I don't exist

[deservesadaisy]

Who: Ivan and Ilde Decima
What: in-person meeting and comparing notes
Where: out and about in the Brock Marsh area
When: Veerdi, early evening
Notes: If anyone feels a burning need to run into Ivan pre-Ilde, feel free, but brace for possible trolling.
Warnings: They are both terrible people.

Since the militia's raid, Ivan has mainly been cautiously exploring his new city. He's not quite sure yet precisely what he intends to do; he'll get bored eventually, he'll need to do something, but in the meanwhile, he's gathering information and blending in without much effort.

He's looking at some of the new inventions in a curiosity shop in Brock Marsh, and though Ilde has never seen his face, she could very well recognize his voice as he asks the shop keeper a question, clipped English with a deceptive hint of Wales and no hint of Russia at all.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

"They'll keep." There's a bench by the river, ahead of them, and it'll be as good a place as any to put the box down on her lap for a minute; it's too big to easily get in her handbag, but she can probably figure out something to carry it that leaves her hands free. (She thinks she could probably bean someone pretty hard with it if need be, but she'd still rather have her hands ready.) "What do you think of Baedal, Ivan?"

[deservesadaisy]

He sits, leaving a polite space between them, and crosses his legs. "It's very devil-may-care on the surface, more than many places. But it's also clearly ruled by people who are used to being challenged constantly but ineffectually." He pulls out another cigarette. "It should be interesting to watch, for awhile."

He wasn't sure what he was now, but if he was still immortal (and he'd no reason to suspect he wasn't) he could afford to wait and watch much longer than most of the city's residents.

[rhinemaid]

"Devil-may-care." It isn't a bad description; Baedal is a city with an unusually high population of movers and shakers, people who come into crises with a certain mindset and attitude, and to a degree it permeates into the city's own mood. Making new friends and acquaintances while casually picking up a weapon against the common enemy is ... not actually unusual for Ilde's own world, but the apocalypse is an extenuating circumstance that most probably don't have.

Then again, she thinks of Boromir for a moment, and all the things he doesn't want to talk about. Maybe 'most' is overestimating good fortune.

"You're a voyeur, then?"

[deservesadaisy]

"I suppose that's... accurate," he said, considering. "I have seen very little reason, in a long time, to get directly involved in much."

[rhinemaid]

"I take it back," she says, giving it some thought for a moment. "You're a cliché, that's terrible."

[deservesadaisy]

"Am I?" he asked, amused. "Which cliché is that?"

[rhinemaid]

"I'm so old and everything is so dull and if only Anne Rice had an editor-"

[deservesadaisy]

He laughed, then. "I am old, more things are dull than they used to be, and I suspect even with an editor, she'd be wretched. Did you know she started writing books about the life of Christ a few years ago?"

[rhinemaid]

"I'm too sober to know that." Ilde grimaces, crossing her ankles and tucking them under the bench, ladylike in lingering mannerisms.

[deservesadaisy]

"I never read any, but I can only imagine." Speculatively, "Carl used to read a lot of the new vampire novels that came out. Mainly so he could mock them at parties." He and Carl had never been close, but it had been an amusing quirk of his.

[rhinemaid]

"You're odd, and so is Carl." Not that she has the slightest idea of who Carl is, but the point remains; that's as bizarre a habit as it is hilarious.

[deservesadaisy]

"Everyone is odd, it just becomes more notable with time, I suspect." He shrugged. "But Carl had his own eccentricities beyond that. One amuses oneself how one can, I suspect." Carl by perversely taking a human lover, Ivan by becoming a war tourist.

"You're odd yourself."

[rhinemaid]

"I'm a fairy. We're allowed." She made that up. ...it's fairly valid, but it's more of a case of 'right by accident' than 'right by knowledge'.

[deservesadaisy]

"Fairies are and vampires aren't? That seems fairly arbitrary. What about ghosts, are they allowed to be odd?" He's only slightly trolling.

[rhinemaid]

With a perfectly straight face, Ilde tips her head and says, flippantly, "I don't believe in ghosts."

...about six years ago, that was true.

[deservesadaisy]

He gives her a look equivalent to oh come now.

"They're generally annoying as hell, you aren't missing much."

[rhinemaid]

"I guess that's just about a professional opinion, too, isn't it." She suspects, for instance, that she'd find him much more irritating if she were herself much less perverse. (Whether that's an aspect of her nature or merely her temperament is something she sometimes genuinely ponders - it's frustrating how much she doesn't know, and sometimes leads her to odd trains of thought.) "There are ghosts in Sobek Croix, apparently. I haven't been."

[deservesadaisy]

"I suppose they're no more annoying than everyone else, but they get so fixated." He shrugs. "And then they're just so glad you can see them, they tend to worry more about saying something than what they're saying."

[rhinemaid]

"Empathy's not your strong suit, is it?" Well, vampire, though Ilde isn't certain of precisely how much of an excuse that is. It seems as though they might be as varied as everything else around here.

[deservesadaisy]

"No," he says, catching on a smile. "No, not particularly."

"Is it yours?"

[rhinemaid]

"Sometimes." But bleeding hearts don't take so well to murder as a lifestyle choice, and sometimes she just doesn't give a fuck. Sometimes, for that matter, she has to remind herself not to fall into the same trap as her enemy; the enemy is Prometheus and its ilk, not humanity.

[deservesadaisy]

"Mm." He pulls out a cigarette. She was certainly more interesting than his average acquaintance. "I think I like your sort of oddness, though. It's unusual."

[rhinemaid]

"I'm not sure whether that's a compliment or not." Or, to be more accurate, she isn't sure whether she should find it complimentary, regardless of what Ivan actually means.

[deservesadaisy]

"A bit of both, likely," he said, not quite smug, but pleased. She reminded him, in certain specific ways, of Helena, which meant he was inclined to enjoy her company to an extent.

[rhinemaid]

"That would go along with the rest," she concedes, tucking her feet up underneath herself on the bench.