On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

Who: Réjean & Ilde
What: A swap meet gone wrong, leading to swimming lessons.
Where: The Gross Tar
When: Newdi evening
Warnings: Réjean. Eye gore.

Among those he deals with it's common knowledge that Réjean can do things that aren't typical for a vanilla human, but the actual extent of his abilities are a closely guarded secret. Some men say that he's just a man with a few flashbang bits of magic that he's stolen, while others are convinced he's just a step below the great and powerful Oz. In part, it's for occasions like this that Réjean cultivates this ambiguity.

Within moments of stepping onboard the boat and heading out into the Gross Tar's current, Réjean knew that this meeting was unlikely to end well. The blinkmoth dealers of Head and Verso regions were too gregarious, too willing to meet on the river, and underneath it all, he could smell that they, and the heavies hidden below decks, were gut-churningly nervous.

Both practically and mystically, running water has a great many uses: it weakens many types of spells, bars some fae and undead from crossing, and in this particular instance, can provide a convenient, if undignified, escape. Once the first shots were fired, Réjean turned and with a hideous wail, clutching at crossbolt bolt protruding from what was once his eye, tipped over the railing and dropped into the river. With hardly a ripple to mar the surface of the water, Réjean sank below the range of the dealer's guns and crossbows.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

Good enough to serve its purpose - that's as much as Ilde really wants said on the subject, she can live without a stranger's pity or profuse apologies and certainly has no intention of explaining herself. It's enough, and after a silence she lets the moment pass as though it never happened.

"You can owe me a drink," she says, rolling her shoulders back. "I'm a pragmatic kind of fairy." There is no such thing.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"I'd be more than happy to pour," he says while wringing out his socks. Réjean could've navigated the river himself and has done so many times in the past, the assistance was welcome. "You have a favourite place? I'll be looking for somewhere new and a little less conspicuous. Or should I just pack a basket and come here to the riverside?"

[rhinemaid]

"You're going to bring me a booze picnic, Réjean?" Her amusement melts the lingering chill, conjuring up a grin. "I like that."

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"Complete with little umbrellas. I'll be back in three days, fair?" He wants a little time to stay hidden, heal, and then start to get a handle on this most recent mess.

[rhinemaid]

"Here, three days from now," she agrees, glancing around to better commit the place to memory. She can find anywhere on the river, that won't be a problem. "I'll expect you."

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

Réjean stands, slings his shoes (knotted together at the laces) over his shoulder, bows with only a little flourish and then makes his way off into the night.

Exactly three days later, he can be found still without shoes, although this is more aesthetics than soggy feet, sitting on the rock she threw him out on. He's brought along a wicker basket, some general nibbly things, mimosa supplies, and a pair of tiny, paper umbrellas.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde arrives about ten minutes later, looking not much as she had when they met - she's quite convincingly human to the untrained eye, clothed and carrying her own shoes, and walking along the riverbank towards him instead of swimming the distance. Pleased as she is to see he's keeping his word, she doesn't seem much surprised, sitting down by him.

Instead of a greeting, she peers into the basket, investigatory.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

Inside the basket there's enough orange juice and champagne for a single mimosa and a random collection snacks from Earth, Baedal, and anywhere else that caught his eye.

"I forgot to ask what you liked, so I took a bit of this, a bit of that, and something that glowed lilac and smelled of Swedish meatballs."

[rhinemaid]

Spared Réjean's wit by her gaze on the basket, she sits cross-legged on the bank as she straightens to pour herself the mimosa and tucks one of the umbrellas behind her ear; she considers the second one, and then (smiling) leans over on her knees, her weight forward on one hand as she uses the other one to tuck the second umbrella behind his.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"You see? I knew I should make sure I wore my good shirt today. I match," he says adjusting the umbrella until he's confident that it will stay in place.

"Is it to your liking?" Réjean never can tell what humans (or human-like) folk want to eat. So much of what's available these days is so far from his own dimly remembered frame of reference.

[rhinemaid]

"I like the fruit." Her fingers are already getting wet with mandarin juice as she picks the flesh of one apart, daintily. "You're not too bad."

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"You're pretty when you lie," he says, seemingly entertained by letting his toes splash in the river water. "But I won't complain much. I'm a delicate man and I love having my ego stroked."

[rhinemaid]

Being of the opinion that 'pretty when she lies' is not just amusing but also technically correct (she has a high opinion of her own reflection, and about 80% of the time it's an illusion), Ilde grins at him. "You don't look delicate to me, Réjean."

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"You've never seen me get faint over this year's lace patterns," he says with all the seriousness it deserves. "Anything exciting, anything worth fainting over happen down here lately?"

[rhinemaid]

"Besides you getting shot off a boat?" Besides that, Ilde.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

Réjean nods and offers to peel another orange-like fruit for her. Unsurprisingly, he's not eating, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to play with the food.

[rhinemaid]

"I think I gave someone in Gidd a heartattack when I swam beneath their glass-bottomed boat," she says, reflectively, as she passes him over a fruit to peel. She'd rolled onto her back to peer back up at them, she remembers a man bending down to look and then getting startled when she tapped on the glass before leaving. "People keep mistaking me for a mermaid, you know."

The more of this mimosa she drinks, the less the things she says will have to do with anything relevant to anything besides 'the first passing thought in her head'.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

Given proper incentive, Réjean can even make roses out of radishes.

"Ah, I wasn't sure myself. There've been mermaids that could come ashore before." No dinglehoppers for her! "All different manner, you know?"

[rhinemaid]

"All I know about mermaids," as she lights a cigarette, setting her apart from probably not as many fairies as you might first think, "is that they go in the sea, and I don't."

Making it sort of quibbly to be so determined about the difference between her and a mermaid, due to the fact that she isn't completely clear on what that might be anyway, but it's one thing she does know and therefore it matters.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"Is it rude of me to ask what you are?" He breaks the not-orange into segments and offers them back to her. "What are you?"

[rhinemaid]

"I'm a naiad," she supplies, taking the segments and picking them in halves again to eat. The convenient thing about being right beside the river is the ease of rinsing fruit juice from her fingers, among other things. "Which sort of means 'I don't really know'. Freshwater fairy. I'm making it up as I go along."

Scrutinizing him over her glass, "What are you?"

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"Are your bones made of pearl?" Réjean doesn't seem to think so, but he's heard rumours and figures that it won't hurt to tease or ask.

"I am very useful man to know. I used to be a tinker, a tailor, a bonesetter, but these days I'm just the man who knows where to go to get whatever is needed," he says, smiling to show off his fangs. "I also go bump in the night."

[rhinemaid]

With the genuine earnestness of the easily-inebriated, Ilde is briefly sidetracked by the idea of her bones being made of pearl. Her skin has a lot in common with mother of pearl when she isn't hiding it under a human seeming; perhaps this rumour stands to reason? It isn't as though she's ever looked at her own bones. She spends a moment studying her own hand as if it'll become transparent if she concentrates hard enough.

(For a moment it seems to be changing into glass, which has nothing to do with her bones and everything to do with her illusions sometimes being influenced by her train of thought.)

His fangs, mercifully, pull her back into the present and she beams at him. "Oh, another one."

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"You'd think there'd be fewer and, given a few years, there will be," he replies sounding very much like he's experience upswings in vampire population before and weathered them well. It's a self-regulating ecosystem. "You'd also think that having the extra time might give a man perspective, and yet..."

[rhinemaid]

"The longer people have to be themselves, the more themselves they're going to be." Whether that's insight or the champagne talking is a matter of opinion.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"You also have to consider the type of person that appeals enough to share such a 'gift' with." It's pretty clear that Réjean has a low opinion of most vampires -- a great lot of stuffed shirts and (un)holy rollers more concerned with rules and slights than anything of value. Why life forever if you're not going to enjoy it and improve yourself?

[rhinemaid]

"Arseholes of a feather?" she hazards, inquiringly. She's picking a piece of fruit apart as they speak, now - not eating it, just slowly peeling it into nothing.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"Can go fuck off together," he replies delicately. "But should anyone ask, you didn't hear it from me."

Réjean is sure that somewhere there are decent, reasonable vampires, but until he meets them, a cynic he will remain.

[rhinemaid]

"You're a sweet man, Réjean," Ilde tells him, dryly, resting her feet on a rock in front of her and stretching her toes 'til they point towards the water. "I like the ones I know." More or less. She likes Katherine best, she thinks.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"Clearly I don't get out enough or I just attract the wrong calibre of person. You don't think it's my face, do you? I've been told I have a good, honest face."

...bullshit.

[rhinemaid]

"I'm deaf and drunk, not gullible," Ilde says, kindly.

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

"It is my face then. I knew it. I should've traded when I had the chance." Either he's full of it or there's some suitably horrid take of face-stealing to come.