Oil, meet Water.

Lux

The Denver Botanic Gardens are hosting, at their York Street location, a shindig, a soirée, in appreciation of membership holders of a certain tier + guest. It's not as big as their August Fete des Fleurs, and there's something of July's temperament to it.  There is good champagne and there is good wine and there are good ushers and volunteers-dressed-as-ushers to find people cabs when they're done looking at things that the plebs aren't allowed to see in the day or when they've done wandering the moonlit paths that are also lit [gently, softly] by fairy-lights and paper-lanterns -- the Botanic Gardens don't want a law-suit. They do want to keep what makes an evening party so enticing, though: that enchantment which comes from dark-and-light, of deepening shadows under the stars, of mystery in the corners, of who-knows-what and where. 

They have music the Orphic strains of which echo through the glass halls and the greenhouse complex, drift like a memory to the desert-gardens with their close-packed dirt and shock of purples and oranges and reds, sing through the sculptured dream-of-aesthetic-perfection that are Japanese gardens, furls-out with a satyric sort-of grace through the Oak Grove, and eventually dissipates into silence around the edges, silence that gives way to street-noise and city-noise, because the Botanic Gardens are just fantasy, fantasy wedded with science and history, and everything within is as transient as the music called of nothing by the musicians they've hired for their members.

Almost everything, anyway.

Almost everything.

Meet Lux, a solitary figure far now from the party. At first glance, and there is always another glance because the first glance is the taste of honey on your lips, and when unexpected needs to be tasted again (and, of course also, because it is sweet). The second glance is something altogether different. But where were we?

At first glance, maybe one would take in the young woman and think, surely, she is lost. At second glance, one might get that she is not lost at all, and that it's because nobody else seems to be around that she's abandoned everything else to come to this particular corner, allows herself to forget to breathe and look the dark pool in the Japanese Gardens. It's almost the only water that isn't lit, the other fountains being showers of luminescence right now, dripping darkness rilled in light.

Not here, though. Here, it's quiet and dark and maybe it's actually been closed already to the partygoers.

Merciless

Mercy was not here for the soiree, she was anything but a dilettante or hob nobber, and she was certainly not part of the staff, here to ensure those about her enjoyed themselves to the utmost, and in doing so kept their pocket books open to the garden and its delights. No, Mercy was a thing of an entirely different nature, the sort of beast and being that those within the lighted splendour of the gardens would rebuke and turn from [to their own detriment] they would see her caste from this place, if only they knew she was there.

But here she was, in the one part of the garden that had already been forgotten for the night, believed to be secure and safe, it is of course the one place a canny hunter would  lie in wait, ready to strike. But she is not here to feast, no Mercy had done so already, perhaps an usher or a guard would be sleeping with a bruise somewhere further in the garden, or perhaps someone else in the world beyond had sated her thirst...regardless she is here for reasons of her own, reasons that are disturbed as Lux trespasses in the dark, and strides into this predators current abode.

The pretty woman would likely not notice her at first, the feral woman perfectly still near the other side of the pool, kneeling at its edge in contemplation, she might simply look like a pile of hides or canvas, or simply another form against the darkness. But when Lux strides into the garden, steps towards the dark, glassy pool that face rises to regard her, framed by the matted hair of a feral vampire almost more animal then woman.

Her brows furrow and her eyes narrow as she looks quietly at Lux before slowly rising to her full [not overly impressive] height and met the gaze of the interloper. It was as if the pool had gifted lux a vision of an alternate realm, face to face with her polar opposite.

Beauty....meet the Beast.

Lux

Indeed not. Lux did not notice Mercy until Mercy rose up. Mercy could've stared at Lux for a long time before Lux realized she was anything other than statuary or a particularly interesting trick of shadow. But across the dark still water, Mercy rises up, and the motion draws Lux's eye to her, and there it stays, and as it stays, the texture of it changes, from opaque to something else. There's a radiance to it -- a kindled warmth that isn't warmth; it would be hot, if it weren't so cool. The Moon draws the moths upward, too, and it isn't fire. They perish trying to get to the Moon anyway though don't they. So. Beauty and the Beast: that's tonight's tale in the Garden Botanic.

The Beast is: matted snarls of Medusa-hair, which Lux's eyes comb over, and stinking (probably) furs and hides, a savage Donkey-skin, which Lux also takes in, a tatter-coat of canvas and dirt, and you've guessed it. For a moment Lux just looks and takes Mercy's image and keeps it in her eye. Then she blinks, just once, the image away. But it's still there when she opens her eyes.

Lux lifts two fingers to her forehead to execute a lazy and insouciant salute, angling her head to the side, a clear invitation expressed in the line of her throat and shoulders, the way she moves her body this-a-way, lilting on heels that don't actually have heels, satyr-boots, succubus-boots, and says:

"Yo. And, yeah, I agree. We could both do better than that."

Merciless

Mercy is still, ever since she had risen to her full height she had been still, no blinking, no breathing, not even the twitch of a finger or the shift of a brow. She simply regarded Lux with the dark pools that were her eyes, and waited...waited to see what the woman would do. 

To her credit, Lux did not run, she did not scream, and she did not cower all of these things would have identified the woman as a meal...or simply something to be silenced so that Mercy's reflections would not go undisturbed. Instead she earns the beast's curiosity. The words are heard, absorbed, dissected and considered all while the woman stands as an unliving statue.

Then movement, the tilt of her head slightly to the right with a momentary flaring of the nostrils as her stance widens, one foot sliding to the right.

"Really?" It is a singular word, spoken with singular purpose...explain yourself morsel...or must I rip it from you.

Lux

[Girl, you're kinda weird, but it's also kinda dark. Do I get why?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 6) ( fail )

Merciless

[Per+Alert, are you meat, or more?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Lux

Lux's attentive -- and hooded now, the lashes low, the vibrant flash of eyes now relegated to smokey gloom -- gaze has taken Mercy in, do recall. Has studied the woman's deathless pallor, the tangles in her hair, the stillness, and though she reads a mystery story out of the sight, it's not a mystery store of undeath and vampirism and hunger, or at least it isn't yet. Some crazy fringe-dweller, she thinks, some homeless madwoman, does it matter. Lux has decided to try to engage Mercy because she is contrarian or because she wants to and there needn't be any other reason than desire for anything in the world (go ahead [ask her what she thinks about desire]).

So, Mercy says, Really? And Lux replies, "Yeah," with a hint laughter like the taste of metal-copper in your mouth after-storm, and corrosion's beautiful, "'The more solitary, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.' Really."

Then she straightens, instead of lilting into that invitational side-lean, watching Mercy like she's waiting for Mercy to become a ghost and disappear.

Merciless

Mad woman, no Mercy was many things but mad was not one of them, perhaps to the city dwellers and those who clung to societies skirts she was...but no disease rotted her mind. A fringe-dweller was a better term, for Mercy was very much on the outside looking in, the wolf outside in the dark, waiting for you to open the door and let it inside.

Mercy regards Lux just as curiously as the Toreador regards her, but where Lux failed to register the tell tale signs of her own kind. Mercy see's Lux for what she really is, and for what she wasn't. Because of this, instead of fading from existence like the spectre Lux might have hoped, she starts to round the pool, making her way slowly, methodically towards her opposite number.

"Interesting." She offers with a soft growl as she sniffed the air in Lux's direction.

"You? Seek solitude?" It is also asked with a tone of disbelief, perhaps Mercy saw Lux as beautiful and could not imagine her wanting to be alone. 

Lux

Lux apparently has decided to give this non-question more than its due. The Maenad-esque creature begins to circle the flat dark mirror of water and circle toward Lux and Lux takes this moment to cease looking at her, to look instead at the pines or the maple or maybe a pile of stones some fucking thing that's over there. Her hair is gathered into an intricate knot at the top of her head, but a tendril or three betray that knot in order to touch her jaw, the jut of her collar-bone above her dress's high neck. The plastic bracelets at her wrists, cheap little dayglo things from some fifty-cent bauble-dispenser at a diner, would've been incongruous on anybody else, but Lux, well. Lux doesn't let that be so.

"No. But occasionally I find it just the same, and it's good. If I were always alone with other people's thoughts, I rather suspect I'd begin to hate people in general or myself in specific. There is something, isn't there," and she takes one of those swaying, too-graceful steps along the edge of the water, turning toward the Gangrel. There is something precise and determined about the set of her well-crafted little mouth, (something that recalls a heart leaping, you see, at the glimpse of some lost but long-hoped-for-thing) something absolutely careless in its self-determination, its decisiveness, "just something terribly attractive about being unsustained," and Lux turns the word over, musing, "and so whatever you are left with is your true self. Do I seek solitude,"

and here, she gives a sharp, quick shake of her head. "Well," she says, temperately, her gaze falling back on Mercy. "Clearly, I don't seek it now. What's your thing that you seek when you're alone at night?"

Merciless

Lux was waxing philosophical, talking of high minded ideas and thoughts, contemplating things that only those with so much time on their hands tended to consider and Mercy seemed either not to notice or not to care. A momentary look of surprise creased her features as Lux turned to move towards her as she did the same, this...woman clearly unafraid of Mercy for whatever reason. 

Despite all of these thoughts however, Mercy does have an answer for Lux as she continues around the pool, getting closer and closer to Lux as she moved with that glacial speed of hers.

"Life." Is all she offers in return, her answer to the woman's question, let her make of it what she may.

Lux

That seems to startle a laugh from Lux; it smoulders in her throat, a bright-laced thing, a flake of silk consumed-by-fire. Which is to say it is brief, and surprised, and appreciative or maybe a little sleek. 

Mercy is approaching, creeping, glacial, like the monster she barely pretends not to be; Lux doesn't keep walking toward Mercy after those two-swaying steps, pausing near a curve of the lake, her reflection a pale something in the dark, gold and white and red koi the symbols of good fortune sleeping in the reeds.

"I like life," she offers, but it's almost beside the point. The forever-young woman regards Mercy with a sense of mild (no: immediate) diversion, that's all.

Merciless

Mercy knew what she was dealing with, knew that Lux for all her beauty was a dead thing just like her, wether Lux knew the same thing was another question entirely. Regardless of knowing, Lux still showed no fear as Mercy drew ever closer, likely to reach the other woman within the next fifteen seconds or so, once that point was reached anything could happen, blood could be spilled, lives lost, or friendships found....one never did know with the undead.

"As do all our kind." The woman said with a purr in her throat. She stopped, not a few feet from Lux, maybe a foot or two out of reach as she regarded the pretty little thing that stood before her.

"You are immortal, what do such baubles mean to you?" A full sentence! Lux was truly blessed this night, the woman inquires, and gestures a curled hand in the womans direction, indicating her clothing and jewelery, the finery in which she wrapped her body.

Lux

[Wait, what? I LOOK AT YOU REALLY CLOSELY NOW.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Lux

[Yeah, that's right. When sufficiently startled, Lux notices things.]

Lux

This surprised look is different from the surprise of laughter out've her. Because the laughter was impulsive and owed something to vibrancy, but this surprise is tempered by mistrust and an oft absent instinct for self-preservation. A sharp, glass-cut little line is conjured between her eyebrows, which draw closer together and there-by lend a seeking cast to her fine-features. She didn't quite rear back, but the impulse to rear back was a restrained desire in the dark flicker of an eyelash and the changing position of her hands.

This time when Lux looks at Mercy, she sees things she'd seen before but hadn't noticed. The way the shadows touch the hollow of the wild-woman's throat, the way they thicken at the edges of her jacket, the lace of dirt and leaf in Mercy's hair, just there, and the statuary flawlessness of Mercy's flesh, the silence of a heart that doesn't beat and so leaves no drummer at the wrist or the neck. She allows her gaze to drift across the woman's hands, dirt-caked nails, cracked if at all not because they need to be, the whole bruiselessness of the savage. Mercy in furs, not quite Venus.

"Oh," she says, after she has really taken this in, after the surprise has settled, touching the plastic bracelets on her wrist with one hand, holding her slim arm up. The bracelets slide down, glitter not doing its job very well in the dark, a subsumed lumination. "Oh," with a brief, almost-ironic smile. "These. Well it's all a great game, isn't it." Lux hooks her fingers underneath the bracelet, stretching the thickest one out into a distempered shape. "Fifty cents at the bowling alley. What do your clothes mean to you? Does immortality matter all that much to the baubles?"

Merciless

It seems that the other woman had thought Mercy a mortal, a kine whom perhaps she was attempting to draw near. How funny would that have been if Lux had tried to feed on Mercy...and bound herself to her in the doing so. The thought brings a feral grin to Mercy's features, it was not the warmest kindest thing one could imagine on a face such as her's but it is what rears its head.

"Nothing matters to them, and they mean nothing to me." The Gangrel says with a hint of contempt as she looked down at the hides which enshrouded her body. "I would shed them, if not for the Kine." It rumbles out of her throat, mixed with displeasure as she ran a hand quickly over the hides almost with contempt.

Her eyes settled upon Lux once more as she slowly tilted her head to the side, those dark pools that were her eyes narrowing.

"You talk in circles."

Lux

"You think so? Well. I find that you talk in full-stops and unanswerable statements," Lux replies, the corner of her mouth curving up, lifting her slim shoulders in a shrug. Stillness is all well and good, but it doesn't need to be all there is. Lux enjoys moving; it is a choice. 

A slender pause, and Lux stops toying with the plastic bracelet. "These baubles would probably be different if the crowd was different tonight; that's all anything is - huh? - an expression of the crowd. Which is why it's so nice to get away and speak to, well, perhaps not kindred spirit, but fellow fellow spirit or something of the sort. What about life attracts you if you'd disdain its trappings?" 

Merciless

Lux continues to try and drag meaningful answers from Mercy's lips, continues to harangue her [at least from her perspective] and the Gangrel simply snorts at it all. She seems fully prepared to turn, to turn and leave this woman to her own internal musings but she pauses, and does not execute that turn quite yet.

Perhaps she could teach this woman something.

"Its desire to continue, its need to survive." She says before pausing, Lux might think she was done but words flow once more. "The trappings...are a lie, a veil to hide what life really is, it a struggle, an insurmountable goal. The more who understand this....the better."

Lux

Lux is a harpy's daughter. Mythologically-speaking, what kind of monster does that make her? The foul-mouthed kind, or the silk-voiced kind? The kind who'll use a sharp word to cut a creature to death, try to wield a question like a club, or the kind who'll take refuge in silence? The Gangrel gathers herself up to go. Lux watches her do it, head aslant, as poised as she was when it was just Lux at the water, and there was no monster come up out of the dirt to challenge her solitude. The surprise has subsided completely, or near-completely, and with it some - if not all - concern that Mercy is Sabbat. That the reason she wears her inhumanity on her filthy sleeve is because she's going to attack Lux and drag her underground and force her into blood-slavery or whatever it is the Sabbat actually get up to when they're being frightening and terrible. Lux doesn't actually know all that much about the Sabbat. Just what anyone would know.

Mercy's animal-snort, like a cat who's just put-up with far too much petting, causes the Toreador's smile to flick wider and brighter for an instant, but she puts that smile away to answer the suddenly mentorship-minded Mercy without levity.

"Survival is ideal. Life is a struggle. But the trappings aren't a lie. They're just part of it. Like you are. Like I am. We can still see each other under the clothes, can't we." 

Merciless

Mercy is still holding her place, waiting as she listened to Lux's response, watched as the woman was amused for whatever reasons were hers. She did not bother imagining what amused the Toreador, because in truth, she wasn't overly concerned one way or another. The woman would think, as all of mankind [and undead kind] would, it was their right...given to them by nature.

"You are wrong." Mercy says it flat out, straight out and without any hint of flattery, insult, or duplicity. It is simply...fact, so far as she see's it.

"They hide us, they blind us, and they give us excuses to be so." Says the woman as she starts to turn, starts to get ready to leave. "All of civilization......dust in the wind." 

Lux

They hide us.

They blind us.

They give us excuses to be so [blind and hidden].

Mercy has come close; has turned. Has turned back, and now turns again; Lux's eyebrows are neat arches, her mouth a pretty little line, her pupils shadow-glutted points ringed by sea-gray, quartz-silver, sea-moss and turpentine, and nobody enjoys being told they are wrong, though one can get used to the sensation. 

All of civilization. Dust in the wind.

Then, impulse-driven, heedless and headlong, Lux takes a couple of steps after Mercy and says, "Don't be blind in reverse, Bertha R. Don't discount what you despise 'cause you despise it. Survival is cold."

Then - and maybe - the Toreador is left looking after the Gangrel. Bertha R. Her lips parted, as if she needed to take a breath, her gaze some commingling of will and ferocity. 

Either way, the sound of conversation filters closer, and solitude doesn't get to stay solitary anyway.

Merciless

Those couple of steps have Mercy whirling about, fangs bared as she closes the gap between herself and Lux, the beast's voice rumbles like a growl as she stares into the Toreador's gaze, daring her to push further. One does not chase a Tiger...

She eyes Lux, her own ferocity barred on her face. Lux calls survival cold, and she brokers no dissent on that fact from the Gangrel, instead the bared fanged maw turns into a dry, almost painful smile and Mercy nods. "It is...it is brutal, and it is hard, but it is honest. Lie to yourself....if you wish."

She turns then and strides off, something of an aristocratic walk in her gait, which is surprising given how the woman moved before. "I do not care." And at that....she strode into darkness, and solitude descended once more.

Lux

[and a wrap! YAY! :D]