O.D. 1.10.2000 [12:41 p.m.]

(Christ, I'm just looking at these original dates and thinking how damned often I used to be able to play *grumps* This one is Vittorio with his Priest (I think she was still Ductus back then), Mercedes - the crazy Toreador Antitribu Rachel played. Talk about love/hate relationship.

I just had to leave in a bit of Rach's OOC note at the top...so funny!)

Okay now the bad news...I deleted one of your posts by accident when I was rearranging the C&P to read from top to bottom. I know, I know I suck--could you Re write it...pleeeeease. I'll put in a marker in parentheses so you can see it.

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::The smell of blood fills his nostrils as he approaches the door...opening it. crunch. Crunch..the sound of shattered plates and broken pottering ground beneath his step. She sits there playing with the pieces her blood oozing from the sharp edges..her blood ozzing from the ...wall? He turns his head to the wall that so charges his senses, his thirst Unfortunately (and oddly..) the room is cast only in the dimmest of light. Making sight unusually difficult in the shadows::

Odd, is it indeed, when the shadowtwister seeks the light--but he does now, taking out his lighter and holding the small, sputtering flame to the bloodied and bizarrely decorated wall. For a long moment he only observes this wall, moving the lighter to and fro slowly to bring everything into the light. Then, satisfied that he had seen all, he flips the lighter shut and slides it away, looking down at her playing with the shattered plates. "What do you think you're doing?"

Perfect Gold. The merest of brown dots only amplify it majesty--its oddity. Those eyes. She raises it to him...Her long limbs crouched tightly as long strangs of near black hair tumble about her features..::"Go not to the clan of the rose for advice for they will give no single answer..." ::A proverb..a fucking proverb? not after thier history. but it lay there as the mosaic, artfully done and simple. There was a thin line between insight and insanity...perhaps "la pieta" has danced too long::

((Here it said something he told her to clean

that mess up ... and starting removing the pieces

from the wall--but well you were WAY more eloquent.))

: ::...and so easily an ear crumbles-- Her breath catches in her throat. Very few things bother her..in fact her most frequent comment was known to be "non se importa" Yet she flinches as it crumbles looking as if she were nearly ready to attack.

Scantily clad in the night (day's) attire he can she her well wroung muscles sleek and elongated as they had been in life.::"...I love it when you TRY to give orders...":: But she stared to well into Vittorio..too well indeed..or perhaps past him to someone else::

Eyes smoky-dark as the pits of hell hold hers for endless moments, and then he turns away. Is he unnerved by her odd staring? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. It is always hard to tell for certain with Vittorio...

The tip of his cold finger reaches to touch--almost to caress--the makeshift paste beneath the porcelain, and shadows swim among blood. "This is your blood," he murmurs, and fingers trail over tiny pieces of plates, dishes, bowls meticulously broken and placed. "Your face." Slowly, then, clouds gather and a frown crease his brow. "And yet not your face." He drops his hand and faces her. "What's going on?"

::Secrets within secrets. Lies within lies..and truth is strangled by shadows--or perhaps simply shadowtwisters...she stands so slowly her length simply unfolding before him....Her long hair falling past her shoulders and lower..where does his eyes focus--where does his mind wander. Does he think about the blood--it potent smell so rampant (and how she never allows herself to be fed from)..Her muscles move sinuously under supernaturally smooth skin ..(Does he wonder about her touch which she so often withdraws.) Or perhaps focused man he is..it lingers only to the eyes..siblings, lovers, enemies all.:: "Some creatures haunt dreams...others nightmares..." ::For once her eyes fall to the ground..her ears lingers in the sensation of pain under her feet..the sounds of ripping skin and crackling pottery so subtle..so ripe::

His gaze shifts with hers--down her form to the blood-splattered ground, the shattered remnants of expensive porcelain. Plates, bowls, vases...bodies, minds, souls...God only knows what she destroyed in her crusade to create. "That's enough," he snaps. His fingers begin to tear the mosaic from the wall. "Get out." Blood, blood everywhere, assaulting the senses. "Is this how you wish to be seen, Ductus?" Her labor crashes to the ground in cascades of shimmering tiles, shattering to dust on the hardwood floor. "The madwoman, playing with pottery and blood? Go clean up."

::The mosaic shattered jolts her into a stand still. Dancing the muted flames she stills herself, there staring at him..his thoughts pouing to her like liquid shadows a small smile creeps across her face as her folds her arms across her body cradling herself::.."Pooor Vittorio mio...let me tell you a secret..." ::She steps closer to him now the shifting pottery beneath her tinkling, though she never DOES touch him:: " In quiet you will know beauty, in beauty you will know truth, in truthyou will know love, and in love......." ::A pause..a breath..a feather-tipped whisper:: " you will know quiet.." ::With that She straightenins seemingly exorcized of past demons as strolls out to clean herself up::

He watches her glide away, caught somewhere between scorn and awe. Only when she slips from sight does he turn back to the mosaic--and still, one calm eye, terrible in its melancholy, stares out at him, very nearly alive in the dimness. For a moment he is caught and skewered upon the gaze--one which acknowledges its own destruction, its own destructor, without ever being accusing. He grits his teeth. Accusation he could handle. Accusation was very easy to handle. A laugh, a few derisive words, and a stroke of easy, beautiful violence. But acceptance? Wisdom? Forgiveness?

Snarling, he rips the eye from the wall. The tiles are dust before his fist even opens to drop them to the floor, and shaking the last of it from his hands, he too stalks from the room. By the time the last of the twilight faded from the sky and the rest of the pack awoke, they would be themselves again, elegant and deadly. But this side--the madness, or perhaps the truth beneath the masks--would always linger in the half-light between day and night, dream and death.