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Post by Lavinia on Oct 21, 2008 11:59:20 GMT -5
Despite her tiny girlishness and overwhelming innocence - giving off an air of terrible sad ravishment and abuse - Lavinia was not a church-going, convent-bound martyr. (She was a pagan, for one thing, which did not help matters much.) She chose to express her suffering through addictions of some sort. After breaking down at the cafe into wordless weeping, a customer there had taken pity on her and gently led her down to the opium den.
The heavy scent of the Chinese drug was soothing and melodious and Lavinia looked forward to partaking, but she had always been rather shy about asking for help and she wasn't exactly certain what to do. Paying her fee was awkward enough, and took enough time. Afterwards she ducked into the the bar, headed up the stairs in back, and ascended in a curtained room filled with twisted shapes and pipes. Momentarily hesitating, rubbing one Roman sandaled foot against the other, she glanced about herself and felt her heart sink. Now how was she supposed to use those hookahs? How was she supposed to hold them? A faint moan of misery trickled past her lips, which trembled, although she fought against the onslaught of tears.
((Shakespeare invented angst.))
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Post by Maria on Oct 23, 2008 14:14:09 GMT -5
Maria had been making a habit of hanging about the Opium Den. Aside from the interesting people she met there (and easy access to a food source), she also liked the atmosphere and the fact that, even as a vampire, drugs could still make her silly.
She’d arrived not long ago when the miserable girl showed up.
Maria had never seen such a wretched creature before—not only was she damaged on the outside, but just from scanning her thoughts she could tell that this girl was also mentally injured. Lavinia—the name was one of the few easily discernable facts in the girl’s mind—was also rather old. Not a vampire, but something else…which made it all the worse.
I can’t imagine spending eternity like that.
Feeling a stab of pity, she moved near to Lavinia.
“Oh, you poor dear…I can help you with that.”
She gestured to the hookah.
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Post by Lavinia on Oct 23, 2008 14:42:22 GMT -5
Lavinia had spent most of her life in Rome, and then Italy, when Rome had fallen. In all honesty, she couldn't even remember when she had gotten to Paris. Her ability with the language had never much blossomed. She could understand it, but would have had a difficult time forming the words herself. It didn't matter. She'd never needed to. Even so, she could comprehend French only if she were trying to hear it.
The approach of someone else startled her, having not quite made out the words, and she drew back fitfully, pulling her arms to her body as though to minimize the amount of space she took up. She only noticed after this reaction that the person gesturing to her intended to aid. Lavinia felt badly for having wrongly judged her, but this more logical feeling was overwhelmed by her belated gratitude. Her arms lifted as though she were lifting her hands to take the hookah or greet someone, and she flinched - she had never overcome habits like that. In the meantime, she moved over towards the other woman in her characteristic manner, like a moth gravitating towards a light.
She nodded and made a sound as though she were responding in the affirmative, kneeling on a sinking mattress besides the hookah that her lack of hands could not grasp.
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Post by Maria on Oct 23, 2008 15:12:33 GMT -5
She joined Lavinia, sitting near and pulling the hookah closer. After making sure she got a good smoke going, she carefully held out the pipe to Lavinia--she didn't want to just shove it in the girl's face, after all.
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Post by Lavinia on Oct 23, 2008 15:18:45 GMT -5
Careful not to make the same agonizing mistake of forgetting she could no longer grasp things with her hands, Lavinia leaned forward with her wrists in her lap, closing her lips over the mouthpiece. Before taking a drag, her eyes sought and found the dark-haired newcomer. She was enormously grateful to her. It was the rare person who did not reject her out of fear at her mangled limbs and horrific speechlessness. Mouth, alas, obstructed by the hookah, she smiled awkwardly, an asymmetrical but well-meaning smile that communicated her thanks and emotional relief better than any uncomfortable verbal thank-you could.
Then her eyes screwed shut as though she were concentrating as she inhaled. She expected to cough, but did not. Had she had this before? Something in it seemed vaguely familiar. Her eyelids crinkled further as she tried to find a way to understand her situation, although she never mentally took note of the irony of her being her most lucid in an opium den.
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Post by Maria on Oct 25, 2008 14:22:31 GMT -5
*She smiled back at Lavinia.
Truly, the other woman's disfigurement didn't phase Maria. It saddened her, but it didn't make her ill or anything like that.*
"I'm happy to help." She said sincerely.
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Post by Lavinia on Oct 25, 2008 15:32:03 GMT -5
Lavinia leaned back slightly, her wrists lifted slightly to steady her. There was something of the ballerina in her movement, of the same dependence on balance. In some very real way, one used one's hands to understand and communicate with the world, to feel, to explore, and losing hers, Lavinia had been thrown off balance, unable to continue to comprehend reality. With every passing year, this had become more true.
Relinquishing the hookah, she gently exhaled smoke, feeling much of her tension lift. The knowledge that she no longer needed to try to cling to the facade of reality was freeing. Inside this den of sufferers, there were no responsibilities. A certain logic worked here, although to many it might seem peculiar that sanity should be more easily grasped under these circumstances. Lavinia smiled at the woman, looking at her suddenly as though trying to grasp something about her. It had become obvious to Lavinia that she was different, in a strange way, from the world around them, but Lavinia failed to understand how or why. She had met vampires before this day - time and time again, and others like them besides - but had never known what it was that they were. She knew how to recognize the signs of one, but did not know what that meant, nor even that the others she had met possessing those characteristics had also been vampires. She opened her mouth to speak, suddenly urged to ask who she was and why she was so moved to help, but recalled her disability and closed it, sobered by this slip-up.
((If it becomes too painfully obvious that I don't smoke opium...yeah. Sorry. Not a clue.))
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Post by Maria on Oct 25, 2008 15:36:49 GMT -5
"My name is Maria." She said, as though reading Lavinia's mind.
And she was, to a point. Lavinia's mind was such a tangled mess that it was difficult to do any more than simply skim the surface. Even then, it gave Maria something that verged on headaches. Mostly gibberish flew past, or disconnected thoughts that she couldn't make sense of, but once in a while she caught something like the question she'd picked up.
"...and...everyone who comes here should be able to enjoy this place."
She wasn't sure if what she'd caught was another question, or if she was catching it wrong, but hopefully it was something of an answer.
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Post by Lavinia on Oct 25, 2008 15:48:50 GMT -5
Lavinia opened her eyes a great deal wider than usual, as though trying to take all of Maria in and failing at a higher rate than she would have liked. For some reason, Maria could understand her. What did that make her? A witch? An oracle? Lavinia had had great respect for oracles throughout her lifetime, although her experience with them usually had required a sacrifice. Perhaps it was written over her that she had been a sacrifice for a long time, and was still a sacrifice, and so the services of an oracle were perhaps more available to her than to others.
She reached out as though trying to clasp Maria's hands with her own, but her wrists uselessly brushed her hands and Lavinia jerked them back at the realization, though it only barred her way for a moment. She felt desperately anxious to learn more, to know what else Maria knew, or if she had some important message to impart. She spoke in Latin as though she still had a tongue, doing nothing more than babbling, asking non sequiturs by the mouthful - if Maria knew her, if they had met before, if Maria knew why she was here and if she had been waiting for her.
((Most of the time, people get annoyed with mind-readers, but Lavinia is a strong exception to the rule. Also, she's mad, and doesn't have any secrets. It would only get annoying if it leapt into god-modding, but I don't suspect any of the vampires here are prone to do that. So! Just so you know, it doesn't bother me.))
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Post by Maria on Oct 25, 2008 16:04:51 GMT -5
((Okies. Maria is still a fairly young vampire, so she doesn't know the extent of her abilities or how to properly control them. And, I figure to a novice mind-reader like her that Lavinia would be hard to understand))
*Thoughts and feelings were coming fast, like rapid-fire questions. Maria wasn't sure if she'd picked up everything, or gotten it right. A lot of it seemed to be about herself. She did her best with what she understood*
"I don't think we've met...I...I'm afraid I don't know why you're here, but I can tell you I don't belong to this place, either. I wish I could tell you more than that..."
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Post by Lavinia on Oct 25, 2008 16:12:26 GMT -5
((XD She is a piece of work. I'm still trying to get used to playing without relying on dialog to get feelings across. I've never had to do it before.))
Lavinia nodded, growing more silent - so to speak - and less eager. She no longer felt the overwhelming urge to clutch at Maria and stare at her like to a statue, which was at least some progress towards acknowledging that Maria did not speak for the gods. But she still felt to be a great deal in awe of her. If Lavinia could dip into the minds of others at will like that - and she had never tried, but assumed that it gave you power to influence those thoughts as well - the world would have become such a different place. Even internally, she became more still at the thought, concentrating primarily on the power to interact with the world again, to speak into someone else's mind, to understand the minds of others. If all that power existed in her brain! - instead of in her nonexistent hands.
She looked back at Maria again suddenly, making a noise in the back of her throat - this time without trying to speak. Did Maria know how she had gained that ability? Had it been passed through her family, or apprenticed to someone else? Was it lent her by some magical object? She tilted her head in a birdlike way, desiring the knowledge.
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Post by Maria on Oct 25, 2008 16:23:27 GMT -5
((It does sound hard!))
*This, Maria could be much more specific on*
"I'm not human."
*She paused*
"Anymore. I got transformed, and this ability came with it."
*No, she wouldn't mince words here. Lavinia had been around a long time, and though Maria hadn't gotten only vague impressions of the woman's past, she had a feeling that the woman had encountered inhuman things before*
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Post by Lavinia on Oct 25, 2008 16:31:22 GMT -5
What took Lavinia aback was not to hear that Maria was not human, but that Maria had once been so. She had already gotten, she realized, an inhuman, immortal impression from her, but had not realized that one could be both at the same time. Lavinia had been around ages, perhaps, but it did not mean she had ever felt she was also inhuman. And there had indeed been no transformation - she simply had failed to die with her father's honorable murder of her, and had stepped out of the family tomb as easily as though she had been sleeping. Lucius had rejected her as dead, as impossible, and had not repented entirely, not even on his deathbed. These thoughts flickered through her mind with a rusty pain that Lavinia had never managed to bring herself to face entirely, and she had to force her willpower on her train of thoughts in order to redirect it. Lavinia had an iron will, although she preferred to not need to use it. She let it rest almost immediately afterwards, freeing her mind to wander in strange directions.
Now her most persistent thought was, did Maria know what had happened to Lavinia, that Lavinia had not died, that her broken neck had mended, that from that moment on, she had not aged, nor improved, for millenia?
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Post by Maria on Oct 27, 2008 19:20:07 GMT -5
*Maria followed Lavinia's thoughts as best she could, the questions she found there somewhat answering her own questions about the woman*
"You're...immortal, also..." She said with awe. "But not what I am."
*With one hand still holding the hookah, Maria reached out with the other to lightly touch Lavinia's arm. She was warm like a human, at the least*
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Post by Lavinia on Oct 28, 2008 8:29:52 GMT -5
Immortal, almost like a noun, a category of its own...Lavinia had never thought of it that way, of herself as belonging to that category, and she grew frightened, ghosts rising up inside the small, stunted vessel of her body of their own accord. And if she were immortal - a category Maria classed herself in - but not what Maria was, then what was she? She had wondered at this before, but it had never occurred to her in such concrete terms - indeed, very few things occurred to her consciously at all, and even less often did anyone note things while speaking to her anyway. Her sudden sense of isolation and the chaos of it made her feel small and unanchored, and she would have grasped Maria's hand if she'd had one of her own to do it with. In her mind, she imagined the action the physical reality was denying her, but even then, she was not certain if that was what taking someone's hand actually felt like - it had been so long that she'd done it. Perhaps her memories of it were invented.
Lavinia's lips parted and she tried to speak to alleviate her fear, but stopped immediately, growing silent. Had she been unwittingly cursed when her father had said the ironic words, "Die, die, Lavinia"? If Maria didn't know, and she herself were in a similar position, how was Lavinia ever to learn - she, a creature who could not speak?
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