singillatim | (no subject)

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?”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"An all too common tragedy," Lestat murmurs, deferentially, with a half-step back done so lightly and cleanly it hardly looks like a retreat. The illusion of space and a boundary respected, the city mouse cowed by the aggression of the rat-terrier.

"You've caught out my true reason for making my way into town," he confesses, as if it embarrasses him slightly. "Without regular companionship, I become intolerable. To myself, to others," he shrugs, a particular grace to it cultivated on a more civilized continent "To even the beasts of the woods, I imagine. Pity the poor rabbits."

Pity him, the nobly lonely exile, who only wishes to assuage his isolation with even one of Rorschach's dire demeanour. A man who would be friends with anyone, no matter how difficult, if they'd only consent to bear his company.

Lestat knew just what to say and do to keep Rorschach from fleeing the encounter. He'd never been good at this sort of thing, the everyday chit-chat people went through, and that fact was all too clear at moments like this. He was far more at home in a barroom brawl than talking with this suave stranger.

"Rabbits dead or alive preferable to some people here. Have the same IQ as lagomorphs." Rorschach clearly did not hold his fellow man in very high esteem. He had no patience for both the general stupidity some people possessed and those that acted like they knew everything on the other end of the spectrum.

Still, Rorschach stuck close to the town, preferring to be within arm's reach if someone needed him instead of fucking off to live in the middle of the woods like Methuselah or this weirdo. If Rorschach became completely detached from humanity, at least moreso than he already was, it would have only left him worse off than before. Having a connection however tenuous to the other Interlopers helped to keep him stable and sane.

Lestat laughs at that, a genuinely delighted bubble of wicked conspiratorial surprise he barely restrains to the muted level he believes best appeals to his easily ruffled new companion. Such wonderful misanthropy.

"I don't know if I should be flattered or insulted," he says, honestly, while withholding that either would please him, "I'm not sure if you mean to include or exclude me from that category."

He would imagine 'include', at this moment. That would typically rankle him. He doesn't like to be thought of as stupid. It's only that he suspects that Rorschach might be quite generous with his ladling out of intellectual scorn - and that, of course, Lestat will be able to convince him of his cleverness in time. A few conversations over sufficiently dense books, and there will be no doubt that he'll be received as a peer in that regard.

Rorschach looked at Lestat with an appraising air, trying to see if he could figure out what made the man tick. If only everyone was so easy to read as the face of a watch. "Depends on how brainless you are. Not sure if yours is larger or smaller than a walnut yet." He wasn't even joking either. Lestat seemed alright, if a bit needy and eccentric, but Rorschach was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Everyone showed their true colors eventually.

Still, Lestat hadn't started bugging the shit out of him the way others in the town had and seemed to know when to back off after pushing, so he got points for that. It was one of the main reasons Rorschach was still talking to him. When he disliked people, he wasn't shy in making that known.

"You don't mince your words," Lestat says, approval evident, "I admit, I haven't been spoken to so directly in years."

Strictly speaking untrue, but he is discounting the insults levelled against him in domestic squabbles. He means spoken to this way by a stranger, not a friend or enemy. Someone with no claim to any intimacy that would permit such forwardness. And, of course, he does not count his prey, whose words mean nothing at all.

No. This is different, he decides. He has no interest in sinking his teeth into Rorschach until he's had his fill of his peculiarities first.

"It's bracing," he declares, "But I fear indulging too much might test your patience further, when you've already been so generous with the sharing of your time. Perhaps I should turn myself back to practicalities."

He gestures at his gift of venison: "You're right. How difficult could it be to char some meat? Housewives do it every meal time."

Rorschach couldn't deny that. He was blunt often to the point of rudeness. One half of it was his lack of social skills and genuinely him just not knowing how to talk to people in a polite manner. The other half was quite deliberate. He wanted to see how far he could push people, pressing down on their buttons until they ultimately got sick of his bullshit and wrote him off.

So far, he hadn't seen that from Lestat, which was an unexpected reaction. He'd thought someone this foppish wouldn't find his company interesting or entertaining at all. Apparently, he'd guessed that one wrong.

He withdrew a little when Lestat pointed out he still had a fair amount of meat to cook up. "Just don't burn down the kitchen." He was serious. They only had the one central cooking area for the entire Community Center and if someone did something stupid it might literally go up in flames.

"Oh, I'm quite careful with fire, I assure you," Lestat says, laughing at his own private joke. It also happens to be true. He has an abiding respect for the destructive power of one of the few things as rapaciously hungry as he is.

"Enjoy your peaceful evening, Mister Rorschach." The implication of solitude in that peace is, he thinks, quite deftly implied. It pairs with the evident sincerity of the wish, and that also even happens to be true. He rarely wishes ill on anyone who hasn't done some thing to deserve it, even if it happens that so many people have done so much to deserve the small and large misfortunes of life that befall them.

He imagines Rorschach might count him as one of those misfortunes. The idea tickles him. Despite the lack of culinary instruction, he'll mark this as an encounter carried off with his typical level of success.

And Louis thinks he isn't charming.