Ahh, art galleries. Verna visits them so much these nights that the art itself tends to blur together along with the people she drinks from. That is, unless the art is strange enough. Gildar Gallery is showing an exhibition by Amber Cobb, with sculptures of black horses drowning in gooey white glue, and flesh-like blankets suspended from the walls in folds.
She turns around a corner, these walls plastered with pink, siliconed bath mats made to look like rippling skin, the smell though -- distinctly plastic. It reminds her of something, some uneasiness.
She still doesn't wear heels. Always those same soft leather boots that she died wearing -- this time paired with a burgundy sweater and black skirt.
Trace
And who should be around that corner but her Romeo from the botanical garden.
Stood in all his tall lanky ginger glory it may take her a moment to recognize him as the madman she met several moons past. He wears trainers and dark jeans and a blazer overtop a t-shirt. Keeps his hands in his pockets. The island from whence he hailed in life helps to hide the pallor with which Death has cursed him.
But that is him.
Verna has about three seconds to decide to turn around before he spots her in his periphery.
Verna Gardner
Oh. Oh dear. Another of the walking dead. She wasn't exactly slacking at the putting up of a brave face before. But now? She has to try extra hard to be normal, to appear cool and calm and collected. It's a question: can she? She swallows the nothing in her throat, and takes a needless breath, deciding that she can.
She tries to meet his eyes from across the way, and gives him a smile.
"Hello. I remember you -- from the botanical garden. It is nice to see you again," she says.
Trace
He turns towards her. In the space of several seconds his expression morphs from thoughtful to neutral to something like pleased. Seems he remembers her too.
"Rachael," he says. "Is this not a wonder? How are you, tonight?"
Verna Gardner
"Fine," she says, and it comes out a bit too fast. People always say they're fine when they're the furthest from it, don't they?
"I'm doing well. You?"
She maintains the smile, even though what's going on behind it isn't so nice. Is he going to start saying anything... weird now? Well. At least now she knows an approximate reason for it.
Trace
[perc + empathy: lol ok]
Trace
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
Verna Gardner
[Manipulation + subt = yes, ok.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Verna Gardner
[She's totally doing well, Trace. Nothing bad going on. Totally.]
Trace
[CURSE YOUR SUDDEN YET INEVITABLE BETRAYAL, DICE.]
Trace
If it's any consolation Verna Gardner is not the first person in the world to ever lie to a priest. The secondary consolation if that one isn't enough is that he isn't a member of the clergy anymore. He's a Malkavian. If he ever was a member of the clergy one could sure as hell hope he doesn't still have a congregation to look after.
The last time they met it was in a low-lit orangery and it had been easy enough to mistake him for human until he opened his mouth. Now that they're in a stark-lit sparse-populated gallery late at night it's easier for her to see that there isn't much in the way of signs of life in this one. Not when a body knows what it's looking for.
"All goes well," he says. "I have my health, and I have my soul, and I have the living to thank for this mercy."
So she has one person fooled. That just means he wants to know what Fine looks like.
[auspex 2: ENGAGE.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 7) ( success x 1 ) [Doubling Tens] [WP]
Verna Gardner
He tries, and he doesn't get much. She's definitely sporting the pale hue of Kindred, but he can't quite pick up even a color.
Fine looks like Normal -- the very thing Verna is trying so hard for.
Trace says he has the living to thank for his health and soul, and thus the weirdness starts. She nods, because that statement is technically true, and she's trying to gain an acquaintance here.
"Don't we all."
Trace
A stunted nod. A consideration. It's easy enough to mistake the mad for slow on top of all of that but there's a sharpness to his eyes that suggests he sees plenty most would just as soon as he didn't.
On a typical night he picks up on things like other people's feelings and other people's states of being. Everyone has off nights. To Verna he must always seem Off. It doesn't help that he doesn't blink. Doesn't fidget. Doesn't do anything that would indicate he's got a pulse and appetites.
They all have appetites. Don't they all.
"That was a rhetorical question," he says. A hint of triumph in his tone. Recognition. Look who's got at least one foot in the door between Reality and La La Land. "Would you care to walk with me, a ways?"
Verna Gardner
He's looking at her so very intently, it almost threatens to ruin the whole Normal thing. But no. She's got the sense not to give anything away, and just presses the lipstick between her lips, tilts her head, nods.
"I would like that, yes."
She takes up a position at his side as he offers it, glancing down the hall at the... curtain things. There's a table at the end with some adorable sheep drowning in goo. Her eyes flit to that for a while.
"It's an odd sort of exhibit they have tonight. Very... pink."
Trace
He takes a step away from the piece he had been considering and begins to walk towards not the front door of the gallery space but the back. That isn't the way they're supposed to enter and exit but then again they aren't even supposed to exist according to the laws of nature.
"Is it odd?"
As if he has no way of knowing. As if squares of blanket and bedding covered in acrylic is a normal sight for him. Nothing odd about animal figurines covered in melted plastic. As if they're walking through the pieces of a little girl's memory. The set pieces from a retired production of The Glass Menagerie. Something off about it even as the title and the colors suggest a sense of comfort.
Tracy does not know a damned thing about art.
Verna Gardner
He starts heading for the back door, and Verna follows, a little confused -- but still compliant. Maybe he means to speak of something a little more privately. Who can say?
"Oh. Just a little strange, that's all. Fuzzy pink plastic. Who comes up with these ideas?"
Amber Cobb does.
Trace
Thinking that he had any real intention when he chose the back door would imply that he doesn't at times suffer from a touch of spatial disorientation. For all she knows he thinks the back door is the front door. It dumps them out into an alleyway instead of the sidewalk. That could have been the way he came in.
"Those with skillful hands and craftsmanship. Perhaps some of the Spirit. Amber Cobb."
He's so funny Verna everyone can understand why you would want to spend time with him.
Verna Gardner
She doesn't really want to go out into the alley. The last time someone dragged her out of public and into the dark between buildings, it was Jon Marc, and he almost... whatever it was he was thinking of doing, it wasn't nice. Torture probably.
So, it's with unease that she passes over the threshhold. Trace isn't grabbing her and demanding obedience. He just asked politely. That's a good sign, right?
"Mmm. Yes," she says, smiles at his little joke.
"Why are we in the alley now?"
Trace
That isn't a question he was expecting but it doesn't catch him by surprise. Gives him something to stop and think about.
"How else are we meant to leave the building?"
So he did not enter the gallery through the main door. Sorted.
Verna Gardner
Okay, finally she gives him a look. It's one of disbelief. Did he really just ask that?
"Through the front door, usually. Sometimes the back ones have alarms," she says, though this back door obviously didn't.
"I don't really like back alleys. They're... dark."
Even in the nice, artsy area of the city, this is just somewhere you go to throw things away and do things you don't want anyone to see. It might be different if Trace were, as she once assumed, a potential victim.
Trace
"Would you like to go back?"
He actually stops walking there. They're about halfway through the alleyway and he's kept his hands in his pockets. No notion that he sees anything wrong with the fact that they're in the dark and it's cramped and shadows overcome any semblance of sight. He is a tall man who the shadows love. Even though he is skinny and ginger no one would mess with him. He walks as if he knows himself to belong exactly where he is in that moment.
And he actually sounds like he cares about her answer.
Verna Gardner
She keeps up with him, at least. And when he asks if she'd like to go back, she shakes her head. "No. Maybe out. That place was pretty empty. I couldn't find... What I was looking for."
Food. Someone to take back to a place like this, so she can do what needs to be done.
Trace
Therein lies the motivation for the Malkavian asking if she would like to take a walk with him. Though said motivation lies occluded by his madness their last meeting is slow to leave his mind. He can remember what it was to be new. His circumstances were a bit different than hers but they have not yet reached the point in their blossoming alliance where they have started asking each other personal questions.
So they stop. She shakes her head. He nods his.
"I'll be as a lamp to your feet," he says. "Just follow me."
Verna Gardner
And so she does. None of the little nagging fears that he might be leading her into this place for nefarious reasons have yet borne fruit, so perhaps they will stay that way.
"Are we going anywhere in particular? Or just walking?"
She could go either way, doesn't give either of the options any weight or nuance that suggests she might want one over the other.
Trace
The Malkavian cannot read her. This means he has to ask questions. With the conversation revived the walk back to the sidewalk passes without incident. They join the thin late-night foot traffic and walk on.
"Did you come out tonight to bear witness to the fruits of an artist's labor, or did you intent to hunt?"
Verna Gardner
"I intended to hunt, yes. Sometimes, it's both, you know. I didn't really care for that gallery though," she says, little lift of the mouth to one side. She's just too good for that place, right?
"You?"
They're out on the sidewalks now. There are people again, and it's a bit distracting. But they're all people on their way somewhere else, people she can't just drag off somewhere.
Trace
"I am guided, and my desires are satisfied in scorched places, and my bones made strong, for I am as a garden whose waters do not fail."
Oh. Okay.
Verna Gardner
"That's... from the Bible? What does it mean?" she asks, because she really doesn't have a clue what he meant by that.
Maybe he meant for her to shut up. It didn't work, if that's the case.
They walk past a brightly-lit shop selling gourmet pizza. Somehow, Verna's not yet gotten around to mourning the lost pleasures of life. The pleasure of blood is pretty strong anyway, and she's fairly certain that even if she were still alive, the best food would taste like ashes right about now.
She does look into the window though. No clue what she's really thinking. Maybe just looking at her own reflection.
Trace
Asking a Malkavian what they mean is always a dicey proposition. This particular Malkavian has his hands in the pockets of his blazer and is looking out at the world around them rather than giving Verna the impression that she has even a sliver of his attention and in part that is because he is not a dextrous creature and in part because he is alert.
He catches her looking either at her reflection or through the mirror and into the restaurant. He follows her gaze. At least he has a reflection to cast behind her. Thin as it is she can make nothing of the cast to his gaze. If she looks back at him by the time she has he has returned to keeping an eye on the street around them.
"The gallery provided for me all that I may have needed. The body and the spirit, sated."
The implication of his previous statement being that this is not a sometimes situation for him.
Verna Gardner
"Ah. You find good luck in the 'scorched places' then. Make your own luck, I imagine," she says, as they walk along. It's not hard to imagine. The older ones all seem to know the right ways of getting what they need.
It would be nice, that. She's asked David to teach her something that might make it all a bit easier. Maybe he will.
Trace
"Our own luck is the only luck we have left. The Father of lights has never known shadow. Every gift we find here came from above, and there will be no more. He took away His providence when Cain slew his brother. Our God is in the heavens, and he does as he pleases without concern for us."
As they walk they start to hear the cacophony of smokers huddled outside a nightclub. Soon after will come the thump of music.
Verna Gardner
He speaks as if God has abandoned them. To an athiest, this does not exactly mean much. Verna has always lived in a world where God or His abandonment didn't matter.
"Oh."
She walks along a few paces, remembering this man used to be a priest. He said something similar on their first meeting, didn't he?
"If God never interacts in this universe anymore, how would you know if he existed?"
No comments:
Post a Comment