An Architect calls

[Jean-Jacques]

Jean-Jacques moves to the ill arranged card table on which are a selection of glasses of different sizes and a decanter containing a dark red liquid, he stops and pours a glass and offers it to June

“June zees is ze Brandy of Napoleon, wiz ze blood or ze Engleesh.”

[L .]

"Your pleasure is returned," Aurelia smiles, her expression cool. "Why don't you join us?"

She spikes an amused look to Dukes, her own aura returning with a little of the joy that had been momentarily stripped, as June looked at her. A Brujah with a chip on its shoulder, how unexpectedly dire. Aurelia ignored the competitive rise of her own Beast, who often wanted to fight out a disagreement, reminding herself the reason why her annoyance was completely idiotic.

[JuneTolpuddle]

June grasps the cup and imedetly presses it against her lips, her eyes wide with thanks and gratitude and with a smile she responds "You have no idea how much i needed that"

Turning to Aurellia " i would love too" june tries to continue her smile and behave as she turns back to poor herself more of that wonderfull brandy

[Elder Silver]

Elder Silver only looked the earth-blood-smell one in the eye, showing her contempt for him, before turning and tugging her head again out of the hatchett.

The kitchen presses inward. She could not turn properly, could not stretch or lie down or get comfortable, not that she would have wanted to on this hard-as-street floor. Elder Silver took a heavy iron hoof in a strike against the wall beside the hatchet, and soon the door, knowing that a prison was only as strong as its weakest part. She considered thrashing in greater stress, and then falling still; so that they worry she was dead.

The comfort-hunger scent is on the other side. Her hooves move like pistons, such is her determination to get out. She paused only long enough to lean out of the hatchet and whinny-scream angrily, before launching revenge on the eastern wall to see if it was killable.

There was a new scent in the house; Elder Silver bullrushed the hatchet-wall with an attempt to lunge clear through, her lips drawing back over gleaming dentition that cracked down on open air in warning.

Again Elder Silver returns to the door of the kitchen: when her body met hard wood she made a mental note that doors might not be killable, but they could be breakable. It shuddered, certainly. She debated the merits of rearing first, to provide the extra momentum of her weight. She would not be left here.

[alanwrotethis]

Niketas, eyes widening, clears his throat and speaks out of the side of his mouth to Aurelia.
"My... ummm... ..."
He nods at the emboldened animal.
"Whose turn is it to settle her? Yours or..."
He gulps.

[L .]

"Oh Mother Mary of - for fuck sake, horse."

Aurelia lapses into Spanish, biting off two choice insults before sighing; she lets the gathered tension go, looking tiredly at Dukes. "I will go. But you must rest your strength, for when it is your turn, I will only laugh."

Amusement wars with traiterous affection. "And non, keep that title for now. It is good." She tilts her chin just so - her dark eyes falling half closed above her proud nose - and the flat of Aurelia's tongue presses against the back of her canine. She makes a low hn of laughter, still watching Dukes, before rising in a sweep of black and buckled surcoat, Dukes' clothing from the party still showing beneath her open jacket.

"Here kitty, kitty," she called, pressing an open palm against the kitchen door and halting in front of it. "While they pour drinks, we will dance, neh. Come, you silly sausage. What is wrong? You no like."

[Jean-Jacques]

Jean-Jacques glances briefly at the kitchen, betraying a sense on growing dread, he moves to a pile of books and pulls out a battered tome, brushes off, what looks like mouse droppings and scans through the pages and then raises his eyebrows on finding a certain page.

“Elder Silver, ee might offer ze sing to ‘elp,”

He begins reading from the book

“Wee does Wan hardlee ever do ze tense part of Ze good one meet do? Why een ’alf ’urope do girls pray to God een Lateen, which zey do not understand?”

“Why een antikweetee waz zere never a seological quarrelle, and why were no people ever distinguished by ze name of a sect? ze Egyptians were not called Isiacs or Osiriacs; ze peoples of Syria deed not ’ave ze name of Cybelians. ze Cretans ’ad a particular devotion to Jupiter, and Ver never enteetled Jupiterians. ze ancient Lateens vere veree attached to Saturn; zere vas not a village in Latium called Saturnian: on ze contraree, ze deesciples of ze God of truce takeeng Zere master's teetle, and calleeng zemselves "anointed" like ’im, declared, as soon as zey could, an eternal var on all ze peoples who vere not anointed, and made var among zemselves for fourteen ’undred years, takeeng ze names of Arians, Manicheans, Donatists, Husseetes, Papists, Lutherans, Calvineests. And lastly, Janseneests and the Molineests ’ave ’ad no more poignant mortification zan zat of not haveeng been able to slaughter each ozzer een peetched battle.”

“Whence does Zis come? Why Ees Ze great number of hard-working, innocent men who till Ze land every day of Ze year Zat you may eat all eets fruits, scorned, vilified, oppressed, robbed; and why ees eet zat ze useless and often very wicked man who leeves only by zeir work, and who ees rich onlee through zeir poverty, ees on ze contrary respected, courted, considered? Why ees eet zat, ze fruits of ze earse being so necessaree for ze conservation of men and animals, one yet sees so many years and so many countries where zere ees entire lack of zese fruits? ”

“Why ees ze half of Africa and America covered with poisons? ”

“Why Ees Zere no land where insects are not far Een excess of men?”

“Why does a little whitish, evil-smelling secretion form a being which ‘as hard bones, deseres and soughts? and why do zese beings always persecute each ozzer? ”

“Why does so much evil exeest, seeing zat everysing ees formed by a God whom all seists are agreed een nameeng "good?"

“ Why, since we complain ceaselessly of our Eells, do we spend all our time een increasing zem?”

“ Why, as we are so miserable, have we imagined that not to be Ees a great ill, when it ees clear that eet was not an eell not to be before we were born?”

“ Why and how does one ‘ave dreams dureeng sleep, if one ’as no soul; and how is it that these dreams are always so incoherent, so extravagant, if one ’as a soul?”

“ Why do the stars move from west to east rather than from east to west?”

“ Why do we exist?”

“ why is there anything?”

He bows toward the hatch, replaces the book, pours himself a drink and drains half of it i one gulp

[JuneTolpuddle]

June stairs a Jean-Jacques with a blank exspression and his words glide past her, only breaking to take another sip of her drink. Each sip his words mean less and less till there just meaningless noises.

"exactly" June responds enthusiastically, rasing her cup as he finishes "i'll drink to that" and begins to poor herself another drink, before reclining back into a chair and watching Duke's face for more entertainment

[Elder Silver]

Elder Silver felt panic and anger beat like twin drums against her ribcage, her heart kicking up a palpitation of stress. The more-human herd continued to reek of death and noise and blue and food. Silver continued to crack her wicked hooves into the door, one foreleg at a time, her head thrashing this way and that, left and right, until she could estimate that she was taking the door's frame to the extremist realms of what force it could handle, and still she kicked more.

"Kitty, Kitty."

Not being a fan of gender constructs, Silver was glad of the pet name. As comfort-food one appeared, she could feel the hammering of her heart lessen, and the panic be replaced with a fresh wave of comfort and need. It was the same need she was adjusting to these last two nights.

Elder Silver agreed that any kind of greeting required the acceptance of both parties, but was unsure whether she wanted this reunion with comfort-food to be a greeting or an apology. Preferably an apology with food. Her own opinion of this place had not been considered, when she had been wrongly imprisoned here.

One ear swivels forward, and the Elder's hoof - having risen to take another deadly crack at the door - pauses midair. She can hear comfort-food on the other side, can feel the strange Otherness from her that was absent in all the others except for the hateful one of earth-blood-smell. Without conviction, Elder Silver kicked the door again, only to back up with a startled grunt as comfort-food snarled, somewhere in front of her, and then she hissed, sharply. Human words came, with a pulse of irritation. Elder Silver turned around once in stress, clattering over the floor, unsure now how to placate comfort-food on the door-side.

"What is wrong?" Is asked again, but in a language Elder Silver could not recognise. "Fuck sake, mare." Silver wonders if the more-human is expecting a reply. She has calmed down now, and is staring avidly at the door, both her ears forward and her nostrils wide.

Horses can do anything, or so the saying goes. It seemed like the brainless platitude it was when you lived in a kitchen, but this more-human... if Silver could swing it so that more more-humans liked her, she could well be set for life.

And then comfort-food did something astonishing, just as she had outside earlier, and again the night before: Elder Silver heard horse instead of more-human.

What is wrong, horse?

Another grunt-whinny; Silver responds with a snort of surprise. She makes an inquisitive nicker, and arches her neck in pride, lowering her poll to display to the door that she was receptive to a truce while she heard-out this phenomenon.

I am angry - Elder Silver said, with a deeper noise of stress. I am trapped.

Not for long - comes the confusing response. But the next was better: Calm. Calm. Rest.

The changed more-human scent of her previous human was making noise outside, the long kind that she understood as the human equivalent of dog-song. Elder Silver stood patiently and beckoned comfort-food forward, willing her to open the door.

[L .]

"There is no room for you here," Aurelia sighed from the other side of the door, her hand beginning to tingle on the wood. "You poor creature of darkness."

She debated the merit of sitting down on the ground in front of the door, because that would work - and then the mare could poke her head out of the fucking hatchett and see Aurelia. It wouldn't do her image any good, not with a Toreador in the room, but Aurelia was close to not caring. She found Valentina surprisingly relaxing to be around. For someone as close to Dyonisia as the Envoy, she had expected the girl to be a harpy. Not the good kind, either.

There was the matter of vengeance however. If Aurelia was seen to be having a lousy time of it on the floor, there's no way it would look good.

"Do you have a bucket, Marchaux?" Aurelia murmured, not turning her gaze from the door, her mouth remaining slightly slack as she extended her senses through it, as discreetly as possible. "That I could use."