taxonomites | [visual / location: don's apartment] (way backdated)

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[visual / location: don's apartment] (way backdated)

It's been a couple days since the attack and her phone call to Don, and Mattie's feeling better physically, but still a little wrung out emotionally. Mostly that manifests in being very quiet and trying convince Don to let her cook meals for him, and a noticeable absence of tiny sternfaces. There's a lot on her mind, however, and one or two questions in particular keep coming up.

So she turns to her tablet, and the Taxon community, for answers. She's curled up against the headboard of Don's bed, wrapped in her father's coat over her nightgown, with a small white gauze bandage on her neck.

"What happens when a vampire bites you? And how are you to tell if you are seeing one?"

[Location for Don, visual or voice as you like for everyone else. Let's say this is backdated to around May 9 so Mattie hasn't been languishing all this time.

ETA: Don may be hovering around and keeping an eye on conversations, expect possible threadjacking. ;)]

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"I find that he is very mistrustful of new things and people." Which she figures is understandable, but nobody ever had a new experience by never trusting anybody.

"I do think there is need for you to hurry." That's Mattie's way of saying 'thank you'.

All that got was a shrug. "A lot of people are. I guess it makes them feel safe." That's what it had been for him for a long time before he learned that he could trust the Collegium and the palace.

"It's no problem. I don't mind a little hurry."

"I will wait in the hall."

When Stefen arrives, he'll find Mattie standing in the hallway outside the apartment, a man's overcoat wrapped over her nightgown and a too-large hat on her head, arms crossed and looking angry.

Sure enough, Stefen arrived a few minutes later, dressed in his Scarlets, leather instrument case slung over his back. She didn't exactly look great, but he'd seen worse. At least she didn't look like she was going to fall over and die anytime soon.

"Are you okay?"

Mattie is a little surprised by the way Stefen is dressed, not because there's something wrong with it in her eyes, it's just very much not what she's used to.

"I am fine." She's mad, is what she is, but that's not Stefen's fault. "Is it all right if we sit on the stairs?"

"That's fine. I don't mind." After all, he'd played in a closet before and at least he had room to stretch out a little on the stairs. It didn't actually escape him why they were sitting on the stairs, but it wasn't be the first time he'd be rejected and it probably wouldn't be the last. He'd have to get used to it sooner or later.

"Just let me know when you're ready."

"I am ready." Mattie assumes if there's something she's supposed to do, Stefen would have told her so. She pulls up her knees to rest her arms on them, and turns a little toward him so she can watch. After all, it's not every day a person gets to have their own private concert.

It didn't take very long at all to remove Rosewood from her case and tune her--not when he had so much practice doing it. So it was only moments later that he was ready, pausing only long enough to think of the song that he wanted to play before he began without any hesitation, concentrating on the Gift, more than the song. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RhVCmMrJkQ) But that was how it always worked, really.

And maybe he was just a little nervous that it wouldn't work here. No one really knew how any Gift worked, let alone his that they'd never seen before. Maybe it really was something back home...

He couldn't be thinking about that right now. He was supposed to be helping someone.

Even if it didn't help with Mattie's pain (and it does, but in a quiet way that she hardly notices), the music is calming and uplifting, something her troubled mind desperately needs. She hasn't heard a bit of music since leaving Yell County, not since the last church service she attended, and even if the words and tune are different from what she's used to, it's closer to familiar than the snippets of things she sometimes hears on the tablets.

She bows her forehead against her knees and just lets herself be quiet for a while, listening.

Eventually, though, it had to end, and as much as he didn't want to, Stefen pulled himself up slowly out of the music and opened his eyes, letting everything die down for a moment, before it all felt mundane enough again that he could spoil the silence with words.

"Any better at all?"

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[visual / location: don's apartment] (way backdated)

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[location] Pretend this is a boy singing, k? K.

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