taxonomites | [Visual] and [Location: Central] Here I am, an old man in a dry month

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[Visual] and [Location: Central] Here I am, an old man in a dry month

"Hello Taxon." A thing shaped like a man (a heavily-scarred man) is sitting at a cafe in Central, and he greets you all with a whisery hiss. The Sanctuary where everyone arrives is visible over his shoulder.

"The man in the moon, here. The Brucolac, for those who do not yet know me. I've been watching over you all, and have noticed a lot of scurrying about. This has lead me to wonder, to concern myself with you and your well-being. How are you? Are you lost? Adrift? Dissatisfied? Content? Successful? How goes the vampire situation?"

And yes, he delivers that last with a smile, just a small one, and a flicker of his forked tongue.

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Speak of the devil, and soon she appears at your side - in short slip-dress, long cardigan and woollen stockings. Pants are just not on the menu if she can possibly avoid it, apparently; she has indeed brought with her a pile of crosswords and a couple of pens, and the Brucolac is treated to the promised invasion of personal space (by which we mean 'Enfys hugs him hello').

"Temptress," he says, his face so close to her neck, to her breast. He could swim in blood for hours and he'd still be...aware of her, in this way. He will, in fact, have another cup of the warm red now, just to clear the haze.

"Now, what is this crossword business?"

"I am what I am," Enfys says bright like the rainbow in her name, perching on the table and crossing her legs with the expectation that Extras aren't going to tell her what to do and that the Brucolac is at least sort of used to her casual disregard of 'appropriate' by this point.

"It's a word puzzle, see?" Enfys displays the first one to him. "Ten across and thirteen down and all that. Actually, do you read English? Because this could be a pain if you don't, but that's all right, because you speak it, you can just help me. Although I had the best crossword in Latin, used to, it was the nerdiest fucking thing."

"Salt, it's called, where I am from. Oh, I do know this! They have these in the papers, in most cities. Usually full of the names of politicans and actors and such, which ones I will be useless as a tin sheckel to you for, but I can read it well enough."

Conversations that other people can follow are completely useless, obviously.

Unless prevented, Enfys will balance her feet (in ballet flats, not boots, for once) on the Brucolac's knees as she examines her crosswords. Of course, if prevented, she will obediently not try again.

"Those ones are boring," she says, dismissively, "I have books of them that are much better. We used to make up our own."

He tuts and lifts her legs off just long enough to slip her shoes off her feet before replacing them on his knee. Her shoes go onto the ground next to him, dirty soles back on the dirt where they belong.

"We?" He leans over her lap to read the clues.

"Me and my mum, and Da." This isn't one of theirs, it's from one of the books she picked up - it is, nevertheless, more interesting than what you'd usually find in the back of a newspaper.

"I am imagining a seven year old making a crossword while sitting bare-legged on a pile of pants. Your curls are criminally darling." All babies are babies, all toddlers are three, all young children are seven, all older children are twelve, and after that they are lads and then young men and then men and then old men. Substitute 'lass' and 'women' as appropriate, and this is the Brucolac's system for assigning relative age to people.

"And were they also hunters? Twelve across is 'mallard', yes?"

"You're not far wrong," she laughs, instead of saying that her mother is dead and she thinks her father mostly died with her. (She double-checks it and then writes in 'mallard'.) "Da used to be a cop, now he's a farmer."

Rosemary was a housewife, a homemaker, a little bit something wild and now gone.

"They introduced me to all sorts of interesting people."

"There's a farmer theives will think twice about fucking with. I know very little about the world you come from, how it works, how men and not-men coexist. Where I am from, the people who make it their business to run around and kill the likes of me do not use us as footstools and thesauri."

Enfys glances up with an uncharacteristically small and inscrutable smile; behind all the smoke and mirrors there is a still place in her that's so much more dangerous than the relentless energy around it, and his observation earns him a glimpse.

"You're my friend," she tells him, like it's precisely that simple when she knows full fucking well that it isn't. "And I wouldn't judge 'em by me, if I were you. Killing vampires isn't my business, doll, it's a thing sometimes I do because it presents itself as needing done. Here. You think 'I am a vampire and this is a Slayer' and I am thinking 'the Brucolac makes hilarious faces and my name means rainbow'."

"Is that what I think? Cruel woman, here I believed you thought of me as more than a creature." He knows she doesn't, but that was a fascinating little moment, one worth exploring.

"I am thinking that you have lovely toes, and that two down is 'decimated'. And that it is worth checking on what the rules are, in case the impression that there are basically no rules here is an illusion, or in case this is a pleasant opportunity to establish rules of our own. I like having you as a friend, in all the ways that it's possible between us."

"I believe people shouldn't talk to me like I'm supposed to define myself by my work if they don't want to be sassed right back," Enfys says, wiggling her toes (painted, blue, maroon and gold) at him.

She truly thinks of him first as a person and his species second; it's how she operates with everyone. The thing is that it stings to be put in a box with people she doesn't know or really understand, to be given rules she's expected to follow simply by virtue of what she is, and while she responds to this typically by refusing to adhere to any rule she hasn't made up for herself (reality is what you make it, her firmest belief)- the reminder of how much it stings will earn a lash back, smiling while she does it.

(This is how she loses friends, usually, because Enfys is a rainbow made of landmines who isn't really very good at interacting once you get past the initial blur of colour and light and force.)

"I think you should just ask nicely next time, handsome. My only hard and fast rule is that hurting for the sake of hurting is only okay if everybody's into it, all right? I could be a monster; I don't want, so I try not to be, so I try to do everybody else the courtesy of not assuming I know. The rules are don't make me ashamed of being your friend and you're only allowed to touch my arse if I see it coming because otherwise I might break your hand."

...she's kidding.

She's mostly kidding. She's grinning at him, either way.

"I was being perfectly civil," he huffs with a saurian bob of his head," especially considering the term 'slayer' is, for once not applied to me. I'm not holding you at arm's length because of it, but I am curious about it. A person's calling in life is no small part of who they are, including their own interpretation of it."

"But I don't mean to make you - or anyone - regret putting up with me."

"You were being subtle," she points out, as if this is a terrible flaw of his that she is generously tolerating. "You should probably give up on that around me, I just get confused."

Well.

She rolls her toes against his thigh, thinking, fidgety, while she writes in 'decimated'. "The golden rule is 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you', which mostly I think means 'don't be a fuckhead'. Words to live by."

"It is part of my essential nature, dear anemone, but so is finding the right words, once I've found the right person."

But there's more to it than that, just as there's more to her reasoning than a simple reminder of the basics of friendly interaction. Her words etch some of the underlying reasoning onto the complex layers of armour her erratic behavior implies.

"I've got to dart and dodge, you know. I mean, it's no fucking mystery what I am, so it would be laughable for me to try to pass myself off as human anymore, but even when I still had my voice I tried to create a world that would accept me for what I am. Even as a child, a strange boy in a stranger land, I only made my place through charm and persistence. Most people take an inordinate amount of convincing. They lack your discerning sense, and I, unprepared to be so readily discerned, proceed only as best I can on uncertain ground."

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[Visual] and [Location: Central] Here I am, an old man in a dry month

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