Verna Gardner
There are nights when Verna knows she should be at home, wherever 'home' happens to be lately. But it's a hard thing to admit to yourself, that you've been dumped out of your apartment by events beyond your control. She likes to pretend, does Verna, at being someone more than she is. So being home, frankly, stinks.
And she can't go just anywhere when she can't stand being stuck in her old room at her parents' or amidst the quiet bleakness of a battered womens' shelter. She has to go somewhere that Jon Marc won't happen to be strolling through. Places like this probably aren't on his list.
She doesn't even have to pretend to appreciate the art in this place, abstract as it is. The paintings are splatters more often than they are something recognizable. But there's a calm balance to the frenetic. Splashes of color and doom framed in a shiny black square -- a sliver of her life. One vicious moment appraised, move on to the next.
As stated, Verna likes to pretend. So she's pretending tonight to not be on a teacher's salary. Black heels, black slacks, a severely perfected pressed-collar sky blue blouse. It looks, as she most often does, as though she went to a job interview today.
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Cipriano has paused beside a blocky print that might, if one turned it upside-down, resemble trees. Or possibly porcupines, but the paint is mostly varying hues of green and Cipriano has yet to glimpse a verdant porcupine. Cipriano is wearing jeans, but they are clean and not shredded (god rest that tattered soul of the last pair) and a long-sleeved tee-shirt with a haphazard arrangement of alchemical symbols he knows to be gibberish. Which is, really, just as well. Sorcery does not look kindly upon dilettantes and dabblers. The last thing the modern nights needs is a horde of young alchemists trying to host meetings in coded messages on Twitter.
Well. They almost certainly exist. The last thing he needs is to know about them.
Alright. That is also incorrect. He would rather like to make their acquaintance. Trade stories and learn what they have invented with their irreverence and their condensing of complex formulas into coded messages of 140 characters or less. He would just prefer not to be there when it all comes crashing down?
No again. For he, currently leaning against a wall with the sleek grace of a cat, half-finished drink he exchanged for a full one that has been long since drunk by a charming brunette in one hand, would find whatever terrors befall a tower of alchemists exciting. Unlike the parade of discarded companions that has made up his evening thus far.
Verna Gardner
Verna spots her 'friend'. Is it to that point yet? They've had at least one long conversation with a certain level of trust. So she supposes it has passed the level of passing acquaintance. He tells her next to nothing of himself, though. She only gets the vague impression that he, too, knows what it is to be a hunted creature.
He's wearing jeans, and something that looks pseudo-scientific. Well, what happened to all that class? And then, there's a thrill of fear. That man, that dangerous man. He's on her side, perhaps, but there's a reason why she doesn't know a thing about him, isn't there? It has something to do with the fact that he wants to help her... remove a problem from her life. Strange, how he looks like any other patron.
She starts walking in his direction, heels making clicks on the floor. They're not the shoes for stalking. Not the right footwear for a sprinting cat. They announce her presence and hobble her in that distinctly pretty, feminine fashion.
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Clothing Verna, is just a performance. Cipriano has studied with the masters of that performance, if by studied with one actually means has drunk with. And, occasionally, from. One of his favorites he played billiards with in a saloon. Verna would have been scandalized. She may yet be, if their relationship progresses far enough he takes her to play such games in dens thick with smoke and the taste of lust and avarice. Pinball is delightful, but it just isn't the same. Cipriano is relatively sure he can distract Verna with the precise angles and demands of force versus friction. He also thinks she could be fantastic at poker, given some time.
He does miss playing poker. And the gorgeous creature that has been sleeping for decades now. No one else gets drunk and suggests robbing a train because royal flush. She would tell him some elaborate story about the painting. Cipriano studies it and sees ghosts, but then he tries to hear her. Her laugh. Some ridiculous thing that she would say.
And then, as if to reward him for his deliberate decision to embrace that kind of joy, there is his scientist. Cipriano waves the hand not holding a wine glass languidly at the painting. "I don't know about you," he says. "But I see a hippopotamus and an ibis dancing a ballet. Unless I take two steps to the right. Then it is undoubtedly two swans, on unicycles, engaging in brilliant lion-taming performance." There is the smile to go with the mischievous tone, and his expression very clearly, dares her to try to tell him an even more ridiculous story about the painting.
Alan Moriarty
There is art, and it is abstract.
There is art, and there he is with his blue eyes stay on paintings. Take in the vibrant brush strokes and the bold choices. He isn't transfixed. He isn't enraptured, but somewhere in the back of his mind there is jazz playing and his hands feel naked without a cigar.
It's been awhile. The man in his nice pullover and his comfortable jeans.
Beside him, there was an older woman, someone who bore a resemblance. Both fair skinned and blue-eyed, but the woman is thin-lipped and tired.
"You coming home tonight?" the woman asked.
"No, I thought I would sleep in a trash can tonight," the man replied with a cheeky smile.
"I'm not mother," she told him, "that smile doesn't work with me."
"Sure it does."
Verna Gardner
Strange how he always disarms whatever apprehension she has with some witty remark. I'll help you hunt your demons. Doesn't this look like two swans on unicycles?
Verna smiles. It's this game.
"Are paintings like clouds to you? We get to try to find the hidden animals?"
She pauses in her steps, looks over the painting from the other side of it. Blocky green abstraction, like ice if it were made with plant matter inside.
"I think it looks like calm. Or like a microscopic image of moss."
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Cipriano glances at her heels. Smirks. "Do you know," he says in that sunlight-on-velvet voice, "That heels were originally worn by men. They wanted to demonstrate their class status, because no one who needed to work could possibly be in such shoes. And so, as more people began to wear them, the rich clung to their status symbol by making their heels higher.
"And then women, damn their impetuousness, started wearing them. And smoking pipes. So men stopped wearing them. And then came the Age of Reason, and everyone stopped wearing heels." He laughs and swipes a glass of wine off a tray that is meandering past them. Well, there is a person you see, meandering with the tray, but Cipriano seems interested only in the tray and the glasses on it. He presents the glass to Verna.
"So do any of the paintings look like frozen light?"
Verna Gardner
"Is that your way of subtly disapproving of my footwear, Mister Santos-Augustine?" Yes, she still calls him that. But then, she says it with a mocking tone today, as they have gone and thrown seriousness out of a tower window.
She takes his offered glass. Smiles at him.
"I simply didn't want to show up to a place like this looking like something the cat dragged in," she says, and still-smiling, takes a sip. She's mocking again. There's an unsaid 'unlike some people' left hanging at the end of that sentence.
"I haven't seen nearly any painting here that looks like our typical representations of frozen light. There's not nearly enough horribly blocky rainbow gradients. See, physicists aren't usually ones that go for artistic expression, so when we display the results of our fantastic experiments, it tends to look like an 8 year old picked the color scheme."
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"I have known some very artistic eight-year-olds." Has he? Has someone let him near their children? What would he even do with children? Perhaps he means when he was eight.
"I have also known cats." This is much more believable. "And I do not have nearly enough puncture wounds and blood for that. Although, do be careful. Someone could get the idea that having me mauled by a lion and dragged about could be performance art. That would just not do.
"At any rate, I am only baffled by your footwear, considering your circumstances."
Verna Gardner
She looks down at her feet. He has a point about the 'circumstances'. "I could always take them off."
"You're right, though. I am terrible at this. But if they were to stumble into this place tonight, the paintings would baffle them to no end, and you would be here."
Verna hasn't had nearly the experience as Cipriano when it comes to evading her enemies. Running in heels though, not such a good idea. She feels safer with him too. Also, probably not such a good idea.
"It would neither do for me to get caught wearing heels, or you to be mauled by a lion and dragged about. This is true. Though some of these paintings do look as though that were the method used to create them. Lion mauling on canvas," she says, takes a sip of her wine, and laughs a bit.
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Indeed," Cipriano drawls. "A tradition harkening back to the noble era of the Roman forum. You can see there, in those splatters of cerulean and saffron a delicacy which presents a sharp counterpoint to the brutal origin of the tradition. And, as we all know...." Here, he seems barely to manage not to laugh. "In that sort of subversion lies brilliance. It is the very essence of art, rebellion.
"Not, for example, like this here. Which clearly seeks to portray the feeling of lingering over coffee with a lover when the sun has been risen long enough it's warmed the room and you should be elsewhere, but you aren't because the moment is too precious. Except somehow this one is all soulless, like waiting in line at Starbucks. It's the uniformity of the width of the brushstrokes, I think."
Verna Gardner
She walks with him as he begins to pick out further distractions for them. She can't help but giggle into her wine when he makes his grandiose jests. Perhaps that's the wine talking. The last time a man offered her a flute of wine, he bled into it first and then offered her a future that she grabbed onto with both hands. And then, he left.
Wine can get to her, oh yes. It can cause months of endless wanting.
She listens to Cipriano talk about lingering over coffee with a lover, and it's blue eyes that she sees in that particular vision, for all that Cipriano's are lovely as well. Neither of them would ever be drinking coffee after the sun rose, but she doesn't know that. She seems at once a bit far-away when he travels down that road, but smiles again when he chases it with another joke.
"Uniformly brown and gold. You think that says coffee? It could be... dirt?" Or something worse. She won't go there.
"What of this one? I like this, I think. The blue. It's like someone dumped a sky out on the canvas."
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Yes," Cipriano says. And, sensing that this time, perhaps, he should not jest, he reaches out to the painting, fingertips stopping not an inch from the surface. "There," he says, "is dawn in winter, barely blue at all. And here, a little streak of the dark blue that chases all the brighter colors of sunset. And over there, in that corner, the blue of the sky on a cloudless summer afternoon." And they are, both of them, remembering something beautiful that they have lost.
"It is rather lovely."
Verna Gardner
"So many different skies," Verna says. And there, the blue of his eyes, that she could drink like water...
"I always like when the sun sets behind the mountains, and it leaves little streaks like that," she says, and points toward a part of the canvas that somehow, against all the other, more liquid themes going on, has straight lines.
"Maybe that's the effect they were going for. Do you think?"
She upends her glass.
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Yes," Cipriano says. "I think that a visceral reaction was the desired effect. For the painting to communicate with us.
"What the colors are meant to be...I could not say. They could be water or time or the dreams of the oldest and wisest of dolphins. I don't think the part that matters is that you understand exactly what the artist saw. I think the part that matters is that what you see means something to you."
Alan Moriarty
The word is serendipity. It wasn't quite accurate to say it was serendipity, because his approach and his movement around the circuit of art and post expressionist blahblah wasvery deliberate. He saw people, noted them, and concluded that he needed to go meet said people. His retainer was left standing by a piece, not entranced by the beauty but certainly looking at it with the bored eye of a woman who was desperate for someone to talk about how absolutely terrible it was.
She never much cared for the abstract. That was more of Alan's thing.
"Huh," he says, not quite intervening, but certainly making his presence known, "they went for lines."
It was what it was. He half smirked, amused and pleased with the departure.
Verna Gardner
They had just been talking about what would happen should Verna get caught by some brute while wearing such unfortunate footwear. She's been engrossed in art appreciation, so she didn't notice the man until he's there, speaking, making his presence known.
The two predators will likely notice how she jumps a little in response, broken out of hanging on her dark companion's beautiful little speech. Cipriano might be reminded of that night at the gun range, when she seemed to stop just short of asking him why he was talking to her with every sideways glance. But, to her credit, she tries to bat down that instinctual response. He's not Jon Marc.
So she gives him a twitchy smile and drinks her wine. Not a sip this time.
"Do you not agree? Should they have gone with..." she shrugs. "Circles?"
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Cirpriano's eyes track to Alan at the bid for attention. Lines. Verna's jump does not go unnoticed, but he makes no mention of it. Nor of the way she finishes her wine. There are circumstances. Hers. Theirs at the moment Alan joined them. But look, there are always circumstances.
The best circumstances under which to meet Cipriano, from some angles, are those in which he has decided he wants to give you his attention. From the perspective of the survivors of circumstances Cipriano has found interesting enough to warrant his attention...it might be better not to have ever be in a position to catch his attention at all. (We shall assume that most of the dead would have preferred other circumstances as well.)
This art gallery, tonight, lured him with the promise of tipsy socialites. Occasionally you meet one that can tell some fun stories. (Four nights ago he found a snack that took him home to tell him stories about Africa and drink African wine. He left with a small carved lion, which has survived the successive trips to places he has slept, and a phone number, which he is not sure he will use.) Thus far, no new people have endeared themselves to him and now his scientist has arrived. It doesn't matter. He wasn't that hungry anyway.
And, now, Alan.
"Indeed," he says quietly. "Lines." There is no real welcome, but also no hostility. For now, he is content to evaluate Alan. Perhaps he will say something more interesting. Do something interesting. And, if not, he has his scientist. His scientist is fascinating.
Alan Moriarty
One shouldn't approach prey animals from their blind spot. This much he knew, and this much he conveniently forgets at times. He's a little pale, but his smile is nice, no overly sharp teeth. Nothing wolfish or rakish about him. He's slight of build, but he's a decent looking guy. His eyes are blue, and that's what stands out. his eyes are so. damn. blue. He puts his hands up a little, laughs a laugh that is calm, yes, but disarming. Disarmed, even.
"I promise I don't have rabies, just a bad taste in art. Which may be contagious," he replied.
He shrugs, puts his hands away and folds them across his chest. He's content to be where he is, isn't scared off by the feeling that he isn't quite alone but slowly and surely feels himself becoming more aware of the fact that he is a third wheel. Or a unicycle in conjunction with a bicycle. Unicycles can fly free, go on their own, handle their own damn business with a little movement of the hips and a new distribution of weight.
"I apologize in advance if you develop a taste for Thomas Kinkade by standing too close to me. I heard it's airborn."
Verna Gardner
She finally gets a good look at the newcomer when he says he doesn't have rabies, and... his hair could be a bit lighter. He could be a touch older. And then? Oh, it wouldn't be the same, not at all. But those eyes remind her of someone, and she smiles a true emotion at him.
"It's not contagious. My mother likes Thomas Kinkade, and I have yet to absorb that particular love," Verna says. Mom loves those garish paintings of cottages and flowers so much, she's filled the house with them. They're just-this-side of overtly religious kitsch.
"I think there's perhaps something to it though. His paintings are these idealistic pastoral scenes -- houses with all the lights on and fires going. But there's never any people in them. We couldn't live there. We'd ruin it," Verna sighs, rolls her eyes. "Either that, or Kinkade doesn't know how to paint people."
There's no more wine. Why is there not more wine? She's doing terribly at this.
"I'm sorry. I'm... I'm being all morbid. I've been in a mood lately. I think that you're perfectly allowed to enjoy what you like, and shouldn't let my gloominess keep you from it."
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Cipriano watches them speaking, silent not like the seconds that pull taut across the expectant hush before a storm breaks but rather the languid silence of a cat. Is Alan like a laser pointer? Does he have catnip? Or boxes?
Alan does not have rabies. Does have a fondness for Kinkade paintings. Candy-bright and lush. Mostly he's with Joan Didion - it looks like a gingerbread world to lure in Hansel and Gretel.
"Mmmmmmmm...." The sound is low, more from his throat like a purr than a hum. "If I'm going to put art like that on my walls, it shall be crafted of actual crushed lollipops. Which sounds charming, but I don't even know who to go to to commission an elaborate gingerbread frame these days." There is no real judgment in his tone. If they want to love some wonderland resplendent with the colors of Lucky Charms marshmallows, that is their affair. He loves Raphael's portrait of Bindo Altoviti, and his adoration is not dampened in the slightest because of that awkwardness with the neck. Art is less perfect realism in physical representation and more the capture of something that transcends that. If all they wanted was a true representation of the physical world...there are cameras for that.
"And anyway," he murmurs. "Kinkade was, at essence, a portrait artist. There are simply rarely people because his portraits were of sunbeams and radiant flames and clouds of starlight."
Alan Moriarty
"Don't apologize, I happen to find it charming that someone has managed to add some more depth to those paintings. I was always struck by the fact that they all seemed a tad too detailed in certain ways. They can't be real, it reminds me of all those fantasy art paintings of cloud castles," he said.
A second passed and then?
"Besides, a piece done entirely in candy would have an amazing texture and luster."
Verna Gardner
"Until the ants got hungry, yes," Verna says, sniffs with her nose up in the air. "Though I suppose that could count as ant performance art. Them, eating up a Kinkade painting? It would be interesting. You could put their colony next to the painting, so you could watch how they take it apart and store the pretty candy pieces in their tunnels."
Yes, put the lifeless ideal next to life, and see what it does. The ants would make their own art out of feeding, carrying away the glowing light and orderly emptiness to create their own order. The only problem with the metaphor is the complete lack of malice in the ants. They're just doing as ants will.
She looks around for a waiter to pass her empty glass to, and it strikes her then that she still doesn't have any of her own. All her glassware has been shattered. There's a quick thought that she could slip it into her purse, but no. There's people here. They'd see. They'd judge. So she makes eye contact with the man lounging by the hallway carrying a platter and smiles and puts her hand up to flag him over. She won't carry away this little bit of candy tonight.
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"I'm sure there is something you could spray it with. Varnish might melt the sugar but some kind of plastic polymer maybe? Perhaps a finishing glaze and then a polymer." Cipriano shrugs, lazy and unconcerned. The thought of encasing a lollipop painting in liquid plastic amuses him, but he has no vested interest in its existence.
"I have no idea, but artists are very creative. I'm sure that they could figure something out."
If he could find Neri, it would be quite the presentation. Scenes from Oz in lollipop dust. Sugar-spun ruby slippers. He has no idea if she is still basking in the glow of creation and wonder. Perhaps she is lost to torpor. Perhaps, though he thinks he would have heard, she is lost to the final death.
He is rapidly running out of old friends.
And his scientist? How long can he truly keep her? A few years? A few decades?
He turns his attention to that very scientist, eyes alight with something warm and mischievous. Practically a dare. "Don't tell me you couldn't do it.....?" And up-up-up raises one eyebrow and that rich velvet voice of his is full of a challenge. Playful. But unmistakably a challenge.
Cipriano's eyes flick, briefly, to Alan. It isn't hard to read an invitation to join him in prodding Verna into the act of studying exactly what would be the best way to preserve crushed candy landscapes.
Alan Moriarty
"Artists or engineers, both have a discerning eye and drive to make something worthy of note," he said, but then something made him perk. Made him grin like that cheshire cat. Somewhere his (seemingly) older companion rolls her eyes. Alan was insufferable sometimes, but flirtatious to the end. Besides, he was in his home territory, this one.
"BUt, you know, if art or science isn't really your thing," he responds with a small shrug, a little moment where he can feel anticipation. His heart does not beat, but his eyes do still fire with amusement, "we'll just have to call a masterpiece temporary."
Verna Gardner
"Oh, I can see what's going on here," Verna says, pointing an accusatory finger first at Alan, then Cipriano. "You're trying to goad me into actually doing this candy preserving thing aren't you?"
Verna rolls her eyes. Boys, both of them.
"I'll have you know, science is so much my thing that I barely have time for anything else right now. You're lucky you found me on a night when I'm not spending fourteen straight hours at the lab. I don't really have the space for fun things in my life. Maybe in the summer. I'll have less work then."
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Cipriano, who is in a playful mood, nips at the air in the general direction of Verna's pointing finger. Snap. Reminiscent of the lazy batting of feline paws at hands that get close enough. And then he pouts for show for a few seconds when she maintains there is no time.
"Come now, we live but once." Some of us for a few centuries more than others, perhaps, but all of us once. "And who doesn't want to preserve their crushed candy paintings forever?"
Alan Moriarty
"Dear nameless muse," he starts to this nameless scientist. The one who says she is banal- his heart could have been in so many things. All that potential, wasted (potential gone, though better than a gutter rat. Beter than being confined to the sewers.) "if you have no time for fun things, then I suggest- humbly suggest-" he raises a finger "-that you redefine what you see as fun. Or just become really, really good at writing grants for doing things you actually want to do instead of synthesizing plant proteins."
A beat.
"The whole of humanity would be better if crushed candy paintings lasted as long as oil on canvas."
Verna Gardner
She retracts that finger when Cipriano snaps at it, and gives him a little admonishing look -- one that says 'you bite?'. For shame.
"I do find it fun. Well, maybe not fun exactly? More exciting? But then... it leaves me with little time to myself. And what time I do have, I spend on my own science, you understand? Things that are not yet complete?"
Well, that and running away from monsters. That and murder plans and all the moving around that comes with trying to hide. Verna's days are filled things -- her nights also.
"But I'll tell you this: if you dears get me a crushed candy painting, I'll see what I can do about preserving it, is that sufficient?"
There. It leaves the ball in their court. And luckily, should they find an artist willing to do such a thing, they'll already know how to preserve crushed candy. Win.
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Cipriano's eyes light up at that look of admonishment. Of course he bites, Verna. How could you forget?
Because he can? Because he bites with the same innocence as kittens and perfect summer skies?
And then his eyes practically flare into a supernova when Verna agrees to take part in their madness if they will only get her a painting to preserve.
So much light. So much light that collapses on itself into the abyss. Back holes. Inescapable gravity.
But in this moment Cipriano is a great cat with constellations flaring in his eyes who needs only procure a painting in crushed candy. And he will, even if he has to make this thing himself. "Your challenge is accepted."
And that great abyss...she waits. Patient. Silent. For now.
Alan Moriarty
"I'm Alan," he offers her. Just to know a name, just to give a name, just so that social convention insisted there was a name.
He'd gone through the motions. Sent his letter announcing his arrival, but at that juncture he was nobody in the city. He was always nobody. That was neither here nor there. Alan was always going to be nothing, blood dictated so. Blood insisted. Not a bit of that refined taste in him, no, he'd eat anything. no, he'd do anything to survive. And he would survive.
He only had eternity to go.
"And," the young man continues, "I would love to commission that painting. As your gentleman companion said- challenge accepted."
Verna Gardner
She looks over to Cipriano who is going supernova off to the side, and laughs out a small, tittering noise. It's like watching a great cat behave like a kitten.
But then, she regards Alan and this whole ridiculous conversation about crushed candy paintings. He's a lover of Kincade paintings. He's probably not one of Jon Marc's ilk. They'd probably beat him up for such a thing, okay? It's totally fine to give him your name.
"Verna. My name's Verna," she says, and extends her hand to shake. It's the thing to do, right?
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Verna's gentleman companion watches as Alan introduces himself to her. It is noted, though without any real hostility or jealousy; just filed away under 'people in this conversation also mostly interested in Verna.' Alan would love to commission that painting, and that gets a smile. Whether because Alan has adopted his game with Verna or because he was just referred to a a gentleman companion.
"This gentleman companion," he drawls, and he lets a hint of somewhere further west and further in the past creep into his voice. There is still all that rich gold velvet, but now with texture, like a hint of a purr. "Prefers to be referenced as a charming rogue." There is a pause and a widening smile. "And may also answer to Cipriano." He doesn't give his full name, but that outdated western drawl and the first name might be enough for Alan to make a connection if he's been around Kindred society enough to start to get a feel for who is who.
Alan Moriarty
"Verna," he repeats, to commit her to memory. Takes her hand and gives it a shake. His hands are cold, but he doesn't linger long, "It's a pleasure."
"And far be it from me in such modern times to fail to use the wrong honorifics, Charming Rogue, Cipriano-" he cocks a brow, takes a second, and there is a subtle shift, standing a little straighter, being a little more aware (not making eye contact unless he absolutely has to because he knowsbetter), but rather only making contact when necessary. Long enough to catch but not long enough to become endangered. Long enough to absorb.
Cipriano is, most assuredly, a mover and shaker. That shift makes it clear, Alan- pale but blue-eyed- knows something. There is no pulse to flutter.
Verna Gardner
Verna's happy about that 'gentleman companion' thing too. Someone sees him as her companion? Very nice. But then, he amends it to 'charming rogue' and... yes, well, that fits, doesn't it?
He is rather rogueish. Rakish. That sort of bad boy you only find in horrible romance novels. But he's never been cruel to her. Not yet, anyway. There is still time.
"Well, now that we've all been introduced..." she says, and walks down the row of paintings, to peer at another one. This one, is all curves and oranges, with bits of black and green to highlight those orange curves.
"What of this? I think it looks like you're supposed to eat it. Like a candy painting maybe?"
Verna is thinking pumpkins and eggplants and other green/orange/black curvy things. But the painting could very well be saying other organic things with all those voluptuous curves.
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Alan realizes who he is and spooks a little and Cipriano barely refrains from rolling his eyes. How does any of what Alan did not know before but now knows change their game? Perhaps this response is not all bad, even if it might change how this game is played. He could totally use Alan to teach Verna poker. Now all he needs is a fourth player, one with barely any tells at all.
He trails behind Verna, lets her choose how far and how fast they are going. There are walls covered in artwork, but he is having more fun watching her experience it than he is experiencing it himself.
"Really?" There is still a hint of a burr in his voice. "I was thinking Cthulhoid tentacle horror prepared for Halloween. Like an adorable baby one. That odd lump there could even be a rattle."
Alan Moriarty
"I saw tea and milk, like that moment when you pour and it swirls around. That initial moment of conception. Babythulhu is just a little beyond my conception. You know, on account of tiny, adorable elder god," he replied, "or, perhaps, it is a portrait."
He doesn't go further, but something about one curve made him smile, the tiniest bit of nostalgia for a woman with dark, dark skin and hair that tried to be something it wasn't. He'd seen her again, but she was older now. She told him that he hadn't aged a day- time was kind to some of them. Never told her husband about the nights and the days that she spent dancing with some spoiled little rich boy in Colfax.
"See, there? That lump is hair, when you pull it back in a bun and it's nothing but a mass of curls."
Verna Gardner
Verna's hair is straight and black and won't hold a curl no matter what you do to it. But she nods at Alan when he says that. She and Marissa used to do each other's hair before lab work. Buns work well to hold it all back. And she had such fine, curly hair. Always jealous of her -- and she jealous of Verna's straightness. We always pine after that which we don't have.
"Cthulhoid tentacle horror? Really?" Verna says, but she laughs while she says it. She's not annoyed by his playfulness. "I rather like that tea and milk idea. Fluid dynamics always struck me as one of the most beautiful disciplines of study. All those swirls and such?"
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Shhhhhhh...I am terrible at art." He is not terrible at art, but he is also not in the mood to be serious about art. He came here to hunt and he has been distracted by playing.
He can remember painting indigo swirls over cool, pale skin. Glittering stones glued to skin and satin and-
That was a long time ago. Kindred memory is long enough, but he is not tied to a court now in the manner that he was. Best not to linger there in memory.
Alan Moriarty
"See? And I know nothing about fluid dynamics, I just drank a lot of tea once upon a time," he said. He replied, he did not opine becase you don't apologize when you have done no wrong and Alan? Darling Alan did like tea. Still brewed it sometimes and took in the smell, just to dump it down the sink. He tried drinking it the first few months, threw it right back up.
Doesn't taste the same after that. seems like a waste to spit it out when you've been drinking. Less of a waste to just pour it out, strangely enough in his mind.
"Something displaces something else?"
Verna Gardner
"Mmm, could be displacement, could be containment. Could be a study of the flow. Chicago had a wonderful magnetohydrodynamics lab. They were more focused on plasma containment, which acts like a fluid under some conditions."
She appraises the painting again. "This is definitely not a picture of plasma containment. There are no outlandish colors of the type not found in nature," she says, giggles to herself.
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Do any of these look like plasma containment?" He has no idea what plasma containment involves. And he is a bit curious, but he does not, at least not yet, ask.
He has not tried to eat or drink anything other than blood for...a long time. Was not abandoned and was warned and never had the experience of trying to eat or drink anything else after his Embrace. There are scents that he misses, but he gets them in places like this, convinces his companions to have the things that he cannot have. It's part of why he hands Verna glasses of wine. Pours his dates whiskey. Invents new and ridiculous ways to add candy to his life.
Alan Moriarty
At that juncture, he is content to observe. At that juncture, the young man who is not so young as he seems was more than willing to listen tot he two people who he happened to be spending time with. There was a quiet moment. A moment where he could just take it in. But there was plasma containment and, without having a knowledge of science to back it up, he was happy to just be in the presence of others.
Verna Gardner
She looks around the room, for electric blue and shining purple. She looks for toroids and lightning branches. But most of all, she looks for something made of viscous light that struggles to break free from its bonds.
"Hmm," she says, and leaves them, walking across the room over to a thing that looks as dynamic as the topic sounds like. There is light and energy represented by the white that lies at the center of all colors, which tend towards unreal blues and cool tones. It looks wild, like lightning -- like the plasma that lightning is made of.
"I suppose, if you considered the frame to be its container, this would look it."
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
And again, he follows.
When you have a reputation like his there are times being led through and art gallery and having science explained to you as though you entire skipped all of the science classes in your school and playing pinball is fantastic. Also, bonus, Verna doesn't seem to have any idea how to find him intimidating.
"So...basically a tempest in a tea cup. Fascinating."
Alan Moriarty
Something catches his attention, his eyes stay on the painting but something, something makes him pause, makes him look at it a little more closely than it should seem. He looks at it, almost wary. He looks at it with a discerning eye but madness often looks discerning to those who are unfamiliar with its methods. Alan does not inhale, seems like he is holding his breath but, rather, it is merely that he does nto keep up a ruse for a second.
His attention goes Elsewhere.
The man blinked and cleared his throat.
"I hate to be a burden, but I should probably leave you two be. I've since abandoned my companion and I need to find her so we can go home at some point before they run out of wine."
Verna Gardner
"Oh it's good, you should try some," Verna says of the wine, giving away the fact that she did not know what the coolness of the man's handshake and the way he holds his breath actually means. "I do hope to see you again, Alan."
She turns to address Cipriano again, and nods. "Very much like a tempest in a tea cup. Or a star in a doughnut, as the case may be."
Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Yes," Cipriano says quietly. "It was nice meeting you."
He watches for a few seconds as Alan leaves them, then returns his attention to Verna. "Soooooooooooo...what other paintings look like science?"
Verna Gardner
[And we fade!]
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