( closed ) there are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth;

[asklepios]

Who: "Vanessza Bernát" and Lucius Malfoy
What: An encounter in a bookstore.
Where: ...a bookstore.
When: After Christmas.
Notes: One day Benny will wear a color.
Warnings: None as yet.

Benevenuta has always enjoyed the wintertime for the things mortals and immortals alike to choose to mark (or not), but modern celebrations are still a relatively recent introduction to her life; watching their invention by the Victorians was one thing, but reemerging in the late forties to discover that they were apparently 'ancient' had been a cute moment. The point being, it doesn't much bother her to go without and after she's sent out her small gifts (Ayse got a bigger jar, of whiskey and apple jelly) and sifted through the jewelry box that arrived for Catenrat (she needs to buy a better lock for it, she thinks), she's more or less done for the season 'til New Year's and unconcerned about it. She'd call her father, some years, but not every single one and it isn't so strange to be mostly alone.

There's any number of clichés about her kind, that way.

So, in hat and gloves and coat with sensibly flat shoes, she's investigating the offerings a bookstore that is not currently in the throes of a post-gifting sale (it's quieter than some others which are, and she doesn't feel the pressing need to get up close and personal with everybody who wants a copy of the latest Baedal publications) and carrying her scarf in hand, sifting through the history section with a few titles already under her arm.

Comments

[amourpropre]

It's been a strange Christmas. That it's called Catenrat should have been a first hint.

The last couple of years had held a distinct lack of wintry merriment, which doesn't mean Lucius can't feel its absence as sharply as he pleases. He had been quite determine to ignore the cohort invite and neglect to listen to nonsense about cats and rats. With exception to a bottle of red sent off to the Malfoy townhouse with a curt little note signed with his name, the one acknowledgment he had made was to rake blunt fingernails in wonder over the blank span of skin where twisted white scars had once been. Even if the ones at his other arm were fresher and slow to heal in his age, the rats had taken the correct markings.

But in truth, he remembers Christmas as family dinners with distant relatives and more societal banquets and dances, the wizard brand of nobility filling up the season with bright lights and food slaved over by long-fingered house elves and insincere courtesies and the ceiling charmed to fall intangible magical snow from the chandeliers. How he had complained about it all, when it suited him.

The bookstore is a nice neutral kind of place. There had been a title in the library he had wanted for himself, and this was seemingly the only store in Baedal (of the ones he had bothered to explore, anyway) that had pledged to obtain a copy for his purchase, so upon entering, he makes for the front desk. His garb is black on grey and only distinctive in the cut of his coat, long enough to swing near his heels, sleeves generous and loose, and long blonde hair makes stark rat tail tendrils along black-clad back. The man working the desk obligingly hands over the requested volume, Lucius taking it and not immediately paying for it; he has all the time in the world and so, he will browse, and continue building his mental fortress with even more texts to occupy his hours.

Hands gloved in lambskin leather and cane missing from his person (as he has taken to storing his wand in the deeper inner pocket of his coat, sometimes), he moves further inside, hands to himself and eyes on the titles crammed thickly together.