Arionna de la Babin
[Do I feels you?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Arionna de la Babin
It
might be the end of the weekend, but that doesn't keep people from
celebrating. There are gallery shows, cafes, restaurants, and general
parties happening because...some people don't see Monday as the
beginning of work, or at least see no reason to cry over Sunday coming
to a close.
Arionna had slipped to the bookstore earlier,
happily (inwardly, not outwardly) walking away with a new book to read
in her off time. But now she wanders, pausing at the opening of some art
gallery, filled with people who wear black...not because they're part
of the goth crowd, but because 'they were doing it before it was cool.'
Probably sipping wine too. Losers.
She has a short skirt on,
with black stockings and a pair of boots. A black long sleeve keeps her
from the cold, and a black jacket to go with it. She wears a black cinch
at her waist and a studded collar at her neck, with a black crystal
hanging from it. Despite her clothing, she doesn't fit. There are no
square glasses on her face, or the indication of art snobbery. Her
darklips and eyes denote that she is, indeed, sporting black for the
most appropriate reason, and not to make a statement; she likes the
color.
Ian
[Awareness ftw]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
Jenn was making him interface with the rest of humanity.
Not that he didn't want to interface with the rest of humanity, it was just that it was incredibly early to be interfacing with people, and she had looked at Elijah with a quiet bit of desperation that came with please please please be my wingman
because there was nothing that got him out and about more than the need
to be a wingman at an art gallery. It was going well. Jenn was with a
girl with dreadlocks and a septum piercing. A girl who smiled too
brightly who could probably count as an amazon of some sort, but Jenn
seemed to really like her so, maybe he wasn't so much there as a wingman
as he was an escape route. Who knew, really. Jenn had just been
specific that she had wanted Elijah to come out with her.
Maybe she just wanted his company and needed an excuse.
Whatever
the case, there was an abundance of Halloween-themed and death-centric
and rebirth-focused artwork at this particular event, and more things
that tasted like pumpkin spice than you could shake a stick at. And an
abundance of vegetarian tiny food thingies. There was a word for them. A
word that was incredibly difficult to spell, so the author of this
particular post just avoided using said word instead of noting that the
food thingies actually existed.
Also: there was always time
for vegetarian sambousa. it wasn't even an Ethiopian-flavored event, but
goddamnit the young man with his trousers and his button up shirt and
his vest (because pocket watch) was going to eat whatever was
available so long as it wasn't meat-flavored. He could tell what the
texture was. He'd had someone else clean off his phone.
Arionna de la Babin
She
felt cold, as she always did. As winter approaches, it might even be
harder to notice her presence, but not yet. The fingers of winter
caressed clothing, sunk its nails into the flesh and burrowed far
beneath it until bones were exposed to the reminder that winter was
approaching, and despite the snow and glamorous glittering sun, it was
not kind.
Night was hers. She never felt particularly strong
or capable when the sun was up, but once it sunk beneath the horizon,
Arionna felt the strength of her own blood. The darkness was her own,
and with it, her magic flourished. But that was neither here nor there,
as she stood outside of the gallery, contemplating crashing it, or at
least showing the 'artists' what real black was meant for.
She
adjusted the bag at her side, inhaled slowly, and made her way slowly
past the threshold. Like a cold wind she stepped in, dark boots clunking
on the floor. Pumpkin spice was the calling of every white girl in the
great USA, and even Ari felt a calling for it. Maybe later.
Serafíne
Awareness.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Ian
Ian
was already inside the art gallery, though for the moment it didn't
appear that he was with anyone. Less than a week and a half ago he'd
been covered in a dead woman's blood, and now he was walking through a
fucking art gallery in downtown Denver in one of his better suits like
everything was life-as-usual.
That was a lie, of course. But not everyone wore their emotional state on their sleeves.
The
suit was a black burberry creation. Tailored and very slim-cut. Beneath
the jacket he had on a deep teal shirt and a black silk tie. He
probably looked a little overdressed for this type of gallery exhibit,
but then, art shows tended to draw a pretty eclectic crowd.
There
was a painting of a man trapped in some kind of nightmare. He was
sitting in what looked like a pool of blood. The piece was crudely
effective, if not precisely nuanced. Ian hovered in front of it for a
long time, the glass of wine in his hand momentarily forgotten.
Kiara Woolfe
[Spidy Senses Roll, yo.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Serafíne
This is a kind of close encounter and this is her neighborhood and these are
her people and she's not tonight at the particular gallery where so
many of her sort are converging, no. She's down the street, in a little
bar so narrow that even the skinniest chicks are all "scuse me, scuse
me" and sidewinding past the strangers tucked into the bartstools. The
place specializes in non-traditional whiskeys, whatever the hell that
means. Sera doesn't know but at least three of the people in the
extended group she is with tonight think they know.
They are probably wrong, but you've probably never heard of these things, either.
Halloween was several days ago but today is All Soul's and anyway Sera is a celebrant, she is still celebrating, she is dressed up
in a black bustier beneath her black leather jacket, wearing these
boots that look like hooves and an antlered crown, and she feels them
and she is unwinding herself from girl beside her considering following
the pull of resonance both strange and known, but the girl does not wish
to be unwound-from and someone buys her another shot of what was that?
and it is golden sliding amber, warming her all the way down, and she
wants another.
So. So - ships, passing. Another shot. This
heady laughter tattooed against her skin as the golden moment splits
itself into fractal edges, each with its own shade of flame. Strangers
come and new-friends go and her phone keeps buzzing with texts and soon
enough that pulse, that beat, that awareness-of-others has settled into
the background hum of her Sunday.
They'll leave that hole in the wall soon.
They'll turn: left, rather than right.
Elijah
He might be a little over-dressed, but damned
if he didn't look amazing in a suit. There was something to be said
about precise lines and clean figures. He hadn't made his way through
the gallery completely, but he did catch a look at the back of Ian.
Generally speaking, he rather enjoyed looking at the back half of Ian
Lai, but the painting he was standing at… something made Elijah's
stomach turn and he carefully found a place to put food away. Carefully
in a napkin, and the napkin in the trash, because suddenly everything
tasted like salt and copper.
He wasn't close enough to the bar to get something, so completely sober Elijah inhaled sharply and headed on over.
"Michael Vieja's got a few more pieces in the gallery. He and Jenn have a couple next to each other," because god damn it was easy to talk about art.
Kiara Woolfe
Kiara
liked galleries. In particular when they were full of people attempting
interpretation of the artist and pieces in question. One could mill
around a picture and garner several fractured ideas about the
implication of color distribution and the artist's use of clouds in the
sky. The Verbena is mostly here for the atmosphere. A sleek Woolfe
slipping amongst the sheep in her little black dress cut up to here with a slice of thigh flashing there,
hair pinned somewhat elegantly atop her head so strands fell, loose
around her nape, framing a heart shaped face that was, as ever betraying
a high degree of bemusement with the scene around it.
There
are others present, felt like the passing whispers of strangers, the
tickle of cool air as a body pressed close in passing.
She
lingers, though, Kiara, bites down into a hors d'oeuvre and lifts the
stem of her wine glass to her lips idly, musing at the entwined figures
in the picture before her. There was something slightly dark to the
image, to bodies ghosting and merging together in bold streaks of black
and red. A violence of color, perhaps. An invitation to some dance
between life and death.
It's not a wonder the Life Mage is drawn into it.
Arionna de la Babin
She
reaches for one of the finger foods, her dark nails sliding around it
as she plucks it up and right into her mouth. With a slightly hung head,
dark hair spilling over her shoulders and around her face, she moves
among the people. Only the japanese could come up with a darker figure
(we're looking at YOU Samara).
No touching. Even if it means
dancing around the crowd, some crazy monkey dance that only Arionna can
portray, then so be it. People were too much of a plague, and she'd
rather not contract it and have to quarantine herself.
She
finds no draw to anything with an uplifting perspective. Certainly many
like her would find 'rebirth' to be enjoyable, and yet she finds it
repulsive. Leave it to humans to take something wonderful like death,
and try to dress it up as the precursor to life. Predators are not
reborn from the prey they consume. They merely continue to live. She can
only wonder if prey often feel the same as humans. On he's not really being consumed by Mr. Wolf. He's just going to a better place.
Gross.
She
can feel them among the crowd, though her mind has been distracted from
tiredness all the day, and thus has left her senses somehow dulled. She
would have hoped that the coming of the night would wake her up. Not
so.
But oh did she move, bringing the cold with her as she
slipped around, looking for something to amuse her, to entice her, and
to allow her to creep on her fellows.
Ian
Ian
glanced away from the painting to take in Elijah's presence. His
expression looked distant at first, but within a few moments he'd
refocused. "I didn't know Jenn was in this show." It'd been
happenstance, really. The gallery hadn't been part of Ian's plans for
the evening. But he had time to kill, so he was here. And evidently so
were Jenn and Elijah. Someone walked in carrying a brush of winter's
breath, and Ian glanced back at Arionna half-expecting to find
Alexander, but instead... there was a girl in black. Someone he'd never
seen before.
There'd been a lot of those lately.
While Ian was scoping the crowd, his eyes landed on Kiara, hovering there for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.
"I'd like to see Jenn's work," he said to Elijah.
Elijah
[do I notice other mages?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Kiara Woolfe
Arionna's presence is ... difficult
to ignore. There is nothing delicate about the press of icy cold
sliding along your body. Kiara recognizes it enough now that she makes
some quiet, subvocal noise and tilts her head. Lifts her wine glass to
her lips and takes a lingering sip.
Relishes the flavor of
the wine on her tongue and turns her attention from the picture before
her for a beat, eyes sliding over the gathered crowd. If she's seeking,
perhaps she doesn't find what she hopes to, for she moves from her perch
and slips among the Sleepers, cutting a taller figure than some thanks
to the heels strapped to her feet.
Clearly, it's a discussion of the fundamentality of existence, Ben.
No, Walter, you have to look deeper, beyond the surface space.
She
sidles up beside a panorama landscape and addresses her smile to the
floor. It's a subtle, secretive thing, that expression and when she
lifts her eyes and glances idly across the gallery and finds Ian's face,
it lingers a moment before retreating to the wall before her.
Elijah
Kiara had a dress that was cut up to there
and it was hard not to look, to toss her a sideward glance while she
hovered by a painting. Oddly enough, somewhere that they needed to go in
order to see what it was that Jenn had at this particular exhibit.
He
was on his way to show Ian where this particular piece was. It was set
on paper, matted in something gray and all done up in reds and burgundy
purples like wine- like pomegranates- like the traditional fruit of the
underworld. There was a tree and a landscape with the flowers withering
and the leaves falling vibrant and and bright tot he ground while a
young woman descends- something reminiscent of Persephone. Something
reminiscent of a mother's mourning, the descent into the underworld.
Next to it was a rather surreal portrait of the young woman's apartment,
held up by tenuous strands and with a sky full of stars so bright it
was nearly blinding. The floor seemed to be falling apart.
"That
one's actually pretty accurate," Elijah said as he gestured to the
painting of the apartment. Acrylics on canvas, whereas the other was
pomegranate juice on parchment.
He stops for a moment, his
attention wanders and he finds the source of the cold, torn away front
he paintings for a moment to, instead, observe people. He looks like
he's miles away, taking the whole world in. Maybe because he was.
Arionna de la Babin
She
knows the feel of Kiara as much as the woman knows her own. One might
consider them two sides of the same coin; Ari would certainly call it
that. Kiara with her, in Ari's perspective, more modern view of
witchcraft, and Ari with the not so new age view. Whether that was true
or not...well...it was hardly important. They were connected enough that
Ari felt it, knew it, and sought it out...visually at least.
But
there were others she had been quietly stalking among the art snobs and
their wine. She circled, paused to look at a few pieces, and found
herself sliding up behind Ian and Elijah, with an acceptable distance
between them. She rather enjoyed the story of the Dark God and his taken
wife, a strong woman who eventually found her own place in a world that
was forced upon her. The pomegranates were hard to miss.
Simplistic. She might have said. It missed the point. It's only half the story.
But who knew the true purpose behind the painting the two men lingered
at. Elijah with his golden colored hair, Ian with his nice suit. The
nuances of Kore's role are lost of many, forever left to be the symbol
of abduction or loss in the face of temptation.
Ian
Ian
didn't ask Elijah if he was okay. Not here in this place where
everything was lines and colors and voices and shifting bodies. Elijah
didn't ask him either. Maybe the answer was assumed. So they walked over
to look at Jenn's paintings, and Ian took them in for a long moment
before nodding in agreement.
"I think that's about how I remember it."
He'd
only been to Elijah's apartment twice. Both times had involved stars
and the sensation of things falling apart (metaphorically speaking.) Behind them, Arionna lurked with her wintery resonance. Ian
stole another quick glance her way, but didn't attempt to engage her.
Instead he drifted away from Elijah's side to approach Kiara. "What do
you think of that one?" He indicated the panorama with a light tilt of
his head.
Kiara Woolfe
There's a congregation of awakened gathered by a painting.
Kiara
Woolfe knows them by sense, as well as sight now. She doesn't approach
them, though. There's a measure of method to that. A fox didn't earn its
reputation for cunning by hovering by the rabbit. Rather it waited and
bided its time until the moment seemed ripe to strike. Perhaps she
simply enjoys the chase more than the kill, hypothetically speaking, of
course.
She's cupping the glass close to her neck, observing
the lines of the canvas before her with a slightly tilted head when Ian
appears beside her. There's no instinctive change to her posture but she
does smile a little when he speaks, as if she had been half expecting
the question since she arrived. "I rather like it," she doesn't glance
at Ian, but extends a hand to trace the lines of wild grass across the
stretch of the canvas. "It's not trying to be what it's not." Now she
glances at him, a brief, measuring thing.
"Sometimes a field of grass is just grass." One imagines she's taking a subtle jab at the deep existentialism surrounding them.
Elijah
Art
snobs and their wine. The young man with the golden hair did finally
manage to find someone with wine that was steal able, which he did steal
with the intent on drinking. A white, not a red. reds felt strange on
his tongue, too thick and too vital and too earthy. He needed something
ethereal, and as far as drinks went if you had to drink something may as
well drink the stars. He'd spent the last few weeks painfully sober.
Maybe he should fix that.
He afforded Ari a second glance,
even a smile because- why not? He could be in the moment for now. One of
the creatures there who was dressed down. He gave a quid glance around
for the tiny woman he'd come with. Nobody asked if they were old enough
to actually drink. Either nobody cared or Elijah's fake ID was good
enough to fool damn near anyone.
Arionna de la Babin
"You
don't belong." She was never known for her amazing ability to make
friends, or be even remotely welcoming. Ari had her own reasons for it.
Blunt, to the point, and completely unaware of the whole
mages-should-be-quiet-lest-someone-in-black-shades-takes-you-away, or
whatever it was that kept people like her from broadcasting themselves.
Certainly she wasn't sending out radio waves to every device nearby, but
she wasn't shy about it either. When you don't exactly fit...you just
don't fit. No one can hide that.
Arionna stepped up closer to
the painting, canting her head a little to examine it before letting her
gaze slide towards Elijah, watching him form behind the strands of
hair. "You're not boring enough."
When a bit of food floated
by, she snatched a finger food and slipped it between her lips, lightly
sucking on her fingers to get the taste off. Not bad, for lacking meat.
Ian
Ian's
own reaction to the landscape didn't seem particularly strong, one way
or the other. (If in fact he even had one.) Kiara's answer held his
interest though, if only because it indicated something about the way
she approached the world. Nearby, Elijah found himself a glass of white
wine. Ian, of course, had red. He drank some of it as he contemplated
the blades of grass rendered on the canvas in front of him. When he
looked at Kiara again, he let his eyes hover on her. There was a
directness about it. Measuring.
"Feel like going somewhere?"
Elijah
"I
could be an actuary, those lurk everywhere, you know," like they were
vampires or monsters that lived in closets. Things that were more boring
than accountants, but he couldn't have been an actuary because his hair
was too long and his smile was too easy and he seemed just a little too
comfortable with his body and his space and himself to be anything
other than… well… the kind of hipster that showed up at these types of
things. but she was true, he didn't fit, didn't quite mesh with that
hint of the south in his voice and the lilt in the way he said things.
"Besides,
you haven't met everyone yet, how can people possibly be boring?" with a
grin, not a smile. His constant companion, something that came too
easily.
Kiara Woolfe
There were a few things
that stood out about Kiara Woolfe. One, the most stark, she didn't seem
to put a great deal of emphasis on tradition. If there was a line to be
drawn about what was acceptable or assumed, the brunette could be surely
found slightly off the mark. There was a sort of deliberate callousness
to the way she assumed her place, wherever it happened to be, no matter
general opinion or thought on the matter was correct. Or ought to be
allowed, due to her existence there in the first place.
Two,
she seemed to greatly enjoy confounding people. There was innate
satisfaction to walking a line of your own creating. And third -- third
... was that she turned bodily to face Ian Lai and it was nearly
impossible to scrutinize what she thought of his proposition. She looked
at him, beyond, at Elijah, Arionna and then returned dark eyes to his
face.
"Sure." A waiter passed by balancing a tray of drinks
and Kiara set her glass upon it, the corner of her mouth turned up in an
expression of playful consideration. "I guess I have about expended my
limits of artistic appreciation for the night."
She offered him her arm.
Arionna de la Babin
"No.
You couldn't be. Too young. Too pretty." She adjusted the bag strap,
shifting a shoulder to take the weight and move it to some other small
space there, hopefully not on the joint. She looked to him again, to
the side, askance so she was never making direct eye contact.
"Don't
need to sample every cat to know what cats are. Don't need to sample
every ant to know their nature. Humans are no different. I've examined a
large sample. People are boring. It's only the outliers who aren't as
boring, aren't as annoying. Though there is still the essence of it."
Elijah
"I
think that might be the problem, looking at people as a whole instead
of a person as an individual," he said, he replied, caught Kiara's eyes
for a moment before looking back at Ari. He could be miles away and
still be present. He could be inches from a person and be leagues into
the future. There was something to be said about that, about how he
can't quite exist in the present at that juncture, how he seems
distracted because the world was distracting (because it was loud and it
was noisy and it was always noisy and there was always something that
he could hear, always at the back of his mind, some chittering, some
whispering, some rattling of something- you'd think he would like the
season but he couldn't wait for the day of the dead to pass. For All
Soul's Day to be over.)
"What made you decide I wasn't boring, though?"
A beat.
"And thank you, by the way. For the compliment."
Arionna de la Babin
"People
are the same, mostly. They dress themselves up in different clothes and
voices, but in the end, underneath it all, they're all the same. Like
stories. Each story has different characters, takes place in different
locations, but it follows the same formula, the same idea. Only once in a
great many years does something new come around. Some author breaks the
mold. Mary Shelley, for instance. Then everyone tries to be like them,
and the formula continues. Difference becomes sameness, just wrapped in
different bows to make it appealing."
When he asked why she
had decided he wasn't entirely like them, she tightened her hands on the
strap of her bag, letting her eyes cast down to the floor momentarily.
"No reason." Another quick glance to the side, and yet this one didn't
exactly stick. Her skin starts to warm, even if just a little, and the
corner of her lips curls up. "You're welcome."
Ian
He
could have stayed. Probably, he should have. Talked more with Elijah,
maybe tried to be cordial to the newcomer. But like the painting before
them, Ian was what he was. And right at the moment, he wasn't trying to
be anything else.
Kiara kept her feelings close. She, like him, was a composed creature. But she offered him her arm and said sure, so
Ian finished off his wine and set the glass down on the nearest tray.
When he looked at her again, he smiled. He had a pretty mouth, soft and
full and etched in sensual lines, but sometimes the warmth of his smiles
did not quite reach his eyes.
He took Kiara's arm in his own,
as though they knew each other much better than they actually did. And
as he led them toward the door, he leaned in to whisper, "Bar, club, or
your place?"
Elijah
"You know, being the same
doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing," he said, took a drink of
his wine. The little brunette he'd come with was still talking to the
Amazon she had courted with the dreadlocks and the septum piecing. He,
for his part, could listen to Arionna with a grin on his face and
tasting faintly of white wine because it went down smooth and crisp.
Someone ordered a decent riesling. He didn't realize he was developing a
taste, a palate if one will, for things like this.
"So you
arbitrarily decided I was interesting?" he half-teased, "and perhaps has
nothing to do with the tiniest bit of winter that you brought with
you?"
Yes, he said, I noticed He said without saying.
Kiara Woolfe
They're
attractive people. They draw the eye, if only for the fact they both
possess the sort of dispassionate awareness of their physicality in
proximity to others. It's not entirely physical though, not
with the female of the pair at least. Kiara Woolfe had the sort of
charisma that tended to generate among her kind. That very base,
instinctual Otherness that clung to her skin, gathered in the
dark humor residing in her eyes, the tilt of her mouth in a smile that
wasn't totally without some private mirth.
As if she knew the composition of the joke before it was told.
In
generations gone past, she'd have been burned at the stake. Perhaps
once, she was. The male moving alongside her whispers in her ear and she
smiles without glancing at him, a habit of hers apparently. "I have
wine at my apartment."
Ian is what he is and so is Kiara. She
doesn't hide what she likes. Or, apparently, what she wants. "Unless
you'd rather keep your options open for the evening, in which case I
know a great place down the street." She pauses by the door, a thin
eyebrow arches.
"Pick your poison."
Arionna de la Babin
"I've
never met one of the mob who wasn't hollow on the inside." Because
honestly, her experiences with those she might consider to be like
everyone else, have never been...pleasant. It's only been the oddities
or the people who don't seem to fit in that she manages to deal
with...and even then...
She and Kalen have only recently called a truce their conflict, short as it may have been.
"I didn't bring it with me. It's always been there, in some way. I came with it.
" She shifted again, just a little, and maybe people like Danny would
find her mannerisms amusing. "Everyone simply forgets it."
"We're
not the same. But you're not like the rest of them. That makes you more
interesting than the rest of those here." Arionna lifted her gaze to
look at him a bit more fully, though it quickly shifted to the drink in
his hand. "What are you drinking? Wine or champagne?"
Elijah
I''ve never met one of the mob who wasn't hollow on the inside.
"I've found we've all got a lot in common with those chocolate easter rabbits you can get at drug stores," he replies.
Funny
one should mention Kalen, of all people he was the furthest thing from
Elijah's mind at that juncture. Odd, because he was the man's student.
Odd, because they sort of lived together. Sort of. They inhabited
similar spaces, and Elijah woke up at some unreasonably late hour most
mornings to the feeling of a brewing storm in the air. There was the
question of what he was drinking and he looked at it again, "it's a
riesling? So it's just a standard wine. Nothing fantastic but it's free,
want one?"
Benefit of coming with an artist here. He knew which drinks he didn't have to pay for.
Arionna de la Babin
Elijah had a funny way of... did he just make an analogy to chocolate rabbits?
The
corners of her lips curl up again in a small smile. Danny, and those
who had come to know her, might have made the sign of the cross at that
very moment; Ari was not known for her ability to smile, much like her
ability to make friends. "The ones with the yellow candy eyes or the
ones without? Come on dude, there are many kinds of hollow bunnies at drug stores.
"I've
never had one." She doesn't generally drink or really need to, given
that such parties are generally reserved for the people who know the
people who are throwing them. She's also technically too young to be
found in a liquor store without being dropped in the county jail shortly
after. "Are they good?"
Ian
Who knew what
sorts of lives they'd led in previous incarnations. Some people
possessed that kind of memory, but Ian was not one of them. Perhaps he
didn't really care. This was the life he was living now, and in it there
was room for both bloodshed and flirtatious conversations with
beautiful women.
Life was made up of many experiences. Some
less pleasant than others. Someone like Kiara probably understood that
better than most, given her Tradition and her resonance.
They
walked to the door, and when Ian asked Kiara where she wished to go, she
said she had wine at her apartment. Unless he'd rather keep his options
open. Ian paused for a moment with his hand on the door, but there was
no hesitation in his response - because he didn't need to think about
it.
"I already found the one I want." This time, his smile did
reach his eyes, and it was all secrets and hunger. If Kiara needed to
retrieve a coat, he'd wait for her to do so, then he opened the door and
stepped out into the street.
