☈ it all went to my heart, like some rainbows in the dark.

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

Who: Ruby Van Alst, MANY PEOPLE to be added as they appear
What: Impromptu enjoyment of the late summer weather
Where: The beach
When: Early afternoon to evening
Notes: N/A
Warnings: N/A

The unrelenting summer sunshine of Baedal is a direct contrast to where Ruby was before, and it's something of a relief. She likes each season equally for her own reasons, but...right now it feels as though she's absorbing the light more than ever, pushing away all the darkness of what she'd done. It lets her float around with the breathless enthusiasm she'd first manifested at the party on her arrival night, and she hasn't really slowed down very much yet.

(At some point there will be coming down, at some point she will have to breathe. But not yet.)

The beach sand is hot, the water is clear, and Ruby is in the process of stripping down to her colorful bandeau bikini. She squints up at the cloud-dotted sky, and stands carefully on the pale blue terrycloth towel she brought with her; eventually she'll make the mad dash across the dry sand to the cooler water, but for now, she is waiting to see who will turn up--there are a few people she expects, but she's open to surprises. Fortunately, it's not exactly hard to find Ruby, given her height and her vibrant hair color.

Comments

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

"I read about them," she remembers. "That kind of fae, I mean. They're Irish. Phoenixes are...destructive, I guess. They're made of fire, and they burn everything they touch. They can't help it. They don't even think of it, really. It's just who they are."

And at the time Ruby hadn't understood why a creature like that would seek her out, but as she got older, well--

She began to understand. Ruby stretches out onto her back to float, squinting up at the sunlight.

[sailorofthefloe.livejournal.com]

"Yes, that's the part I don't like. Giving up who you are." Which only makes sense, considering. Not that anyone has ever tried with much success.

"She dies, and has to do good deeds to gain a soul and enter heaven, so she can be with the prince. In one version, anyway. It's sad." He gestures to the sea. "After all, who would want to give up this?"

He dips his head under the water, before re-surfacing with: "Trust a Danish man to take all the fun out of something." It carries a slightly smug undertone that the Norwegian way is better. National rivalry and all that.

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

She laughs a little, straightening up in the water simultaneously so she can test how far it might be to the bottom -- a foot or so, she thinks. Treading water isn't too difficult, as she's pretty athletic, and if it gets tiring, she'll just back float.

"Well, at least we know who to blame."

She is more considering, after a moment. "I can't really blame her, though. Love makes people do crazy things."

...as well she knows. After all, she'd split the country and tracked down her prince. It didn't work out, and he put her up on a pedestal so high she couldn't possibly get down without hurting herself, which is about how it went, but she doesn't necessarily regret the relationship. Ruby supposes that's not much of a fairy tale.

[sailorofthefloe.livejournal.com]

What with human love and bear instinct having a less-than-sane outcome in a lot of situations, he makes a noise in agreement. Love was always a subject he inevitably fell down on. Not for lack of trying, but because there was always the need to keep people at arm's length (for his peace of mind, his safety, and occasionally theirs.)

"If she ends up here, we have to give her ice cream and take her on a bar crawl." It's said a little too intently to be serious, and yet.

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

"Absolutely. Actually, I just want one of those in general." Unsurprisingly. Ruby hasn't investigated any more of the local bars, since she's only been here a week, but she wants to find them. And any clubs in the area, too.

[manipulativni.livejournal.com]

"Cold is no trouble with me." Katherine's body functions more like a typical human's does than other types of vampires, but the cold doesn't bother her. "And if something tries to eat you, they'll have to go through me first."

There's a bit of lightness in her tone, but she means the words. So loyal, this one is.

[rhinemaid]

Phoenixes appeal to Ilde conceptually; burning everything clean and starting again, it's an idea she can get behind. Creation and destruction are forces that go hand in hand, often, and for everything new there is something it burned through.

"I was always cold all over," she remembers, in contrast. "I had doctor's appointments when I was small, they thought I had a circulatory disorder or something like that."

[rhinemaid]

The number of women who'd kill anyone who touched her is more than a little gratifying; she knows, intellectually, that she shouldn't measure her worth by the value accorded her by other people, but the point remains that she does and that Katherine's assertion makes her smile, lazily, trailing her fingertips through the water. At some point, she's abandoned her bikini top, and god only knows what sunscreen actually does for her skin.

"Come join me, then."

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

Ruby moseys over to greet Katherine, with a smile. She's in the process of refastening her bandeau on, because it's cute and she figures she ought to wear it most of the time she's on land, though it's obvious she's been in the water--her hair is damp. Thus far, however, Ruby has managed to evade a sunburn, because as redheads go she is a freak of nature in multiple respects.

"Currently this is a mostly female-dominated beach trip," she says, by way of greeting, "I think boys are scared to show off. I'm Ruby, by the way."

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

"...and they could never figure it out," Ruby guesses, laughing with a bright and startled familiarity. (She remembers when she'd starve herself, the doctor's visits. How nice the doctor was, and how unsettled by the way she knew who was going to die, what was wrong with them, and what every mysterious piece of medical equipment was for.)

"We're banes to the scientific system."

[rhinemaid]

Ilde's answering laugh is a wordless confirmation, and she says, "Daddy stopped bothering to take me after a while - he said it had never done him any harm so it probably wasn't going to do me any, either." Which is among the many small clues she's put together to trace her ancestry through her paternal line, even if his adoption (and their lack of information about who his birth parents were) make it a dead end any further back than that.

[sailorofthefloe.livejournal.com]

"Ice cream or a bar crawl? Or both?" He squints in the light, looking towards the direction of the beach and if there is an ice cream stand somewhere (of course there is. There always is. It's a beach).

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

"So you and your father are alike that way?" Ruby inquires. She doesn't think anyone in her family is like her--she knows there were maternal ancestors, certainly, and they seemed to carry the red hair trait, but that's all she knows. None of them ever spoke to her...well, sort of.

(She still doesn't know what to make of that particular happening.)

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

"Both," she says, decisively, and then ducks underneath the water to swim forward a few paces. When she comes up from the water, her hair is swept back behind her, and she's grinning.

"Once, someone tried to convince me to have ice cream with beer. Like a float."

[manipulativni.livejournal.com]

"Of course." And shortly after she's laid out her towel, Katherine shimmies out of her cover-up dress, toes off her sandals, and comes into the water to join her friend. Ilde wasn't exaggerating when she said that it was cold, and a shiver runs through her as she wades out to where she is in the water.

"My, you weren't kidding," she says, but she grins at her anyway. "It's quite refreshing, though."

[manipulativni.livejournal.com]

At this point, Katherine's at least dipped her toes in the water, but she's laying out on her towel for the moment, enjoying the feel of the sun on her skin. Ruby might find it odd that she's got an expensive-looking bracelet encircling her wrist, but if asked, she'll say it's a family heirloom that she never takes off.

"Their loss," she says as she sits up, moving her sunglasses to the top of her head and regarding Ruby with a smile. She heard her approaching before she spoke up, though the surface of the sand makes it harder to hear the footsteps. "It'll be a success even if they don't show up, though." She extends her hand to the woman in greeting. "I'm Katherine. Good to meet you."

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

Ruby shakes Katherine's hand and immediately (and she sort of knew it was going to happen, her power is sometimes secret and sudden, but sometimes like an electrical storm) comes away with three rushing senses of knowing, conclusions that hit her one after the other:

One, the polished dark-haired young woman, of apparent comparative age, is much much older than she seems.

Two, she's running from something--or someone.

Three, that she's dead.

Breathing, but dead. Not the kind of sleeping, quieted dead that involves a casket and a burial, but the sort that drains away innocence and fragility, leaving a cool, poised, even brutal quality in its wake. Vampire is a word that Ruby of course knows, but it's not a label she's ever had cause to give anyone until now. She pauses only briefly, fortunately, and the bracelet does catch her eye, so after the brisk greeting is accomplished, uses that as an excuse for her hesitation.

"Likewise." She settles down in the sand next to Katherine so they aren't oddly angled as they speak. Her mind is still running over those three individual flashes of awareness, but she's more than capable of working on multiple levels by now.

"That's a beautiful bracelet, by the way--antique pieces are so much more elegant than most of what we get nowadays."

[manipulativni.livejournal.com]

Katherine frowns slightly at the pause, but it's over quickly enough that she doesn't realize that something's up, that Ruby's just discovered something she's been trying to keep under wraps as much as she can. While there are benefits to being the type of vampire that she is, there are a few disadvantages, one of the big ones being that she can't automatically identify the supernatural. There are signs she knows to look for, of course, and her heightened senses help at times, but for the most part she's flying blind until she knows what to look for.

"Thank you," she says to the compliment, raising her arm a bit to be sure it's not in danger of slipping off of her wrist. "I'm quite attached to it."

[rhinemaid]

"I haven't seen him since before," she admits, sparsely skipping over the details of that (when she thinks of him, she thinks of the last message she got, anxiously assuring her that he'd get her home if she didn't like it), "but all the things that are...more, now, he had them, as well. Stronger, I think." There aren't that many generations between them and Ælfræd; their blood is still closer to fey than to human, and it was more marked in her father again.

[sailorofthefloe.livejournal.com]

"I've drank weirder, but that still sounds pretty disgusting," he says, treading backwards. "I once went to this bar, a gothic theme place, and they had a cocktail after each deadly sin. Pride was a mix of vodka, crème de menthe and chocolate liqueur. It tasted like melted mint chocolate ice cream." In other words, delicious.

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

Ruby tends not to hide what she is--she doesn't see the point, for one, and this is the first place she's ever been where she can be somewhat open about being a witch. She has a degree of pride now that she couldn't fully express at home. That said, even Ruby does not really know the truth of her ancestry, and she tends to disguise that uncertainty with bravado.

"I can imagine. Especially since whoever brought us here didn't see fit to also bring along much of a closet." She tips her head back to squint up at the bright sky.

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

"Okay, that sounds much better. Do they even have real clubs here? The bars aren't entirely suited to dancing." And the neon lights of nightclubs hold a certain appeal for Ruby, much as she's considered herself an outdoorsy type. (The girl is versatile, let's put it that way.)

[pinkmoon.livejournal.com]

"Sounds like you were teetering on the edge, and now you've been pushed over it." And as dangerous as that sounds, sometimes it's a good thing. (Ruby is something of an expert in taking the mad-sounding leap.)

[rhinemaid]

"It's like drowning, if drowning were good," Ilde suggests, wading deeper into the water - it's an odd comparison to make, considering she's physically incapable of doing that. (Sometimes she pretends, at the bottom of the bath in the house she shares with Sonja; she goes to sleep there and pretends she'll never have to get up again, and it's fine, it's not real, it just makes things easier for a while.) "Going in all the way to the bottom. I think it's good."

[sailorofthefloe.livejournal.com]

"They better, or else I give up on this city entirely." He ducks under the water, swimming down until he touches the sea bed and along, before re-surfacing. It seems as though he's heading in the direction of the shore.

"Still, ice cream first?"