taxonomites | 01 [holo] A different kind of fairy*

Entry tags:

01 [holo] A different kind of fairy*

It is true that the Arrival room has seen many a variation on the theme of first impressions and abduction. It is also true that, while some are more polite than others, or more eloquent, it is a rarer sight to see such calm, seeming indifference. There stands a tall man in the Arrival Room, silent and unmoving like a lone tree atop a hill. In the stark lights of the apparatus mounted to the ceiling, his long hair falls like a stark white curtain fading into vivid yellow: it is a gossamer veil, he the monster done up in fancy robes. Its eyes are a vivid yellow, though this might take a closer look for how dark the skin around them is. Otherwise it is of a pale complexion, nearly waxen, and adorned in what appears to be deliberate scarring. One such scar curves from one high cheekbone to the next, undulating across the bridge of nose. More scars run in vertical slashes down his forehead, though whether those are of ritual origin or war is less apparent. The circular markings on each side of his forehead strike a different chord: like ripples on still water, and partially hidden by his hairline. His robes are formal, sumptuous and striking: dark, slick fabrics meeting subtle details (is it armour or simply militaristic, of a stereotypically Western origin, or perhaps Asian? Is that an obi adorned with a metal emblem? A hakama?), offset by a dark metallic seal at the front of his broad belt. There are no weapons - at least no visible ones - but one might just get the impression not to get in his way. Don't wake the sleeping bear, as they say. Don't provoke a wounded beast.

But, no. His posture belongs to something other than a beast. He is royalty. He is sprung from the Father Tree, bearing the royal scars of his clan. Royal marks, not sprung from ritual or fashion.

He who walks a different path shall find himself in strange lands. It was simply a matter of time before he stumbled into the unknown. Having just sent the last of the forest gods to its demise, it seems only fair he too should be sent somewhere without consent. An eye for an eye, one sole surviving warrior for another.

Ever shadowed, yellow eyes look out, assessing its surroundings like a cat in unfamiliar territory. The head, with its vaguely High German features, tilts this way and that way. Dark lips part, revealing teeth that seem too sharp to belong to such a face (or perhaps not sharp enough). The pointed tips of his ears lift (perhaps difficult to spot, with so little contrast between skin and hair), and he walks through the open door.

He calls out to a small group of meandering non-humans (Extras of a brand new variety, as it just so happens). He barely raises his voice, in near perfect, if somewhat dated Gaelic. And by dated, we mean ancient and oddly evolved. "[I am Nuada Silverlance, crowned prince of Bethmoora.]" A brief pause follows as he slows to a stop, taking in his surroundings. The people gathered there, in what appears to be a museum idolizing the macabre, are of little help. In fact, very little help other than hesitant, too polite smiles and looks his way. A small, wry smirk turns the corners of his lips. "Entschuldigen Sie bitte...?" No?

"Je suis Nuada Lance d'Argent, fils unique du Roi Balor; prince royal de Bethmoora. Je vous en prie." He inclines his head in the faintest hint of a bow, watching these unorthodox, foreign-looking fae with barely there intrigue.

One of the Extras, visible in the very peripheral edge of the hologram (a blue-faced girl of reptilian features and colourful scales instead of hair), gathers a bit of cheerful posit-tu-itiveness, and dares tread closer.

"I'm sorry. No sprechen European. You speak Standard?"

The look on New Guy's face can be summed up with one word: perplexity. Long-suffering perplexity, no less.

"English," he says, chin lifting ever so slightly. Strange how such minute a movement would look so menacing. English, the standard of language? "How very pedestrian of you."

---
* Different indeed.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Piercing leonine eyes turn towards the voice, and the man himself changes direction. He comes to a stop, giving a slight inclination of the head. Courtesies exchanged betwixt one humanoid and another, and so on and so forth.

"Information, sir. I'll want anything you can give me regarding this place and its history and notable inhabitants."

Long gives his visitor a measured blink, taking in his bearing and appearance with no sign of surprise.

"I should be happy to, but it might take some time to tell you all that. Would you care for tea?"

Care for it? Not in particular, but generosity towards the kind folk needs some token acknowledgement. "Please," he says.

"I was hoping for records of some variation, preferably in writing. I take it the letter of welcome didn't exaggerate matters?"

Long nods affably, and sets to turning on his little hot plate, fussing with the selection of teas he has acquired now. Two cups.

"Exaggerate? Hardly. Perhaps understated, in some things." Long taps his strange fingers against his chin, wondering if there is anything he ought to attempt to update in that letter. Of course, simply because he updates the letter is no guarantee their captors will use his updated version.

"In history: the city appears to have been in existence for at least, hm, four years? Our records are all originally word-of-mouth, you see: asking the oldest current resident (who would be Glitch) who the longest resident before him was, and so forth. We have tried to record things, some of us, but given the frequent departures it is often an exercise in seeming futility."

The effort of that explanation causes Long to yawn, which he doesn't bother to stifle. He keeps the library warm. The warmth, accordingly, makes him drowsy.

Wordlessly, he holds out the basket of teabags for this individual to choose from.

Long fingers reach in, moving like a fish through water, searching through the different blends - mostly green, which isn't normally his preference, some white, some herbal - there. The flattened fingertips, calloused and worn for never having shied away from hard work, snatch up one of the teabags for a barely there sniff.

Gunpowder, roasted, formosa, yes...he remembers this variation. "You have a good selection, Mayland Long," he says in quiet tones of vague approval.

The yawn doesn't go unnoticed, merely without comment, and as for the rest, "Frequent departure. More frequent than death in the mundane world? I don't see how that would be a problem."

Nuada's choice of tea pleases Long, because the tea is oolong, and the private joke of it makes him smile to himself, eyes crinkling at the corners, though this could be taken as mere response to the compliment.

"I am afraid I must thank our captors for some of it," is Long's phlegmatic reply. He plucks out a bag of lapsang souchong for himself.

"More frequent in our proportion of residents, yes. In a town of five thousand, I suppose someone dying every few weeks or month would be no great impediment to a contiguous record; in a group of twenty or so inhabitants, that frequency is rather more disruptive."

He doesn't offer sugar or milk-- not with Chinese tea, no, sacrilege-- although he can supply them if they are asked for.

"Would you care for a chair?"

Ah, emotes Nuada's arced brow; he sets his eyes on the subhumans going about their quiet business in the background, while Long's deep murmur of a voice churns at the back of his mind. Twenty or so inhabitants. He saw to the death of three times that number and more not even five hours past. Twenty inhabitants, indeed. By that count, his kith and kin ought have majority in the populace at large. Already, out of three encounters, counting himself, that makes one human to every three other.

Yes. He can work with those numbers. Teach the monsters a lesson they might understand.

"Yes, please," he says in response to the query, turning his attention back to his genteel host. Come to think of it, it would do him some good to rest his feet. Tonight he'll set his mind to the bracelet and the tablet, but for now: tea, and a chair, and the gathering of relevant information. When a cup is offered him, he takes it by the rim between thumb and forefinger, asking for nothing else.

"I don't mean to be uncouth, but your letter as well as yourself seem to suggest there is no growth to the population. Am I to infer I am in the company of twenty-odd captives, all of whom are happily celibate?"

How very refreshing, his tone of voice might suggest.

If he were privy to Nuada's musings, Long would be both disheartened and aggrieved. Clearly, all his fine talk of peacefulness in his guide is quite wasted. But he's not, of course; so Long merely hands tea over and takes his own cup in hand as well.

He adopts a half-lotus position in his chair, long fingers wrapped around the hot china, face lowered to the steam and eyes half-closing.

At Nuada's question, his eyes flick back to the other's face in startlement, and amusement. He laughs, white teeth flashing in the dark face, then settles into a smile instead, with his spine molded to the chair and his eyes still dancing somewhat.

"I can certainly think of some who are not celibate," is his dry, amused answer. "But not of such natures that their, ah, conjugal relations will produce children."

The vampires, as far as he knows, are infertile; and certainly Glitch and Bagoas shall not be producing any children, nor Mr. Cain and his paramour, nor anyone else he can think of in the city that he knows to be dallying. He scratches thoughtfully at his ear, running a mental inventory on the women of Taxon.

"People come and go, as mentioned," is his eventual, semi-tactful answer to this. "Not that many people here are here past periods of nine months, honestly."

When Long lets loose his amusement, it brings out a tempered counterpart on the elf's blackened lips. He smiles, teeth bared and pleased that his observation rendered such a response. In diplomacy, like so many other things, it is nearly always good to bring surprise to the table. Nuada sits like one might imagine a general of old, with knees wide apart and his booted feet set firmly to the ground. In his left hand, the cup, held by the rim rather than around the curved sides.

So he smiles, and lifts the rim to his mouth like an oyster. He sips, holding the hot tea in his mouth for a moment, letting it remind him of smoke and fire and hard work. He can nearly taste the earth in it, roaring and wild like a furnace.

"I see," he says, and what else needs to be said. He can fill in the details of the bigger picture as it please him. No offspring, good. He'd rather not hurt children, nor would he want to, but a lesser man might take advantage. They would make good leverage, were they even a factor.

"I take you to be an exception, sir. Are there others like yourself here? Others who have stayed on?"

Edited (aaaargh okay, done now) 2013-02-22 15:03 (UTC)

"Some of us are what you might call veterans, yes," Long answers equably. "Glitch. Mr. Cain. Mr. Smecker.

"There are others who have been here some time, but those three have all been here longer than myself, and I am, hmmn, past the two-year mark now."

Two years. When one is master of oneself, two years amount to nothing. Days come and go, nights do the same, until everything passes by in a blur of predictable patterns of motivation and chance. But in a jail cell, faced with the same inmates every single day, year on end (well, is it really so different? A microcosm within a macrocosm? But here, where, as Long says, the number of inmates stay relatively consistent, yet the fatality rate is so much higher.

"Longer than two years?" He says, solely for the sake of conversation; drains another third of his cup, balancing neatly at the edge of long, waxy white fingers. "What can you tell me of these men?"

Long answers: dutifully, courteously, treating all newcomers with the same courtesy by and large and little suspecting the darker thoughts that flit beneath Nuada's pale surface.

He tells Nuada of Glitch, much as he will tell Horst: an inventor, a genius, a man of nobility and artistic quality in Long's estimation. There is no mention of the zipper, because Long does not consider it germane to the discussion of Glitch-his-friend.

Wyatt Cain is also elaborated upon: a colleague of Glitch's, a man of the law who has some acquaintance with prison confinement. Of Paul Smecker, Long knows least-- an intelligent-enough fellow, a man of the law as well as far as Long knows.

When Nuada meets Glitch in the later course of the day, he'll think back on this conversation and know Long spoke the truth as he knows it. What more can anyone ask, when in the middle of the ongoing, dreary scheming that all men do.

Now he considers the men, taking care to remember their names; and drains the last third of his tea. He can work with this information. Yes, he certainly can.

"I'll keep you no longer, Mr Long," he says with a measure of finality few Taxon residents have possessed in the past. "Thank you for your generosity; you've been most kind to suffer my interrogation. You won't mind if I have a look?" He gestures towards the rows upon rows of bookshelves.

"Not at all, I am always glad to help newcomers acclimate," Long demurs. "And please. That is why they are here."

One long hand gestures towards the endless books. Long collects his teacup again, and lets Nuada go explore the library.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

01 [holo] A different kind of fairy*

[location: library]

[location: library]

[location: library]

[location: library]

[location: library]

[location: library]

[location: library]

[location: library]

[location: library]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject