tigers and other assorted oddities.

Feila Montefiore

[and I am rubbing my hands together and writing a post!]

Feila Montefiore

The weather outside is oddly changeable. When the door opens it is as like to bring in a flurry of snowflakes as a smattering of rain, a sudden burst of sunshine, the sound of crickets, the smell of the city.

Hmm.

The time of day outside is oddly changeable, too, it seems. And the scents and location associated with the outside. Inside it is less important what time of day it is, or what sort of weather there is, or where the sudden inhabitants of this place are coming from, or think they are coming from. Granted, that may make the usual small talk ("strange weather we've been having", "whatever do you mean? it's sunny as the first of May!") a little more awkward than usual, but it's not like anyone remembers those conversations for long anyway.

This time when the door opens, the bar and grille is scarcely occupied at all, even the rooms-for-rent upstairs that remind one of a saloon or tavern out of time and not a modern-day bar -- what does it mean, 'modern-day'? when is this? where is this? -- stand currently empty. The time of day outside is unknown, but it is very dark. The weather is confusing and invisible, but very warm, with the occasional breeze. There are no stars or streetlights or nearby cities; the exterior is pitch dark. That is where she is coming from, at least. We'd best not think too much on that.

The door shuts behind her. There is a fire in the fireplace despite what she thought was warmth outside, but here it simply seems cozy, familiar, welcome. The bartenders are wiping glasses and counters, chatting with each other.

She, this person coming in from the dark summer, is surprisingly tall for her age, which seems to be late teens, early twenties, somewhere in there. She is lithe. She moves gracefully, toe to heel, her footfalls light and subtle. She is pretty, and wears pearls in her ears, but she does not smile, and her eyes do not smile. Her eyes are pearl-black, mirthless. But her brow is smooth. She is not frowning, either. She looks around more curiously than anything else, as though she can't quite put her finger on where she is,

or how she came to be here,

or why.

Which means she is probably super, super stoned.

Constanta Iliescu

There is already a woman here and the woman inhabits space that others merely occupy; transforms it by her mere presence. Refines it; makes it sharper, makes it brighter, makes it holy.

Here are facts: she is slender and she is delicate and she is beautifully articulated. Fine bones and tender bits of skin, golden hair like a halo and a pale blue eyes and a certain wintry precision to the way she holds herself. There is an attendant close-to-her and the attendant close-to-her is forgettable and deliberately so. Has forgotten everything except for pride-in-the-service-of-its'-mistress and a certain efficiency, which is no more than she expects from such serviceable and in the end disposable creatures.

There is a fire in the hearth and a rather ornate - goblet, yes a goblet - of something dark on the bar in front of her, and when Feila arrives, enters, unsure of where she's come from or why or how or where she is or what this might be -

the stranger has her head bent over her glass,

at prayer.

In the name of the Father, and the Father, and the Father, and the blood we bear, and the blood we bare. Death to the tyrants. Freedom for the soul. Amen.

Quietly at prayer, wholly at prayer, entirely at prayer, you see. Consumed by it, until it is done and she is done and she glances up. Considers the stranger with the same odd precision with which she considers everything.

"Has the storm let up?"

Griseda

A very large, very green person (from what one can tell) walks through the door, dressed in chainmail over a suit of black leather. The chainmail gleams like no metal anyone here has likely seen -- brighter still than silver. On this person's head, a giant deer skull -- antlers and all -- adorns a helm of polished gold. She has to step in sideways.

And with this person, comes a sense of oncoming doom. You wouldn't want to piss this one off. Like the Hulk went to a fantasy LARP. So, you know, it might not be a good idea to laugh at the hat.

As she strolls in (like she owns the place) a tusked mouth (with images carved into those tusks -- reliefs of her great deeds) bellows, "Ahh, shit. This place again? Gonna kill that elf."

Feila Montefiore

The girl, though it is hard to call her a girl because of those eyes and hard to call her anything else because of her form, sees the goblet and the woman with it. The girl is wearing a knee-length skirt, cream-colored, the sort that might twirl. A closely-cut, deep brown top with a scooped neck and little cap sleeves, not unlike a leotard but not a leotard in fact. She wears flats, and they are gold. She's a normal girl. The woman with the goblet does not seem normal. The woman coming in with green skin and chainmail is not normal, but it's the latter woman that makes the girl's eyes widen slightly.

What.

One asks about a storm. The girl shakes her head, and that hair that is dark but limned with lightness of gold and copper, just shakes her head in confusion for a moment, as though casting off cobwebs. "What? There's no --"

Are you sure about that.

She isn't, really, when she thinks of it. Maybe there was. She remembers a storm suddenly, but just as clearly as she remembers the warmth and the breeze and the endless darkness. The green-skinned one says something about a drink, and the poor girl lifts her hand -- slender and fine, long-fingered, lightly manicured in clear polish -- to touch her brow, hoping the chill of her hand will cool her head off. She is surprisingly cool, she finds. And also very hot. And with that, she lowers her hand, with the same sort of motion,

like she is moving through water,

and walks herself to the bar, gripping the edge and looking at a tender and saying: "I would like something to drink," she says, with alarming firmity for someone who looks like they might just be breakable over your knee.

Surprisingly -- though mostly surprising to her -- the bartenders do not ask to see an ID. They ask her what she wants, and she says she would like... what does she want. She wants one of the things she's had before, so she says she wants a margarita. And so they make her one, on the rocks, no salt, and when she asks about payment -- realizing too late she has no purse, no ID, no nothing -- the tender just smiles and says:

don't worry about it. it's on your tab.

Which she doesn't remember starting, but so it goes.

Feila takes a nice big drink, faster than she should.

Lancaster

Such a gust of stifling humidity when the door opens again. Hot and dark and drenchingly wet. The roar of a summer storm in the air, a wild ocean wind gusting through the door. Gallon upon gallon of water pouring from the sky onto waxy-dark jungle leaves, pattering onto pavement, pinging off overhangs.

The creature that steps in from the storm has the luxury of unabashed, unmitigated beauty. He is coal-black hair and sharp white teeth. Wide-set, slanting, savage eyes. He is dusky skin and aquiline nose, wide shoulders, long limbs. A certain lazy and carnivorous ease to the way he moves. The snap of his collar up to shake the rain off; his hair plowed back from his brow. He is dripping and does not care. He peels off his light raincoat, which did him little good, and leaves it in a splatting wet pile at the door.

How he moves. How his balance shifts, how long his stride, how low his center. He settles at the bar, folding his forearms atop, sinking his weight between his shoulderblades. For a moment he peruses the selections. Then he turns, addressing the slight gold-and-pale woman over his shoulder.

"If you're here to seek shelter from the storm, you'll be here a while."

His eyes, even obliquely in profile, are startling. Burnished, complex, undiluted gold; a bestial color. A solar hue.

"What's your drink? Perhaps I'll take my cue from you."

Constanta Iliescu

Well.

Well well well.

That thing, with the tusks and the skin and the maille reminds her of the rather crude displays of cruelty and power to which some of her blood will give themselves over. The twisted monstrous necessity of it, the warbeasts built of stolen shreds of muscle and crushed up bits of spiked bone, for which she has so little use.

Still, this creature has its tongue intact and some mythology of its own, some explanation for its existance beyond the whim of its master or the demands of an endless holy war fought for the soul of the world. "I was to meet my brother," the golden woman remarks, rather quiet, and perhaps more to herself than to the others, when the strange man remarks on the likely length of the storm. "Not here, I think. Elsewhere." So no, Feila. You are not the only person in the room disoriented by the strangeness of the place.

"He will not come until after dark."

Lancaster suggests that he would like whatever she has ordered, and Constanta favors him with a small but rather supple smirk, the edge of her gaze like nothing so much as a blade.

Then she lifts her delicate chin and fixes her cool gaze assuredly on the 'tender. "Give him a Bordeaux, first growth. Not a glass. I suspect our friend will desire the whole of the bottle."

Griseda

The orc, as those in the room may have guessed by now, walks straight to the bar, but not before giving Feila a grin.

"Be careful. Last time I was in a place like this, they made you pay in stories. Your own. Memories of your life, to be traded around like coin," she says, and the voice is less gruff with her than you'd expect. Musical, almost, but not soft. Strong, and booming.

At that, the orc reaches into a pouch at her belt and holds up a gold piece, eyeing the barkeep. "This'll do?" she asks, but it's less like a question, and more like an imperative. This'll do.

The barkeep nods, and Griseda shuffles the coin over. "For her too," she says, while gesturing to Feila.

"I want an ale. Whatever you've got, 's fine."

The helm, in this enclosed space is getting a little... annoying. It's meant to impress, but more so to other orcs, who appreciate things like skulls attached to your helm. So she removes it, and in her hands, it changes form into an intricate ivory haircomb, decorated with golden flowers. This, she tucks into coal-black hair that has, unfortunately, acquired quite the case of helm-head.

Feila Montefiore

Don't mind Feila, chugging tequila and what amounts to tart liquid sugar at the bar.

She looks at the man -- and how can you not -- but she doesn't know him, either. He mentions a storm, too. She exhales, looks away, listening. The woman with the goblet and the -- servants, they have to be servants of some kind, or one servant -- was going to meet her brother. Feila closes her eyes. She tries to remember where she was going. Was she going to meet someone?

Everyone that comes to mind, she knows was gone somehow. Left her life, was absent for a time, vanished, had reason to be away, but that can't be right. She would have been alone, if that were really the truth. She finishes the margarita and is already dizzied by it, palms flat on the bar. The green-skinned woman with the tusks tells her about paying in stories and Feila turns those dark, lightless eyes on her slowly, trying to fathom what is being said and what is saying it. "That's an old mythology," she murmurs, not in question or dismissal but mere acknowledgement. She cups her hands around the empty glass, wet with condensation.

She watches the antlered headdress turn into a hair-comb and blinks, but does not scream, or startle, or run. Her eyes become keen.

"What was that?" she asks, sharper than she means to.

Lancaster

A bottle is clunked down in front of him. Right there, inches from his folded forearms, inadvertantly and adamantly within that invisible sphere of his personal space. It is a fine vintage from a fine year, packaged in a fine bottle with a fine label.

Lancaster lifts his hand.

For a moment you could not be blamed for thinking he might simply swat the bottle off the bar. Or swipe it up and throw it. Shatter it, break it open, drive the broken end through someone's face without batting an eyelash. There's such a coiled summer-storm intensity about him, and such -- such carelessness in his eyes. Those hands are so large, the roll of those shoulders so smooth. He could be capable of it. He could be capable of anything.

He does not do anything so uncouth. He wraps his hand around the neck of the bottle, nails cut short but fingertips uncalloused. He lifts it and reaches over the bar and sets it down, and then he rises upright.

"Thank you," he is courteous to the bartender, "but I did not ask for this."

He steps back. He crosses those few paces to the fair witch's table, and he grasps the empty chair by its back. Swings it out and around and sets it back down again -- gently -- straddling the back as he sits. Closer, his vitality and savagery become unmistakable. There is a pulse, a hot red pulse, in his wrists and his throat, and in the center of that magnificent torso. He folds his arms again. Folds them neat and lazy across the top of the chair.

"Indulge my curiosity. What are you drinking?" Beat. "Could I try?"

Griseda

"Oh that? Was given to me by the Summer Queen. The fae're so keen on illusion. This is its real form, if it even has one," Griseda says, and gives a (very) toothy smile to the barkeep when her ale is delivered.

She's surprised by the fine glassware. Usually these things come in earthenware mugs.

"All I had to do was set her up with a guy," she snorts. "I think I kind of got the raw end of that deal, but y'know... Fae."

As if that explains everything.

"Perhaps the mythology is old for you, true. I don't think this place has a time, per-se though."

Feila Montefiore

Summer Queen. Fae. Illusion. 'Real' form. Feila takes all this in with less confusion than the bartender not checking her ID. Though her margarita came in a normal glass, Griseda's ale comes frothy and pungent in a tall steel pint mug, sloshing over the rim onto the polished wood. Feila tries not to take too much note of that.

"I think it depends on if you wanted the guy," Feila says, her tone a touch dry. "Maybe the comb was the better deal in the end." A faint shrug. "More useful."

Constanta Iliescu

They are servants. They are absolutely forgettable and virtually faceless, noiseless, thoughtless servants except she has given them faces or perhaps even allowed them to keep some memory of their own faces. Allowed them this hint of the ordinary to ground them in the macabre chains of their absolute servitude, and that beast of war, the crude creation of someone else's indulgent hand keeps speaking and the golden woman cannot or does not bother to hide the supple tincture of distaste that tightens the exquisitely fine muscles framing her mouth, or the way her eyes track -

- no.

The other beast in the room refuses her charade-of-a-gift and the spare grace of her clear eyes returns to him. Oh, see, the slender precision of her spine as she turns to fix him with a gaze that is clear and cold and haughty and coiled with an errant and otherworldly sort of power.

Her hands remain before her, still folded as if she were at prayer. She watches him approach, all that savagery in near-perfect counterpoint to the remarkable precision, the microexpressions convey both her absolute disapproval and her nigh-seraphic imperturbability.

When he takes a seat at her table uninvited and backwards, her chin rises minutely, her jaw tightens and the servants bristle, but are quelled with a supple, wordless glance aslant.

Then she turns back to Lancaster, and gives him the curving edge of her mouth,

"The blood of a saint who died in remarkable pain with his last breaths dedicated to a screaming prayer for a god crumbled long before he did."

all sickle, all blade.

"An acquired taste, I'm afraid."

Her eyes are on his throat.

"And alas, the last of its vintage."

A Host of Names

The door opened or perhaps it did not open because perhaps Mirth was somewhere not immediately adjacent to the bar. The walls are dark wood and the floor is wood and there must be a wood which all that wood remembers there must be in that knot right there in the grain of it do you see that knot is a door that knot could be a door or a face or a gate some sort of lock which if just pushed right one would see the wood that the wood this bar-place grill-place meeting-place is made of remembers. That remembered wood wouldn't it be tall and graceful and full of darkness and moonlight and silver and starlight and wouldn't it be full of

The door opened or perhaps it did not open. Perhaps there is some Otherwood here and that is how Mirth came spilling came quiet-soft came soft-quiet like a hush a hushed thing around the corner of that expansive bar, with its orc, its Feila, its priestess and its bright kingly thing. Perhaps there are no Otherwoods any longer and there is only the boring story about a restroom and a young woman who drank too much and got sick or wanted to wash her hands and she is quiet because she is quiet there is nothing hushed-thing about it nothing fall of starlight just a college-aged young woman (Mirth) with a touch of fame.

Folk-singer, Hart & Heath, you don't know her unless you know her but that shock of pale hair blanched like berries in snow, the skin-clear except for three precise and dark beauty marks one on her cheek by her nose one just beneath a certain way she holds her head as if there's something crowning it but there's nothing crowning it except for hair. Her jacket isn't wet because maybe she was never outside and it's dark green and covered in patches and some people drew on it too and she is wearing something that glints silver at her throat and

yes that's all. Because everybody's eyes are iron aren't they. Everybody's eyes are iron and iron and ironironiron and she hates them all sometimes she should hate them all right now she can feel herself wintering but she isn't a wintering mirth no or is she.

She is a liar.

She is a liar whose dark eyes fix first on the orc, yes of course the orc, and then on Feila, and then roam (animal) from Feila to Constanta and Lancaster, and where does trouble call you, Mirth?

The orc and the Feila: it's like somebody mentioned the devil and now the devil is here except mirth is not a devil, mirth is quiet-shy, quietquiet, a breath just-fallen:

"Hey, um. This is strange but I am playing messenger: there is a man who asked me to give you something when he saw you come in; you don't have to take it. I wouldn't; he's kind of a dick. Sorry to interrupt," and a shyquiet smile for Griseda, "Does your skin like sunlight better than moonlight because it is green?"

Griseda

"I didn't want the guy, no. He was a god. A god I had to resurrect for her. That's why I think the deal may have been a little weak, haha! All I got was this comb and a kingdom."

"Was this man tall, pointy, and pure white? Called himself Cenbreit? Thinks especially highly of himself? Probably insulted you three times before saying as many words?" Griseda asks Mirth. "If so, it's probably perfectly safe."

"And no. I am not a plant," she adds, hastily downing some ale in the process. That last bit does come out a bit gruff, and a bit rote. Like she's said that a million times before.

Feila Montefiore

Mirth is the thing that is lacking in Feila's eyes, even when she makes a wry comment about the usefulness of men, or lack thereof. Mirth is the thing that couldn't live in those eyes, which are caught in another life previously lived and mostly forgotten. But then Mirth is there, looking at the orc and the girl, like looking at the Hulk and a dancer more than the golden pair by the fire,

we'll be glad Feila didn't over hear the bit about the blood of the saint, because Griseda is talking about a god she didn't want, a god she resurrected, and... okay.

But Mirth is drawn to it. Feila turns to her at the hey, um. Her eyebrows don't go up, they go down. She frowns. "Who was it?" she asks, and though she's frowning, she's almost pained by her own curiosity.

Lancaster

What a strange tale she tells. What macabre words from that fine-wrought mouth. What cold wrath she has; counterpoint to the red heat beating off of the creature come uninvited to her table. He listens to her, he does. Languid and never-quite-still, his feet planted strong, that chair tipping gently onto two legs, swaying onto four. He listens, and those corded forearms remain folded, and those large and well-made hands remain loose and at ease.

And then one turns. A smooth swivel at the wrist. A crook of two fingers, twice. He beckons her closer, and he leans forward, and that chair tips precariously and perfectly. He smells like wet earth and animal musk, monsoonal rains and rivers at flood. The edges of his mouth curve up.

"Would you like to hear a secret, gravedancer?"

A Host of Names

The young woman is spare in her movements; spare, because she is graceful; graceful, in that way deer have in the morning, when they're bounded by paling shadows, when they're a delicate shred of stillness and the dawnlight's sweeping o'er. The young woman [does not have horns; does not have animal eyes; is human, does not have a face delineated by some dream of a hunt of a shiftshaper of a - ] grins first at Griseda and her gruffness (how to get more) and she does this thing with her shoulders as she grins like she is going to hide behind covers but there are no covers so she's not going to and she isn't frightened or startled.

"Nope. Wasn't that guy, not at all. I met that guy once; he's a good cosplayer," and it hurts some part of her to say it, but the trick, the trick. "And he insulted me seven times, but I told his wife that he let the hounds out in the morning and then locked the gate and - oh, well um, if you're interested I'll tell you, but it was not that guy."

"It was this other guy. Dark hair, dark eyes, you know like um he just really yearned to be in a romance novel or a ballad or something, he was cute, made of a voice but um. I don't know. I didn't catch his name but this is the thing?" Mirth reaches into her pocket and takes out a folded up scrap of paper, a page torn from a book, offering it with her eyebrows lofted like she does not know what this is, even though she knows exactly exactly exactly what it is. Antidote for iron.

Back to the plant: "Are you sure you're not at least a little bit plant? Because you look like you'd be a juniper tree on the inside. I think. Bones and children and twistyness and berries and things. Though I guess they are not green-green-green except in NoCal because of that toxic waste spill."

Mad Maddox

A man who is more than a man walks into a bar. This man is tall and lanky, with a shock of dark hair that falls into dark eyes that seem both faraway and present. This man is wearing a faded rose-pink t-shirt, tattered jeans, scuffed up maroon sneakers, and there is a guitar case strapped to his back as he walks into this strange place. And what a place that it is, too, so many interesting people.

So many lovely ladies, all gathered around - what, who is that? The person is dark-skinned and wearing chainmail so bright he squints against the glare. Maddox Cartwright tilts his head curiously, but first, a drink! He must have a drink to whet his throat after whatever journey brought him to this place.

He swaggers up to the bar, and though he isn't much to look at he moves with confidence. Not like he owns the place, really, look at him, he looks like he's probably renting that instrument (is there even an instrument inside it or is it just for show?). No, not that kind of a confidence, but a confidence just the same.

"A pint of your finest beer, please," he says, voice colored by a British accent, and digs into the butt-pocket of his jeans for a battered leather wallet. In the process he looks over his shoulder at the table full of interesting-looking people.

Constanta Iliescu

"I will believe nothing that comes from the cusp of your tongue,"

And yet,

she smiles. Slender-fine and dauntless, reaches to grasp the base of her goblet and to bring it to her mouth. Drinks, you see, and the blood is still warm and it swims through her senses and that moment when the liquid hits her mouth is closest anyone who is not a believer will ever see her to ecstasy, and even then the expression in the merest flicker of a pale brow, the brief but supple sense of give in the muscles framing her orbits.

"skinchanger."

Such a swelling disgust, for such base and bestial things.

And yet, what is it about her when she turns her ear to his mouth. When she gives him a perfect target in her slender white throat. This absolute unconcern. (And yet: no. She does not unbend herself to lean toward him.)

"Now," prim, precise, otherworldlyh, "tell me your secret."

Feila Montefiore

She is lost and she is mildly, suddenly drunk. She fixes her eyes between the other woman and the green woman, then she reaches out to take the piece of paper, the page torn from a book, to unfold it, slowly, listening to the way it rustles,

finding oddly and suddenly that she misses this sound, this feeling of book-paper between her fingers, and wonders when the last time was that she really spent time focusing on it. She closes her eyes for a moment.

The room feels like it's falling through space and time, tumbling end over end, tumbling, while she focuses, and then opens her eyes, lookinga t the paper.

Feila Montefiore

[Iron Will]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Feila Montefiore

Feila smiles, to read the page. Not the words written on the page but the words printed on the page, marching neatly across the paper. She recognizes it. She breathes in the memory of it, sapping it, and feels something enter her. Slip up through her fingers and into her mind, her pretty mind, her fierce and bright and remarkable mind, and that is when

a wall goes up, and a door slams shut. A wall that should not be possible to build, and a door that should not exist, but is made of something strong as iron, but is not iron itself. Feila does not feel like iron. When Feila focuses on paper the world turns upside down and those nearest to her can feel themselves twirling through space, tumbling as though from a cliff, and gravity at once has no meaning and is the only meaning. That isn't banal, that isn't dark, that isn't cold iron.

But when she feels something trying to change her, something uninvited, something not-asked-for, something sprung on her that will change her perception and it doesn't matter if it would be for the best it is something that she just... pushes back against. Powerfully so, so that if Mirth has any connection to it she can feel it, or see it, see the way the girl hardens, resists, the paleness of her skin and the spots of bright color in her cheekbones, the ferocious darkness of her eyes, which would be like gemstones if they could reflect any light.

She is taut, taut as a wire, when she lays the paper down, curling her hand into a fist as she retracts from it, turns to look at Mirth.

Turns to look at the orc.

Steps back. And oh, what a graceful thing she does, the way she moves, light padding steps, delicate and soft. She has nothing to sacrifice, but she begins to speak, and it is not in a language known -- more than likely -- by those here. It sounds like a record played backwards. That may in fact be what it is, but if you played it forward, it would still sound like gibberish to the English (or Common) ear. She reaches up into her hair and finds what she needs there, which she was not expecting, which was tied to a thread beneath the locks: a feather, small and clean, tickling her fingertips as she strokes it.

She focuses on the music playing from somewhere: Old Fashioned Love Song. It will do.

She focuses on the feather, and the way her mouth forms words, and looks between the orc and the other in turn, trying to determine their nature. And meanwhile, the room flips, the room's gut twists, the room falls and falls and falls and falls apart.

[Mind | Spirit | Prime 1. Aura/magic sensing. Coincidental. Base difficulty = 4 - 1 (Quintessence)]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (4) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Lancaster

I will believe nothing that --

"Careful."

The word is a heavy paw laid on the throat and flexed to show the claws. It is a warning, a flare of fire. A flash in his eyes, a tilt of his head. And then the sudden relaxation, the sheathing of the weaponry. He draws his shoulders up and then he lets loose. It is a stretch in miniature, not half so indulgent as those long, liquid post-nap pulls in the sun.

Still:

still, she turns her ear. Still he leans in, as he must, because she is not deigning to come closer. Now his hand is coming down for balance atop the table between, landing soft as velvet, silent. Now his lips are by her ear and

he bites her, sudden and vicious, sinking those feral-sharp teeth into the strap of her neck.

And releases.

"I have crushed the skulls of your kind between my teeth." He is smiling now. It is in his voice, indulgent. His eyes are looking past her, golden and resonant, flickering restless about the room as he murmurs to her. "They burst so easily. Like rotten fruit. Cold and thick. Full of decay and maggots. All of it ashes in the next moment.

"I have also," this, after a beat, "allowed a gravewalker the taste of my blood. A rare opportunity for your kind. A pleasant transaction for both.

"Now, then." The beast settles back. "Indulge my curiosity once more. Let me have a taste of that rare vintage," he reaches across the table. He taps the foot of her goblet, and then he turns his hand, shows his wrist,

grins to show his teeth,

"and I'll leave you a taste of mine."

Mad Maddox

Ask for a pint of beer and ye shall receive a pint of beer. Which goes down the gullet and settles like a nice warm coziness in his belly. Maddox sighs, content. A few bills somewhat-neatly folded left setting on the bar before him, the tall man who feels strangely capable of a violence he doesn't look capable of committing turns away. Turns away and sees the lovely young girl reading a slip of paper, sees a man bite a woman on the neck - does he not care that he's in public? If Maddox still had a glass in hand he would raise it to the gentleman for his boldness, but he does not have a glass so he does nothing.

Nothing but move away from the bar and off to somewhere, the bathroom - to see if he can slide across a Gauntlet and see what's there on the other side in this weird place perhaps.

[he is a flyby after all!]

A Host of Names

But she is banal: Feila. Has to be banal in the moment she denies what imbues (imbued [it flickers; she wills it so]) the page even if for just that sliver of a moment. That sliver is enough to make mirth go so still and if one thought she was still before one did not know what stillness was. This is the stillness of a shadow which falls and has fallen from the beginning up until now in a place where the light always spins exactly the same; where there is no time; where time does not remember to move so the light is always this same gloam-laced thing, and so, and see, and so she is still: so absolutely still.

The stillness shifts into a moment of illness; motion, movement; hand reaching for her stomach, fingers a-curl, and then the moment of too-too-too much winter it is gone, not a splinter at all, nope, and Mirth says,

"Um," and takes a step back, "So you don't want it?"

[PM incoming!]

Feila Montefiore

She wills banality where there ought not to be it, and it does not break her ability to change reality nonetheless. This is why Feila, if asked, would say it's much easier to be a will-worker, a Turner, than one of the fickle fae, whose magic is as fickle as the hope and wonder to be found in the world.

Let's face it: there is precious little hope and wonder in Feila herself. Those eyes of hers. It's as though they've been sad since she was born,

it's as though she's carried the sins of another life into this one, dark and brutal and not belonging to a body so graceful and elegant, a face so young.

Feila is looking between Mirth and the orc. She is seeing pulses of the invisible, glimmers of inhumanity but not monstrosity -- monstrosity lives over there, one too-bright and one made of ashes, and she is distinctly not looking over there because she is afraid. She is afraid and she is starting to remember things. She doesn't know enough to know what she sees, how to name it, but she can start guessing. She knows enough to make some very educated guesses.

She breathes very slowly, though she is a bit drunk. She swallows hard. "No," she tells Mirth, "I want another drink."

Constanta Iliescu

(His mouth on the strap of her throat. She does not flinch. She does not threaten. She does not even move, and instead remains still as a statue, and just as unbending. Though perhaps he can feel, hear, sense some coalescent murmur of something in the air, some thickness that buzzes at the base of his skull, that does not-quite-hum deep in the labyrinthine architecture of his ear. Some note of soil. Some whisper of the dark. Some promise, you see,

of conflagration.)

And then the moment passes. He releases her; and she gives him a keen, unhurried glance. These things that he killed must have been her enemies, for she herself is filled with nothing more than blood and a righteous, holy, cleansing light. She imagines it has scoured all of the terrible and terribly improbably plumbing of mortality right from her corpus, that everything fell and profane in her has been burned away and seared and cauterized.

He threatens her, and she does not react. Listens entirely to him, with that same radiant, chill expression hung lightly over the architecture of her face.

Considers his request.

And, after a moment's thought, pushes the goblet in his direction. Nudges it, really, the mere suggestion of a movement."I have taken the pelts of your kind as well. Slept with them wrapped around my skin." Conversationally, informationally, really, a pale brow lilting upwards in query or inquiry or challenge as he considers the goblet,

and whether or not to drink.

"One severs the tendons in the ankles. The an incision, careful, keen. Splitting the skin along the ball of the foot. The trick is to get it to come away all in one piece. Though, sadly, I have found that I still prefer the generous embrace of the soil of my homeland to such," a beat, "prizes."

Griseda

"So, you're a wizard," says the orc, a bit annoyed. "Can tell by the funny words."

In Griseda's experience, wizards are pains in the ass, to a one. This is the source for all the snark. Still, she nods to the bartender. Yeah, put her drink on that gold piece. It'll pay for about a hundred drinks like the ones they ordered, really.

"I knew I wizard once. Made himself in to the elvish god of good tailoring," she says, and quaffs ale. "Did my hair once. Never could decide on a hat. I should have traded him my comb, hah."

Feila Montefiore

Some time ago, whenever that was, a woman came out of the bathroom having just washed her hands. She wears a thin cotton dress edged at the top in lace and with adjustable straps so maybe it's an undergarment, but she wears it with tango shoes and a rose-colored cardigan and pearls wrapped twice around her neck, so maybe it's a real outfit. Her lips are red but not glistening, ruby red. Her hair -- blonde -- is tousled but not disheveled, swept across her forehead. She's closing in on 5'9" in her heels. Her eyes are green.

She sashays back to her table, flops into the booth, and picks up her newspaper again. It's the Penny Saver.

Iris Dahlstrom

[Fuck my life.]

Iris Dahlstrom

Some time ago, whenever that was, a woman came out of the bathroom having just washed her hands. She wears a thin cotton dress edged at the top in lace and with adjustable straps so maybe it's an undergarment, but she wears it with tango shoes and a rose-colored cardigan and pearls wrapped twice around her neck, so maybe it's a real outfit. Her lips are red but not glistening, ruby red. Her hair -- blonde -- is tousled but not disheveled, swept across her forehead. She's closing in on 5'9" in her heels. Her eyes are green.

She sashays back to her table, flops into the booth, and picks up her newspaper again. It's the Penny Saver.

Feila Montefiore

"It's Tsalagi," Feila says, sharply, to Griseda, and this time she means it to be sharp. "And I'm not a wizard. Or a hairdresser."

A Host of Names

"I want a drink too," she tells the bartender. "I want a drink now."

The fey-thing, actually fey not just fey, actually Fae, the devil-conjured sweet-faced doe-eyed young woman who isn't a young woman who is wearing this body because this is the only way she can still-be, be-still, the only way she can weather this world that wizards perhaps more heartless than Feila have made (paradigmatically the age of myths is over) well she gives Feila this stricken look and then says,

"Then what are you? Who who who?"

Lancaster

Instantly the offered goblet is in his -- shall we say it? -- claws. He takes it, he wraps his fingers around it, he curls it away from her and close to himself, the predator's jealous embrace. She speaks of grotesqueries, but really, no worse than what he described to her. Just a little colder. Not so raw.

The corners of his mouth curl up. He leans over that dark goblet, that viscous vintage. "There are no others of my kind." His arrogance is supreme, and so sure it becomes no arrogance but mere truth. "I am singular."

And:

he drinks. Swift and unafraid, a generous swallow of that blood, cooling, foul with terror and fanaticism and death. When he lowers the goblet there's a hemorrhagic cling around his mouth, slipping down his chin. He licks his lips. He catches a drop on his thumb, and then he licks that off too, slow and indulgent, as though in another moment he might simply stop everything, ignore everything, to groom his perfect, beautiful, resplendent self.

He has some temperance. He is not all indulgence. He draws back; refocuses. Flexes that hand, tasting the blood still on his tongue, watching the tendons and muscles move in subtle synchrony beneath his own skin. He sets his palm flat on the table. Rising then, coming to his full height, towering, lithe and powerful, the savage and striped king.

"That was different. A new experience. Thank you for sharing." Pause. "Would you prefer a little privacy? You can bring that curious little vessel if you find drinking from the source too -- intimate."

Griseda

"Oh, terribly sorry. You're a Tsalagi. Not a wizard," she rolls her eyes.

"A different name for things in different times, I suppose," Griseda muses, then it's back to the ale. She doesn't realize that Tsalagi is a language, not a title.

"You don't think this storm is going to die down any time soon do you? Ahh, soon is so relative though. Doubt this place even knows what 'soon' means."

She looks over at the... beings who are busy drinking blood like its some kind of foreplay. Odd. Thinks the orc. It's just, usually her kind begin drinking blood at a very early age. It's fermented with mare's milk for crying out loud. You sometimes paint it on yourself if you're wanting to scare your enemies, but it's a foodstuff.

She rubs her eyes.

Constanta Iliescu

The delicate monster considers him, unblinking, for several long beats of someone or something else's uthinking heart. Takes in all of it; the arrogance that is mere truth, the self absorption, the deep and abiding sensuality, the perfect synchronicity of his movements as he catches the table's edge, rises, to his full and savage height.

She rises too, and moves with the clipped efficiency one might expect from so still and contained a being. Beckons one of the attendants forward with a negligent gesture of her wrist.

"It will gather your blood in a flask. I'm afraid I do not intend to indulge, myself.

"You'll be a gift for a rather reckless childe of mine. You needn't worry that the experience will be wasted, though.

"I have no doubt that he will enjoy you."