open log } swapping your blood with formaldehyde;

[astronomer]

Who: Alice Morgan and you.
What: A few days in the life.
Where: Everywhere; given locations are Brock Marsh, Creekside, Gallmarch, but she can be anywhere.
When: This week, essentially.
Notes: The main post is rambling narrative and context, feel free to skip it. Tag in anywhere, or feel free to post your own situation. PM me or get me on plurk if you feel the need. :E
Warnings: ...Alice. Idle fantasies of murder, general hideousness.

The city is monstrous.

Alice has been in Baedal for just over three weeks, and every morning she wakes up surprised- is it still there? Yes? Really? It always is, outside her grainy and dirty (she has taken a sponge to it to no avail) Brock Marsh window; Baedal, fuming and smoking and twisting away from her, hemmed in by grey-white fog and fear.

She has been following, but hasn’t posted to, the Network. She hasn’t really met anybody but Krithn, the distracted star-mapper she’s been assisting, who forgets to shave and forgets to eat and forgets what he’s paid her and can always be relied upon to shell out more than he should if Alice takes a gentle tone with him and suggests that an advance on her wages would be appreciated, not mentioning the numerous other sums he’s advanced her. He hasn’t noticed that she’s a genius, but he hasn’t noticed much on ground level for years. He disgusts her. She steals his keys. She studies his maps and charts and books when he’s not in.

It occurs to her that perhaps she should have cried on the network, that most people- most of them who are Chosen- must come to their cohort damp with tears and nigh hysterical. It isn’t that she hasn’t cried- she has, for the sheer impossibility of it all, because she was so angry, so indignant, so sure she was straight-jacketed in some padded cell in the real world and it was all so revoltingly undignified- but only for herself. Emotional exhibitionism doesn’t thrill her. It simply didn’t occur to her, at the time, that she should make the effort. She was shocked, briefly, into numb honesty- the truth is that she was and is afraid, of course, afraid and angry and bewildered, but her emotions have never had the power to paralyse her. She’s stronger than them.

And is she mad? Alice thinks about that, eyes drifting from one of her borrowed books to the pavement as she sits outside a cafe in Chimer; is she mad? No, she reflects, staring up at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, rubbing the corner of a page between her fingers. On balance, having recovered from her fit of panicked fatalism, she’s probably not. And that makes things very simple and very complicated by putting her in a familiar position- in a world which makes no sense, upon which people are desperately trying to project order, in which people are trying to eke out lives of some significance.

Some things are constant. (She glances away, across to the xenian waiter who brought her her tea--) Some things are not.

Prison was worse. Prison was better.

So now she works and saves and reads. Her room in Brock Marsh is slowly filling up with books, like every other room in Brock Marsh. Soon, she will outgrow it; she has her eye on apartments. She budgets in pencil down to the last penny, though they aren’t called pennies here. She wears carefully-selected reasonably-priced clothing which doesn’t look reasonably-priced, and invests in expensive shoes, because she intends to do a lot of walking, already thinking in investments and futures and long-term plans. It’s in her nature. It helps. She burns the hospital gown she arrived in.

Despite the care she has taken to claw some temporary stability for herself out of the chaos of Baedal, Alice feels swamped by the city, unable to breathe for all the things she doesn’t know. (How dare they do this to her, make her drown in all this nonsense, how dare they try this with her?) It is a language she doesn’t speak. It is threatening, hungry, consuming. It drags its citizens in and it eats them alive.

The city is evil.

Comments

[astronomer]

Alice has so far been too busy measuring him up against Burgess to linger on details which don't quite add up about him, but she notices now his slight not-rightness- which is much more pervasive and off-putting than any blatant wrongness.

It still doesn't worry her in the slightest. She is (she has heard from some very reputable sources) slight not right herself.

"Pleasure, largely; or more accurately, curiosity, but then the satisfaction of curiosity is a pleasure. One doesn't realise the amount of trivia one has retained about the world in general until it's made irrelevant." There is something sweet, if slightly petulant, about her tone, and she accompanies it with a smile- a brief and conscious implication of vulnerability.

[deservesadaisy]

"Ah, yes." He smiles, a bit sharp. "Nothing like trying to do a pub trivia night in a foreign country."

Ivan knows quite well that it isn't precisely what she meant. (Though his point, he thinks, still holds.) He's not sure how to read her entirely, which makes him contrarily want to.

"How long have you been here, then?"

[astronomer]

It's not what she meant, but she gives a not-laugh, a barely-voiced breath, amused. She is weaning herself off of collecting pieces of familiarity from the world around her- a British accent, a book she's read before at home, a reference to pub trivia nights- but nonetheless it's somehow fascinating to her, how one can travel across universes (supposedly, supposedly, she can't quite take that at face value) and still be surrounded by the same minutiae.

"Not long enough to stop thinking of it as a foreign country," she says. "Just under a month. I'm sure the honeymoon period will soon wear off." She says that with supposed perfect seriousness and a blithe smile, only the glint in her eyes and the sheer absurdity of the idea that Baedal has a honeymoon period suggesting she's joking.

[deservesadaisy]

"Well, you're not really broken in until you're caught in an attack of improbable monsters," he observes with good humour. (Or until you're doing the attacking yourself, as he's been on both ends of that equation.) "It's been quiet recently, I suspect we're overdue."

He's also interested to see her reaction to 'monsters' as a concept.

[astronomer]

She's done research, scoured past newspapers in the library endlessly until her eyes failed to focus and the words failed to sink in. She knows that a theoretical knowledge will not necessarily totally prepare her for whatever might happen here- and she feels that something is going to happen here, that and now you live here is an anticlimax, that she's here for a reason- but the acquisition of facts makes her feel powerful.

She hisses in her breath through her teeth, mock coy- "Oh, do you think so?" she says, like he's suggested they're long overdue for a patch of sun. "Then I look forward to being broken in immensely."

--watch it, Alice, he's taken, but she's not really angling for that; she ticks all the boxes of flirtation without ever really trying to make it anything more than a box-ticking exercise. She could be more convincing, but sees no need. "What was it like? I've read accounts. Newspapers. All very detached, very...third-person."

[deservesadaisy]

He smiles a bit at her flirtation, but notices the emptiness behind it; she reminds him of someone he used to know back home. (A vampire, of course; she radiates less humanity than he's used to from mortals, and it's part of what keeps his interest.) He doesn't serious think of recruiting her - not on a first meeting, and not when things with Ilde are fraught anyway - but the fact he thinks of it at all is unusual for him. He hasn't recruited anyone since Daisy.

"The newspapers here, as everywhere, have their own agendas, but get in shouting distance of accuracy in my experience. I've been here a while; is there an event in particular you'd like another opinion about?" If not, he can pick, but if she chooses, he'll be curious to see which draws her first.

He likes that she's playing with him. It's been some time since anyone was both bold enough to try and smart enough to be effective at it.

[astronomer]

Alice smiles. She wonders if he's trying to intimidate her, or if mentioning monsters was simply to see her reaction; it could be a mix of both. Terribly efficient, killing two birds with one stone like that. She can respect efficiency. It's something like what she's doing right now, really- searching for information but enjoying herself along the way, and perhaps investigating him. He's interesting as few people are to her- there is a lack about him, an emptiness which she finds rather compelling. She doesn't imagine her interest will last- it waxes and wanes, in almost all circumstances goes away when she has taken someone apart and worked out how they tick (--metaphorically, almost always)- but while it does, she'll indulge it.

"Why don't you tell me," she muses, "about the very start of the flood of monsters in Kavadry. What you saw and what it was like, being there."

[deservesadaisy]

He smiles, leaning against a nearby ladder. His smile is possibly the least human thing about him. ...one of the least human things.

"I don't recall what the papers said, about how it started. There was a political scuffle of sorts; Mafaton was closed off, so I was a bit busy when the sky started changing color." Ivan paused, adding, "You know, I never quite went through it with anyone. Everyone had their own fallout to cope with at the time."

[astronomer]

"I'm sure it was terrible," Alice says, utterly truthfully. She is sure. It's the only logical conclusion. But there's that same emptiness behind her apparent sentiment; she's as truthful as a mathematical proof, and exactly as emotional.

She's sure he won't mind.

"Does that make me a confidante?" she inquires, sounding more curious than a half-joke really should warrant.

[deservesadaisy]

"It makes you unusual," he says, which he's sure he can give her confidently. When speaks of the incident, there's almost a sort of nostalgia; now that he's sure he and Ilde lived through it, it's easy to miss a period when blood was simple to come by and he had something to do other than be snide in bookshops.

"It was citizen fighting citizens, and then suddenly it became everyone fighting actual monsters. Not as pretty as the film sort, but enough to keep one occupied."

[astronomer]

Her expression at 'unusual' is entirely unsurprised- pleased but pleased as if he's gotten the right answer to something and she can check an item off a list in her head.

"Actual monsters," she echoes, not asking him what he means by it so much as pointing out what he's just said with a grin on her face. She doubts he's human, but then it's hard to tell sometimes and she's not entirely sure it matters. "Do you miss it?"

[deservesadaisy]

He smiles, small and sharp for all that his fangs aren't visible. "The actual monsters? No. They were like large, angry animals, mostly and about as much fun to clean up after. The fighting before that, well." Ivan shrugs.

"I wouldn't tend to pick a fight with a species who saw mine as a viable food source, even if they were a minority population. But perhaps that's just me."

[astronomer]

Her smiles almost seems to feed off his as she dissects his words and puts them all together in new ways in her mind, coming to conclusions. Certainly not human, then- most likely vampire, or cruorvore of some kind at least.

The cruorvores fascinate her somewhat- she likes destructive things, and she finds the idea of something that literally drains life to sustain itself harsh and attractive. Pure evil. It's as horrifying as it is magnetic.

"Fear," she suggests, painting motivations onto the Candlelighters she's read about. "Arrogance. Stupidity. All the usual reasons people make ill-advised decisions. Some people, I suppose, just don't care- but from what I've read, I can't even credit them with that." As if not caring is something to be respected, an appropriate response to existence. "Were they fun to clear up after?" she inquires, looking rather wicked; she's letting the mask slip quickly here, she realises, but it's intentional. If he won't hide, then she doesn't see why she ought to.

[deservesadaisy]

"I didn't say I didn't understand," he says, amused, "just that I wouldn't act as they did regardless. Still."

He smiles in answer to her question, and it seems for just a moment his eyes darken, though they don't truly flash black as they would if he were a bit more vivid in his reminiscing. "And yes. I did enjoy that. They'd had it coming a while." And he'd been caged too long; his leash is longer even now than caution dictates it really should be, but he's restless still.

[astronomer]

She raises her free hand, mea culpa, like she's surrendering- "Oh, forgive an academic the desire to spell things out." Her smile is bright. She doesn't seem to blink as often as she should, and nor does she seem at all put off by what he says or how he looks- they'd had it coming a while- yes. She can understand that. "I can't help my nature."

[deservesadaisy]

He smiles, lazy and amused. "Heaven forbid you tried. Even on first meeting, it's an intriguing nature." It's only partly idle flattery - that part's habit, an extension of the persona he's spent decades crafting for himself. The civilization overlaid like a veneer, decorating his brutality more than truly obscuring it.

"I'm Ivan," he adds, after a moment, because they've been talking long enough he feels like offering his name. As if it's a token she's earned by being interesting.

[astronomer]

"It is," she says, quite seriously, and her smile, her unwavering, unblinking gaze, serve to make it seem as if she's reflecting the compliment back on him.

"Alice." She holds out a hand, gives him a look like they're conspiring; "Right through the looking glass, seeing as we're in the proper place for literary references."

[deservesadaisy]

"Are you really? Ambitions to become a queen, then?" He takes her hand with a similarly conspirator's smile, but instead of shaking it, he lifts it for a cool, brief, and oh-so-polite kiss. "Or just the victim of boredom and curiosity?"

[astronomer]

Her smile doesn't answer, and she stays silent until her hand is lowered. It's not the sort of silence which suggests she has nothing to say- just that she's choosing not to say it.

"Well," she says, and she voices it as though it's an answer to his question, "I should tell you that while I'm delighted with what I've discovered, I have no interest whatsoever in reading about true crime." She seems to come into focus, a smooth hardness appearing in her hushed voice. "In fact, I find the concept boring, voyeuristic and slightly pathetic. I came over because I thought- perhaps- that you were a friend of a friend from home."

[deservesadaisy]

"Did you really?" He smiles, mildly intrigued. "I wonder if it's coincidence or just the nonsense of different universes." Suggesting, strongly, he doesn't expect to go back; meeting her in the future isn't a possibility he considers.

"May I ask who you thought I was?"

[astronomer]

"You may certainly ask," she says, as if she's promising something, grinning as she gives her non-answer. There's no reason, really, not to tell him -- but she feels like the subject of murder is something to reveal slowly in this case. Not to ease him into it, that's not how he comes off, but to make it more interesting.

She shifts her weight again, transferring her books to her other side, and then she taps her hand once on the cover of the top volume with a calm click as if she's decided something. "Are we loitering with intent?" she asks brightly. "I have to pay. Would you like to have coffee, Ivan?"

[deservesadaisy]

"What a delightful suggestion. I assume you meant with you." Rather than just generally. "I'll meet you outside and minimize the loitering."

[astronomer]

She just smiles instead of answering, leaving to pay -- despite being stronger than she looks, it's something of a relief to spread the weight of the books into two separate bags. She meets him with a certain bright, straight-backed, reporting-for-duty air. Very wholesome, apart from how she's just a little off.

"There. All stocked up. There's a charming cafe just down the street," she suggests. "Someone I knew once told me that one coffee doesn't make two people friends. What do you think?"

Steady on, perhaps, considering they've known each other for under an hour, but if Alice forms any attachments, they're fast and slightly unsettling. She frames it as a more or less academic inquiry, in any case.

[deservesadaisy]

"I don't know about that as a general rule," he says, blithe. "I think for some people, it's sufficient, and for some all the coffee in the world wouldn't do. Would you like me to take a bag?" He evidently hasn't bought anything, and his hands are thus free.