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Post by Mortimer on Mar 16, 2009 18:11:18 GMT -5
Mortimer's eyes darted up to the man's face and back down again. Erik had warned him about showing people his other shapes, and his new social graces reinforced this idea.
"What do you mean?"
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Post by Carlos Castro on Mar 16, 2009 18:23:01 GMT -5
Carlos shrugged.
"It doesn't matter," he sighed. He was too tired, too irritated from recent events to press. Did it matter, anyway? He'd likely never see this fellow again; he almost didn't believe this was real. He might be dreaming. Then again, would he dream of finding a pretty young man along on stage with evidence that he, too, was some sort of doomed shapeshifting creature?
Well, yes. He thought that rather likely.
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Post by Mortimer on Mar 16, 2009 18:27:17 GMT -5
Well, if the man couldn't smell anything strange even if he claimed it, Mortimer certainly could, at least. He took a cautious step closer once again and peered up at Carlos' face.
"You smell like the cellars and...smoke. And like an animal a little."
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Post by Carlos Castro on Mar 16, 2009 18:30:00 GMT -5
"An animal?" Carlos said, taking another step back. "What kind of a thing is that to say to someone? And I certainly do not smell like 'an animal.' I smell like myself. Which, in any even, you should not be able to smell. As people cannot."
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Post by Mortimer on Mar 17, 2009 8:37:48 GMT -5
"I'm a person."
Mortimer frowned and stepped forward again, sniffing openly at the man.
"You shouldn't eat the rats, Julian will get mad."
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Post by Carlos Castro on Mar 17, 2009 9:33:56 GMT -5
As Carlos had never said the man was not, the response seemed redundant. And his next observation made Carlos visibly start. He barely acknowledged his nocturnal activities to himself, let alone someone else.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said airily. He frowned. "You know Julian." He said that flatly, and recalled suddenly who the little man reminded him of. "Are you some relation?"
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Post by Mortimer on Mar 17, 2009 9:37:08 GMT -5
Of course this man would know Julian--he recognized him now as someone who shared the stage with his Pretty.
"Julian is my family." he answered, not sure how to otherwise state the relationship.
"He's ill. I may sing for him if he can't."
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Post by Carlos Castro on Mar 17, 2009 9:58:09 GMT -5
"Ill," Carlos repeated, recalling finding him in the cellar, looking rather the worse for wear. "You know Erik, then. I thought you lived here alone."
Altogether, he was rather less comfortable now than he had been when the man had just been some anonymous encounter on a darkened stage. This seemed rather more sinister.
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Post by Mortimer on Mar 17, 2009 10:07:05 GMT -5
"You know Erik?"
He tilted his head--Erik had never said anything about this man, and Mortimer had never seen them talking, or seen the fat man up close.
"Well...I'm not supposed to talk about Erik but if you know him then I guess it's alright. He is my family too, I take care of him. But sometimes I go away outside where Erik can't go." he was rambling now and came closer to Carlos again, more at ease that the man apprarently knew Care care, his webbed hands taking up their textile explorations again. "I wanted to go for a walk, but Erik doesn't like to, and he was sad so I came up here instead. Do rats taste good? Like furry apples, or fish? I always want to bite them, but it would make Julian sad, I think. But if they go in the lake, I will swim and eat them and it will be their fault because the lake is mine."
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Post by Carlos Castro on Mar 17, 2009 10:18:19 GMT -5
He seemed to have opened a floodgate, and Carlos knew now why the little man seemed to have been instructed not to speak of such things. And he wasn't surprised that Erik refused to go out walking. He wouldn't either, if he were a raving lunatic.
So. A deformed madman lived in the basement with two extremely pretty creatures, neither of whom seemed entirely human and both of whom entirely disregarded the concept of personal space. Something very, very strange was going on down there.
"Look, what's this about rats? Why should I--or you, for that matter--want to eat rats?"
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Post by Mortimer on Mar 17, 2009 10:21:44 GMT -5
"But you have been eating them."
He purred his low clicking.
"And you smell strange. Do you always look like this?"
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Post by Carlos Castro on Mar 17, 2009 10:27:11 GMT -5
There was something oddly alluring about the rhythmic purr of Mortimer's voice, but Carlos shook it off.
"You're not very polite, you know that?" he said. "And I hardly think you're one to talk about smelling strange."
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Post by Mortimer on Mar 17, 2009 10:36:34 GMT -5
"Do you like to swim?"
If the man could smell him back, then he was not a person, but he wasn't the same as Mortimer either. Erik had warned him heartily against showing himself to strangers...but this man lived in the opera, and knew Erik, and smelled not like a human person, so Mortimer hopped back from him and peeled his already open shirt off, following it up with his trousers.
"You can swim in the lake, I won't drown you. If you swim with me."
As he wriggled out of his clothes, his skin became mottled and blueish and his hidden tattoos faded into a crisp black that obscured his pretty features.
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Post by Carlos Castro on Mar 17, 2009 10:42:48 GMT -5
As the man began to shed his clothing with extremely little ceremony, Carlos stepped back, raising his hands in a defensive gesture.
"Look, you have the wrong--"
His words cut off short as he saw what emerged. Mortimer was changing before his eyes, but not the way Carlos changed. He'd imagine the man was some other shape-changer, but Carlos couldn't think of anything blue. And... tattooed. And, as the man pulled his trousers off--Well, Carlos had never seen anything like it.
Was no one around here just... normal?
He felt the tell-tale tingle of his own change, but warded it off. It was the last thing he needed right now, and he was confused enough already.
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Post by Mortimer on Mar 17, 2009 10:46:52 GMT -5
The bluish tone of his skin evened out to the bluegray he usually carried and he took on his sharkish form, thumping his tail on the wood of the stage behind him and padding back over, much less gracefully now.
"What's your name?" He said, impossibly, from a shark's head, and reached with thick, webbed and clawed fingers to take Carlos' hand.
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