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 Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2016 7:59 pm
Ezra: 25/25, not giving out all his infos Ezra shakes his head. "That's up to you," he says. "And what you wish to become."
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Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2016 8:04 pm
alois scholz || 25/25 || good enough 4 me What I wish to become… I wonder if it’s a binary or an actual, open choice.
Alois dropped his hands, and the mask found its way into the back of his sarong again. „I understand. Ze wine is for you, by ze way.“ He looked to July, to September, to Ezra. „Sank you, Father. Now, I haf’ a mask to return to someone. Unless you need me for somesing else?“
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Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2016 8:07 pm
Autumn Smith 20/25, contemplating
Autumn kept her distance from the Lady Spinel and her husband or ******** they were, keeping an eye out for Jeremiah or Zac or anyone she knew. There was information to be shared, and she was damn well going to get it to them. ...If she could find them, anyway. Her hand ran over her purse, three masks in tow, and she sighed.
When was moonset, anyway?
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Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2016 8:23 pm
alois scholz || 25/25 || being that angry 90s grunge child “Back in a bit,“ Alois offered by way of parting. In a quick sleight of hand, Alois slipped one of the two cigarettes Rabit forked over to catch a light off Ezra’s knee. Quickly he spun the cigarette between fingers and closed his fist about it, hoping his father either didn’t catch the motion or didn’t care enough to reprimand him for it.
You should be happy enough I didn’t don a mask and ******** up the game, Old Man. I have a habit of party pooping to stay ahead.
Alois stepped down from the front of the black halls and started into the sparse crowd again. His heart shuddered in his chest, and his mouth felt dry. He was exhausted, he considered at last. All and all he drank the wine here, never once thinking about the level of dehydration he must’ve been going through. He knew he pissed a minimum of four times since coming here, and the hour was still young. He needed to sit, perhaps to sleep, perhaps to recover himself just enough for these trials that lay ahead. At once he glanced back toward his father, half-turning in his step, and he checked one of the otherworldly patrons on her way to the dancing flat. He apologized, but she only chittered at him and left on grasshopper legs.
When he turned back, he spotted Autumn further toward the beginning of the black halls with maximum space between her and the three at the head of the area. He approached her begrudgingly, and pulled the mask from the small of his back.
„Here,“ he offered, shoving the gilded butterfly into her sternum. „I won’t be needing it. I’f resigned myself to eternal slavery zis evening.“ Finally he procured his cigarette from his fist, tapped the length of ash off and took a drag. Smoke whisked by his cheek as he started to pace, and approached the overburdened shadows hung over the windows.
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Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2016 8:33 pm
Autumn Smith 20/25, done with your s**t "Slav- you really think that's what I was talking about?" Autumn asked, narrowing her eyes in disgust. Her fists clenched a few times at her sides as she regarded him, trying to work Alois out. Trying to understand. She had told the fetches she was tired of violence, tired of anger. It seemed anything involving Alois just naturally brought it out in her. Rather than raise her voice, she offered him a near cheery grin- effective, if not for the fact her eyes betrayed her traitorous poison.
"Oh, sorry, that's right. I'm just simple. I don't understand what it's like to want to lick my father's a*****e in thanks for abducting me from my home, and letting people abuse me in front of party guests. I don't get what it's like to not to want to fight for my life, and let someone manipulate me into getting his way." She paused, and the grin widened a hair. She snatched the mask back from him when it was offered, tying it back onto her face.
"Me no get complex magic court! Me too simple! Me want to come rescue man from kidnapping and hand breaking, but me no get it. Father no love me and I sad. Too simple, too simple."
A breath through her nose.
"Sorry I thought better of you. It's probably better your dog got to die loving you when you were a decent person, not seeing the groveling little s**t you've let yourself become. Ohh, I don't want to be here, Autumn! They took me from my home! They make me work all day! But just kidding, I love my father. You humans are too simple to understand."
She was frowning, now, in earnest.
"The only reason anyone can call me simple is for having the stupidity to think you were a decent ******** person. Telling me you thought I wished slavery on someone, s**t. Real classy, Alois. But no, don't even bother asking what I meant. Just run back to the man who lets you get beaten for funsies, see if Daddy will let you sleep in his bed tonight." She tipped her head to the side, challenging. Threatening.
"Or, or wait. Am I too simple to continue conversing with?"
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Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2016 8:48 pm
alois scholz || 25/25 || done with your s**t too It was a fluid motion, quick and sinewy like water into a shallow basin. Alois simply redirected - he didn’t turn, didn’t change on his heel, didn’t about-face to confront his new target. He cat her by the throat in one bony hand and pressed the both of them to the wall, using her back as a brace against the unyielding plaster. Inches from her face, tendons standing at attention in the back of his hand, he mumbled to her in a quaking, bitter voice. „I don’t give a s**t if you misunderstand me. Assume I called you retarded, zen. Assume I called you ******** stupid because you biologically can’t compete wis’ sings zat are beyond human. What does it matter to me? I lost my ******** dog. What did you lose today, Autumn? A fingernail? An eyelash? A sense of <********> dignity?“
Alois pulled the cigarette from the corner of his mouth and pinched it surgically between index and thumb. He held it right between her eyes, ashen tip brilliant with the orange of his father’s glow. „******** say it again, Autumn. Tell me anozzer one about my dog. Go ahead, s**t on my relationship wis’ Schatzie. Tell me what a s**t dog owner I am for some Doppelgänger to take my place despite my best efforts.
„Go ahead and tell me zat I’m just rolling over and taking it when I spent weeks trying everysing I could sink of to split from zis place. Tell me I deserf’e to die because I shoved glass down ze sroat of some shriveled corpse who killed my dog. Maybe you should’ve been in his place.
„You want to mock him?“ A tip of his head, a gesture back to Ezra standing near the Spinel Lady. „Zen say it to his ******** face, you coward. You want to tell me zat he’s ze enemy because he let me get beaten? Zen tell me who ze ally is, since not ******** one of you tried to stop zat double from breaking my hand. Zat includes you, Autumn.
„Or are you just jealous zat I’m sleeping in Daddy’s bed and not yours? Go ahead, Autumn. Tell me I’m wrong so I can ruin your perfect ******** face.“
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Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2016 9:02 pm
Autumn Smith 20||25, there's nothing really appropriate for how ******** up this is "You wanna know what I've lost?" Autumn sniped back, despite the fact her heart was pounding from the sudden attack. ********, ********, ********. His double had been all words and pathetic begging- he hadn't actually fought back. For some stupid reason, she hadn't expected him to fight back, either. Her face was now a forced mask, stillness behind the butterfly one guarding her once more.
"I've gotten the s**t burnt out of me by your dear, darling dad because he wanted an eighteen year old's heart, and he couldn't get it. So he went after me instead, and burnt my lungs out of me. I nearly killed my friend with a spell to save us from the enemy, because the world didn't let me help him. I've gotten to watch people I know get ripped apart by wild moonwalkers because I didn't act quick enough. I got torn apart by the kid I was trying to help because I didn't recognize him. I've gotten to know part of the cage died because I didn't raise a ******** hand to save him." She paused, and then.
"I got to watch monsters my brain created tear my friends apart and eat them. I got to sit in their eyes and know how their bodies and blood tasted. And I enjoyed it."
Inhale, exhale. She was disappointed in Alois, disgusted even. And yet, she couldn't hate him. It was the fetches once more- no ability to pull the trigger.
"So how about, before you start this pissing contest, you realize I was here trying to save your a**, and all you want to do is be the perfect little monster Burning Man wants you to be. I'm sorry about your dog, I am-" here, her eyes were soft. Genuine. Sympathy for the loss.
"-But that doesn't give you any goddamn excuse to become like them."
She shoved back, hard and fast, to push Alois off of her. Not a fight, not yet. But she was willing to dance if he was stupid enough to go after it.
"I wanted to help you, Alois. But you're so determined to prove you have it the worst you won't let anyone lend you a hand to be better. To get out of here. Not until you prove your manpain, and nobody will understand it but you."
And finally, her voice betrayed her. Exhaustion, anger. Sorrow. So, so much sorrow. Her shoulders sagged.
"This entire ******** court has been a lovely ******** reminder that I couldn't save anyone. This stupid ******** place gave me healing, and I just get to watch them all die for it. Pax'll die, Heliodora will die, Zac and Jer will die. You probably will, too. Anyone I make the mistake of giving a s**t about, this place wants dead, and I just get to sit around, knowing no matter what I do, it doesn't change a thing. I don't know why I bother."
She pushed past him to leave. To go back to getting drunk, giving up on solving this mystery or saving any of them.
"Don't ever ******** call me simple again. You don't know the half of it."
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Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2016 9:25 pm
alois scholz || 25/25 || doggie no He let her shove past him, and drew upon the cancer that he needed to stop the quaking in his hands. „I don’t regret putting glass down his gullet. I guess zat makes us bos’ monsters, doesn’t it?“ He was exhausted, pained, and terribly tired of his emotions welling up to thwart his common sense. Dealing with Autumn at nearly all junctions left him wasted from anger. He watched her go, wherever she had in mind. Whoever she had in mind, since he only knew her as far as her name, and only the first half at that.
Alois watched her leave, his half-chance out of this mess. His golden ticket away from the endless tasks and the trials of the evening now lit upon her face like yet another gilded cage. All her nonsense came with her - all the tales told that he couldn’t stand to make sense of. All her tales about a world that he barely understood, though he lived in it longer than many might have done. Zac passed on some information, but his meager grasp of Other Ashdown only set him that much further apart than the guests who milled about the place. Who was he kidding? These people who stood around and watched while his hand broke and his knees buckled beneath him knew far more about the otherbeings here than he did, and perhaps they knew just as well that it was better for everyone to simply remain a watcher - maybe even better for him.
So he watched her go. He leaned against the wall, cigarette still pinched into the corner of his lip, and his hands searching for pockets he never received. Soon they started to dig for their blackened holes, and nails scraped at the material to make their familiar grounds if they couldn’t find a single gap in a single seam. But there was nothing for them there.
Nothing at all.
The first breath caught, and he knew he crossed a last threshold. The familiar pitched whine - it reminded him of his dog’s pathetic protests when scared or groveling - clawed its way out of his throat. It choked like glass, and mourning tasted of blood. An ineffectual hand curled in front of his mouth, flexed and splayed and pressed over his face to try to hide some semblance of who he was from the rest of the guest list. But he had no mask, he had no privacy from watchers here. He felt the tears next and cursed himself.
Alois choked, and he stammered, and he coughed from the sorrow clinging in his throat. He thought of Vale then, and how he crushed a handful of glasses to force retribution upon him. He thought about how that creature was his intended fate if he survived the tithe and failed the evening’s tests. He considered how he gave away his last chance at freedom from the whole affair, based on a misbegotten dream. But none of that mattered in the end, did it?
He would never see Schatzie again.
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