Trying to Get Home

[Valentina Audley]

Calm before the storm wasn't the best thought, but... all things considered, that could probably have gone a lot worse.

She doesn't have words to reply to him, doesn't think words are the wisest thing to even try right now so instead she stands and curtseys to him, pausing at the lowest point for a moment, then calmly reseating herself. Her aura has settled a little, into a calm watchfulness.

((Still in Brythonic))

"I should be delighted to repay the debt I owe you Elder Keane." She smiles intrigued at the thought of sewing, her interest on the package. Then a thought strikes her and she deflates a little.

"Though, this will mean that whilst I will of course, ensure your introductions into Bristol, I will not be free to show you around." She says gently. She's hopes he'll understand that subtext. She doesn't feel like explaining that she's hoping Dyo will let an Elder Malkavian help her explore her own psyche to Uriah.

[Posh-Tim]

Keane visibly sinks in on himself.
"Oh, of course, I understand."
He puts the damp package besides the sofa next to him.
"Well, I think having a guide in the city would be of more use to me. Perhaps next month then." He smiles a little weakly and returns to fiddling with the beads in his hair.
Hopefully Grace wouldn't be too long and someone else could be the main focus again.

[Andross Blint]

Ah yes, poor Jean-Jacques, unreleased as he may be, it would be a little unfair to leave him completely unawares. Of course with how he's been, he may not have noticed the conersation occurring anyhow.

-In English-
"Bare the discussions no mind Jean-Jacques, it has merely been talks of private guided introductions in Bristol."

No need to mention the who, and suggesting a romantic interest to the people involved would probably not be in good taste in front of Uriah.

"If perhaps talks could continue in the common tongue when you are able Ancillae Audley, it would perhaps be to all our benefit. My understanding is that the language is still quite the rare knowledge, and despite its seeming commonness in this room, it may be better for those of us of a younger nature to not be speaking it on the chance someone were to walk in."

Andross looks directly to Uriah

"If i may be permitted to ask Prince, now that the Rose War has been settled, and the inmediate concern over last night's late visitor" he makes obvious efforts to not say Vortigern for Valentina's sake "seemingly passed for the time, with his joining the Camarilla, is there any large issue that you believe we should be aware of and concerning ourselves with?"

[Jean-Jacques]

[. . .]

He'd always thought of dates as pins holding down the past, which would otherwise drift and lose its shape. Then there were the constellations: pins holding up space's invisible blueprint.

Time was more or less what it had been before, seconds, minutes. Happening in real time. Just without his body in it. It was not astral. And there were distractions. The cobbled road, flanked by hedgerows, glistened in the rain. The cottage doorway was arched beneath a froth of pink rhodedendrons. The Brujah, he noticed, with mild incredulity at the pace of their thoughts, were further out, unidentical rosettes of light in the dark. They were arguing.

He moved along the ivy as it climbed the walls.

Amputees, he'd recently read, 'felt' things in the missing or phantom limb - ghost sensations, little mimicries of life. For centuries, he'd felt like a radical amputee. No body, but a maddening imposture of sensation. Before the fall he'd had an image of himself standing with his back to the edge of a sheer drop into blackness, emptiness you could feel, cold gravity, the horror-personality of nothingness.

His thoughts moved into the cottage, effortlessly now, as in flying dreams, but it wasn't in him to do otherwise. What was will and what was seduction he couldn't keep clear. The desire, always, was to stretch out, to flex, to exist in a place beyond his own body's walls. Too much time without meant too much time now when in.

The souls inside the cottage were bright and active and charged in the air's splitstream. Collectively they gave him what would have been a pre-thunderstorm tenderness. He heard Andross' neutral observation, that he was: '- seemingly passed for the time, with his joining the Camarilla -' and thought to smile. The kids delivered jewels like that all the time.

Inside fully now. The Tremere was in another room. He passed by him, then into Valentina's mind, her thoughts quicksilver and elegant, amorphous but for a year ago. She was beginning to take recognisable shape to him, following the incident with the mirror. And then there was Keane, the black tang of the old earth still fresh under his metaphorical nails. To them both he provided an extended image, into their mind's eye: of rolling verdant hills below the valley, the midsummer night a memory, deep in the tribe lands. They were each lazing contentedly in their own minds, bellies down on the grass or on their backs, stars clambering over them, the night air full of crickets and the moon bright above them, huge and luminous. He pulled Andross' mind into the picture - basking and stretching. The hoot of an owl, a distant fox, the wind, the whirls and knots of the nearby tree - all of them had their own souls and voices; they spoke their minds, and they understood them. The world was an extension of their home, a larger labyrinth, but essentially possessed of the same security and warmth.

The druid was focussed, jittery, still high off the previous night but sobering with the company; he calmed this. To Valentina he simply pressed a touch, inward to her temple. Finally there was Jean Jaques, whose own thoughts remained emphatically available. He felt tenderness again, at this, but fast darkened by amusement. He gifted the Childe a flash: a broken mirror, and through it, the glimpse of what had been shown to him that night, beyond the Lie.

Finally Uriah, his aura sending little heraldic doodles through the air. He focussed on it. In a beat - the soul becomes a body. Extraordinary: the tangle of blood vessels, the weight of bone and skin, a graveyard of nerves. As a child Ammiel had found a dead rat in her barrow. She'd put a stick in its mouth and prised it open. When it snapped shut, the teeth had made a little tick, striking each other. That, more than anything to some, confirmed its deadness. He'd thought of that when he'd found her ashes.

For those in the room there was a type of tinnitus around the items, generally, and in the air. A disturbance began to impinge like the sound of a housefly. Then total silence.

Past Uriah's mind he skimmed, on the wings of the same memory-gift: the meadow behind them shimmers like another world. The raw skies and glittering forest into the past made itself known in whisper, as if in greeting.

'Beannachtaí Danú ort,' they said.

But this last only to Uriah:

'It is time.'

[Jean-Jacques]

Jean-Jacques eyes seem to focus on some detail, unseen in the room, his aura is suddenly a prismatic array of colour

[Uriah]

Uriah had been relaxed, enjoying the general atmosphere of nervous kindred and looking forward to the return of the Brujah. Then his mind is brushed. It takes moments barely moments but his aura turns to a static. Frayed lines and a brief but intense red. Physically he does not react and as fast as it happened his aura is returned to the gently thrown sigils. He casually glances at Jean-Jacques. Eyes lingering for a moment, suspicions confirmed. In the same calm and confident manner he had held the evening thus far, he turns and smiles at Andross.
"No doubt, Ancilla Andross, there are a great many things I could caution you upon. Were we to have the time at least. But rest assured, as always, the camarilla is there to protect and you should not be concerned with any such great threats for the time being. Now," He stands and sweeps his arm in a gesture to include all in the room, just fractionally too exaggerated.
"I fear I must beg my leave for the time being. There are matters I must attend. Ancilla Blint, please inform your Primogen I will speak with her at my leasure. Valentina, I will see you hence to travel. Good evening to each of you."
With that, he flashes each of them a steely blue gaze and steps deliberately to the master suite of the Tavern.

[Valentina Audley]

Valentina's eyes flutter shut for a moment, as the vision takes her, her aura calming peacefully as she enjoys the scene.

But Uriah's presence doesn't allow her to fully relax, her lover's lover keeping her watchful even as she feels Vortigern's touch (how she can say it's his she doesn't know, but she knows it beyond doubt, confirmed by his greeting). So her eyes open swiftly, just in time to see Uriah's aura fade from red.

She smiles at him softly as he takes his leave, her gaze repsectfully lowered and noting his familiar use of her name again, with interest.

"Yes your Highness." She says politely, curtseyings as he leaves the room, pausing until he's out of sight before sinking back into her seat.

Wasn't that interesting.... He'd called Vortigern friend, when he'd spoken with her at the last Reading Meet. And now, here he was, running away... Her smile turns thoughtful and she taps a finger against her lips for a moment.

"Greetings Lord" She murmurs softly after a moment. She then smiles around the room, relaxing back into the sofa in a way she hadn't all the time Uriah had been present.

"So... What shall we speak on now?" She asks the room at large, her aura flaring with curiosity.

[Andross Blint]

The scene is a blissful treasure after, the weather outside and the rampant nature of the prior kindred meeting. A peace that relaxes Andross off the careful perch he has been keeping himself on whilst talking so far.

-spoken in Ancient Brythonic-
"Blessings upon you Elder...."

As Uriah makes his speech and sudden retirement to a seemingly sudden new interest.

-spoken in English-
"As always, the details shall be passed on and Primogen Granville informed. Thank you for your time Elder."

A moment passes as the room settles.

"Are there any matters in particular you wished to discuss Ancillae Audley? We are a more limited, but private audience currently...."

[Jean-Jacques]

Jean-Jacques aura, a kaleidoscope of colour, moves like grass accepted the breeze, eddys forming and dissipating. Eddys seeming reverse and rise like cones from the plateau, culminating in a firework wheeling off into the rainbow sky.

Then as quickly as it surfaced, the colours fade, and merely lap, subconsciously at the fringes of a grey aura.

jean-Jacques turns from his focus elsewhere and looks at Keane, Andross, and finally it rests on Valentina, he sits back in his chair, his eyes forming a casual glance after first meeting each pair of eyes.