vojvode | [oom] A cellar

Rae had gone out a little while ago to watch the sun set, soaking in the last bright rays of the day. She's seen the days getting longer at Milliways though the early spring chill lingers, while her own world inches towards the dark and cold of winter.

She may tell herself that's the only reason she lingers here rather than returning to where she belongs, where she has things left unfinished.

It is a quiet evening. The rats hadn't been frantic with food orders, so Sunshine had chatted with them a bit as she and they measured and mixed and cooked and baked; she'd even got an interesting vinaigrette recipe she wanted to try the next time she took a shift in the coffeehouse's kitchens. A quiet evening gives you a chance to unwind. To relax. Possibly to hum, where your cheerful apprentice can't call you a hypocrite for humming when you so often tell him off for doing so. >_>

The cinnamon rolls and Bitter Chocolate Death and Lemon Lecheries and maple poundcake and jamdandies are ready to be taken out of the oven, though, so she has returned to the warmth and light of the kitchen. She's humming idly as she removes the trays from the ovens, with no more than common skill at carrying a tune and an occasional pause for when she needs to focus more on lifting and balancing the heavy trays. It has the lilting quality of a folksong, familiar and old.

It tells the story of two sisters, the younger bright-haired, the elder dark-haired and both fair of skin, who fell in love with the same mysterious knight. The knight - who refused to remove his armor - was quite taken with the elder, but as the younger was her parents favorite, he was promised to the younger. So the elder sister killed her younger sister by throwing her into the ocean to drown, leaving herself to be wed to the mysterious knight. But, the knight turns out to be a vampire. The end of the song, like any good folktale, is appropriately grisly.

It's a cautionary tale.

(Even if Sunshine knows that the old tales of knights being vampires in disguise are a bunch of hokum. A suit of armor isn't enough to shield a vampire so completely that he'd be unaffected by exposure to the sun.)

He doesn't know the tune, but he knows the tale. Perhaps it is his tale, in some strange way. He lingers in the shadows for a long time, listening to her work, taking in the scents of her wares now cooling on the sideboard. She is a force of nature, in her own way. As relentless in her tasks as the waves eating away at the shore.

He waits until she is through lifting the hot and heavy trays, waits until she's come to a rest against the sinks near the doorway to the cellars. He watches her wiping her hands on the pale cotton cloth, watches her swiping at the beads of sweat on her brow.

When he speaks his voice is low, familiar and there is no hint of his power present. He speaks to her, from just beyond the threshold, and even though his true form is shrouded in darkness, his voice is nothing more than a man speaking to a woman.

"You look well."

And yet the voice causes her to flinch slightly, and the humming stops.

(Probably for the best. Sunshine never liked the ending of the song, even when she was young, and she only grew to like it less as she got older.)

She stops because she knows the voice, even if all it is is a voice right now. Because even without the power behind it, she can feel the presence of a vampire. She can't help but be aware of it, and can't help but turn to face the direction from which the voice came. The shadows are sharpest when the sun is brightest.

"Thanks," she says, after a moment. Even if she's sweaty and smudged with flour and cinnamon, can still feel a couple of grains of sugar that have gotten stuck under a fingernail, and is wearing a dirty (there are smudges of grape, apricot and pear jam, as well as other baking things) apron to protect her t-shirt (peacock green and blue) and jeans (purple).

After another moment where she debates the intelligence of saying this, she says, wryness in her tone, "Though you've left me unable to reply in kind."

She can only see through natural shadow, the kind cast by a source of light, not the darkness in which he shrouds himself.

His tone is gravelled, almost what one might call weary.

"Perhaps, that is for the best. May I -- join you?"

The question seems genuine.

She stares at the darkness-clouded shape in the shadow of the door frame, out in the hall. Rae can feel her eyes and their Dark sight trying to see through it, even if she knows that her ability to see through darkness has nothing to do with her eyes and everything to do with the blood of the doe that Con had given her.

The thoughts going through her head are many, and varied, and possibly arguing with one another.

"Yes."

"Thank you." The darkness thins, like a veil parting, and he steps forward into the light.

The man that crosses the threshold is gaunt, his eye sockets dark and sunken into his cheeks. His hair is long, silver and plaited against his skull and the heavy black woollen robe that hangs from his shoulders seems almost too heavy for him to bear.

His eyes are bright, and he graces her with a smile.

"I heard you singing."

She blinks at his appearance. She's not seen him like this before, and the difference is striking.

But the eyes are the same. (Don't look.)

"I didn't know anyone was listening," she says, slightly embarrassed. She likely wouldn't have been humming had she known anyone was listening.

"You woke me from a dream. I thought you were -- she."

He glances away, as if this other person might be still here somewhere. But no.

He turns back to her, looking into her face with that same intense gaze. One hand rises, and she can see his skin pulled taut over each clearly pronounced knuckle. His nails are more talons, cracked with age. He draws the back of his knuckles down her cheek.

"I can hear you, everywhere."

Rae eyes the talon-like nails as they are so near her face, feels the dry, seemingly fragile skin of the hand against her cheek, and wonders what happened to him. Having been starved for weeks on end, Con had merely looked starved. Powerful still - he'd be fine once he'd had supper - but nothing like this transformation.

"You'll... hopefully forgive me for not knowing whether I'm comfortable with that or not."

She may be thinking of the humming she sometimes does while in the shower. And she may be trying not to think of it.

And after a moment, she adds, hesitantly, "She?"

He looks away again, his gaze unfocused as he moves passed her into the room.

"My lady wife, Elizabeta." It is the most tenderly she has ever heard him speak.

"You have a beautiful voice."

She doesn't reply to the compliment; her attention are on his first words.

They remind her of Con asking her what fairy tales were, when they first met, and how they had surprised and confused her. How she had wondered if he remembered having a childhood, hearing stories, growing up, being human, feeling human emotions of love and hate. And how she had thought, perhaps, that forgetting what had come before would be the only way to live with oneself. After.

The part of Rae reminding her what sort of creature she's feeling pity for is being drowned out.

"What happened to her?" she asks, quiet, hesitant.

He draws a deep breath and lets it out, his head falling to his chin. He stops at the end of the long counter, his weight resting heavily on one hand. His eyes close, and she can see the deep lines of grief etching his face.

"The Sultan -- my enemy. Fired an arrow through the window of her tower, bearing the message that I had been slain in battle. Upon reading this message, she threw herself into the river below."

Sunshine can't say anything to that. She can envision it pretty clearly. Shiva wept, how terrible. The husband off to battle, alive and well -

and doing things Sunshine isn't going to think about

- but his wife hearing news that confirms her every dread, that brings it to a startling clarity of anguish that she takes her own life to be with him, rather than live on without him. And he must have returned from battle, expecting her to greet him, only to find her dead...

"The priests would not allow her to be buried in consecrated earth."

The Church who he had defended his entire life.

He rises to his full height, and she can feel see the talons of his hand gouging long parallel lines in the hardwood of the table top. His eyes are still focused on some distant point.

"It was that day -- that I renounced God."

Hearing this, and seeing the grief on his face - this wound that clearly pierces him to the heart - Rae can't say she blames him for doing it. She's never been one for religion. Wasn't raised in a religious household - having a sorcerer for a father would really kind of kill that possibility.

So she can't imagine having her faith ripped away and turned on her like that, at least not any further than knowing it must have been devastating.

If anything, Rae worships the sun, though she wouldn't call that any sort of belief or religion. It's just who she is. She drinks in the sunlight as much as, if not more than, any plant. She just doesn't have to turn green to do it. She can't imagine the sun being taken away from her and then turned on her.

Yes, she can. But she doesn't want to.

There's a long palpable silence as he simmers and then grows still.

He turns and gives her a long look, his voice quiet again.

"You could have been sisters. Friends. She had a gracious, generous heart, not unlike your own."

"I'm sorry," Rae says, quietly, well aware of the words' inadequacies and regretting them. She watches him, seeing the loss in his look and the sorrow in his voice, and is at a loss.

Someone is in her kitchen and is hurting. And she can't feed him.

Feeding people is what she does, how she identifies herself; good food heals many ills, or at least helps them not hurt so much for a time. Time enough to gather oneself, at least. A tiny light to see by, while one fumbles for matches and candle.

Rae doesn't know if it's worth anything, this gesture that seems to her the only thing she can do, inadequate as it is. A small plate is set down beside the gouges on the counter, holding a cinnamon roll roughly the size of a child's skull, still warm and gooey from baking and with homemade vanilla icing spread upon it.

She knows it may not even be a band-aid for such a horrible wound, but it's all she has.

"I would have been honored to know her."

He looks at the sticky sweet bun, smells the rich spice wafting up on lazy curls of steam. A look of perplexity crosses his features. It has been so long since he tasted anything of the kind. He can't bring himself to think of it as food.

"My dear, you shouldn't have."

He gingerly slides the plate back towards her, not lifting his gaze to meet hers.

"Yeah," Rae says, quietly, not really being able to quell her regretful wince at the cinnamon roll's rejection. "I suppose I shouldn't have."

But she does a lot of things she shouldn't, and she wouldn't be herself if she didn't do those things.

He feels the wince more than sees it, and for some reason it pains him even more than the hunger coursing through his skin.

"You have no reason to show me such kindness. And yet, you have. Please, do not think me ungrateful."

"You're hurting," she says, quietly. "I make good food because people feel better when they have good food. Feeding people is what I do, to help them hurt less." To make the world a little brighter, and the night a little less cold. "It's how I identify myself, as a feeder of people."

"You're no less deserving, no matter what else you've done."

She just can't feed him. It leaves her at a loss for what to do. Now she knows how Con felt, a little, when he despaired over being unable to feed her, his guest, because he kept no human food in his earth-place.

Her words make him turn and lift his gaze to her face.

"You believe I still have the capacity for pain. How strangely reassuring. That one such as yourself could believe such a thing, about me."

He does not loom, does not move into her space, though it is a close thing.

"Yeah, well," she says, looking away, her fingers fidgeting with her apron. "I've been finding out that a lot of what I thought was true actually wasn't, lately."

That vampires may in fact be people, with emotions other than bloodlifelust and relationships with others that extend beyond the traditional one of bloody murder, is just one of them.

A long silence hangs between them. When he speaks, the shadows roil behind him but his voice is free of any compulsion.

"Feed me, Rae."

(Her doe stands at the edge of the wood, her brown-furred back dappled with leaf-shadows and patches of bright sunlight. She lifts her head, acknowledging her oncoming death, accepting it.)

But Rae is human. Or close enough to one.

"I can't," she says quietly, her voice catching. He's already rejected her offering. More than that, she cannot give.

He moves with a preternatural speed, so quickly the eye finds it impossible to follow.

His hand closes around her wrist, his touch as light as a feather. His voice gravels with the effort. He does not have to ask. He is a predator by nature. He could simply reach out and take what he needs. And yet, here he is.

"You just told me, it is what you do. And I am -- hungry."

Her not-quite-human eyesight catches the movement, but that does nothing to help her slow human reflexes react in time. She tries to pull away, but the grip on her wrist, as light as it is, might as well be an iron shackle.

They've been here before.

"I... I can't," Rae shakes her head, barely-restrained panic in her mind and in her eyes. What could she say? She couldn't send him to other patrons of the bar, setting them in his path instead of her. She's seen the results of such meetings on some of her friends' faces and necks, after having unwillingly sated the vampire's thirst.

"You could... you could try the bar."

His brow furrows, at first in anger and then, the expression softens into confusion. He lets her pull away from his grip, fixing his talons back in the wood.

"Have you gone mad?"

Let go, she backs up, putting space between them that she knows only serves to give herself a false sense of safety. She wasn't expecting his advance, only so shortly after her trying to offer him comfort for the loss that obviously still burns.

"Probably," she says, but not because of her suggestion about the bar. Rather, because she's still here in the first place. Rae is only just restraining the urge to rub at her wrist. "I've heard that you can order anything from the Bar, the... counter, since it's magic and serves orders by itself, though I don't know how. I was told you could get anything, apart from weapons and drugs, so maybe..."

"Blood. I require blood. Fresh. I cannot drink from a corpse."

He's staring at the counter top now, his jaw clenching and unclenching.

"And there are those in the main hall who would rather see me dead than dine with me."

"Is it worth a try, though?" she asks, still hesitant to look at him, on the off chance of catching his gaze.

"If... if it doesn't work, if you can't get what you need from the Bar, then fine."

She'll offer.

There is a low rumble in his throat, a savage dark sound that echoes throughout the kitchens. He pushes away from the counter and stalks away from her.

"Humiliation upon humiliation."

"I'm sorry," she says, quickly. It's not what he's used to, she understands that. But she's not going to suggest someone else go in her place, just to save her neck.

And if it works, she wouldn't have to feel that horrible sinking feeling each time she comes across another person who has been bitten; he wouldn't have to worry about Security hounding him as they have been.

And if it doesn't work...

Rae's voice shakes. "I can... I can go get it for you, if you'd rather."

Again he looks up at her, that same unholy fire burning in his eyes. He does not cease his restless pacing, almost as if he is keeping the counter between them.

"That would suit your calling, wouldn't it?" There is a hint of a sneer in his voice, but she might recognise it for the truth, the snarl of a cornered and wounded animal.

"You would leave, and I would wait. And you would come back with the constabulary, believing me weak." Her thoughts feel the dark shadow of his mind like a storm cloud passing in front of the sun.

Uneasy as she is in his presence, Rae has to stop herself from grinding her teeth at his sneer. The dark shadow of his mind takes the smile from her face, her look darkening.

"My calling is giving people food," she says, short.

"Do you really think I'd go on the pretext of getting you sustenance, and bring back Security? Or are you just saying that?" Just saying it because he hurts and feels the need to cause others pain in turn. She knows that feeling. She's on intimate terms with that feeling. "Because I don't like the insinuation that you're making." So soon after she was feeling sorry for him.

"If I brought 'the constabulary' to you at all, it'd be because I figure you could use a square meal, not because I'm selling you out." And like hell is she so delusional as to think him weak.

Just confusing and terrifying and sometimes bloody infuriating.

She is magnificent in her defiance, and he wants so much just to reach out with his mind and bend her to his will. She could be his, fawning on her knees before him, just another lamb for the slaughter. He could have her, body and soul, and just be done with it. There is another long silence as he gazes at her, envisioning this very possibility.

Eventually, the predatory look fades. That is not what he wants.

"Give me your word."

"You have my word," she says, meeting his gaze and not looking away.

Forgive her if she'd rather not have to sign in blood, thanks.

He revels in the directness of her gaze, drawing himself up to his full height. His chin dips in a stately gesture, a concession of a sort.

"Go then. I shall be here when you return."

Like some sort of tamed beast, waiting for his mistress. Bound again by the rules of hospitality. Pathetic.

[oom] A cellar

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