(no subject)

[flanerie]

Who: Lestat de Lioncourt and open
What: Exploring town, exploring caves
When: December
Where: Milton, Misty Falls Cave

Content Warnings: Vampirism and associated blood thirst, animal hunting and consumption, claustrophobia, caving



misty falls cave

Unlike many of the explorers seeking the cave, Lestat did not receive directions from the old man of the forest. His guide to the falls came in the form of others’ boot prints trekking to and from the falls, a sight which couldn’t fail to incite his curiosity.

The trail brings him to the falls some hours after sunset. He had his trap-line to attend to first, where he took his small dinner from a gamey rabbit that now hangs dressed and butchered in his growing larder. Hunger blunted, if not sated, he can admire the tumult of icy water as it deserves to be admired.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” He calls over his shoulder as soon as he picks up the sound of newly approaching footsteps, perhaps sooner than whoever comes might expect. “A chandelier hung by winter itself.”

He turns gracefully even in his heavy winter layers, smiling at the newcomer as if they are already in accord. Warm acquaintances at the least, if not yet friends, on the cusp of embarking into a thrilling secret together.

“What do you think is inside?”

vampire about town

The evening Lestat walks into the grubby little town is unremarkable except for the fact of his arrival, a fact which perversely delights him. There have been no letters sent ahead, no lodgings arranged, no quantities of money moved by the firms of quiet professionals who attend to such things on his behalf. There’s only Lestat in secondhand winter layers, gliding between the huddled houses to the center of the community.

He’s always a little excited by novelty. It’s a quality one must cultivate to survive the interminable span of immortality, and it’s one of many such qualities he possesses in surplus of necessity.

So his anonymity has its charm, as fleeting as it will be. His mark will be made soon enough, beginning with crossing the threshold of the town’s gathering place.

Once inside, he takes in his surroundings with evident approval before he crosses to a table near the fireplace. He undoes the bundled canvas strapped to his back and lays it down, unfolding it to reveal the choicest cuts of venison he’d been able to harvest from last night’s hunt. Its blood is only a pleasant memory, but sufficient to keep him clear-headed and convivial.

He turns to the nearest party who happens to catch his attention with a modest smile, plucking his gloves from his hands a finger at a time.

“Good evening,” he says, warmly, “I thought this might make a decent supper. You wouldn’t happen to be a cook?”

Comments

misty falls cave

[fidior]

It isn't a task that he'd particularly wanted to take on alone, much preferring the stability and security of a group effort. (Wiser, too, to have multiple sets of arms for carrying items, and multiple sets of eyes to keep watch out. To keep one another safe. He isn't meant to function on his own.)

However, Edward has found that many of his tasks these days are done in isolation. It's an odd ache, a feeling of wrongness, and of a particular sort of loss. Several of the men from his specific time and place have ambled up to Milton by now, and yet they remain scattered pieces rather than anything that could constitute as a unit. He doesn't have a place with them. He doesn't know his place anymore.

He ducks his head against the biting chill the closer he gets to the waterfall. There are others he could have asked to come with him, but most are still recovering from the storm that ravaged the town. He keeps walking, following the directions given by Methuselah.

The great mass of half-frozen ice begins to reveal itself to him, but before he can take in the sight, a voice calls to him, and Edward's startled, head lifting up as his eyes find the source. A man, one whom he has yet to make acquaintance with, smiling his way. Admittedly, a fellow human (that is the assumption here...) is a welcomed sight, and the other man is exhaling a quiet sound of relief, boots trudging through the snow as he makes his way over, keeping a gloved hand against the strap of his shotgun to secure it in place.

"Ah — good evening." Though he's not as outwardly expressive as this stranger, there's a friendliness of his own, even if muted, polite. He can't hide that he's a bit winded, though — and anxious, wary of what's to come, eyes shifting sideways to the waterfall for a brief moment, the way one would look at an animal they don't quite want to make eye contact with, before returning to his new companion.

"Hopefully not literal treasures." There's something that could be a smile, but it's more a wince; Methuselah described the prepper as hoarding 'things of value', and to him, that may very well have meant precious stones, items of wealth.... none of which would have any benefit to those trapped in the town now. Where others might be eager to head on in, Edward lingers — to recollect himself, catch his breath, but also due to that wariness; he clearly isn't seeing this as some grand adventure... He looks the other man over, tipping his head in a nod.

"Did you have a safe journey up here?"

[flanerie]

Lestat is an excellent judge of human character even without his mental gifts. Honestly, he barely has to make use of them at all, so acquainted is he with the varieties and types of humankind. He takes Edward in as he approaches with a gaze devoid of calculation, open and welcoming, and takes his measure.

A mannered man, uneasy in his skin, but seeking to present an appearance of competence. Anxiety is scrawled across the cant of his smile and the grip he keeps on his weapon, which Lestat thinks he does not want to use. He's come here for a purpose, presumably the same as the other travellers Lestat did not make himself acquainted with, and that purpose is a burden to him. But it is a burden he shoulders because he thinks it a duty, with how he inquires after the well-being of a stranger as if that stranger already falls under the aegis of his care.

Lestat's smile takes on a touch of worn bravery. He pretends to allow tension he does not feel to slip from his shoulders.

"The wolves seem to be elsewhere tonight," he says, with a slight nod, and begins to walk towards Edward as if it does not occur to him to take precautions in the presence of an armed stranger. Immediate trust, given without hesitation, as Edward appears so easily trustworthy.

"Lestat de Lioncourt, at your service," he offers, extending his hand to the other man, "So you do know something of this cave. I was curious, when I saw the tracks...so few other people delve this far into the woods."

[fidior]

The other man's openness is another relief within him, something he finds himself warming to more easily than others might. But it is... tiring, carrying the tension and worry of strangers, to be met with a wary eye in the face of his uniform and gun, as has happened more times than he can count in this place. There's something immensely relieving to be met with a smile and a handshake. He's leaning into it immediately, extending his own gloved one to shake the stranger's, exhaling another sound as a smile touches the corners of his own mouth. Even to be given a name, an introduction.... it feels familiar. He finds himself grateful.

"Edward Little, of Her Majesty's Royal Navy," he provides in exchange, with another nod, this one more assured — but amiable, friendly. "It is a pleasure to meet you, sir." After his handshake, he's casting another look at their surroundings, giving a purposeful nod.

"I've not ventured here before tonight, but Mr. Methuselah's direction has never proven false. I believe whatever we may find inside will be worth the trouble." ....He hopes. But in the face of someone else, it's best to encourage a certain hope with the prospect.

"If you should like some company inside, I would be happy to provide it."

[flanerie]

Lestat's handshake is firm, yet unchallenging. It has the softness of a man uninterested in games of status, matching the appreciation that shows in his expression when Edward introduces himself by his place in the world.

He's always liked a man in uniform best when they're out of uniform. The ones who manage to wear their brass buttons and gleaming badges of rank even when they're absent are the ones he likes the most.

"An officer," he says, decisively, even though the man said no such thing. It's simply easy to tell - and if he's incorrect, something he thinks Edward would find all the more flattering. "Fortunate company, at that."

His smile brightens, as luminous as the moon above: "Between you and Mr. Methuselah, perhaps we'll face no trouble at all. Wouldn't that be a relief?"

[fidior]

Oh — it's unexpected, the recognition of his status so easily, and it catches him off-guard a little, something probably evidenced by the fracture in his expression, a slight widening of the eyes, a soft look of surprise. But quickly enough that relief returns, and he's smiling again. 'Fortunate company', the man says, and a swell of something that might even be considered happiness warms him; this, too, is a pleasant surprise.... That someone should associate his status with fortune, with safety.

A pleasant surprise in this place, at least, where no one knows him and where he has found that his position seems to offer less comfort than he'd hoped. But back home, and in his own time.... the uniform he wears would have meant something. The amount of gold on his cap, the double-breast of his coat; he would have been immediately recognised as an officer. And even when he introduces himself that way here... it's most often that the "lieutenant" title is removed when he's addressed by Milton's residents. Titles seem to mean little when people are far beyond the structure of what they know, and everything is a battle of survival. ....Of course, he's no stranger to that, is he.

But it's a sort of loss he's still not quite sure how to contend with, one that has him feeling disjointed and strange in his own skin more often than not. And so, a small moment like this is really not so very small to him. There's a glimpse of pride in the dark brown of his eyes, a rare thing for Edward Little, and especially so these days.

"First Lieutenant of HMS Terror, sir. I was serving there just before my arrival to Milton." He smiles again, and it's so easy to, in response to that bright thing that the other man is giving him. Such a shining smile feels nice to be standing in the face of. "That is my hope. I have been doing my best to help maintain order here, but I have come to find this place to present certain dangers beyond anything any of us have known."

Some things have happened in his time here that can't quite be explained... but his intent isn't to frighten this genial-spirited man, and he's offering a brisk nod, as if to reassure the other that he's safe with him. "If we should find any trouble within this cave, I'll not hesitate to take care of it."

Vampire About Town

[moralabsolutism]

Rorschach had noticed the stranger enter the Community Hall. It wasn't the usual time when new arrivals showed up, so he could only assume this man had been keeping to himself. Maybe he was living on the outskirts of the woods? Or in the woods like Methuselah? (Though he hardly looked like the outdoorsman type.) With how small the town was, Rorschach knew he would have assuredly seen him before now if he'd been among the main population.

"No," he said. This was the man who ate cold beans straight out of a can after all. "But it's not hard to." One couldn't afford to be picky about how that food was prepared in a place where survival was always on the line.

[flanerie]

That's quite a look. Lestat admires the shifting patterns over the strangers' features with fascination that borders on indecent, his hands stilling in their work. But he decides not to begin with commenting on it, largely out of a fit of whimsy. After all, he's certain almost everyone must say something about such a sight, and he hates to be predictable.

"I'm well out of practice, myself," Lestat says, with a diffident little wave of his hand, "It was bread, cheese, and a little wine for me, back in my wilder days - ah, well. Perhaps more than a little wine."

He brightens his smile, showing off a glimpse of even white teeth.

[moralabsolutism]

There was something about the way Lestat looked at him which made Rorschach feel profoundly uncomfortable. He was used to people looking at him because of his face. That was the natural way of things when it was his most striking feature. But there was something about that fascination that made Rorschach think of retreat briefly before he quelled the thought. He wasn't about to turn tail just yet.

"Bread, cheese, and wine? Were you a cultured mouse?" Rorschach said. It was hard to tell with the flat tone of his voice but that was meant to something approaching a joke. In the back of his mind, something noted the rather charming way the man had of looking when he was smiling.

[flanerie]

Lestat laughs, amusement easy and natural.

"Yes," he says, delighted, "Like the country mouse and city mouse - I was a mouse in the country, and found the city more to my tastes."

That isn't quite what the moral of the story is, but Lestat finds the original moral to be rot. Any mouse from the country would do well to make their way to the ripe abundance of the city, where instead of picking over farmers' winter seeds and hazarding their cats, they can nibble at the trash of a hundred drunks a night, so long as they stay clear of poison.

"Isn't that another story? A lion who was a mouse? Or a mouse who thought he was a lion?" He lifts a hand and wavers it side to side. "Something to do with a thorn in the paw."

[moralabsolutism]

"Definitely look more like a city mouse," Rorschach observed. The way this man carried himself and spoke didn't speak of someone rustic at all.

He shook his head at Lestat's horrible butchering of Aesop. "Mixing up two fables. First one mouse is spared by lion from being eaten after saying it will do good deed for him in the future. Lion thinks nothing will come of it. It's the strongest animal in the jungle. The king of beasts needs no help. Then gets trapped in a hunter's net. Can't get out. Mouse hears his cries for help and comes, chews through the net to free him. In other one, slave named Androcles escapes into the forest, finds a lion that won't attack him. Lion has thorn in paw and needs help. Man removes thorn, heals the beast's injury. Lion repays his kindness by bringing him food. Eventually, man is recaptured, sentenced to die in the arena by the emperor. They bring out a lion to kill him. Lion refuses, recognizes the man who was kind to it. When emperor hears why, he frees both Androcles and the lion. Moral of both stories: spare those weaker than you even if kindness is hard and someday they can return the favor owed."

Congratulations to Lestat. That was probably the most Rorschach had spoken to anyone on any subject at length. But then he'd always been a voracious reader and just about everything he read got stuck in his mind. Something, he supposed, that had to do with how little he interacted with other people in reality, allowing his mind to fill in the gaps with fiction.

vamp about town

[solitarysoul]

Levi looks down at the meat. "Um..n-no I can't cook. U-unless you just want to roast that over a fire...but, um, it'd probably be better if someone else does it. I can help you store it?"

There was no power to the refrigerators anymore, but due to the cold they were still basically ice boxes.

[flanerie]

"Levi!" Lestat doesn't have to feign his pleasure at recognizing the solemn young soldier, his remarkably blue eyes brightening as they fasten on Levi's features. "It's been too long - you must catch me up."

Apparently the subject of food can be set aside for a moment to address pleasantries first.

[solitarysoul]

He responds with a small smile, glad the other man recognized him. "Um, well, not that much happens here really. I assume you've noticed the weird tracks and the dead things?"

[flanerie]

Lestat nods, a touch of solemnity colouring his smile.

"One of the reasons I made my way to town," he lies, casually and readily, "The woods are becoming a touch dangerous for my taste."

[solitarysoul]

"There's something new in them. Something dangerous and probably poisonous. Or it just likes killing." Maybe both.

"Its generally safer staying in town...but its not like I can stop anybody from living out there."

ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

[ployboy]

Tim has renounced humanity. He's become beaver.

That's the brand of elevator music serenading him between his ears, anyway. He's slumped over one of the few surviving tables in the Community Hall. He's chewing on a stick.

He's blinking intelligently at the bag of goodies plopped down in front of him, and he wonders if the man even knew he was awake. Because Tim didn't. Tim didn't know he was awake. He has maybe assumed, but the hope had lingered that he would manage to fall asleep. He hadn't. He's awake. He's chewing on a stick, staring at a... meat bag.

Ew?

Tim, with an almighty show of brute strength (not), sits up, removes the stick from his mouth, and tries to pretend like he wasn't just more asleep than awake.

"--uh?"

He never considered veganism until he got stuck doing the Bunny Thing, and the sight of something raw wants to turn his stomach. Treacherous as always, his stomach only growls. Welp. Tim runs a hand through his hair. Says, "Uhm. I'm the one who normally burns the water. I can take you to the kitchen? There's always someone there who knows what they're doing."

And because he can't help himself, "Uh. What is it?"

[flanerie]

Milton is a town with a thriving youth population, it seems. Lestat rarely takes much interest in anyone under the age of thirty, finding them generally underdeveloped even by human standards, but he has been reconsidering this in light of the strict limitations of potential social circles.

This one seems promising enough, at first blush. He's asking useful questions. Lestat favours him with a good-humoured smile, choosing to overlook his peculiar snacking habits for the time being.

He remembers doing much the same, once. A vague impression of youth, stretched out in the woods and nibbling away on something fresh and green.

"It's venison," Lestat tells him, with an air of being pleased by his interest, "I was fortunate enough to bring down a deer, and there's far too much of it for me to eat or preserve for myself, so - a gift for the community I hope to join."

All of this is, technically, true.

[ployboy]

To be entirely fair to Tim, there was minimal spit on the stick. No reason to give it more than a second glance. So somebody please tell him why he slips it into one pocket of his jeans as he makes to stand up; he's so beyond done with nuances of status and lording it, real or perceived, over others. Tim thinks he's done gone past the event horizon, has become the dickhead who can't stand the thought of sitting when someone speaks standing and there's the tug of eternal disappointment that nobody grabbed him by his shoulders, sat his bony ass back down, and hissed oh my god Tim who the fuck cares.

Anyway.

Dude has nice blond hair, gloves and table manners, and apparently some very sharp knives.

"Well, you're in luck," Tim says. There's a hushed remnant of the wish of sleep in there. It's whatever. "Nobody in the community's gotten fed to the abyss yet. And bringing in food is going to buy you immunity from next week's vote. I'd say you're in solid standing already."

On the subject of preservation-- Tim frowns, and it's somehow a shadow different from his usual style of frown. Maybe pensive.

When it comes to food... anything, he is so woefully out of his league.

He straightens up, says, "Come on. We'll find someone who can actually do something with it."

[flanerie]

The look Lestat gives Tim is the quizzically patient one of someone aware they're only half-understanding what's being said to them, but isn't put out by it. Fed to the abyss and immunity to next week's vote include words whose meaning he knows, but their arrangement seems to suggest some cultural touchstone or local event Lestat is unaware of.

Novelty, again. He's heard more interesting new things in the past month of living in the fucking woods than he had in decades on the streets of New Orleans.

"I'm obliged to you twice over," he says, easily, "I've been hideously absent from polite society."

Not that this brisk young man is precisely polite, but he's not rude, either. Bracingly modern, if anything. Lestat falls into step with him readily, whatever direction Tim intends to head, content to leave his bounty in plain sight and unguarded for the time being.

"I take it you've been here for some time?"

[ployboy]

The look Lestat gives him is one of an old man, or some hipster who cut out watching television altogether with the deluded idea that Facebook has better, more ingenious journalistic integrity and writing. It's the writing of people he keeps in touch with, that echo chamber that will never tell him no. Tim brings his good hand up to scrub at his face, and he doesn't care how it looks. For emphasis, he urges, "What, you've never seen Bacherlor in Paradise? You're missing out."

Like he's oblivious to the small things like vocabulary and unearned confidence that what belongs to this man will stay as this man's.

"I've been here... since October? And it's supposed to be December. I've been trying to count the days to keep an actual calendar around, for everyone's sake, so we're not wasting time wonder what day it is or supposed to be," he explains. Patiently. Politely. He shakes his head. "Trying is the keyword. You're new here? I'm Tim, by the way."

Just, y'know, an afterthought.

january event | louis de pointe du lac

[flanerie]

Lestat has tried everything he can think of to banish his phantom.

He's entreated, threatened, cajoled, ignored, appeased, caressed, assaulted, spoken calmly and wildly, covered the mirrors and the windows and his eyes. He's dashed out of his new refuge at the periphery of town to pant, fierce-eyed, in the snow. He's curled up in a stolen bed like a child with the covers drawn over his head.

It lingers still, the presence. As beautiful as the day he died and became more and less than he was. It does nothing, save look at him. He cannot stand it. He cannot be expected to stand it.

His hermit crab house has a porch. It's too bitterly cold for his nearly mortal flesh outdoors, and he sits there all the same, like the old man he never and always is, swaddled in a quilt as he resolutely refuses to perceive the chief occupant of his thoughts.

In a fit of renewed revulsion, he reaches for it. Not with the crude stuff of his hand, but with the ethereal brush of his thoughts.

What do you want? He asks. Only tell me what you want, and you'll have it.

It doesn't answer. He never has. Lestat burrows deeper into his quilt, huddled wretch that he is, and stares out into the black between the distant trees.

cw: deer hunting

[flambeaux]

Lestat? he asks incredulously, forgetting that not once has he communicated with him this way. Lestat spoke at him when he was human, and that advantage he had over him was silenced when he made him his fledgeling. As then, only the wind hears Louis.

He knows Lestat's voice as easily as he knows that he is speaking French. He could not get it out of his head even as he ran from it in those early nights. Lestat's voice lacks the intimate tone with which he draws Louis in. ("Come to me.") He is speaking to another.

Each revelation of Lestat's hidden powers unsettled and enticed him, hinted at the frustratingly hidden greater world of immortals, but this was the devil he knew. The tenuousness of their weakened vampiric nature here causes Louis great nervousness and agitation. The magics of the Northern Territories do not (yet?) have a convenient shape on which to lay the blame.

Louis doesn't want to go back to the broken down hunter's shack where Lestat offered him his neck. After waiting for what seemed like hours near a game trail, he gives in now and spends a precious amount of energy on one preternatural sprint and brings death to a young buck without pleasure or satisfaction. He is accustomed to bringing and storing the meat for bartering, but he is in a hurry to leave the forest now. He heads back into town emptyhanded.

Louis goes very still mid-stride at the edge of the tree line where he emerges into the moonlight. No one merely sits on a porch as if to catch a breeze on a warm summer's night of clinging wisteria and cicadas, yet Lestat's hair is an unmistakable pale flame. Louis is relearning the nature of predators and prey within his new parameters: If he can see him, it is likely he is already seen.

[flanerie]

Lestat would know Louis by the slightest intimation of his shadow, by the crunch of his footfalls in the snow. So much of his time spent following his estranged lover was spent in relearning him with his infuriatingly muted senses. As awful as his dulling has been in all respects, the part he resents most keenly is the pleasures his sensitivities afforded him.

Such as: being able to see Louis' face perfectly, as if it were right in front of him, and not as a charcoal sketched impression in the dark.

He still drinks it in avidly, desperate for the respite. It could almost be enough to make him forget the bitterness between them. How he longs for Louis to comfort him, to soothe his wounded spirit with his presence and his once-gentle words. He sits up in his shroud and pins his gaze to his fairer phantom of better days.

"If you want to stare," he calls out, "There's no need to keep your distance. I won't bite."

Please, his thoughts extend, How I miss you, my inconstant constant.

[flambeaux]

"I wouldn't be so sure."

It spurs him to move at least. He trudges through the thicker snow and over the thinner layer on road worn down only by foot traffic. Most porches he's noticed are of the utilitarian sort, a place to knock mud off boots in the summer months. Many of the buildings don't even have porches, just a jutting interior entryway. Like turtles or igloos. The current climate doesn't encourage hanging around outside.

"The hell you doin' freezin' your ass out here on someone's porch?" he asks as he crunches up the steps. (He's glad of his deerskin boots. He still has all his toes.)

The brusqueness he tries to affect is undercut by the complete absence of it. Any roughness in his voice merely comes out as intimate, as if he just woke groggy in the dark of his coffin nestled close to him. They no longer sleep under the same roof.

"And you don't... You don't need to do that. Don't do that. How? You could never before... only when I was human..."

His hands are already shoved into his pockets, but somehow he manages to do it all over again with hunched shoulders. It's an intrusion. He makes to block him, as Claudia would do to himself when asserting her privacy. He has no idea if it works, but he doesn't want Lestat reading his mind.

[flanerie]

Lestat's eyes widen as Louis approaches, but whether excitement, surprise, or trepidation dictates this motion is muddled by the darkness and Lestat's own changeability. His face is almost always alight with animation, but that often only makes it a more convincing mask.

He knows his renewed mind-gift is not yet disciplined as it should be, but his realization that somehow, it defies one of the only true laws that bind their kind - he doesn't know what to make of it. It stands to reason he would be an exception in this, but not understanding the source of the change troubles him. It does not trouble him more than it fills him with a surge of indefinably powerful longing, so much so that it comes with a rare and fleeting trace of genuine uncertainty.

Perhaps you are human enough again for me to touch you, he thinks, and the thought flies from him unbidden, Or I -

He scowls petulantly, drawing his quilt tighter about himself.

"More decrees of what I am permitted," he says, sourly, "As for what I'm doing - I've taken up lodging here. Assuming, of course, you will allow it."

He's always at his most difficult when he's unsettled. He does not suffer infirmity or insecurity well, and the two combined are almost too much to bear.

"I ran out of seating," he adds, for flair, "This seemed more convenient than hauling furniture into the woods."