Bull

Lux

The library is quiet tonight -- it's a library; aren't they always quiet? -- but is disturbed by a number of people breathing, breathing informed by varying states of panic or perturbation or contentment or focus, because Finals are only a week or so away. Even so, it's late enough at night that the students who are still scattered throughout the generous profusion of reading rooms on varying levels their laptops open along with their notebooks are the ones who are really intent or have a plan or were working all day and look like they're going to be working all weekend so they've gotta do this now. They're thinning away; some of them are sleeping.

Here is a(n immortally) young woman who is not sleeping, slouching with a kind of reckless grace over there in the natural history section of the stacks. Her jacket is tweed and her jeans are thin and her shoes are ridiculous, frivolous, an artful confection so it looks like she's walking on dark-rimmed butterflies, and somebody's scrawled words all over her jeans. More than one somebody: somebodies.

As she finally settles on a book -- Maria Sibylla Merian's illustrations -- from outside there is a clap of thunder, rain sheeting the Anderson Commons'; weather for monsters. For Byron and Shelley and poor old Polidori to get together.

Lux

[ooc: not butterflies; my bad. dark gold-brushed foliate given dimension; peeled out've an illuminated manuscript and dipped in tar, then dipped in gold-leaf.]

Bolivar Fisk

Libraries, they were places of solitude, of reverent instruction and tutelage. These places had been repositories of knowledge for so long that even now in the age of data and the internet these physical repositories held strong amongst the onslaught. Bolivar was here of course for the sake of his own curiosity, still new to the city, still new to its secrets he combed the various repositories for signs of diamonds in the rough. Such places were usually picked bare....but one never did know what might have slipped through the cracks.

He was a contrast, even in these places, his body was large, not huge mind you, but topping off at a intimidating six foot eight, and easily weighing three hundred pounds some might equate Bolivar to a walking wall, his steps slow and certain, his boots reverberating on the floors of the library with each slow step..just below the necessary level not to get kicked out.

It would be a choice location to feed, so many sleeping kine, so many unaware intellectuals safe within this bastion of the erudite, and for now they were. The thunder and lighting that mixed with the rain beyond the walls of this place seemed to suit the silver haired man just fine as he adjusted the leather coat over the old blue jeans.

His movements took him through the natural history section tonight, not because it was something he sought, but because what he did seek was in the far corner, that tiny little area that accounted for many esoteric, and uncircumstantiated topics, from philosophy to ancient history, from ancient journals, to the occult itself. This was his destination.

But Lux, languid, reckless, graceful lounged about between himself and his goal, and so soft blue eyes took in her existence from within a hard lined face with a lantern jaw.

Lux

He's looming.

He might not mean to loom but his physiology has made him into a loomer; a Golem in truth, carved eyes and carved mouth lined like baked clay and somebody's thumbs to carve out the brow. He's looming, and his shadow falls across a languid and recklessly graceful young (no) woman so she looks up. Her fine eyebrows rise, delicate in shape if not in expression and she either watches him as he passes by behind her, turning her head twice in order to keep him in her sights, or he's waiting for her to move and so she only turns her head to look at him (inquiringly, attentively).

Whatever color her eyes are isn't important now; they're some shadow-cloted color, some tarnished-up piece of darkness thanks to the way the light falls and the shadows from the bookshelves.

"Say," she says. "You look interesting. Tell me, what's the most interesting idea or fact you've come across this week?"

Bolivar Fisk

It's not so much that she was in his way, thought that was entirely possible, the man might well seem to take up an entire aisle, from shoulder to shoulder, and the dark colour of his clothing seemed not to help in its usually slimming manner, it simply seemed to make him deeper, like one might imagine a personified black hole might be like..if one were to meet it, see it, and survive it.

No she is not in his way, she is simply there, and he is simply stopping to look. It doesnt seem to be a leering thing [looming as it was] Perhaps he is wondering why a woman dressed as she was here in this place. [Not that he was much better.]

When she asks him her quesiton though, calling him interesting he tilts his head slowly to the side and he rolled one shoulder in a mild, casual shrug.

"I would have to say the interesting thing I have absorbed in the last week would simply be that Obsidian transmits the electric field of a human being far more effectively then most precious metals." His voice is deep, but it rumbles gently, a soft thing as he stepped into the area she sat in and looked slowly around. "It's why many ancient cults preferred such brittle damaging instruments to something more utilitarian."

Interesting...right.

Lux

"Do you think so?" Her tone is conversational, interested, her voice pitched at an appropriate level, a silked thing. "I'd have thought the preference had all to do with the sharpness of it, the beauty of the idea, you know. 'I'll cut your heart out with a knife forged from glass left behind by some volcanic demi-god's displeasure.' Are you a scientist or an occultist?"

Beat. Absent: "As well as a student?"

Bolivar needn't have a specific reason to look at Lux.

Lux is something to be looked at; she's something to be looked at and, looking, to be compelled, to feel compelled, to find something compelling, some quicksilver quality to her beeswing-fineness, pale-cream skin and imperious (stubborn) chin and a fine filigree of bones beneath, just arrestingly and undeniably lovely.

He's so huge he must be used to people staring at him. If she weren't wearing the shoes she's wearing, he'd top her by more than a foot; as it is, he tops her by nearly a foot, and isn't that just as bad?

He looks too old to be a student but in these days people are going back to school at every and any time in their life. The book in her hands is not at all forgotten, but it is a book in the hand, and this gigantic man's ideas is a book in the bush -- ruin the old adage. A bird in the hand may well be worth two in the bush, but if you've already got a bird in the hand and there's possibly a bird you'd like even more in the bush, why not try to flush it out?

Bolivar Fisk

She isnt put off by his particular revelation, or perhaps she was simply level headed enough, used to such idea's that she could avoid seeming disturbed by an opening topic that might well have sent most individuals scurrying. A thin line spreads across his lips, becoming a smile which showed the barest hint of wide teeth.

"You might well be right. Fact's are after all, subjective unless you have come to such conclusions of your own ability and skill." His steps took him around her, those slow heavy foot falls drawing him to the shelves themselves as those blue eyes surveyed the books that filled every available space. "I would personally believe both to be equally true." He pauses briefly to pull a book from the shelf with a large mitt like hand, examining the back cover for a moment before slotting it back into its home.

"And I do not see why I cannot be both." That grin widdened slightly at that, more teeth now as the quiet voice rolled across the space. "To be one without the other is to limit one's self to only half the picture, personally I prefer to see with both eyes, rather then one." He looked over at her, and Lux might almost wonder if he kept such distance between them simply so he didn't have to look down his nose at her, and she did not have to look up, up up.

"I also find that anyone who says they are not a student, is a liar, and if not a liar...then a fool of considerable calibre. Wouldn't you agree?" He answers her questions without truly answering them, was he a student? Certainly...was he a student at this campus? Well...that was still uncertain.

Lux

"That depends," Lux says. "If I agree, is the conversation over? Because if so, there can be no accord; only war."

Pause. Then, "Hmm." Another pause; there's a sudden presentiment of laughter, there in the side-long sluice of her glance, because as he moved further away so she turned back to her shelf, and is regading him so now. There might be another book she wants.

"Would you rather see the whole picture with only one eye or half the picture with both eyes in good working condition?"

Bolivar Fisk

"Heh you ask of the price of knowledge." He lets out a low quiet, but rumbling chuckle as he turned back to her fully now and started in her direction, slow, even steps were the norm for this man it seemed, but then one step for him might well equal two or three for another. "I happily pay the price for full knowledge, be it an eye or whatever else you have to sacrifice to gain it. Of course...I would rather barter for a better price then settle for the demanded currency." His smile drooped slightly then, returning to a simple line upon his face, though the corners of his mouth remained upturned.

"And what of yourself? Do you pay the price for knowledge, or do you try to get around it, to avoid it as long as possible before paying the piper's hefty interest?"

Lux

"I'm heavily in debt," Lux tells him, solemnly. "What's your name?"

Bolivar Fisk

There is another deep rumble, brief and almost chortling at Lux's reply and he let his head swing gently to the side in a half finished shake of his skull. "You better be careful, the proverbial piper isn't the sort of being that takes kindly to those who welch on their debts."

The smile returned then, perhaps pleased with her reckless abandon in the face of fate, and its weighted scales. He came forward then, that slow long stride bringing him into shaking distance, but not a pace more. He extended one of those meaty paws and tilted his head in her direction, a half nod if you might believe it.

"My name is Bolivar, but if it suits you can just call me Bull." He left that hand hanging between them until it was shaken, or left there long enough not to be bothered with. "May I have yours as well? Or is the price of such knowledge perhaps too rich for sanities tastes?"

Lux

"Do you object very strongly to other nicknames, like Bully or Olivar or Bee?"

Her mouth compresses, surprisingly firmly, into the suggestion of a smile and she tucks Maria Sibylla Merian's illustrations between her sharp elbow and the tweed of her blazer, then takes the huge man's hand. Her fingers are cool, her circulation poor, a sculpture, ice-carved instead of glass-carved, her handshake without flourish or feint.

With a touch of wry -- sardonic with a vibrant edge, see: "And it's my understanding that only the names of God are enough to muck around with a man's sanity, you know, really muddle it up, so you can rest assured no bill will be delivered if you call me Lux."

Her breast pocket buzzes and she pulls her cellphone out, slides a thumb across its face so it'll reveal tonight's secret. Who's that calling?

Time to go. "Thanks," she tells the huge, huge, huge bull of a man called Bull, when she looks up from the phone again, slipping it into her left pocket instead now. Light does not catch on her ring as she does so; light does not catch on her at all. "I haven't thought about obsidian for an age."

Bolivar Fisk

"I do not object to much." He admitted in midst of their shake. "Names hold power, but I find they only hold so much, and nicknames..." He shrugged once more. "They are simply reflections of their owner, and their giver." His own hand is warm to the touch, not heated, but warm enough perhaps to pass most inspections. [Lux might be one who is not fooled by such things after all] It is also rough, calloused as one would imagine such hands would be, the man a curious collection of states, from his rough and tumble looks, to his seemingly learned mind.

But then it is time to go, Lux was on her way out, and in truth, Bolivar had tasks of his own to complete, tasks that involved combing through those dark recesses of this library in search of those tiny gems he always loved to find.

"Your welcome Lux." He offered with a final nod as he turned to head into the father reaches of the library.

"Be well."

Lux

- roll credits.