Lavinia
They
weren't familiar. They most assuredly weren't familiar with one
another, only accustomed int he way that one is accustomed to a person
you've met twice- once sparring, once to ask a favor. It stung on her
lips and left a bitter taste. The loner inside of her cringed at the
possibility of being a freeloader, or not making good on her word. When
you're alone, you have to look at your actions differently. That's what
she's learning.
The morning started like any other morning.
Wake up early, sit ups. Eat something out of the mini fridge that
probably lacks adequate caloric value but she never really liked
eating, but she did like having the adequate body fat to actually pad
fledgling curves. So, after sit ups and the first breakfast, there were
push ups, a run from the motel to the nearest gas station, buying (and
consuming) a giant burrito and hating herself for it (I'm going to puke if I eat this (you're going to pass out if you don't) Which is better? (Shut up and run.)) Then burpees. Then hating burpees. Then more burpees, squats, reading, staring at the ceiling, and then a shower.
Cold.
Not because she's hardcore. No, it's cold because the water at the
motel is always cold in the morning. Mr. Polluck turned down her water
heater after the complaint that, no really, you can't take a bath in
scalding water.
Whatever the case, between eating lunch (second lunch) and playing guitar on a street outside of a coffee shop (Yes, I have a license to be here, see? Paperwork in order) she texted Ian.
Thank you= Persian food+dancing? Are you busy tonight?
She
doesn't tell him that, regardless of whether or not there is an
affirmative, she is going to eat Persian food tonight and go dancing.
---
Shiraz
is a decent enough place. The reviews on Yelp were numerous and largely
good and the menu largely consisted of a series of kabobs that seemed
pretty delicious stews that were questionably difficult to pronounce. It
was one of those places with ugly chairs and amber walls and art that
was smuggled over when some hopeful worker came from Iran in the 1970's.
The restaurant's been open close to fifteen years, but the tapestries
are washed and the carpet (no matter how bland it may be on account of
being the kind of carpet that you have to be a professional or a
four-year-old to stain) is clean.
Let it be said that a lot
can be said for a place that is clean and is full of customers, a fair
portion going on in Farsi. Laughing loudly.
Lavinia has a
table, she's inspecting her nails (short, corral) and waiting on a
waiter to refill her water. She drinks like a fish in every sense that
the phrase does not intend.
The dress she's wearing is short.
Short because everything she wears is short because the woman is over
six feet tall- of course it's going to come up short on her. The sleeves
and over dress seem to be lace with an embellished sash across the
middle. It's indeed for someone with cleavage, or perhaps it's intended
to be worn precisely the way it is and draw attention to the runway
figure she was. Tall, subtle, athletic... and shaped like a hanger.
The
shoes are flat sandals (thank God for Ross, she only owns three pairs
of shoes- four, now). Gladiator style and gold. Little gold bracelet,
earrings that get lost and blend into her hair, and a purse that she
picked up at consignment for fifteen dollars four years ago. Very much a
last season designer purse, the kind that holds a phone and keys and
maybe a wallet (maybe).
She learned later that they were called evening bags. Whatever the case, it matched her dress. That's why she got it, because she liked the color.
Ian
I get out of rehearsal at seven. Where do you want to meet?
And
it went from there. Lavinia texted him the address and Ian showed up at
the restaurant wearing clothes that looked comfortable enough to dance
in. Expensive jeans (black resin with a flattering cut - dancers always
look good in fitted jeans, don't they?) and a white v-neck t-shirt. Even
his shoes looked comfortable, trading out the boots he often wore for a
pair of black and white striped trainers. If he was tired from
rehearsal, he didn't let it show. Walking in the front door, he took a
slow glance over the restaurant's interior before his eyes landed on
Lavinia, already seated at a table in a dress that looked as though it
belonged on a runway.
It was a bit reminiscent, actually. Ian
smiled when he saw her there, making his way over to the table. He
pulled out a chair for himself and sat down, grabbing a quick drink of
water. "Have to say, as far as repayment plans go, this isn't a bad
one."
Lavinia
"As it turns out, I crunched the numbers- it's much
less complicated than getting you a new suit. I don't think we're at
the point in our interactions that it's socially appropriate for me to
take your inseam," she smiles. Everything looks natural, which means she
either wasn't wearing makeup or Lavinia had perched herself on top of a
structurally unsound sink to get her eyeshadow to blend out just right.
Truth be told it was a rite of passage, hiding in the bathroom at the
wee small hours of the evening locking herself in at fourteen and trying
her sister's makeup. Carefully working on shading and with trembling
hands putting on lip liner again and again and hoping that nobody would
notice so she didn't have to explain to anyone why she was doing this.
The
first thing she did when she was sixteen, when she was out of the
house, when she was unexpectedly on her own and mobile was to buy
makeup. Eye liner, some cheap dollar store Wet 'n Wild eyeshadow palates
and shoplift a decent set of brushes from the Walgreens on the corner.
She'd traded favors for couches to sleep on. Stuck with tight jeans and
oversized sweaters that nearly drowned her. Lavinia was Chelsea at the
time. Chelsea was a lanky, awkward girl, but god damn it Chelsea could
rock a smokey eye with two and a half bucks worth of product.
"So, rehearsal," she announces, brows raise, intrigue on her features, "are you in a band?"
Ian
"I'm
a dancer," he corrected. "Not quite as cool." He hardly seemed
embarrassed though. One might imagine that male dancers tended to
develop pretty thick skins regarding their profession. (Ballet dancers
especially.) Ian glanced at the menu with a thoughtful expression,
running a finger over the edge of his lip. In truth, he was hungrier
than he would have liked to admit, and the smells wafting over from the
kitchen and the nearby tables were more than a little distracting.
"What
about you?" He glanced up from the menu. "I never asked what you do.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if you modeled, you've got the frame for
it." Women who looked like Lavinia tended to hear those kinds of
compliments, usually in the form of veiled flirtations. When Ian said
it, it sounded more... appraising. Observational. "You'd probably make a
killing in New York."
Lavinia
"I'm in a band right now. Being in a band is not cool, being in a band consists of sleeping in some guy named Bud's
VW bus because your bass player blew all your living money on a very
expensive bottle of cognac," she looked down, smile still on her face,
"is it okay that I invited you out dancing? That's not going to feel
like you're going to put in overtime? If it's a passion I doubt it, but I
don't know many people that go into the arts just to pay the bills."
She
picked up the menu as a formality- she knew what she was getting, but
it was a ritual. Open it up, turn the page, look thoughtful and give
your partner time to see what they want so you're not stuck staring at
them with eyes like eternity feeliking like the boundless reaches of the
cosmos whining about being huuuuungreeeeeeeee. In truth, she wasn't hungry, though she should be. Perhaps modeling might have been an appropriate career for her.
"I hadn't considered it, though. Work with the Choir makes it pretty difficult to hold down a real job."
Ian
"If
I didn't want to go I wouldn't have said yes." Though Ian's tone here
was cryptic enough that it was hard to tell if he'd said yes because of
the dancing or because he'd wanted to see Lavinia (and maybe that was
intentional, though of course anyone who knew him would likely assume
the answer was: both.) He did seem quietly interested when
Lavinia mentioned to him that she was in a band, and his attention
hovered on her for a moment, the menu in his hand neglected.
When she mentioned working with the Choir, his expression changed subtly, and he uttered a little hmm.
"The Choir, huh?"
Lavinia
[Per+empathy- is the Celestial Chorus thing going to be a deal breaker?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Ian
[Subterfuge]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1
Lavinia
[Nope, I am going to say this and be totally cool!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Lavinia
"Yeah,"
she says, as though she doesn't have to apologize for anything.
Because, well, why would she have to apologize for anything? It's her
tradition, her choices, her life- if there is one thing that could be
said about Lavinia it was that she wasn't ashamed of, well, anything.
Nothing that she presents outwardly, anyway. All people have shame; hers
is buried six feet in a cemetery on the west coast. "I kind of figured
when I was nineteen that there was something really messed up with the
world, woke up and found out demons were A Thing, and spent a few years
figuring out I'm more equipped to poke true evil with a stick. I don't
anticipate making it to thirty, my order's an endangered species."
A
beat, a drink of water, and she doesn't even leave lipstick on the
glass. She's a professional when it comes to keeping things meticulous;
you only want to apply once.
"And I don't get most of the rest of the chorus either, so we're still trying to work out the whole we can't tell if you're divine or an abomination
kind of thing. I try to keep out of the big debates," she said,
nonchalant about the whole thing. Perhaps prone to hyperbole or perhaps
not. It was conversational enough, she inhaled a long and confident
breath. Could be sociable, could be all sorts of things when she needed
to be.
Lavinia didn't like lying. She didn't like putting on a
face to seem like things were okay, but... Traditional baggage seemed a
little heavy for dinner.
Ian
[Per+Empathy]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Lavinia
In
that brief and shining moment something becomes clear- in her
Tradition, in society, in the magical world as a whole she is an
outsider. She knows it, too, and it wears on her. Digs under her nerves
that she has to defend her existence. What he gleans is simple-
while she might be committing her existence to a cause, that cause might
not necessarily want her. What person doesn't want acceptance?
Ian
It
was instinct at this point: checking for listeners when talk of
Traditions started. They were in a public place, and anyone might have
overheard them, though in reality people seldom seemed to care. Too
wrapped up in their own lives. Ian's gaze was quick and subtle as it
chased the room, returning to Lavinia soon after. He gave away so little
of what he was thinking, and though she tried to hide her feelings as
well, her mask frayed just a little at the edges. Ian didn't comment on
that, and soon they were interrupted by the server. It was an odd
juxtaposition, moving from demons to lamb kabobs. (But such was their
life, wasn't it?)
Ian ordered some tea with his food. When the server was gone he said, "Why do it, if you think it's going to kill you?"
Lavinia
She
ordered lamb, because the lamb was fantastic. She smiles at the waiter,
something charming and genuine and pleased by the presence of another
person for just a second.
"Everything will kill you
eventually. I decided I'd rather die doing something very few people can
do, because it needs to be done. It makes me feel like I have a
purpose."
Ian
"I'm guessing that's important
to you, if you joined the Chorus." He was still being careful. They were
in public, and they barely knew each other, and Lavinia was hardly the
kind of presence that could stand to be underestimated. She was bright,
and strong, and potentially dangerous. Ian didn't seem offended by
anything she'd told him, but he did seem... more aloof somehow.
"I
suspect they probably don't deserve you. Though... I don't really know
you well enough. Other than the fact that you can fight, and you look
good in a dress." He cocked his head there and smiled, leaning back in
his chair.
Lavinia
[Charisma + Expression, let's see if I can pull of Mae West]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
Lavinia
"I'd say the dress usually
looks better on the floor," brows rose for a second before she
discarded the look to take a drink. There is a moment, though, the
moment where her cheeks turn pink and her dark, dark eyes go down and
there is a very clear look of oh sweet merciful divine, I really just said that.
She
cleared her throat, sat up a little more and, "that's really sweet of
you to say, I mean, like. It's- anyway stick with the dress thing that's
a lot wittier." Another dismissive hand wave but her cheeks are bright
and her ears are warm and she's turned her head ever so slightly so she
can hear him better, put the world on her literal wrong side and focused
in on her company.
Ian
If Ian was surprised
by that, it was less because he was unused to being flirted with
(hardly) than because one tended to have certain expectations of the
Celestial Chorus - expectations that Lavinia seemed inclined to subvert.
Ian answered Lavinia's look with a similar one of his own, arching a
brow as one side of his mouth turned up in a curling smile. Everything
about the look said that he'd played this game before.
"You would look better with the dress on the floor. But I wasn't going to say that until after we'd eaten."
Lavinia
She's out of practice, or perhaps she never really had
a lot of practice. It was up to debate, one could be confident and
cocky and self-assured and any number of things on a stage. You could
make love to a microphone and scream your heart out and use the words
you were given to paint some pretty tempting pictures. There were some
expectations, some boundaries, some images of what a Chorister does and
does not do.
Mademoiselle Cervantes seems content to say, with
the voice of a herald and the resonance of someone with purpose.
Heartily, verily, from the pits of one's soul- fuck your conventions.
She
laughs, "and miss dancing? I didn't put on heels for this, and that's
saying something. I can not begin to tell you how imminently satisfying
it is to be on a dance floor and six and a half feet tall." Makes sense,
with resonance like that she would be larger than life, tower like a
damned Amazon.
Ian
"I wouldn't mind. Tall women don't bother me." A beat, a half-cocked smile. Ian wasn't precisely tall
(not the way that Lavinia was,) but at six feet barefoot he was tall
enough that he only sporadically encountered women whose height required
him to look up. It was, if anything, a novelty. "But dancing in heels
is a nightmare. I don't blame you."
Ian took a drink of water, rolling a piece of ice between his teeth. He sucked on it once, then bit down and cracked it in two.
"Where did you learn to fight?"
Lavinia
Where
did she learn to fight, he asks. And she has to think about it- looks
up and to the left while her fingertips idly tap out some rhythm.
Triplets, subtle. She has to think about it, how to word it, because
time has passed since she first learned to throw a punch. "I got the
basics down from a band mate- lead guitarist was pretty keen on making
sure that a girl knew how to take care of herself because we played in
some pretty seedy places. Learning how to take a hit was trial and
error."
It's not a pity party, it's just a fact. Nobody learns
to keep going unless they take a hit. Nobody learns how much they can
handle before they break without actually breaking. He knows things
about her pattern. Knows how many ribs she's broken (a couple on one
side, most of them on the other), could probably guess the number of
concussions she's had and it's a wonder the young woman hasn't lost a
tooth. That the worst of the lingering damages is her hearing. Things
she wears like a badge of honor.
"After that, my mentor helped
clean things up," she clarified, "what about you? You're really
polished, you know how to handle yourself."
Ian
Nobody
liked to think about what it meant to learn to take a hit. Not the way
that Lavinia meant it (not in some boxing ring with a trainer watching
over, but because she'd been attacked - more than once.) Ian didn't seem
shocked by her admission, but there was a subtle tension around his
eyes that might have suggested some hint of understanding. He knew
how many bones in her body had been broken. How damaged her hearing was.
He knew, too, why she may have attracted violence from more sources
than just the demons she hunted.
They lived in a cruel world.
What about you?
"Different
places, I guess. I learned some when I was a kid. Then I did some sword
training in New York. Kendo mostly. I know..." Ian gestured loosely to
indicate his face (which was, despite some Americans' complete lack of
cultural awareness, not Japanese.) "My ancestors would be rolling over in
their graves. I also did Wushu. Since I moved to Denver I've been
training with an Akashic. He's upped my form a lot. Dancing helped too,
actually."
Lavinia
"I
always thought kendo was beautiful, and definitely a lot more flowing
than anything you can do with a switchblade," but also a little harder
to conceal, but that went without saying, "I wouldn't mind learning
somewhere, though. It'd be very Uma Thurman in Kill Bill but without the
yellow jumpsuit."
Which was a plus, because realistically it
would be impossible to find a yellow jumpsuit for someone who was tall
and thin. She knits her fingers together and rests her chin n them.
Maybe leans in, just a little- subtle. Enough to convey her interest in
whatever it was that he was saying. He's been training with an Akashic,
and she stops long enough to think, "would that be… the person who was
with you when we sparred?"
Then to continue on, "dancing's helped?" In very much a tell me more fashion.
Ian
"Jae-shin, yeah. If you want I can give you his work number. I think he's taking new students over the summer."
Ian
shifted in his chair, reaching back to slide the billfold out of his
pocket. There was a brief pause while he searched through the slots for
Jae-shin's business card. When he found it, he pulled it out and handed
it across the table. The card was small and white, with am embossed
image of a silver lotus flower in one corner. The text said: White Lotus Martial Arts Studio. And beneath that, Master Jeong Jae-shin: Taekwondo, Gong Fu, Taiji, Kendo. At the bottom, it listed a phone number.
Lavinia's
second question required a bit more consideration, and Ian mulled it
over while he sat back in his chair. "It helps to know your body, and to
have control over how you move. It isn't just the agility though. It's
also... learning how to read people. To be able to respond instinctively
to the cues in their body language. Dancing is all about that."
Lavinia
There
is something of an instinct that some women have, when they take
things- little things that they want to remember, things that they need
to keep close to them- they take them. Carefully, hold them close in
their fingers and then slip those tiny, inconsequential objects into
their bras and call it a day. Lavinia almost does this, but then seems to remember that this particular dress didn't exactly give her the kind of leeway she needed to have an extra set of pockets in the front.
There
is a second of hesitation after she's done looking, done letting her
fingers graze the embossing. That moment of remembering oh, right, I'm not dressed for that. It gets tucked away in her purse- the one that is small and blue and barely has room for anything but it does
have room for it in her tiny, tiny purse. "I'll call him," she tells
Ian, "the worst that could happen is that he could tell me no."
It didn't need much mention, but Lavinia wasn't the type to just pay lip service.
Fingers
knit back together, eyes intent and that subtle lean forward still
there. She watches, pays attention, but her eyes are on his lips more
than turning her head to the side. She's watching, yes, because she
wants to be sure she heard correctly. "Seems like it requires you to not
cut that particular part of yourself off- the one that can just
react. I'm not always good with catching body language, I'm too busy
just…" she looks up, searches for something- words that she has but
can't quite string together "- I don't know. I'm not paying attention
the right way. My reactions are too slow, it's like I'm over-thinking
it."
Ian
"I think that's normal, at first. You
don't really hone those instincts until you've done it so much that it
lives in your bones." His voice trailed off when the server appeared
from the kitchen bearing a tray that looked as though it was meant for
their table. Sure enough, the man approached with a pleasant smile,
setting their plates down before them on the table. The food smelled
delicious, fragrant with spices and slow-cooked lamb. Despite this, Ian
went for his tea first, wrapping the glass mug in his palm until the
heat began to soak into his skin. It was a nice, strong black tea. Some
variety of Assam. He drank it carefully, setting the mug down when they
were once again alone.
"It also helps if you spend a lot of
time studying living patterns." There was a beat, a silent pause while
Ian contemplated whether or not to voice his next question. "What
denomination are you? Since you're in the Chorus."
Lavinia
There was food, and time for her to reposition her hands and shoot the man who was bringing their food an absolutely pleased smile. A little wave of her fingers and an earnest thank you
and soon enough they were left with their food again. She goes for her
rice first. Exhales and steels herself, a tiny inward reminder that she
needs to eat something. That she's going to have to, at the very
least, make a good attempt at eating food. Truth be told, if she could
avoid the whole experience, she would, but it was only a recent endeavor
that food stopped being appealing, and it was a slow return to the
point where this wasn't overwhelming.
They weren't talking
about the celestial creature's eating habits, though. She nods at his
final note, that studying something's pattern helps you get to the point
where anticipating movement becomes instinct. He seems to be an
authority, clearly aware enough because he helped keep her arm attached
to her body so he definitely knew what he was talking about.
The
next question though does make her pause, makes her look down at her
food for a second but there's still a smile on her face. They're all
questions she seems accustomed to.
"I'm not?" she says,
"there's actually a group within the Chorus that believes all beliefs
and factions and religions are basically facets that humanity uses to
try and connect with a singular divine. I'm a soft polytheist,
generally. I tend to get lumped into the somewhat pagan umbrella."
[Author's Note: At which point Ian gets a call and has to leave, because life happened.]
