Thin Ice

Lux
The place: a ice skating stadium -- someplace where some Olympic ice dancer used to practice his moves once upon a few years ago. The ice skating stadium: the kind've place which from the outside can trick somebody that it is closed because it is big and the door is small. 

Or maybe the place is: an ice skating rink -- someplace where some other Olympic ice dancer used to practice her moves once upon a few years ago and it is outside and open-aired and twinkle-lit and cold. 

Here is: a Lux. A decorative thing, shadow-haired and pensive, glass-bright delicacy, dark-spun sharpness. Here is: a bench, tying up her skates, or untying her skates. 

Amber
An ice skating stadium isn't the sort of place one would find an Amber. She'd have to be a skater, which she is not. Or she'd have to have friends who would invite her, which she does not. She does not have friends of any sort, really. There are people to whom she is not a complete asshole, and people who give her information when she needs it. Beyond that, the ghoul is more or less on her own. 

But something outdoors, that is a place she might be, rolling past with her hands tucked into the pockets of a warm leather jacket, hair sort of down except the wind created by her own passing causes it to lift, brown and red waves swept back from her face. She is a decorative thing of a different color, and caliber, from Lux. Someone once told her they would make her a queen, but then once he had her left her to her own devices. Left her alone. 

So she's out, wandering the city looking like she's looking for a fight, because that's how she always seems. Amber is a beautiful, but intense and tempestuous young woman. She had been getting better, more in control, but she's gotten worse in the last few weeks. It doesn't take much to set her off anymore. 

Lux has never inspired a high level of wrath in Amber, only a sense of disquiet and unease when she found herself in a room where a vampire stood over a man she'd just saved. 

When she sees Lux seated on a bench and lacing up a pair of skates she stops suddenly, and looks around, like looking around might explain to her how she came to be walking past this woman, and here, and tonight. 

Lux
Lux is alone tonight. 

There are no friends or companions near-by. There is only her precise fingers moving on the laces of her skates. The double-edge of them, as darkly gleaming as any expression which is ardent enough to touch her eyes, when she angles her heel and points her toe just so. There is only the graceful cloud of her darkness-gathered hair, falling over her shoulder, a curve like a caress against the line of her throat. Lux. Lux might compell the Heavens to rebel. [Rebel, Rebel! Learn to want a brighter word than bright.] Or to look, at least. With a look, perhaps, and with the look, chains. Someone began to sketch it out in charcoal once, dark/light, smoke/page, they sketched until they'd bled for wanting to get it right and failing -- but she is alone right now tonight when fate has decided to bring Lux and Amber together again. Lux who is Lux. Amber who is an intense scorch of satyress beauty; Maenad-song, physicality. 

Who, naturally, Lux looks at. The last time they ran into one another it was in a hospital room over Nathan Marszalek. Before that: a handful of nights, spent defacing the city, painting the town; a bar, where she - insouciant - claimed she wanted to know everybody, or something to that effect. 

Her expression opens up like a switch-blade. [Which is to say, it was closed and inscrutable, internalized, perhaps a little distant or - well - something? But now, it] Brightens, draws the vibrant edge of a smile from her mouth and causes her to lean back instead of slouching forward, tying, the palm of one hand touching down on the bench, a wiggle from the fingers of the other hand to say hello. Lux should perhaps want gloves, but she does not. They're in her bag, which is unattended under the bench, near her calves, along with a pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses that she doesn't have any occasion to wear. 

"Hey, Amber," invitational, this. The whole thing, Lux. Lux enjoys her solitude, but she never (or rarely) is awkward about shifting from solitary creature to social shark. "How are you?" 

Amber
Amber was also alone, but not anymore apparently. She pauses when she sees Lux, pauses to look around and see that Lux is alone as well, and there is nothing to explain how fate has caused their paths to cross tonight. Or rather, for Amber's path to cross with a place where Lux has come to rest. 

And she smiles like she's pleased to see Amber, like seeing her causes light to glow out from her pores into the darkness of the night, illuminating all around her. Casting that light in Amber's direction, Amber who is grateful but wary for any light cast her way. 

Like now, when Lux sees her there and invites her closer, asks how she is? No one asks how she is, or no one did ask how she was until last month. Amber lifts her hand in a hesitant wave, but does come closer, can't refuse to come closer. Lux could compel the stars to dance and the world to rebel, how can Amber resist? She approaches the low wall that keeps out yet allows riffraff like Amber to gaze upon the beauty of creatures like Lux gliding over the sleek, slick ice. 

"Hey," she tosses back. "Alright," she answers. Lux is the one who has a claim to Nathan and last time Amber saw Nathan it ended terribly. Perhaps this connection is also ruined, along with the one to Laurel. Flood lifted Amber from the dregs of society, gave her nice things, but she, apparently, cannot have companions in this new life, either. "How're you?" 

Lux
Lux's figure-skates are tied now and she turns her knees toward Amber when - hesitation? Hmm - the Maenad-thing comes nearer, digging her toe-pick into the frost-hardened-or-withered grass or the cold-cracked cement. How're you? Lux: head-cant and an inhale. The head-cant is insouciant and complicated by honesty ( - not at my best). The inhale is - Amber knows - unnecessary: but Lux likes breathing. Lux is a sensualist who enjoys the quickening of oxygen in her lungs, enjoys the taste of the snow-drunk air, enjoys the kindling of that thing so necessary to fire. Does a vampire exhale oxygen, too? 

But replies with words, too, after that luxury of a lungful. "Oh -- " 

-- graceful cut of a hand-wave; and now the exhale. 

"Unsettled, you know. Haven't been able to decide which project I want to pursue. My current abode is a piece of shit," frank. "I want to paint it. But I also have -- actually, care to take a look and give me your opinion?" 

Lux leans over her knees and pulls the bag-under-her-bench out between her feet. The bag contains a sketch-book, see, and one-handed Lux begins to undo the bag's clasps while the main focus of her attention is on the ghoul she doesn't know is a ghoul. She does not fumble. She does not squander movement. 

"But Nathan's out of the hospital." He's somebody they have in common now. He's another somebody they have in common now. "Let's see how long he stays out of it and not take bets." 

Amber
Amber knows that Lux doesn't need that breath for anything more than a show or perhaps the comfort of a habit remembered from her living days. She knows this but it doesn't unsettle her. How many times over the last two, three months has Amber seen her take those unnecessary inhalations? No, she's known for a while that Lux doesn't need a scarf or mask to protect her from the fumes of spray paint, and that any breaths of smoke have a very different effect on her than they do Amber. Amber's voice has been roughened and deepened by smoke, turned to a low gravelly sultry sound. It adds to her earthenness, which is earthly but not down-to-earth. 

Lux wants to show Amber something and Amber takes another hesitant step forward. "Sure." No, not really hesitant, she is not the sort to hesitate, but she is uncertain. Which is just as unnatural on her, isn't it? She takes an uncertain step closer, hands in pockets, boots scuffing on the concrete because she has to look. Logically she knows she could turn away and disappear into the night, but this is Lux. A little of that implanted awe has stuck in Amber since their first encounter as what was planted became truth. 

But then she has to mention Nathan and Amber's forward progress arrests altogether. See, the mortal young man was someone they had in common, past tense. The last time Amber saw him she left. Gathered up her things and took off just as fast as she could get away. No more books for Nathan Marszalek. No more outside food. Or if he got some it wasn't from or because of Amber. 

Her brow furrows and her head tips down. Stormy green eyes shift away from Lux. Nathan must not have told her that his savior abandoned him. 

"That's nice," she says, gruff, growly, even more...yes, even more unsettled than when she first discovered Lux here. 

Lux
Lux takes the D&G sunglasses out of her bag and slips them neatly on her head. They're cat-eyed, smoked just so -- gilt with baroque gold roses. They're impractical. The bag also contains a pair of wooden knitting needles and a twist of yarn, and of course her actual boots (by gum, the very ones made for walking!), assorted pens (draw on me [I want to be your canvas, darling]), a case, a case for her cellphone, a pack of cigarettes [no lighter (lighters are for other people, lighters are Hello-how-are-you, let-me-bite-your-neck)], and yes yes! 

"Here. Look at the last two pages." 

the godamned sketch-book, dented-up, which she holds out having liberated it after the sunglasses -- 

but Amber is uncertain (pausing [hesitating?]), again, is looking away, dredging a sluice-of-a-look from Lux, the natural rise and fall of her shoulders stilling, stilling, because why is -- ?

Lux doesn't connect whatever it is Nathan told her about Amber with Amber's behavior now. Maybe Amber had a thing for Nate? Her ghoul occasionally dates, or at least he tells Lux that he does. 

This is Lux. They could be friends, or something near it; Presence made certain of that. A trick. An edge. The reason that Toreador, Brujah, Setites, are so dangerous: are so influential, present (presencet?). Presence becomes real. So: This is Lux, darling of a monster, Valentine-girl, 

"I'm happy about it. For now, anyway. If I'm keeping you, we can catch up later instead." 

Tithe @ 9:18PM
Private Message to niko
[Hey, Amber. What's up, man? Per + Emp -1 diff for Auspex 1.]
Roll: 4 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 5, 6) ( success x 2 ) VALID 

Amber
Lux and Amber may not be friends in the traditional sense, but the vampire is the closest to a genuine friend that Amber has. All the others have gone. Laurel? Ran off at the sight of her and Nathan in a hospital room together. Nathan? Ugh, how could she be so stupid. Flood? Hardly a friend in any sense, and not really around of late. Or maybe Amber's begun successfully avoiding him. 

So there is Lux, who has claimed Nathan, who is a problem for Amber. Lux who is holding out a sketchbook to her, but will let her go if she's keeping her, and it galls that she would so easily send Amber on her way again. Amber's cheeks redden with something like embarrassment and irritation and frustration and she starts to turn to go, but she stops just as her back is to Lux. She stops, and she looks back over her shoulder at the woman in ice skates, and finally she turns half-way back, giving Lux more of her profile than a frontview. 

"You know Flood." He's never come up in conversation before, not directly, and yet Amber lays it out there, just like that. "Nathan was asking around about him. Do you know if he still is?" 

Lux
This sharp little line etches itself between her so-fine eyebrows - a sharp thing, Lux, sometimes, cut yourself on her fineness, bleed in offering, more blood froth passion. 

"I do want your opinion," she says, without any particular emphasis: each word its own reason for being, her chin lofted and the slope of her gaze slanting to the sketch book's cover, which she falls open result of some miniscule change of position in her wrist and she flips closed again deftly, her gaze rising again when Amber arrests herself and mentions the other person they have in common (Laurel doesn't count because Lux thinks about Laurel the way one thinks about a waiter one met at a club who might cater a certain kind of party if paid properly but otherwise doesn't hold much interest). 

Flood; a sweep of eyelashes, moment's consideration, first a frown. "When was he asking around about him? He shouldn't be -- he should know better now." And then the brief slant of a smile; does it reach her lovely eyes? "How d'you know Flood?" 

Amber
Amber gives a slight shake of her head, no, she doesn't know if he's still asking around. But Flood was always very particular about his privacy, his security. For her sake, he might have said, but a part of her knew. He did not keep her safe for her, but to protect himself. Somehow, it all leads back to him and his own wants, needs, desires, self. And isn't that part of what drove her away? 

Nathan shouldn't be asking around about Flood, and he didn't ask Amber about him, not exactly. But he came up. He's asked around about him before. And if he knew...if he found out...Amber may be freed in a way, but there is still a tether hooked beneath her skin and wrapped around her stupid, foolish heart. 

Lux wants to know how Amber knows Flood and she goes tense, fists clenched, shoulders tight, spine stiff as a rod. All of this...the intrigue, the suspicion, the friend or near friend or sort of ally business. All of this is too complicated for a girl who is subtle as a forest fire, as gentle as a hurricane. Because Lux is an almost-friend, beautiful but dangerous, but she is connected to Nathan who is trouble. Who is also almost-friend to Flood, which is a worse sort of trouble. 

Her eyes dart away and she frowns. "It doesn't matter how I know him, I know him," she says, asserts, drawing a line in the sand and hating it. That look shifts back to the sketchbook and she reaches for it finally, snatches it and yanks it toward her, because Amber is a physical creature. It's a release valve, a little twist to let out some of that anger, hatred, and resentment that she keeps locked up inside her like a bottle of soda eternally shaken, ready to explode. 

"Nathan better not be asking about him anymore," she says, gravely voice cracked and dry as a peal of distant thunder. It is not so much a warning as it is a hope, small and tiny and desperately fragile. 

=====
niko @ 1:05PM
[manip+subt+WP]
Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP] VALID 

Samael @ 1:08PM
Witnessed! 

Lux
???????????????????? - for that Manip Subt roll, I guess. Or the narrative stuff. Or, well, whatever. 

Percept + Emp + WP! This is a conversation about NATE and SABBAT, I will BE perceptive! 

Tithe
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 7, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP] 

Umbralwind
Witnessed! 

Tithe
[Thanks bro!] 

Amber
And now the results for that percept+emp: Amber is a whole whirl of mixed up, confused feelings, thoughts, and emotions. Talking about Flood is distressing to her and makes her uncomfortable, but she's being protective of him and his secrecy/privacy. Talking about Nathan is also distressing and makes her uncomfortable, because she seems to want to protect him, too. She's hoping he's not still asking around about Flood because that would be Bad News for him. 

Lux
"Sure it does. Or I guess it doesn't really, but," Lux says, and then Amber snatches the sketch-book. There is no resistance: all that unleashed savagery. The pages flap, wing-sound, help, help! sound, and because it is a used sketch-book a couple of the pages which aren't as firmly fixed slide half-way out, hooking at an angle. The place Lux was holding with her thumb is lost, but easy enough to re-find. Lux looks surprised, and alive with it. That surprise.

There is an impetuous vein running (secret [restrained]) through Lux. The impetuousness is occasionally suggested by the expression in her eyes; by something compelling about the set of her mouth when (forever.) taken together with a certain slant of shadow; by a gesture more insouciant, more apparently unconstrained, than usual. But then, only occasionally. Lux has an articulate physicality, but she is nothing like as clear as glass; she fought hard for control. Still. Impetuous creature. Passionate creature. Amber has been told that Lux is beautiful, but dangerous.

Has Amber also been told that Lux is a synonym for quickness? Of the three Disciplines known to be mastered by the Toreador, the one she has the most skill with is the one that is perhaps more associated with the Brujah. Why Celerity? Does she even know? Perhaps it was because, being impetuous, if she was truly quick enough, she could ensure that the only one to regret whatever action she took would be herself.

Nathan better not be asking about him anymore. Lux is not a killer. But Nathan is a special case; what if that had been a threat? That could've been a reason to be impetuous: calculating, but impetuous - a terrible combination and one which lead her to ruin. 

Nathan better not be asking about him anymore, Amber says, wildfire woman, roaring lady, gravel-ground voice, and Lux wide-eyed and still absorbs Amber's body language, the subtle nuance of tone, and she places both hands on the cold bench. The corner of it bites across her palm's life-line: a love-bite, a reminder, forever, Lux, forever, don't you love forever.

"I think he's learned his lesson. But you can never tell with men like that." Briefest of pauses. "I hope he has learned." Because she does. "Let's put the men aside for a moment, huh?" Lux reaches up to play with her collar, a brief gesture, putting it in its place, indicative of - who knows. "Amber, with them out of the picture, do you hate hanging out with me? Because I don't want to chase you down, but I'd like it if we could just say 'friends' and do our thing. Have fun."

Amber
Sure it does, Lux begins, and Amber's body tightens further. It's hard to concentrate on the pages of the sketchbook - ripped from Lux's hand but otherwise handled carefully, the sliding-free pages slipped into place with an absent tapping of her fingertip - with threat of further questioning regarding Flood looming on the horizon. How does Amber know him? She could count the ways, which are not as deep and intimate she she once thought they were. She shouldn't care anymore, she knows she shouldn't. She should be able to talk to Lux about him but there is something in her still (blood, vitae, his, bonding her to him still despite weeks and weeks apart) that compells her to protect him. Amber doesn't understand it, and she's going to hate it sooner rather than later, but she can't help it.

But Lux doesn't continue to press. She's found a pressure point - these men, these boys that have gotten Amber so turned around in completely different ways - but she doesn't press down on it. Thankfully. Some of that hard edge to the nearly mortal ghoul begins to soften, some of the tension in her starts to ease free. When the vampire-woman, cold and calculating, with that buried but not forgotten vein of impetuousness streaked through her, when she says she hopes Nathan has learned his lesson Amber's storm-green eyes lift from the page of the sketchbook where they'd landed. She doesn't mind putting the men out of the picture. Aren't they mostly out of the way, anyway?

Her brows, decliate, sweeping, arching wings of soft brown, crowd together with uncertainty and suspicion. "Friends," she says, tasting the word and finding it does not taste like ash in her mouth. "You and me?"

Lux
[That wasn't the page! Is what's on it good? We'll extend once 'coz Lux ain't no slouch dawg. Or is she, dice. Tell us your truths. Artification!]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Lux
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )

Lux
[...]

Amber
[holy shit]

Lux
"Yeah." Beat. "Why not?" The corner of her mouth goes up: alchemy; bright-skinned creature, for all her hair is shadow-kissed, gloom-beloved, for all her colouring is striking, and there is more of darkness there than light. The radiance is contained: a trick of personality -- of spirit. Don't kneel. Don't give in. Be yourself. Something like that, maybe, and there is a pause that isn't really a pause, it's a silence (inviolable [inviolate]), solid as anything ever was, before she adds, "It's better with people." Her voice doesn't go softer; it doesn't deck itself out in Pathos; doesn't wallow in its own revelation; just a simple statement: It's better with people.

As for the sketch-book, Lux is skilled. The page Amber turned to by sheer chance: if Lux had been preserved [Eternity] for no other reason than the creation of that page, charcoal phantasms touched and tinted with suggestions of water colour, the warmer spectrum shading into darkness and more charcoal, then it would be enough. All the other years, all the lives she's almost taken: that's how good.

It's probably fitting that the miniature masterwork is a side-note, a foot-note to the scene playing out between the living and the dead. 

Amber
[just for comparison how awesome was that last painting Amber was working on before she chucked everything and bolted?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Amber
[oh right empathy was probably the thing I should have rolled: are you fr srs?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

Lux
[Amber suspects Lux isn't yanking her chain being all 'friends, why not?' Bon Vivant. It IS better with people. Amber intuits a bit of musing on that last statement- Lux isn't thinking too closely about herself, but there's something that resonates in that statement with her personally.]

Lux
[But now regret! Okay. BUT DID WE CONTROL THE INFORMATION? If it was a botch, obv same but super more obvious. *grin*]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Amber
It is better with people, or it can be. Amber remembers when there were more people around, scores of them wandering the halls of some school somewhere. Gathering in the street around her home. Everywhere. There are still people everywhere, but it's different these days.

She does not quite trust this dark-haired, bright creature of the night. Or rather she does not quite trust what she's offering. So casual, that Why not? Tossed out to land between them like an old shirt Lux no longer cares about but is willing to let Amber borrow. Because sure, why not? What is friendship between a vampire and a ghoul, anyway? More servitude?

But Lux has never compelled Amber into serving her. She twisted the girl's heart to be in awe of her, but everything after that was a choice. She did not force Amber to go paint the town with her. She did not force her out of Nathan's hospital room and she did not force information out of her later. She does not force her now.

And she seems genuine. Genuine enough, at least, to ease a little more of that tension from the ghoul's frame, loosening her muscles. There is one final slight narrowness of those green-grey eyes, the storm-tossed sea of her soul whipping up a froth of doubt and...just...a little bit...of hope. And nervousness.

Her attention returns to the sketch she found. It is a masterwork, something that belongs on a canvas hanging in a museum or a gallery or some collector's wall. Not stuck in the middle of a worn out sketchbook, pages falling loose, fingers free to rifle through it. If Amber were less sure of her abilities she might be intimidated by it. But if she is certain of nothing else in this world, this life, and her part in it, she has absolute confidence in her talent, her gift, the way that she will leave her mark on this world.

She flips the past the page, skims the images next. Clearing her throat first, she asks, "What did you want me to look at?"

Lux
[Blah. MISSING ROLLS. New art.]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Lux
[Grumble! Worse roll! And #2.]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 8 )

Lux
[I promise to always grumble! *_*]

Amber
[*_*]

Lux
[DECISION]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )

Lux
Another gesture. A clean thing, this gesture, and speaking. Lux doesn't want the sketch-book back. She twirls her finger to indicate flip forward and flip forward.

"The last two," she says, with a charmed and sudden half-smile, another transfiguration, shadow-etching light-shot and crystalline [nuance] her expressive eyes- and they never seem entirely clear, there does always seem to be something else, keep looking, some thought about to be expressed- whatever. But the quick smile and the animation it gives her is just that- charmed, pleased, and then to the business of sharing. "They're for separate projects. I want to try my hand at a picture book for adults, but I'm not sure what to develop first, so suggestions, comments, ideas, oh, anything, it's all more than welcome."

The second to last is good, though not near as developed, not near as moving, as technically proficient or as heart-taking as the first and more complete page. Ochre charcoal used for red earthy tones, a style that's heavy, violent, sketch of a man screaming, fists clenched around words that're scrambling to be free, movement is what she was aiming for- movement is what she might get. There's a square towards the bottom lopsided and uneven- a comic, maybe? a few other body sketches around the pain sketch, more movement-movement- and if there's an emotion she wanted to evoke, it's something about striving- maybe- standing up- there are touches of orange water-colour and purple deepening bruises here, adding a shadow-

But the last is [a knife of beauty-] better.

The last one is sad. Movement, again, but it has a different energy, the lines are more delicate, are more certain, the shadows are softer and seem more inevitable, there to stay, lovelier- black charcoal for this one, then shades of green and gray water-colour overlaying, tinting, dredging out more pathos- the subject's posture is confident except except something in the shoulders something in the neck some saving something that makes everything else just: SAD, in spite of what woudl otherwise be beguiling tongue-in-cheek sly wink-wink.

Lucifer looking at heaven. That's what that last one is- Lucifer, looking at heaven, snake tattoo around the wrist-

snake tattoo all around twist curve. And it is all in the posture. The frame around the subject, the places where it's sketched open, the suggestion of a confined place, claustrophobia to one side, stars to the next- another box drawn for words, a sketched out art nouveau vine and an apple round on the very bottom of the page bitten off-

Amber
[i am pretty amazeballs at art, do i get what your expressing? wits+crafts I think should do it]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

Amber
Amber nods and adjusts her hold on the sketchbook, shifts it so that the last two pages become the first two pages, if it is a book that opens backwards. Or was printed in some other country, with words that flow in the other direction. Amber turns to the last page first and it evokes a reaction, as most art should. She stills. The storm, it doesn't abate, doesn't recede. By now it's already receding from a feeling it might devestate the countryside - thatshe my wreak havoc across the countryside, through the city, destroying everything in her path. Now it hovers, still, paused.

Her brows tighten and then her mouth tightens. Her free hand moves, fingertips not quite touching that last-first page, tracing along the patterns of movement, the lines of the fallen angel's posture.

She turns the page to get away from the ache of that pictures, fallen angel peering up to what's been lost. Her chest feels tight when she looks at that picture, eases up again so that she can breath, her heart can beat freely, blood flows through her veins when she turns the page.

Her frown returns, deep and thoughtful. A picture book for adults. She looks up at Lux, beautiful but dangerous Toreador. Danger of the sort that Flood tried to warn Amber about so long ago, after it was already far too late to protect herself. That danger seems to have shown itself now, in a handful of skillfully executed sketch-drawings.

"What sort of picture book?" she asks, though she's already guessed. Feelings. Emotions put on paper to rip them out of the viewer, expose them like a mirror made of charcoal, paint, graphite.

Lux
What sort of picture book? The sort of picture book that'll incite a city to burn. That'll insight the cold dead scions of the moon who reflect and are radiant are a poet's madness but forget all about Phaeton's passion what it is to want to be free to want freedom to stand. The sort of picture book for adults that'll reminds dead hearts that immortality's not to be squandered and neither is mortality. The sort of picture book that says I'm Not Sorry. The sort of picture book that'll be remembered. At least there was that. At least.

"Lately I've been thinking about Voltaire. On his deathbed when he was asked to renounce Satan his response was 'Now is no time to go making enemies.' He stayed unchained. I want the sort of picture book that speaks to that, something that certainly has a narrative present- but doesn't need to be 'read' in any order. I don't even know if I want to put words, if I want to use a lot of colour, if I want to stay with one style or- "

A gesture, to indicate that there's nothing else after the 'or.' Lux rests her elbow on her knee and her sharp little chin iin the palm of her hand, and she is a perfectionist about certain things (many things), but she is thick-skinned when it comes to art criticism. Learned behaviors.

Amber
A picture book to spark a rebellion, or ignite a revolution. That's something Amber could get into, with all her passion, all her anger and disappointment. And leave a mark? Leave behind something that would be remembered for ages? Years, decades, centuries? Yes. Yes yes yes.

Lux doesn't mention that part of her ideal, but she does mention Voltaire on his deathbed. Unfettered, nonconforming to the very end. Rebellious and defiant. Amber, if she ever gets to find herself lying on a deathbed, will probably be the same. Even now she rages against the world, the preconceptions, the labels that other people have forced on her to force her down into the gutter. And she rages against something else, a hook-in-line pull that tries daily to drag her back to a place that she's left. She has not yet seen Flood walking with another vampire, has not yet had her world blotted out or felt herself suffocated by the darkness of oblivion that she so desperately fears. She has not had that night to drive another wedge between her desire for freedom and her desire for creature comforts.

A fiery and defiant, angry being, always, even though 'always' will soon be reduced from eternity to decades, probably less.

She looks back down at the sketches in her hands, and she turns back to that final image. Looking at it as though entranced, she says, "No words. You won't need them, not with something like this."

Lux
[You bein' straight with me, gurl? -1 for Auspex, the ol' Perc Emp dealio.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 4) ( fail )

Lux
[Gasp! A botch! SO THE WHEEL TURNS.

Nyet! +2 diff.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )

Amber
Amber is being totally straight with her! She is entranced and deeply impressed with the sketch of Lucifer the fallen angel (maybe feels a connection? maybe? it was only 1 suxx so you be the judge!).

Lux
Lux doesn't know much about Amber's current situation (and the future is [in spite of Augury, of the new gift of Insight: hints and gleams - suggestions for interpretation; she still misses those, most of the time, if they're even there to catch] clouded - so nothing there, either). A thrall. That's all. But she said: why not put the men aside. Friends. Fuck it. And she meant it. Lux doesn't really, not essentially, not at heart, not in her bones, just live for the moment, but it is so much a part of who she is when she is out each night, that sometimes it might as well be.

Rebel. Rebel.

So: Lux studies Amber studying the sketch-and-watercolor again, and then she smiles. Young and beautiful forever, Lux: compelling, compulsory, magnetic [star-heart, star-fall], it's at its greatest height when (--she spends Caine's blood; but shhh) it's a whim instead of instinct. Choice instead of thoughtlessness. 

"Okay. I think I'll take your suggestion and see what comes of it." Beat. "Are you working on anything right now?"

Amber
Lux reads Amber's face, her posture, and knows that she is not hiding anything of herself in the moment. And perhaps that's a bad thing, perhaps that's something she should learn to control, or hide, or obfuscate, but she doesn't. Everything she is tends to be right there, out there on the surface, even when she tries to hide it. Like her concern for Nathan, or her protectiveness of her (unbeknownst to Lux) domitor.

Then they put the men aside so they could talk, or just hang, or just whatever, without all of that getting tangled and in the way of things. But Lux's question draws a sharp, startled look from Amber. Because that question sort of kind of brings at least one of those men back into the conversation. Or at least on the edge of it.

Is Amber working on anything? Her gaze slants to the side. There was something. It is maybe still resting on its easel in an overlarge house downtown, fire colored and barely begun. Or maybe it's in the trash, or ashes in a fire place. Amber doesn't know. She hasn't been back since the night she fled the company of a Lasombra.

She squints, the skin around her stormy eyes tightening as she works to push those thoughts back. Think too long in that direction and she'll start to follow those thoughts back to a house that is not and never was and never will be a home.

"Not really," she says, which is truth. "Some guy hired me to paint up the side of his store, that's it." Anger simmers, resentment glows. Because she is tangled and tied and denied something that she wants.

Lux
The vampiress reaches over to take her sketch-book back, to slip it back into her bag. "Do you have any ideas, or... well, would you like in on my project?"

Amber
[Calm down, Amber: manip+subt, psh, yeah, alright, I mean, if you really want me to, whatever]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Lux
[With my magical powers that I fear are not magical thanks to that horrid 1 2 3 4 roll... DO I SEE THROUGH IT? PROB NOT.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )

Amber
Amber relinqueshes her hold on the sketchbook easily. Her hands, now freed, find their way into the pockets of her jacket.

"Yeah." She says. That single word when it first begins to exit her mouth, it starts off low, comes out down and disheartened. Yeah she has ideas. But it ends with a lightening of her expression, a straightening of her spine and a lifting of her shoulders. Would she like in on the project? Hell yeah. She is eager for it but does not appear overly eager. Because she does not dare to hope for things like friendship or, having so recently lost home and freedom to create to her heart's content, a promise of a creative outlet.

The corner of her mouth lifts because hope is a thing even she can't completely suppress. "I'd like that, yeah."

Lux
Lux can't see through Amber's facade of cool: cool-eyed, cool-faced, sure-man, whatever, this-happens-every-night - so she accepts the pose. Accepts the corner of her mouth lifting, accepts the easing as something Amber does sometimes. The Toreador (does Amber know the clans? What they mean? What they mean to the creatures who belong to them?) leans back, having slid the sketchbook safe back into her bag, along with the incongruous knitting supplies, the gold-etched delicacy of D&G sunglasses still a kiss of elegance holding her hair back by the ice-rink at night.

"Great." It's not a place-holder 'great.' It's a cool and assured and pleased: Great. It's a word that means something. "Want to go somewhere and talk over some preliminaries?" Somewhere like a coffee shop; somewhere that isn't outside in a park at night. "Or," her shoulders go up, her fingers twine together, animation, "Rent a pair of skates, join me on the ice?"

Amber
[would ice skating be the worst idea? dex+ath]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Amber
Amber's gaze slants toward the ice, so smooth and cool-blue, and her eyes narrow at it. She has been skating before, years ago when she was younger. A school trip or something, or maybe she was a girl scout once. Wouldn't that have been a laugh. No, but a school thing surely. Middle or high school. Years and years ago. Ages for her, scarcely more than a blink to something like the woman already clad in bladed shoes.

That gaze drifts back to that creature, to Lux whom she admires so deeply. "Coffee shop sounds good," she says, kicking one foot back, the toe of her boot scuffing on the concrete. "I can meet you there if you still wanna," she trails, looking pointedly at the ice again. Lux has already rented skates, after all, already has them on and is ready to glide across that smooth expanse of pale blue-white.

Whether the Toreador stays back or not, eventually they meet again. They sit over a table while Amber marks out sketches and explains just why they should leave out words - words are muddy, messy, dirty, awkward. A picture is worth a thousand of them. How many is a drawing worth? A painting? Anyway, they discuss until the hour grows late and the coffee shop must close. There is a parting of the ways, hopefully only a temporary one.

The ghoul's fate, after all, is a cloudy, muddy mess of an uncertain thing.

[how are those sketches? no specialty.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 6) ( success x 1 )

Amber
[erase erase! do-over!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Amber
[deep breaths, you stupid girl]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 5 )

Lux
[I'm totally gonna skate my heart out real quick and then meet Amber. DO I SKATE PRETTY? Watch the botch.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Lux
[Or the Olympic recruiters.]

Lux
[Oh! Wits + Expression.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Lux
[FADE. YAY. THANKS. SCENES <3]

Amber
[THANK YOU!]