After the new start for the Council of Neonates

[Christine Daye]

They are taken to the stage door of the theatre, a heavy door with steel reinforcement, and an exceptionally sturdy lock, hidden down a side alley next to the main theatre building.

Christine calmly opens the door with her key, and ushers them in.

"Mind your step. The stagehands are terrible for just leaving things lying around."

She leads them through the maze of corridors that makes up the backstage area. Sure enough, there are random bits of furniture stacked against walls. A bust of Julius Cesar stands next to a tarnished throne, next to a flat depicting a stormy sea.

In a few minutes, they are shown into a room, about the size of an average parlour, but empty of furniture except for some chairs stacked in the corner.

"I apologise - this is not as comfortable as Mrs Jackdaw's parlour. But needs must, as they say. You are welcome to the theatre. Please, make yourselves comfortable."

[Dorian M. Black]

Dorian pauses. He feels oddly dizzy, as they pass through one corridor. Christine ghosts along ahead, her hair like a beacon of colour against the gloom; it triggers a curious montage of memory, all crimson light on black. The painting of the sea arrests him next, with an almost Lawrentian intensity. Dorian swallows and moves past it all, ice knocking along his spine.

"It is immediately comfortable for its lack of past company," Dorian reassures lightly, passing Christine with a brush of his shoulder.

"It's rare you meet someone in this life so mouselike that it becomes a necessity simply to prop their courage up with silence. I have not done it for some time, but that woman seemed close to breaking. Close to a cripple, you might say, or to death. Mayweather would at least charge a fireball. How did someone like Jackdaw wind up with so docile a mate?"

Dorian follows the shadows into the Cerynian's heart, and the merry group disperse into Christine's rehearsal studio. He moves to the stack of chairs, but immediately thinks better of it, and avoids the task entirely - by perusing the place with feigned interest. The valiant Gangrel would sort the seating out. They were a doing people, were Gangrel. Good chaps. Dorian was loathe to divest them of them a job.

George had always wanted a Gangrel. Dorian found himself wanting to provide the Council one, even now, when it was all too late. That always seemed to be how things went.

"I don't think I've ever been inside a studio," he blinks. "In any year. Only ever in the audience, or, when the rare salon I wanted to attend was held in a theatre chamber that might as well have thrown up its upholstery."

"Did you know, Elysium was aptly named for the Elysian Fields - sans fields - it was supposed to mimic, a scheme of the afterlife so beautifully bright it could blind. Vampiric Eden: the Undead drug of choice. Unlike cocaine, not to be sniffed at."

Ink-shadowed walls and the moon a chalky hoof print through the drapes. Dorian walks silently around the room, taking in the echoes of its life, the quizzical little details of the backscene to which Christine was privy. He wondered if Erika was home.

"Pornography, is what someone I used to know called it. Elysium, that is. I suppose the same could be said of theatres, too. A wild pornography of colour and form, all the shameless posturing, the brazen succulence and flaunted curves. 'There's no human word for the undiluted adulation a place like the theatre expects you to dish out, just by being that attractive, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.'" Dorian smiles, and it's oddly bitter.

"It's different from the main hall here," he murmurs. "Quiet, almost. Empty." He looks to Christine, after a long moment. "Do you prefer this, ever, or just the stage?"

From that shameful reverie the scraping of chairs woke him. The sound of it annihilated all the time between the first time he'd stepped into a theatre and now. Dorian had to confess that this one wasn't so tragic as he was mentally painting it. It was modern, even (less glamour than a choke-hold), but had Dorian ever thought that modernity (beyond Science, of course!) would one day provide him relief he'd have torpored himself a while ago.

He clears his throat, returning to his previous subject with vigor. "The Jackdaws are absurd. Marriage has an air of noxious finality. I don't know why anyone would do it except for political necessity. Everyone knows that all marriage brings is unhappiness. Not to mention: Vampires and marriage is so inappropriate a concept that it amounts to a Rylean category mistake."

He's said it before he realises his mistake, and Dorian looks to Christine with a suddenly blank expression.

[LittleBird]

Kira pulls her cloak tighter around her as they edge and skirt along the corridors...yet seeing all the trinkets, the peculiar display that litters the cramped space, she removes her gloves and allows her fingertips to explore.

What roles have you played on stage? What flicker lights drew shadows to change how the world viewed you? Were you serenaded too? Were you a tool to be hurled at another?...or have you always been left in these dark twisting shadows to await the warmth of being needed? Of being wanted for a night?

With such lulling voices ahead, it almost surprises her that they stir her from her current thoughts. She strides ahead to catch up, strides ahead to those familiar melodic tones...knowing each step of her own is harbouring one of a apologetic nature on the tip of her tongue.

A breath. Her tongue reaches the roof of her mouth. That dry click. Ready to speak. A word even. But no. The contents of their words hit her, and she brushes her own fancies away. Her bare hands brush against his shoulder as she edges from the corner of the corridor to the room.

She sweeps it briefly, trying to imagine rehearsals, trying to imagine what new creations were fathomed in this room...but no, her mind is elsewhere with such chatter, and looking down at those leather and lace gloves, clutching them tightly, she feels too bare to speak.

She tilts her head, this talk keeps dragging her from her own thoughts. She's about to return her gloves to her hands yet decides to retrieve a chair from the tower. Trying her best to be quiet as she lays it down. She is about to sit yet the talk of marriage keeps her though.

Her ringlets swing by even as her gesture is stopped mid position. The poised, mysteriously demure and illuminated gazes she has granted all evening melt away...her brows furrow in disagreement, lips open suddenly merely to slow shut themselves away, her eyes gripped more than a moment longer than they should...and with pools of blue so pure that even a speck of light can alter their course, she tears her gaze away with a blink. Her lips reopening, this time with an unscripted and pained sigh. That own sound of hers catching her off guard, her gloves finally are being put on and she leans over the chair, and her fingers tap against it idly, needing a beat to arrange her mind to the here and now.

[Regulus Grey]

Regulus moves slowly through the cluttered hallway, taking in the scents and detritus of the theatre. His brain groups it all together as the detritus of civilisation. He takes a moment to admire the picture before moving on, a faint twitch upwards at the corners of his mouth indicating his appreciation of the work.

But the true beauty lies in the room ahead, graceful and elegant the three predators who have already arrived. Coiled violence ready to be unleashed at the slightest thing, savage and pure. But he could not truly appreciate such tonight, for tonight the veneer of civilisation was still in place.

Stepping into the room, he nods to Dorian and sketches a bow to the ladies. With a few steps he moves to the pile of stacked chairs and rolls up his sleeves to expose the dark grey scales that extend from his wrist up to his elbow. Easily hefting the chairs he sets another six down in a rough circle, all facing towards the centre.

Glancing at Christine, he speaks.

"Is there a table or any such that needs to be brought in Ms Melody?"

[Christine Daye]

This is Christine's place. It's obvious in how she moves, how she hums. She owns this space, wrapping it around herself like a blanket, a costume, a lover.

Here, now, she is no longer manic, but still bright eyed, otherworldly. The dreams and visions, the magic and sweat and blood of the theatre welcome her as their own.

She meets Dorian's gaze with a gentle smile.

"Oh, the stage... the acoustic in here is not so good - it's meant for actors, this room, and they yell something terrible. But the stage when the auditorium is empty... then I can sing for the love of my music... there is a purity in that... just me... and the music... and any ghosts and otherworldly creatures who care to listen."

Another smile at Dorian's comment about marriage, a hummed melody.

...I love my love and well he knows... I love the ground whereon he goes...

Then a slight frown, remembering her parents.

"Not just vampires... mortals too."

She thinks a moment, caught by an idea.

"...my mother's people used to have this thing of marriage 'for a year and a day certain' - and at the end of the time, one or both partners could end it with no stigma attached... it seems very sensible..."

She smiles at another memory.

"...they say Granuaile managed to acquire a very fine castle at the end of such a marriage... to Richard an Iarnán - Richard in Iron..."

Her reverie is broken by Regulus, and she comes back to the present with a blink.

"Oh, thank you, Mr Raven, that is very helpful of you! I don't think that we shall have need of a table, but there is one that can be fetched if we decide we do."

She looks around the room at the others assembled, and tilts her head.

"I am not Mrs Jackdaw to set an agenda, or make formal introductions. Nor will I insult you by telling you what you may or may not do. Please, let the conversation flow!"

[Dorian M. Black]

Dorian closes the curtains. Outside the darkness was loud, now that he listened, with the sound of life's indefatigable plotting. He doesn't want to hear that tonight.

"A year and a day? What an intelligent compromise," he murmurs, more to give himself something to say. There's an odd sensation in his chest, that's hot and tight and deeply unwanted. This whole business of feeling again is starting to bear it's scars.

Once Regulus has put down a chair, Dorian sinks silently into it, with a gracious nod of thanks.

Good old Gangrel.

"Heavier clouds remain, but, for this political interval, we are not doing so badly if we can talk ad rem, no? Victory to that. Lunaris parted three streets back so as to pick up our entertainment. Well. I say entertainment. It's how we have begun passing the absurdity of this year, as we all slip and slide into domain anarchy. If we're not jumping ship, I suppose we're here to stay."

"Eventually, some of us humble neonates decided to bypass the parti pris and get on with the whole process of being depressed. A little ridiculous at first, until you're three rounds in, and then suddenly nothing really matters and the game is great. Even Constance likes it. But she's a terrible player, doesn't understand when you're meant to drink."

"We figured out a cocktail blend that goes down. Human blood and alcohol, very simple. Constance decided to name the game Never Have I Ever."

"We could play it, but we should set up some house rules to withhold certain information. Politically threatening nuggets, nothing too damning. There's no fun if there's no secrets."

"But some of those secrets are amusing. Grey, was it?" He asks, glancing at Regulus. "I dare say this is one way to get to know your companions."

[Regulus Grey]

Regulus scratches his chin, sitting down in one of the chairs he had just fetched down.

"It sounds very interesting, and indeed a good way to break the ice. I shall be happy to play such a game if others are ammenable to it."

He grins, scratching lightly at the grey scales of his forearm.

"I havnt drunk alcohol since my days as a mortal, doing so in this state will be...a facinating experience."

[Christine Daye]

Christine smiles. It's rare that one of her devoted fans hasn't imbibed a glass or two before she meets with them privately after her performances. She knows the taste well - though at much lower concentrations, she'd wager.

(though there might have been forgotten times... in the lost nights... she shrugs mentally... those nights are gone..)

This already sounds like far more fun than Katherine's earnest attempts at politics. Sucking up to the Elders indeed! If it were as easy as that... well...

She gifts Dorian with a mischievous smile.

"That sounds like a most excellent and interesting game. Thank you for suggesting it, Mr Black."

Memory: a dinner game without dinner. The game that changed everything. Hope. Sunlight. Trinity.

She hums a melody, happily, listening carefully for whatever noise Lunaris chooses to make, telling her that he is at the door with the drinks.

...when I was younger I was named... the generation unafraid... for the years to come... be brave...

[LittleBird]

Kira smiles gently, "Who were your mothers people? Did they vary much from your fathers?" she swings her leg from under her cloak and her dress rather intrigued, tis clear it's rather a joy for her, to hear of others family life, "Did they both marry again afterwards? Did they part on good terms? Was there anything else about this year and a day marriage? What name did it go under? How was it performed? Was it for love too...not just for gain?" she catches herself suddenly, her legs stop swinging-she only barely manages to stop herself from crossing her legs in the banned manor-and she looks down, a little sheepishly, "My apologies my dear, it's-" she looks out to the distance with a bright day dreamy haze to her gaze, "It sounds so marvellous, so charmed..."

"'Never have I ever?'" she turns to Dorian shortly after, a tilt of her head, "What is this? Brother, pray tell what are the rules? And not merely these political house rules of which you speak."

[Christine Daye]

Christine blinks at Kira's onslaught of questions. She should have expected it really.

She settles back more comfortably in her chair, addressing Kira.

"Fadó, fadó, a long long time ago, so the story goes, Aengus Óg, God of Love and the Birds, was out walking along the Cliffs of Moher."

Her voice takes on a sing-song quality, the talespinner's tone.

"And he sang, because the day was fair, the wind was in his hair, and his court of birds sang with him. Sweet and merry and clear. Sunlight on dappled water.

"Then another voice joined his song, a woman's voice. Weaving a darker thread, the sound of the implacable sea. And he looked, and he saw her. Clíona the Fair, daughter of Manannan Mac Lir, Lord of the Sea.

"There were many gifted singers in Éire at that time amongst the filidh. But none were better than Clíona. And the God of Love was smitten by his own gift."

She moves her gaze around her audience as she speaks. Kira, Regulus, Dorian, back again to Kira.

"But Clíona was proud, and who would not be with her talents, her parentage? Aengus wooed her for a year and a day, bringing her gifts and delights from far away, singing in praise of her beauty. And sure enough, at then end of that time, they became one. And from that union, a girl child was born. A child of Air and Sea. A songbird to put all others to shame. With hair of flame and skin of cream and lips the colour of wild roses."

Christine smiles softly, her gaze distant, looking to the past, then frowns.

"But so great was their passion, these gods of Air and Sea, that they stirred their very elements to such a fury that the land was laid waste by a storm that raged for seven days and seven nights. And the people cried out to Danu, the Great Mother, pleading for her to intercede.

"And she did. A year and a day, she gave them. A year and a day, then they must part. A year and a day, then they could come together in love once more.

"Time passes differently for those outside the fields of Man. An hour is a year, a century a day. And though Air and Sea are close, they are also apart. But, when a year and a day is past, Clíona and Aengus meet, still kiss, and the sea crashes with winter storms. The winds howl and the waves crash and the lightning splits the sky. And the seafarers stay safe at home, for to interrupt the gods in their passion is death.

"But, oh, the skies, the seas, afterwards are beautiful."

She smiles softly, her eyes dark, otherworldly. No longer looking at the here and now. She hums quietly.

...siúil, siúil, siúil a rúin... siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciuin... siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom...