can see in them, in those liquid depths catching the candlelight, that it’s with utter sincerity and no small love that she whispers, "Thank you."

You’re welcome, M-A. I would do this and anything more I could for you; anything to keep the fire in your eyes and banish that awful emptiness. And I would do it, I swear, through all the ages of this world. But you don’t want me with the same fire you want him, I can see it in you plain as day. And I pray God it’s the time, the empathy, the need for a creature who better understands you. Else I fear I will never have it, and that would destroy me.

I want to say it. It’s there in my mind in the flicker of an eyelash, and by the next, I’ve banished it away. She’s not ready to hear it. She may not ever be ready to hear that. Instead I lean close, smiling as gently as I may. I kiss her cheek, and flick my tongue across the blood ¬- her blood – that’s caked there, because I want to and I can’t help it. It’s the ghost of a half-remembered nectar, the taste of her salty and powerful and tingling with magic on my tongue. I whisper, against her cheekbone, "Je t'adore, ma soliel." And she leans into my lips, bringing the taste of her to my tongue yet again.

"It would be easier if you didn't." You don’t mean that.

My voice catches. "Would it truly?"

Her arms wind around my neck then, trickling warm water in trails down my back, and she nods against my shoulder with a small sound of misery. "Our existence is easier when we don't care for each other." No. I won’t accept that so flatly.

I slip an arm into the water to curve about her waist. "I wouldn't know. I've had no time as a vampire without someone I loved near to hand." I draw back so I can see her better, and take her jaw in my other hand, because I want, need, to make this point to her. "Easier, perhaps... but I imagine also emptier."

She only nods. "It is." She pauses, seems to search vainly for something, and then says, in the most fragile tones I’ve ever heard from her, "Will you stay the day with me?"

I glance at the curtains and the small light growing at the edges, and speak the truth. "I don't have a choice now." My fingers tighten on her jaw, because simple truth here is not enough. "And even if I did, I would stay with you." I would always stay with you… but I don’t think I can.

As if drawing herself away from a precipice, she murmurs wonderingly, "It's late."

I smile, brush her damp hair away from her face. "Yes. The sun will be up any minute."

"Help me to bed, Etienne. I'm tired." She tries to lever herself upright, and slips on the porcelain. Only my hands spare her neck from slamming into the edge of the tub.

"Stop," I say, and I can’t help but smile at how stubborn she is, even in the dregs of her weakness. The blood surges in my arms, and I bend to pick her up again, lifting her effortlessly this time. Water sheets down off of her, soaking my chest, my stomach, my pants. It’s the water, only the water, but she feels furnace-warm against my icy skin, and she wraps her arms close again, pressing her face into the curve of my neck.

"I'm sorry," she whispers again.

I swallow, hard, and carry her out into the bedroom, pausing at the foot of her bed to cradle her just a bit closer. I huddle against the warmth of her, and I realize that it’s me who’s at the precipice. "What are you sorry for?"

She doesn’t raise her head away from my neck. "I've hurt you. And I'm going to keep on hurting you."

Slowly, I move to the side of the bed, and lay her down there, being careful of her feet. I pluck the sheets from where they lie at the foot of the bed, and draw them carefully up to cover her in a cool swath. Yes, you have. And yes, you will. God, I’m hungry. I bend, remove my shoes, and unbuckle my belt as I walk around to the other side of the bed. Pain, torment, hunger. Tribulation. It brings wisdom with it, that’s what you’ve taught me. My pants are soaked, and I have to bend again to peel them off my legs. But is it only me that needs to learn?

I stand straight, looking away from her and towards the tall windows and their muffling drapes. The faint predawn light seeps around them, doing nothing but lending slight definition to the darkness. From the bathroom, the rapidly-dying candlelight is what gleams ever so faintly off the water on my skin and hers. No.

I whisper it aloud. “Tribulation brings enlightenment, mon coeur." We both have things to learn from this. Maybe I can finally teach you something, too.

The weight of dawn crashes over me then, like a sudden wave in the ocean. I drag myself under the covers beside her, and gather her to my chest, needing this small contact. My last thoughts are of her arms slipping around me, of the scent of blood and her subtle perfume, of winding my fingers into her beautiful hair. And one thing more.

I have to go away now, cherie.

[Etienne] - Reconciled

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:26:29 GMT

She’s begun to pace, her braid swinging and switching like a thick strawberry-blond whip. That agitated, exaggerated motion is the best expression for the two of us; me irritated and distracted, her frustrated and desperate, neither of us trying to let it show too much. She’s been throwing this family-lecture at me for over an hour.

"Not all families are close. Ours is and isn't. There are some that keep such close track of each other that every move of every member is known. There are some with sires who have spilled their seed so far and wide that no one knows who is related to whom any more. One of the few benefits of being Ventrue - and there aren't many, I assure you - is that someone has written down who we're all related to, and if we can just find who's taken up genealogy as a pastime, we'd find out about cousins we never knew existed."

I’m not sitting in my usual chair, mostly because I’m trying to break habits. The more comfortable I am in general, the harder it’s going to be. I’m dressed more casually than usual; slacks and a button-down shirt; sleeves rolled up and only half the buttons fastened. I’ve left my shoes at the door. The casualness is a forced illusion and both of us know it. I rest my chin in my hand and watch her, wondering when she’ll be finished.

She pauses in her pacing to look at me, as if she’d heard the thought, and bites her lower lip, a thing she only does when she’s nervous. "Our family isn't quite like either of those, although I think Josephine is holding out on a few more childer, or maybe she's just forgotten about them - I don't know, really. Sometimes it's hard to tell."

She shakes her head, then, and I’m suddenly aching, hurt and worried. I realize after a choked moment that it’s not my worry, it’s hers, and it’s suddenly gushing through our bond as if she’d been holding it back with everything she had and had suddenly given in. "We're as close as Josephine's whims, which isn't close at all. But there's not a single one of you that I wouldn't come to if you needed me."

God, M-A… have you been keeping yourself back as much as I have? Is that what we’ve done to each other now, kept so much back that the floodgates are bursting and soon we’ll simply tear each other apart? I close my eyes, clench my fists. No.

I’m suddenly standing, blood surging in me, and I’m not sure what words I meant to say; all I can do is look at her, at her eyes tired and aching because of what we’ve wrought.

She asks, quietly, "You know that, right?"

"That was the whole bloody point of this lecture." I say it flatly, and laugh; I’m sure it sounds frustrated, but how else can I sound, when she’s been talking circles for half an hour just to come down to that one point, to saying she’d do anything for family. No, idiot, saying she’d do anything for you. I can’t do this anymore.

I cover the distance between us in two quick strides, and grasp her firmly by the upper arms. I don’t know if I expected resistance, or anger; I didn’t expect passivity, her head canting gracefully to the side and her eyes just waiting, waiting for whatever I might do.

I don’t know what I’m feeling, really; there’s too much. Angry with her, angry with myself. Disappointment, betrayal; yes, those are present, but so is desire, so is love. I find my words, finally, and draw her closer, until there are mere inches between us, because I want her to understand what I’m saying. "You... are the most capable, wonderful woman I have ever met. The only thing that saves you from perfection is what a bloody irritating mess you can make of things when you really care about them."

And then I can’t take it anymore, and even as her eyes are widening in shock, I jerk her those inches closer and kiss her, bruisingly hard.

Icy skin, burning lips, and a flood of precious warmth. She melts against me and makes a tiny sound of relief, arms wrapping tight around my back and waist. She kisses back, ardor risen to meet me, crushing her lips against mine as if it’s all that’s important in the world. For that moment, perhaps it is.

I let her arms go, and dig fingers into her back to keep us molded together, force my hand into her hair and tighten it in a fist. It draws another sound from her, something deeper and more primal, and her nails dig through my shirt and into the skin beneath, sharp and painful, immediate as the sudden surge of a cresting wave.

A confusion of time later, we’re against her desk, clothing a memory and skin desperately pressed against skin as that first wave ebbs. Her legs are wrapped around my waist, my hand is still tight in her hair, and I breathe words, quiet and passioned, against the curve of her ear. "Don't pull away from me again, don't withdraw. I couldn't stand it, not right now. Days, a week, then as you will, but not... now."

More time passes, more waves and we’ve reached the floor. I pause above her, study her with the clarity that I’ve been missing for weeks. I raise my wrist and slash it open with my teeth, a neat, practiced incision that sends blood pattering over my palm and trailing down my fingers. I trace a design over her heart, my design, a tiny rune that evokes the tree she scribed on my skin. I press my hand over it once I have, obliterating it under a perfect crimson handprint. I know the ancient words, and I speak them for any who might be listening, with all the purpose she’s taught me. "Blood of my blood." And then, just for her, "You only ever have to ask, and I will come."

At the end, we lie spent, my head nestled between her breasts, our arms tight around each other. She smoothes her hand over my shoulder, traces fingers over the ink that she put there, and whispers into my hair, "You're going to leave,” and I hear no anger, no judgment, only surety that begs the same.

"Yes.” And then, "That's what you need me to do, and what I need to do, in so many ways."

I can feel her smile against my head, and she murmurs. "Mostly it's what you need to do."

I return the smile against her breastbone, and one hand raps almost-playfully at her leg. "As you say. But don't lie to yourself. You need me gone too."

Her dry wit manages to emerge again; I’m surprised that the glow kept it hidden as long as it did. "Hrmph. Probably not for the reasons you think." The affection remains in it, enveloping us.

I pull away just enough to look at her, and respond with the same love and humor. "Sunshine, I would never pretend to understand you completely. I am, after all, a smart boy."

She levers herself to her elbows, bringing our faces closer, and smiles. "That is, in theory, the reason I kept you in the first place." She leans forward to kiss me again, and I laugh into her lips; sad, yes, for what must happen, but this is us, my sire and I, and there’s no more widening gulf between us. This is exactly, perfectly, right.

[Etienne] - Lion in His Den

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 12:23:07 GMT

I hesitate at the door of the Lion. It’s his club, and as genteel as the arrangements to meet him were, it’s not lost on me that I’m walking willingly into a place where I could be killed quietly and with nobody the wiser. Ah well. A small crucible, but there it is nonetheless.

I’m met by a woman in a dark suit; tall and grim and aggressively Nordic. She wears gloves, and that makes me hesitate slightly, but she merely points toward the back of the club, beckons, and turns. Not a word, not a moment’s pause. I follow, trying not to think about how stupid I may be, and knock lightly on the door I’m shown to.

She looks at me scornfully, opens the door, and follows me in, standing off to the side. If he’s going to kill me, I certainly haven’t much chance now. St Julian rises from behind a heavy desk, and nods. He’s dressed in a conservative suit that, at a guess, costs more than I used to make in a year. His face - surprise, surprise - is stony and impassive. "Do you want the niceties observed, or did you want candor?"

I consider, reflect that I’m in no mood for games, and shrug. "I came with niceties ready, but frankly, I'll take the candor."

He nods slowly, settles back in his chair. According to my ears in the city, he’s been involving himself more and more in the local politics, and I wonder how much influence he’s gotten, how quickly. "So, tell me, what do you want?"

"To understand you slightly better, and find out the reasons for certain things. May I sit?"

"Of course." Responding to both, easily.

I drop into the chair before his desk, not bothering with courtly manner or perfect posture. He said candor, so candor he’ll get. I take a moment and wonder which of the questions I’ve brought will make him least edgy or angry. "You placed yourself to meet me if I returned, and you did so ready and willing, even eager, to judge me. Was it simply because I was your old friend's childe, or did you have another reason?"

He smiled, though it did not reach his cold eyes. "You are asking a question that would come from a place of familiarity."

I raise an eyebrow at the assertion, smile at him with equal chill. No playing. "If we were observing niceties, I'd have approached it from another angle. You asked for candor, Monsieur St. Julian."

"I did, it does not mean I will be candid."

Establish candor, and then play word games? Oh, please. "Then refuse to answer me, and tell me something that way as well. I have plenty of questions. If you think that one was too personal, you'll likely either throw me out or kill me before I finish."

"Or, I can lie. You forget that."

I was already beginning to regret coming, but his latest simple arrogance makes me laugh myself back to tranquility. "I forget nothing, Monsieur. If being a politician for years didn't teach me that anyone can and will lie, it did nothing for me."

"This is different. We are predators."

True, but woefully oversimplified. “If that was all we were, I most certainly wouldn't be here, unless it was to kill you. Which I'm not fool enough to think I could, regardless of whether I would. Will you answer that first question, or should I move on?"

"We're also corpses. Move on."

I’m fairly certain I avoid rolling my eyes. "Fine. I always heard you described as an academic. Is that very fine translation in her library your work? The Strucker?"

"I taught at Trinity. Yes, the Strucker is mine."

I smile, because there at last is another redeeming feature. The work really was excellent. "Good to know. His work is hard to find in English." I pause, while I feel out a more delicate question. "You said something of me cutting out my own heart. Why do you believe it's necessary?"

"He never translated his work. I happened to be in Munich when he was alive. What she has is the only English copy of his work. And to answer the unasked question, I was born in Hesse, German is my native tongue, the French I speak was more prevalent before Napoleon. As for that last bit..." His faint almost-smile appears. "Because the rules of this game are far different than when you were human. Because the human attachments and drives cannot mesh with our current state. Certainly we cannot forget what we were, but that is not what we are, is it?"

German, and low stock, that would explain some things. I nod to him in thanks for that unexpected honesty, and consider his question. "No, it's not. Though what we were informs what we become. Can we not have new attachments, as what we are? Or is it somehow anathema to us?"

"Are your emotions the same as they were before your death?"

The answer is obvious, and I wonder if he’ll get around to answering me at some point. "No. Too much is wholly different."

Again, his lecturing tone. I wonder if he’s fully aware of it. "We are predators, the Beast drives us, a illogical and primal aspect of our psyches, our... souls. Every moment of intimacy you can feel it claw at your mind can't you? Hunger. Or anger. Or fear.”

I don’t want to admit this just yet, but I might as well be honest with myself, if I’m being honest with him. "I... no, not always. But many times, yes."

"What is politics?"

I blink at the abrupt change of subject, decide to answer him in the same direction he seems to be aiming. "The typical answers you'd get would be... the science of government, or the strategy of obtaining or maintaining power and position. But we did decide on candor. So, politics is in greatest part more teeth and more claws, disguising themselves as words."

"Obtaining and maintaining power and position. Key things for predators. Also it should be that we see to promote oneself, to be able to maneuver and get what we desire without obstruction, or ensuring that the obstruction is minimal. To simplify, politics is about need fulfillment."

This is a lecture I’ve had, and given, before. "It translates almost directly from mortal politics. The number of politicians I've met who are other than predators of one kind or another... I could count on my fingers. Vampires are in some ways more honest about their political agendas... the main difference is that in this framework, almost everyone is forced to participate. And the consequences are much deadlier."

"There is more personal investment."

Well, there is if you don’t ‘cut out your heart’… "That happens when your life is at risk, rather than your career."

"And you know risk. You know that there are consequences for actions."

"Yes." And just to see what he says, “Coming here as I have was a risk, but calculated."

"Hardly a risk."

That makes me grin. "You still haven't heard the rest of my questions."

Of course, my brief levity gets no response. "I can dismiss you at anytime. I could have elected to not allow this to even happen. People know you’re here. I have not gotten permission to kill you. You are safe. And you wouldn't come here to kill me."

How perfectly logical. "Everyone loses control eventually, Monsieur St. Julian. The more when they're confronted by things that hurt them, or make them afraid."

"Sacrifice everything you have, everything you built up, boy. Throw it to the fire, and know there will be no reward. Then you will get a glimpse of where I am. We are surrounded by creatures wallowing in their own denial, in their pitiable existences. If you want to come out on top, then it is a simple matter of will. That is why I speak of cutting out your own heart. Because someone who can do that... can you beat that person?"

I watch him say that, and finally feel like I’ve gotten somewhere with him; this one piece, one declaration that has any true spark to it. It opens my eyes a little more to what he is, and against my will I feel sympathy for this cold, purposeful man. I shrug, just a little, and try to be gentle. "No, perhaps I cannot. Perhaps that person cannot be beaten. But I wonder if that person will ever truly win anything at all."

"Therein lies the paradox of the game, you cannot win." He lifts a hand, as if to stop me responding. "You sire told me that I was more dangerous than she, because I could kill her, and still sleep well."

I watch him, weigh him, and believe only half of that last declaration. "I think... perhaps you could. You strike me, more than anything else, as a," I almost say 'creature', and then correct myself, "man, who could do whatever was necessary. But that is not necessary, is it? If it were, you would have done it, and not be lingering on as you have, barely touching her but not truly gone."

"I left candor an option, and if I felt that your words could harm me, then you never would have gotten them out." He locks eyes with me, and I have a moment to realize how stupid I was to let him, before I can feel him, the press of centuries leaning against my very mind. And he does nothing to me, only speaks a moment later. "You've drawn an assumption, there is more to this than what you see."

I break eye contact and immediately feel as if the walls are farther apart. "I know next to nothing of what's passed between you, I fully admit it. I've seen only brief moments, hints of you and clues. She's told me nothing, but I feel every ounce of pain in her when I'm nearby." I cannot believe I’m doing this. I cannot for my very life believe I am actually spending my time and risking my skin to say this.

His voice is frozen. "Leave it at that."

Absolutely beyond belief… "I haven't pursued it at all. As much as I can possibly stay out of it, I have. But I came here, in part, to tell you one thing, because I won't have another chance any time soon."

"Then say it."

"She respects you, and cares more deeply for you than I can compass. It's a rare gift from her, and if you push her away, you're a fool."

There is ringing silence for a few long moments. He watches me, I watch him, and I wonder what’s going on behind those high, high walls in his head. Finally he grates, "I have been called such prior."

I can’t help but sigh; this man will never be easy or receptive. "Color me surprised. But please don't ignore what I said."

"Pardon, Eva is the zealous sort."

I glance reflexively over my shoulder, guessing he refers to the blonde; who else? Sure enough, she’s there, looking at me intently, frozen and beautiful and lifeless as some deadly marionette. St. Julian's words draw my attention back to him. "We are done for tonight. Next time, she will not be here."

I shake my head just slightly. "If you want to talk to me again, it will have to be soon. I'm leaving, Monsieur.” I decide to tell him this on the moment’s spur. “And I'm doing it, in part, because you're right."

He rises, nods, and speaks some Germanic dialect rapidly to the woman, Eva. She narrows her eyes at me, and I wonder if I’m about to get in a fight after all, but she doesn’t move. He looks back to me. "A tip, if you actually want honesty you'll have to try and unbalance me. Arranging a meeting does not work."

I didn’t expect that from him, and it makes me laugh. "Then if I decide I want more of your time, I won't bother making an appointment.” I turn from him, and step for the door, but pause with my hand on the knob. "And if I don't, then thank you, in all honesty, for your thoughts."

"Another time then, I can always find you. I imagine, you won’t blend with the best amongst them, Mr. Valliant. Good night."

And I’m left to consider that cryptic final comment as I see myself out.

[Etienne] - Polite Illusions

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 10:48:47 GMT

It is cold, unseasonably so for Sao Paulo. A human would have been shivering in my light-weave cotton suit; I merely note the temperature as an abstract concept and marvel at the changes in my own body. Three years, such a short time in truth, yet change piled atop change as I adapted to this new existence, and now, sometimes, I barely recognize myself.

I come up the long drive on foot, lightly amused. M-A wouldn't be expecting me back for days yet, but everything had fallen into place miraculously; a little old man in the night market had sold me all the beads and the herbs I was looking for, and shown me to an old woman who could offer me the charms. The books had practically fallen into my lap. It was everything she’d asked for, even the longest odds, and I can picture her delight at the contents of the attaché case in my hand. I unlock the door, hoping against hope that she'll have slept in a little and I can surprise her.

Instead, the surprise is mine. I close the door behind me and turn to find a stocky, forbidding-looking man rising from where he'd knelt on the foyer floor. Two candles illuminate broad, craggy features I’ve never laid eyes on before, and I suck in a breath. Some habits die hard. The Beast snarls its recognition of Another, and my blood leaps in sudden anticipation of a fight… but after a moment, he has not moved to threaten. Who is he, what is he doing here? "Good evening. I hadn't expected to see anyone here at this hour."

"You would be Etienne Vaillant. Childe of Madeleine-Antoinette Sabatier-St. Germain." A level, resonant voice, his French accented Provencal. Wrong features for France, though; German? Perhaps further north? Who the hell are you?

I smile, my elegant mask slipping seamlessly into place. "Then you have me at a disadvantage, sir. I've not had the pleasure." And if you know my name and use that framework to describe me, you're here for a reason. But how did you get here so early? And where is M-A? Deathly afraid for my sire, I can only try to learn what I can.

His face is a stone mask. "I am Christopher St. Julian." St. Julian? An old friend of M-A's, wasn't he? His eyes weigh me, judge me, nothing casual or soft about them. "Former diplomat, then that tragedy, still in the microfilms, you see. Your mental resilience would be the reason, wouldn't it?" He asks as if the facts were rote and the answer obvious, and that irritates the hell out of me. Unless… he was here through the day?

I shrug, one shoulder in a quick motion. Fine, if we're playing court games, we play. "Physical fortitude and luck are the reasons my bones aren't mouldering in the jungle. Mental resilience is the reason I've not been back in France almost five years since." I let my smile widen enough to show it's true, and add, "I know your name."

"Many people do." Again, that stony face, and a shrug of his own shoulders. "I know yours, I know how many people here know your name as well." Oh, bully for you, you know how to ask questions. Stand like you know how to fight, utterly confident… a stone edifice, you are. Let's see how subtlety works on you.

"Most anyone who counts. I was properly announced and introduced."

"Properly is open to debate, given the number of knives that would seek your back." He clucks his tongue, actually clucks his tongue. "Now, I see it. The outsider, proud, very proud. Did you stay here to prove yourself?" His head tilts, like an owl watching a mouse.

"Propriety often is." I shrug again, throw out another barb. "Especially where my sire is concerned. I stayed here, sir, because I try my best to cultivate a passion for what I do, after I make sure that it's worth doing." So much for old-world manners. This is my home too, you arrogant ass. "I'm young yet, and I still have some mortal whims." Like politeness. "Will you join me for coffee?"

"Yes, you are young. Thank you, though I never much liked coffee, Mr. Vaillant." He stares for a moment, then reaches out with pale fingers and pinches out the flames on the candles. "Then you must know that I know this game well, or was that bit left out?" I couldn't have done it so casually; something in me, in our kind, rebels at the proximity of fire. But for him to do it like that, so pointedly and with such a pause… I have to swallow a laugh, it's so overblown. I'm beginning to find a measure here already, if only I could figure what he wants.

"I'm certain Roberto could suit your tastes. But as you will. I trust you'll forgive me a cup while we talk." I step past him, somewhat amazed I have the courage to do it so casually, but if he were going to attack, likely he would have already. Roberto’s distinctive step moves ahead of me, and some of my fear for M-A goes away; surely Roberto wouldn't have stayed alive if it had been some kind of attack. I look over my shoulder, and catch a faint expression, the first clue to anything from this one's face. I'm forgetting… ah, right, his heavy-handed lure… "Your reputation precedes you but sparely, I'm afraid. Which game are you so accomplished at?"

"I did not venture great skill with that statement, merely knowledge. There is a difference."

Night save me from a literalist. "Accomplishment doesn't always denote skill either. But, fair enough. Knowledge and skill often amount to the same thing, depending on the game. Which one are we discussing?" Into the dining room, and Roberto is there with a tray of coffee. I exchange a glance with him, and his expression is strange, but I'm too relieved that he's all right to question. "You, sir, are a marvel," I laugh, and Roberto gives a nod and a tight smile before withdrawing. Concern. From Roberto. Now I know I'm in deep.

St. Julian folds his arms across his broad chest, fixes me with a stare, determined not to be sidetracked. "The one we're playing. Your sire inducted you into it. In your case it's the high wire equivalent of jousting." He acknowledges Roberto with a nod, and it makes me think better of him, as does the amusing analogy, naked threat as it might have been.

Coffee first. It's a prop, a reminder, and I flash back on a glass of wine in M-A’s hand once. Though drinking it will hurt later. I pour a cup and then pull a chair out for him, nodding with a greater measure of courtesy before moving to another chair, across the table. Politeness, even in the face of rudeness, loses me nothing, really. "Over a pit of fire, I should think. And one doesn't live to your age without acquiring a great deal of knowledge about this particular game."

He arches a brow with nothing like M-A's grace, and essays what I think must be his version of a smile. "My age is irrelevant, I could have got that being staked and left in a cave for a century or two." His large hands spread on the table. "It is never a question of experience, never of age, never of skill. Is it? You were a commodity, and you were taken from others. We are not an emotionally stable group. Are we?"

Jaded, aren't you? At least when you decide to move a conversation, you move it. I cradle the coffee mug, letting the heat soak into my fingers and breathing in the rich-scented steam while I think, really think, about what he's said. The flaws seem obvious. "Some more than others. You're right, age is less relevant than many factors, though I have to imagine being staked and thrown in a cave would be a lesson all its own. A sharp one. Still, I'm afraid I can't agree about skill and experience. If I'm to accept that we are all commodities sooner or later, then we must have intrinsic value. Simple principle of economics; what we obtain for our trouble had best be worth our trouble. And from what I understand, bringing another of us into the world is a great expenditure of resources."

St. Julian snorts, and it sounds of amused contempt though his face is still as stone. "Intrinsic value? Ha! Perceived value is far more important than actual value. Would you be the same right now, if it had been the Invictus Primus who had taken you? You'd still be in training, and your value would be different. The perception of you as a commodity was all there was. In truth there is no way of knowing whether you held any value in the possible scenarios, except to place you in them." Again, that faint almost-smile drifts over his face. "To some it is a great expenditure."

I wrap one hand around my mug, let myself feel the warmth of it, and gesture… perhaps trying to fend off bad logic. "Fair point, but the perceived value, by definition, comes from the individual's perception. What they had to gauge me and judge me by was reputation, observation, and digging... all of which reveal quality both actual and illusory. Perceived value still depends largely on skill, especially in the case of someone for whom image and reputation are a skillset in and of themselves." I sip at the coffee, savor the warmth and the smell for a moment, and smile at my next thought. "The Invictus Primus almost did take me, and was angry as hell to be beaten to the punch."

The other merely shakes his head. "Perceived value is not measurable, it is a mental construct in the eyes of the viewer." His eyes go frighteningly far away for a moment, in that way that only the elders of our kind ever do, and he raises a hand inscrutably. "I've talked with the Primus, he is... victus. What are you?" Another tilt of the head, again predatory. Victus… Conquered, or food, depending on how you translated your Latin, and he looks at me like prey, which makes me dearly want to throw it in his face. Fortunately I’m not utterly stupid, so I spend a moment watching him and collecting my thoughts before I answer.

"Pride makes me want to snap back that I am nobody's food. But that would be a foolish assertion at my age. I am difficult prey for most hunters. And at least in my own eyes, of much greater worth as a commodity than mere food." I can still be respectful, no matter how you press.

His first real smile is vicious as a stalking wolf, and the flash of his eyes matches it well. "You are hardly the alpha, my dear boy. You puff up your chest or have a chip on your shoulder, because you're talking with a lover of your sire. One who knows he is hardly the first or the last. One who has a good idea how your relationship with her at least. And, I am one who is uncertain if you could cut out your own heart, boy." His diction is sharp and precise, like an overbearing professor, and I would laugh but for the ancient weight of his scorn. "Fret not, there is potential there. Though until I see the bloodied knife, you're just a blind foundling."

I’m absurdly, foolishly angry. This is a being that my Beast, at least, recognizes the danger of, who could surely rip me to pieces and leave me broken and helpless. But I want to defy him, want to throw my worth, my sire’s choice, at him like a brace of knives. I manage to avoid dangerous rudeness, but only just. "And you, Monsieur St. Julian, must be very used to rooting out defiance and arrogance both. You seem to look for them very carefully." I set my mug down; my enjoyment is soured, and the gesture emphasizes my next words. "Let me assure you of two things. Though I have my illusions about my own stature and place in this society, they are very few, and I keep them because they're useful in their way." Unconsciously, I lean forward. "And two, if I ever cut out my own heart, it will be for a much greater purpose than proving anything to anyone, no matter how puissant or distinguished." And no matter my control, I’m sure my lip curls at least a little at the last. "Lover or not."

He is unfazed, still smiling as though staring at a meal. "Pride is a virtue, my dear boy. You know that, don't you? When they had you in the jungle what else did you have, but yourself? Your pride. Your resolve. You changed there. Someone else walked out of that jungle, and now when you attend the gathers, and the little public outings, it's starting to creep in. The contempt. You see how hollow they are, how they've let nothing matter. And you've steadily be coming closer and closer to the line as you work out this existence for yourself, and you are fully aware it is coming, and you are fully aware of what is on the other side. The only real question is are you able to do what it takes to cross that line?"

At first, I think he’s chosen the wrong topic, that here is ground I’m utterly unafraid to meet him on, but he drives home his startling words with overbearing presence, rising from his chair and leaning across the table and into me as he speaks. My Beast demands action, screams for me to run, or to fight if I must stay, and it’s only by the utmost will - by a sudden determination to show this creature nothing that he wants – that I keep my seat and do not flinch from him. When he leans back and looks away from me, I take a breath, a small one, and the simple unnecessary ritual of taking in air and expelling it calms me, brings me back from the brink I was so near to. I draw my shredded calm back together purely by dint of long training. And his words, as I turn them over, were powerful, so I give him plain truth.

"I've seen, I admit, very little of my new world. But what I've known and what I've heard has made me very sure of one thing. Most of our kind value their illusions and masks, their finery and pretention, very much. Being able to meet them on that ground is a valuable skill. But I was a politician, I will be one again, and I know what's really under those masks." I gesture to the north-facing windows, and in my mind I’m really pointing out at the rainforest, at my time of imprisonment and torture and fear. "The jungle doesn't stop at the line of concrete and steel. And the rules for surviving, in the end, are exactly the same." Saying it like that, like I’ve never done quite so bluntly, wakes something cold and furious in me. And of course, it’s then that M-A’s soft tread sounds in the doorway and makes up both look.

She’s wearing my shirt, I note a little numbly; the one I left in her room because I’d soaked the cuff through with blood… I remember your smile when you took it off me. She’s wearing nothing else, and her hair is trying to escape the loose braid. She looks between the two of us once, twice, her face carefully blank. "You've met, I see."

My first surge of emotion is absurd joy that she’s alive and well; whatever that my logic said she must be, having it proven lifts my heart. Joy, quickly obliterated by surprising rage, that she did bring home the man across from me, that he stepped so apparently easily into the place that’s been mine for over three years. Surprising, howling, jealous rage. I know I’m being irrational, but I find I don’t care. Luckily, I’ve already leashed my Beast tight, and the past few years have been good training for me. I can smile at her with all the warmth in the world, and butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. "Morning, sunshine. Monsieur St. Julian was... offering me some education on our society."

He’s stood to receive her, and that sends a fresh hot note thrumming down my spine. He’s taciturn, reserved, but her presence changes him. "Yes."

M-A walks into the room with that delicate arch of eyebrow that I so enjoy… directed toward him. But I know her face, and she’s being very careful herself. "Good. It will save me the effort of introductions. Roberto's been making himself useful?"

I look to St. Julian, wondering whether he will lie as well; he merely shrugs, a gesture meant to convey nothing at all. I answer her question. "As astonishingly so as ever." Convenient he didn’t take the offer; there’s a mug free, and she loves the smell of coffee. "There's more, if you like."

"Mmm." M-A drifts to me first, puts a hand on my shoulder and brushes her lips through my hair. She pours herself coffee and rounds the table, just to walk past St. Julian and caress the breadth of his shoulders on the way. A special effort to touch us both, and then she draws out the chair at the head of the table, between us, and perches. "So. The topic?"

I blink once, thinking whether I want to do it, and then say something slightly venomous. "Polite illusions. And their absence."

She laughs, that wonderful laugh that throws her head back, and for once it doesn’t inspire me to join her. "Of course, and what a fine topic it is. So useful. Speaking of which, you're home rather earlier than expected, aren't you?" Oh, touche, ma soleil. St Julian smiles, ducks his head almost deferentially, and is back to his stony mien before I can actually be sure he looked vulnerable.

I gesture idly, saying with my fingers – a lie - that it’s of no concern. "It turned out that I found what I was looking for quite a lot sooner than I might have thought.” I smile, do my best to infuse it with charming bravado, and riposte. “If I'd known you were expecting company, I'd have made my timing a bit more definite."

M-A takes a long breath over her steaming mug. "I wasn't; Christopher's arrival was quite a surprise." A warm glance at the other. "A welcome one, though."

He meets that gaze, then looks at me, and bluntly breaks the illusion, his voice soft but resonant. "It wasn't a discussion, I was measuring him." His hand drifts, possessive, to her shoulder, and it makes something wrench and snarl deep inside me.

I take my own deep breath over coffee to cover the anger, and manage a tight smile. "I've yet to hear how the scales rest. We were rather swept up in said measuring, I fear I forgot my pleasantries."

She smiles in turn, ignores my sally and looks to St. Julian. "And how have you found my Etienne?" I can’t help but look at her as she asks the question, and then I turn my gaze to the other, curious as to how he’ll answer that.

"Unfinished." He speaks it like something of vast significance, like the one word should speak volumes for itself. As once before, it’s overblown enough that it breaks through my anger and I have to swallow a laugh.

Meanwhile, M-A’s pursuing her question, not letting one word be enough. "Do you speak of your measuring or his place?"

"Both." Two words, then. Eloquence. His hand moves from her shoulder, as if he was expecting her to simply accept his response.

She laughs again, looks to me. "And what think you of my old friend?"

I trace the rim of my mug with a fingertip, glancing at each of them in turn. Angry as I may be, I can’t possibly be serious now; that man has all the seriousness in the room sewn up neatly. "Unfinished. Though less so."

I’m rewarded by M-A’s snort of laughter into her coffee cup. She draws her legs up under her on the chair, and leans forward. "And what do the pair of you think of me?"

I almost answer, but I’m more curious to see what the other will say. He’s doing a marvelous job of making me look scintillating thus far.

He draws himself up as if to make a speech, and more or less does so. "Etienne is still formative, and he still clings to what he once was. The circumstances are different, if he remains the same, there is no promise that he will be anything more than a callow shade. The question is whether he will remain afraid, and whether or not he can sacrifice of himself." He pauses briefly, refocuses on her. "You? I think highly of you. You know this. I do however wish you would stop trying to protect my pride, because it makes me think that you pity me, or have no faith in me. Those are not thoughts I should like to have of you. Beyond that, I care for you, and see you as mine. I see pieces I thought I had I buried in the deserts of Oman a long time ago."

This is more than I thought to learn about him, and I’m stone-still through the litany. I’m intrigued by most of it, infuriated by his possessiveness. Yours? Spare me.

She smiles like the sun, her eyes all on him, and it wounds me irrationally yet again. "If I stopped trying to protect the parts of you I can reach, I'd stop being me. It is not pity, and don't ever mistake what I feel for you as such." Her eyes turn to me, and they’re gentle. Either she can feel my turmoil, even as hard as I’m locking it away, or she feels the walls and has guessed. "Come, love. Tell me what's on your mind."

I flick my eyes from one to the other and have suddenly had enough of the game. A rumbling at the back of my mind tells me she has as well, and I opt for honesty. "On my mind? This has been very different from the evening I was anticipating, and already I have much to think about. As for you, Madeline-Antoinette, I think you are the same wonderful, infuriating, intelligent creature I always have. And for the sake of candor, I think you belong to nobody."

Her smile is warm, but there’s finality in it. I was right. "And with that, gentlemen, I think we all have things we need to think on." She rises, puts her coffee cup down, untouched, and St. Julian stands as well, courtly and mannered for her as he didn’t bother to be when we were alone.

Though already risen, she puts her hand in his, thanks him. "So we do," I say in answer, and I abruptly change my mind; I’d thought to go to her, kiss her good evening and be on my way, but I decide to keep my distance. I’m not at all in my right mind, and I fear I’d make some kind of fool – possibly a greater fool – of myself. I nod toward the attache case I left by the foot of the table. "Some of what you wanted from Rio is in there, M-A." She’ll realize the understatement later, I imagine. I blow her a kiss as gracefully as I can manage. "Glad to be home.” Then the other… “Monsieur St. Julian, it was an unexpected... privilege to make your acquaintance. I hope we can speak more soon." Once I look past my irritation, I find to my own amazement that I mean it, and I’m not at all sure why.

He makes an oddly gracious reply, she doesn’t. I watch them for a moment, her hand in his, and then turn and walk for the door. I put a spring in my step, an easy confidence. Might as well keep up appearances. I’m either going to go home and think, or go out and eat somewhat violently.

I haven’t quite decided by the time I hit fresh air, and I take a deep and racking gasp, grateful now for the cold.

[Etienne] - Games

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:45:05 GMT

Chanting fades to silence, and the strident wind that a moment ago had raged – howled? – in my ear is gone. I feel as if I should say something, make some obeisance, even tend to her arm, but my heart is pounding too hard, my mind too full of surging thought. It takes me a moment to realize that my lips are slightly parted, my eyes a little too wide... and she’s said something.

I nod and come to kneel by her, trying to think what she asked me, but I’m gripped by a knife’s slice and the crimson line welling from her fair skin. “I... your arm, can I..?” Brilliant. Well put. Full of dignity and reverence.

She shakes her head, unconcerned, her hand holding tight to her arm, and tells me how to clean up the ritual. I realize that’s what she asked me at first, and out of embarrassment more than anything else I simply obey. When I clean the knife of her blood, I save the cloth; somehow that seems important. I’m about to ask her if I should break the veves when she tells me to, and I shoot an amused glance at her.

I rake my fingers through water and sand and blood, obliterating the careful lines, scattering the traces. I even rough it with a kick or two; no trace, she’d said. I offer her a hand up and she ignores it, standing on her own, asking me to carry the bag instead. Of course she does.

I, of course, can’t help myself, though I don’t expect it to matter. "We're walking through the jungle. You should at least wrap the arm." Sure enough, she dismisses it airily, serenely. Of course she does. I manage a shrug, conceal irritation and amusement both. “As you like.”

My mind goes back to the ritual, flies to it and through its twists and turns. The names she invoked, the words she used and the cadence, the rising and falling tones of her voice... that strange rush of wind and how hard my heart beat.

“Penny?” She asks casually, as she has a dozen times before. I have time to notice how perfectly the moon silvers her arched eyebrow, and then she’s starting back across the beach toward the forest.

I step after her, the satchel over my shoulder, and flash her a smile. It’s still hard to do otherwise, with her. “I’ll give you one guess as to what’s on my mind.”

Her lips quirk. "I could. I could tell you your every thought. But I'd prefer to hear it from your lips." Of course you could, and of course you would. Damn woman.

"I was thinking about the ritual, start to finish. It was not what I'd expected, in many ways."

"What did you expect?" The question is innocent, but even in the wan light in the jungle, her eyes flash sudden interest. Oh ho, got your attention now...

"Any number of things. More people involved. I expected it to be longer, slightly more involved. I didn't..." As always, I find myself saying more than I’d intended. "...didn't expect to feel the results so powerfully."

"My worship is peculiar in many respects. It isn't entirely Umbanda, it isn't entirely vodou. It takes aspects of both, some of other faiths. It makes practice with others difficult." Facts first, but then she stop restraining her own curiosity. "What did you feel?"

I’m picking my way over a tangle of roots, and I take the moment to think about how to explain it, what to tell her. "I felt the wind surge... and there was a howl. Like something far away but furious. It was... stirring. Set my blood racing, and pulse pounding."

She merely nods. "There is power here and in this."

"I know. I've felt it before... just never quite so directly.” I flash back on the wind’s sudden surge, and my heart pounds again with the thought. She’s given me a great thing tonight, a beginning of real understanding. "Thank you for this, M-A."

She sidesteps a spray of philodendren and nods somberly. "You're welcome. You need this. Not everyone needs faith the same way. The way I worship will likely not be the way you do. But you are still trying to find your place and your gods."

I keep myself quiet after that, partly because I’m not sure how to respond, partly to give myself time to think. Part of my brain is still picking at the ritual, putting things I saw tonight together with facts and things I’ve read. Part of me is puzzling over her words, her cryptic ways, turning over questions to ask her. At some point, after we’ve walked for a time, I think about asking her in some depth how she ended up where she is, what brought her to this place in her life and her surety of faith.

I take a moment to imagine her answers in all their labyrinthine, evasive glory, and I actually laugh aloud.

She looks at me curiously, and I hide my grin, but decide on a whim to be honest. "I was just thinking of asking you how you came to this path." And being highly amused at how you’d answer. Let’s see if I’m right.

She makes a sound low in her throat. "Mmm. That is... complicated."

I laugh again at the understatement. "My dear Madeline-Antoinette, if I asked you easy questions, you wouldn't keep me around!"

She stops walking for a moment and looks at me, as so often, like she’s staring at something beyond me. "That's truer than you know," she says, which naturally keeps my laugh from dying completely. Of course I know.

I mimic her cadences teasingly. "'Truer than I know.' My dear friend, with all her knowledge and her secrets." On an impulse, I dart forward, step half-into her path and strike a slightly challenging pose. She bristles.

“You wouldn't like me half so much were it not for my secrets," she snaps back.

I’ll play, but not the irritated game. "You fascinate me the more for your mysteries, how could I deny that? But I know I'm more than a diversion, M-A, or I wouldn't stay around. Do you really think I'd be lost to you so easily, if you didn't have quite so many locked doors?" I’m still teasing, but this is slightly more serious. I find that I really want to know, and how she answers this will tell me a lot.

But rather than a comeback, she closes the distance and raises her hand to lay gentle fingers along my jaw, holding my chin. Part of me notices that her wound is still open and not bleeding, and wonders at it. A small part, with her staring into my eyes from so close. "No, no you aren't. To answer fully is to reveal things I can't, not yet. But we should play a game, see how clever you are." Games again. How many shall we play at once?

I reach up, touch her arm, and accidentally graze the wound. I wince, and lower my fingers, but she never even blinks, and I do not even try to wrench my gaze away. “Always games,” I say quietly, “but then I play so well.” And I’ll play if you want it. For you. This had better not be another test. "All right. What will it be tonight?"

For a moment, she doesn’t even breath, so still is she… but then she inhales suddenly, deeply, and nods. "We're going to examine what you know of me. What you surmise to be true. And then we'll discuss what you think it means for my faith."

I watch her carefully, waiting for more, and the wind makes soft music in the foliage. Finally, when it’s obvious nothing more is forthcoming, I take my own breath, nod in turn. "All right." Damn you.

"Come,” she says, turning blithely back to the path. “The night isn't getting any longer." Ahead, I can barely see the glimmer of lights from her estate.

I follow, shadowing her, one hand holding her satchel, weaving through the undergrowth. I’m happy for the darkness and movement that make it easy to hide my frown. I play because I said I would; listing off facts for her, only what I am sure of. Certain she will catch my meaning, I carefully don’t include much that she’s personally told me, only what I’ve seen and confirmed to be true.

As I speak I fall into a measured cadence, one I’ve used before when listing off facts. And this particular litany, I’ve spun for myself a few different times in private, examining it from different angles, trying to understand the mystery of Madeline-Antoinette Sabatier. As I talk, we walk, and we are mere feet from her walls by the time I’ve neared the end of even the cursory list that will suffice for an answer.

"...I know you speak with an accent, and are bolder and quicker of wit than most anyone I know." That should do. "I could go on, smaller details, but it would take all night."

Her responses have been spare; she only nods at this. "And what do you surmise about me?"

I pause, thinking about how I want to answer this part. Honest, I think, and only as cutting as she deserves. "I surmise that you've told me the truth about most things; your name and Roberto's, where you're from, what you're doing here, the tidbits you've mentioned about your family." As I speak, she brings out a key, opens the gates, and gestures me through. I keep up my listing, the various important things I’ve guessed, as we walk through her slightly wild garden, up the stairs to the servants door and into the warmth and light of her house. She is finally displaying reactions, amusement, and maddeningly I cannot keep my own irritation. I wrap up my list, offer her my arm courteously and with only a little mockery.

She takes it, heedless of the blood on her hand, and puts more of her weight against me than usual. She takes a moment, considers what I’ve listed off. "Mostly true. What of your suppositions do you think are the most likely?"

"Your faith," I say immediately. Easy question. Though if I had to choose a second... "And your general feelings toward people." Wicked woman.

She laughs, delighted. "Oh, both are true enough."

I shrug, smile a little. I knew that. "I'm willing to admit I could be wrong or ill-informed about most of the rest, but I'm fairly certain about the extent of your knowledge. And I'd really like to believe I know your name, and that the shreds I have of your history are real." I really would… "Madeline-Antoinette," I say, and caress the name as I often have to myself, rolling the liquid French sound of it. "I've always liked your name."

Her eyes betray something in that instant, and then, suddenly: "It's not the one I was born with. But it's real enough."

I look sharply at her; I can’t help it. I don’t know why that simple admission makes me so angry, but it’s more than I can do to keep it out of my face and muscles. Purposefully, I stay quiet, manage a nod. We walk to the library doors, and I open them for her, falling back on courtesy to keep from rage. Calm, Etienne.

She goes directly to her desk, rummaging in a drawer. "Why does that bother you?"

I move across the library to one of the great north-facing windows, quelling emotion and thinking before I answer. Moving the curtain aside, I lean on the window’s frame to look out at Sao Paulo. The hour is late, and the city lights fewer. A beautiful view, but I can’t appreciate it at the moment. "I... don't know. You have as much a right as anyone to a different name, and probably more need for one. I think... it bothers me because I told you about that oak tree above the vineyard.” I bite back something scathing, instead manage coolly withdrawn. "Which is to say, not for any rational reason." I’ve given you so much of what I am. Why do you give me so cursedly little?

"Because I've cast off a name that no longer has any meaning to me?” She pauses, rustling, moving a little around the room. “It is well. I do have my secrets and I'll keep them as long as I can, although my family aren't the secret keepers." She comes up behind me then, and puts a hand on my back. She never does that, and I shiver under this strange intimacy, even through my anger. "Come sit with me."

I look at her for a moment. Another level to the game? I follow her back to the comfortable leather chairs where we’ve spent so much time, wait for her to sit. She pulls bare feet up under her, and says, "So. Let's take what you know and what you surmise and apply it to my peculiar brand of faith."

I sit in my chair, sink into it with as much grace as I can muster, but make no reply, watching her carefully. I have a strange feeling I’m about to get angrier, or possibly hurt.

"I am wealthy, educated and a night owl. I dislike people and everyone you've met that might be my peer is likely catholic. Yes?” I quirk a smile when she mentions her 'peers', but gesture agreement, and she purses her lips. "I've told you in the past that my religious proclivities were chosen for me. You know that I'm New Orleanian. What is the obvious conclusion?"

I let a half-smile twist my lips, because I can’t for the life of me think what grand conclusion I’m supposed to come to. "Look at me being a disappointment... I don't think I quite follow your path of logic here. I'd say you're referencing New Orleans voodoo, but that's not a conclusion, only another step. The really obvious conclusion is that you're part of one of the old American families from that illustrious city and are playing the black sheep with your heathen ways. But that seems too simple. So what am I missing?"

"This is a long and sordid path. There are many conclusions that are merely steps. So. Both of those are correct. However now I'm here. What do you suppose caused the change of scenery?"

“I can only assume some kind of schism with your family. Otherwise why would you strike out on your own so far from home when your husband died?" For some reason that makes her narrow her eyes.

"I'm not a widow." There’s the next needle. How many more tonight?

I can feel my eyes narrow in turn. I want the truth of this. "Never married or never widowed?"

"Never married. What do you think of that?"

"I wonder whether you lied for your guests or for me." I grin because I don’t want to snarl at her. "I wonder whether you never married because nobody would ever put up with you, or because nobody could ever keep up with you. If it were a hundred years ago, or even fifty, I'd wonder at the fact that you were never married, all wit aside. But today, it's not so uncommon. Especially for someone so... enlightened... as you are."

She throws her head back and laughs, and I’m beginning to hate how that silvery laughter melts my anger. "Enlightened, hmm?"

I sink further into the chair, a small means to isolate myself, and tap a finger against my lips. "Remember when I said you were quicker of wit, and bolder, than most people I've ever met? That wasn't an assumption. And that sets you apart, M-A. Whatever the source, enlightenment is as good a word as any."

"Hmm. Well, tribulation doth bring it. So. Louisiana Vodouisant goes to Brazil. What is her faith lacking that Brazil provides?"

I steeple my fingers, looking for the conclusion so I can find her point and be done with this. "Context? History? More freedom or a new start? I suppose those are all aspects of broader understanding."

"Which do you think it is?"

I shut my eyes, count to five, and then meet her searching gaze. "Knowing you and guessing... I'd say some of two things. You left because you wanted freedom, either from your family or from the structure you were living in there." I sit up, the better to toss out my own arrows, and point at her. "You came here, in particular, because you found parts of the faith you were taught that didn't work for you, didn't seem correct. So you came to a place which is the heart of another faith, a closely-related faith, to look for answers to your heart's questions.” And the logical extension, “I'd be very much surprised if you didn't settle in Haiti for a time before coming here."

She laughs. "And there you have your answer, or at least a part of it."

I look inquiringly, inviting explanation.

"You asked how I came to this path, and you've answered it quite neatly." …I have. She made me answer my own question entire. She smiles encouragingly. "But I think that the question you asked is not the one you meant."

I smile back, and I don’t think I keep all the anger out of it this time. "I said I was thinking about asking you. The reason I laughed when I told you that is because I knew precisely what you'd say if I did ask."

"Oh?" She arches that perfect eyebrow again, still looking amused.

"Oui. I was dead right, too."

"You often are. Even when you don't realize it." She produces another penetrating stare, and this time I meet it in kind, trying to fathom this woman for the hundredth time.

"There's your mystery again."

At that she grins, a look portending laughter. "And I'm not even the mysterious type, really."

It’s too damned much for me that she actually said that, and I lean my head back against the chair and start to laugh, staring up at the ceiling. I laugh for some time, making myself see the ridiculousness of all this, trying to bury my anger and mostly succeeding. She doesn’t interrupt, just watches me, and I’m grateful for that. I’m tired, I realize, tired of the constant games and the tests and secrets, and that’s probably why tonight, a more avid round than any yet, has gotten to me. Eventually the laughter is gone, and I wipe my eyes, but keep my gaze up. I don’t know if I want to see her face.

I must be looking pensive. "A thought like that might be worth more than a penny," she says wryly.

I change my mind and tilt my head up a little, enough to glance at her, but she’s as serene and unreadable as ever. I let my eyes stray away from her face, close them. My voice sounds tired even to me. "What will you give me for it, then?" Surprise me, M-A, please...

She does; quick as that she is up and out of her chair, and kneeling next to mine. Before I can decide how to react, she takes my hand, squeezes my fingers gently. "I'd give you a great deal. But not now. Keep your thought. You're not ready to give it and I'm not ready to have it."

I can’t think how to interpret that; there’s too much in my head. Her fingers are slim and cool, delicate-seeming. Slowly I sit up, and curl my own fingers loosely around them. My eyes wander over her hands, up her scarred arms and past the makeshift bandage, over her throat, her hair and her face. I find her eyes and look deep, trying to find some core of her under all the masks... but who am I to begrudge her the disguise? I think of the past months of friendship and learning, I think about tangling fingers into her hair and kissing her. Instead, I gently free my fingers, and stand up.

“I think," I say, my voice catching a little, "I ought to go for the night." Let me go. Don’t let me go. Ask why… say something.

She nods and rises, her expression suddenly distant, and that wintry reserve hurts me all over again. "Have Roberto see you out."

I control my face, absurdly proud that I manage it, and nod in turn. As I step past her, closer than I should, my fingers steal out as if of their own volition and graze the back of her hand, but again she doesn’t move, only watches as I move to the doors. There, half a moment’s pause.

"Good night, M-A." Then I’ve gently closed the doors, and am walking out, numb and exhausted.

[Etienne] Drabble: Ritual

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:36:36 GMT

She leads me through thick jungle, rich and damp from afternoon rain. Thence onto a pale beach under a swollen moon, the sea murmuring close by.

I refuse the escape she offers; that pleases her.

She sings, traces three twisting, labyrinthine designs in the sand, chants out a beckoning rhythm of greeting. She makes offerings.

Earth, to Exu of roads. Glass and water, to Iemanja of the moon. Blood, black in the moonlight, for Ogoun of war.

Something answers. A distant howl on the wind, a throbbing tension... released swiftly by her final supplication.

Then, silence, but for the waves.

[Gideon] - Drabble: Prayer

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 06:03:10 GMT

In hell, Gideon painted.

Locked in a metal box under a brutal sky, he painted with his own blood, the only pigment he had. He painted because he felt sure he had looked death in the eye; hers was a terrible, burning gaze. He knew she would send for him soon.

With torn fingers his brush, he painted an angel, on a roughened canvas of hot steel. The bloody tears and perfect face, flaring halo and churning mass of wings from his memories, all took shape in ruddy sepia tones.

In hell, Gideon prayed, the only way he knew how.

[Etienne] - Stories Told on Skin

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:12:56 GMT

Her touch is unique.

It’s part of her mystery, part of that great unknown that is Madeline-Antoinette. Her touch has a quality to it, an awareness and deliberateness, which I’ve never known before. It’s not that she’s cold, or passionless; I’ve seen her spontaneity and fire too close at hand to think such a thing. I’ve been burned by her hands, her lips.

No, it’s simply the sense that, even in the greatest abandon, she’s aware of her every movement. Every time she touches me, there’s a sense that she’s exploring me in some new way, coming to understand me better through the electric thrills her caresses bring. Every one is different, purposeful, beautiful.

Tonight, some uncountable time after I arrive, we lay in the tangle of her bed, sweat glistening under candlelight, the scents of lovemaking heavy and heady around us. And when she leans closer and walks her fingers up my spine, it is with that hungry deliberation, that certainty of purpose. Something new…

“I want to tattoo you. Just here.” Her voice is honey, sweet and rich, and it takes me a moment to process what she said. I look at her sharply, once I truly hear it, but there’s no trace of mockery in her face, only a look of fascination and thought as she smoothes her hand across the center of my back.

“What would you want to put there?” I ask the question slowly, carefully. It could be a disaster for my career. Whether it shows or not is completely irrelevant to that. And yet… Part of me is worried at the idea, but that part of me has grown small and quiet in the seven months I’ve known Madeline-Antoinette Sabatier.

She thinks for a long few moments, tracing her nails in patterns over my skin, and it distracts me as she knows full well it will. After a time, “A tree, I think.”

“You think?” I ask, smiling and still cautious.

“I think,” she says serenely. “With branches curling up and out,” smoothing cool fingers over my shoulder blades, “and roots that spread and reach down,” drawing her nails deliciously to the base of my spine. “To remind you what you were and where you came from, as well as where you’re going.” Strange thing to say so suddenly…

“Mmm… I’ve been told tattoos along the spine hurt something awful.” I’m mostly just curious what she’ll say, but she meets my eyes squarely and smiles with something like relish.

“Oh, they DO, darlin’. They do. But worth every instant.”

I think about this for a few moments, and my trepidation must show on my face. She chuckles, leans in to brush her lips over my shoulder. “It is well, love. No need to give me an answer yet. Just think about it for me.” I will, you’ve seen to that… Further kisses trace down and over my back, full of awareness and purpose. Her tongue licks a trail of sweat from my spine, and it turns out that we’re not finished that night after all.

The idea lingers stubbornly in my head.

After a week, I start finding her sketches, stylized trees in various forms, many quite beautiful. It's not that she's hinting to me, merely thinking on paper, and I'm enough a part of her routine to find her thoughts. I think on the power involved in putting ink to your flesh, of the significance of allowing her to do it. I think about having a tattoo at all, her choice and her hands and how the idea feels. I think about the snake that curls around her body, about following its sinuous course with fingers and tongue, and of all the other scars I pass along the way. More of her mysteries, more stories she keeps for her own.

After another week, the idea is hopelessly stuck in my mind. During the day, at the embassy, I think on it often, and it almost distracts me from several crucial appointments. During the night, whether lying in my own bed, lying in hers, or studying with her long into the dark hours, the tree is in my thoughts, stealing my concentration, making me wonder.

Almost three weeks gone, I come just after dusk to find another set of sketches laid out on her desk, and these are almost all the same. A gorgeous piece; even seeing her journals I had no idea she could draw like that. This image, even more than the others I’ve found, burns its way into my mind from a single hungry glance, and then stays there despite my attempts to dislodge it. I try to concentrate on the book she’s handed me, a treatise on certain aspects of the worship of the orixa. She wants my opinion on some of the author’s suppositions. I realize I have read the same page thrice, that there is another idea crowding the text out of my mind. That does it.

She is sitting calmly at her desk, and barely notices me walking about the library as has become my wont. She notices, however, when I lean over her shoulder, that best of her sketches in my hand, and slam the paper down across the map she was reading. She’s startled, and that in and of itself is a small thrill. I lean my mouth not an inch from her ear, and whisper, “It’s distracting me completely. Do it.”

She shivers with a small pleasure at my voice harsh in her ear, looks up at me with that brilliant, wicked smile, and after a moment of watching my face, says, “All right. I will. Come with me.”

She takes me to one of the many spare bedrooms, one I’ve never seen before. The walls are covered with art; papered with rough sketches, precision depictions, inkings of many colors; studded with vibrant pieces in paint and oil and charcoal. Most of it’s hers… her hand, her lines. Why have I never seen this before? I look around the room, only half-seeing it, while she almost carelessly clears papers and art tools off the table in the room’s center sweeping it away as if her patience vanished with mine.

My caution is gone; I’m focused now, clear, and I know this is the right choice. All that remains is to see it through. My coat, I toss onto a chair. I unbutton my shirt, slow but purposeful, and strip it from my back, letting it fall onto the coat. She’s looking speculatively at the table, and I catch her eye and lead it inquiringly to my pants.

“Leave them on. The table’s splintery, and you won’t thank me for… well, you know. Maybe I should put down a sheet.”

Oh, that’s funny. I force a smile. “I doubt very much that I’ll be paying attention.” And I lay myself chest-down on the table, just as rough as she promised.

She produces a large wooden box from somewhere in the room, runs her fingers over its dark-polished surface, and opens it, revealing an array of needles and tiny jars of pigment. The box goes on a second small table, and she pauses to look at me again, but I simply nod and wrap my arms around the rough wood I lie on. I can hear the barest breath of a laugh from her, and she sets to work.

It hurts.

Oh, by all I’ve known, it hurts. The needles and their burden of ink pierce me a hundred times, a thousand. Many are bare pinpricks, tiny stings that after a while cease to be startling and hurt very little. But many are into the skin just above my spine, and the sensitive nerves to either side, and every one of those is a lance of tiny fire. My arms tighten about the table, and the muscles stand out like cords in my back. But the first time I flinch, the first time I can’t help it and make a small noise of pain, she sets down her needles and kneels next to my head, running a hand through my hair and kissing me until I lose the pain in her lips. She does it every time the pain makes me flinch or cry out.

At the end, it is perhaps an hour from dawn, though I have lost any sense of time. She sets down her tools for the final time, and steps back to survey her work, leaving cool fingertips against my hot skin. Slowly I manage to let go of the table. My whole back is afire, and I feel wrung out by pain and tension.

“You’re done,” she says softly, her voice husky. And done and done, three times for all.

Where I find the will, I do not know, but I press my palms into the table and lever myself up, up to stand on my feet. A soft hiss of pain escapes me, and she is there in an instant to keep me upright, those small hands as surprisingly strong as ever. She looks me over with caring and a hint of mischief, and her sweet Cajun drawl is slightly more pronounced. “If it’s any consolation, love, I think this is some of my finest work.” It is. She brushes a kiss against my neck, then along my jawline, then my lips. Her kisses are better than any balm, and it inspires me to tired humor.

“At the cost of my respectability, I hope so,” I murmur, craning my neck slightly to look over my shoulder.

She lays her fingers on either side of my jaw and makes me look back at her. “You’re still respectable. I have never respected you more than I do right now.” It’s one of those odd things she says that actually leave me speechless, not knowing how to respond, so I smile at her through the pain.

She lays a dressing over it for me, soft linen soaked in some kind of cool cream that smells herbal, wrapped in more linen. When the dressing is done, she stays kneeling next to my legs, and places a hand directly over the center of it, pressing down and drawing a harsh gasp from me. When I look at her, she rolls her gaze up the length of my body, murmurs, “You’re mine, now,” and hands me my shirt. Again, I‘m struck silent, but this isn’t a lack of words. Rather, this is not knowing which I should use.

After that she ushers me out. Dawn, of course. Roberto drives me home, Roberto who is solicitous and polite and who doesn’t like me. But he talks to me, keeps me centered, tells me how to take care of my open wound. I pay attention as best I can, thank him for his help. I always thank him.

Another day with no sleep. My back hurts freshly, sharply, as I walk to my front door. In a corner of my mind, behind the pain, is wonder, and a tree. The tree. My tree. Behind the wonder, anger. You’re mine, now. Perhaps it’s just that I don’t like being claimed thus. Mine. Or that I have no such claim on her. Mine, now. But I feel sure this was more important than I knew, and perhaps I’m angry that she didn’t tell me why.