|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 7:46 pm
"I don't know who they are, but they said they are from Siberia. Does that mean anything to you?" Riasha asks Lance, moving closer to him because he's still more familiar to her than the Russians.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 7:55 pm
"Siberia?" Lance asked incrediously. "Are you sure?"
He eyed the two men suspiciously. Siberia hadn't existed since the End War over two thousand years ago because from France to the west coast of the United States was coated in thick ice and snow. All of the expeditions the Immortals had sent out were forced to return due to the horrid conditions.
"How is this possible?" He asked, more to himself.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 8:46 pm
"I am sure that's what I heard them say," Riasha says carefully. "Whether they are actually from there or not, I wouldn't know because I'd never heard the word before today. But I doubt that you've been to where I am from, or that I've been to where the elf is from," she points out. "So they could be from many places."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 8:59 pm
Lance furrowed his brow as he said, "That may be true, but there is - was a Siberia from my world. I don't think its the same, since the climate is unbearable for humans to populate in. Even Immortals have trouble there because it's a land covered in ice and snow, but not like their usual winter. Everything there freezes almost instantly. It's practically impossible to warm up, and there's not even time to use magic. There must be... Maybe thirty separate expeditions that are frozen somewhere between France and America, and who knows if anyone made it to Russia."
He laughed nervously and said, "But I think I've lost you there, dear. Besides, it's rather boring."
He paused and said, "Now that you've mentioned it, I don't believe you've told me where you're from."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 10:56 pm
Yakov & Ruslan Yakov grinned widely, clearly pleased with her approach and the heat rising in his groin. "I don't know what you think you can compare to me," he chuckled, giving her a slap on the butt before placing a hand on the small of her back. Yakov swiveled the bar chair further out and scooped the other arm behind her legs, lifting her up and onto his lap. "Get comfortable." He took a randomly poured drink from the bar that Ruslan had ordered, unsure of what it even was, and handed it to Jóna. He tossed back another shot. Yakov would do his best to pace himself for the night with the girl he'd managed to wrangle, but with Ruslan present, he couldn't make any promises. Some light conversation would have to do for now. "You've been working here long in Volgograd?" Ruslan's ears perked to hear the name of his childhood home used so many times, enough to break his trance of the cat he held in his arms. A most peculiar man made his way over to the bar as the strangers spoke. "The great north," he chimed in. "You are unfamiliar with Siberia? How is this so?" His hands continued to stroke the purring kitten in his arms as possible names for her still whirled around in his head. "I was brought there when I was just a child," he reminisced. "Yakov became my family. The bear-choker." Yakov turned his head toward his comrade when he heard the mention of his homeland title. He shot the other strangers a devious grin, his other hand wandering to more favorable places along Jóna's body.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:08 pm
Jóna refused to sit in the big man's lap like a child, instead flipping one leg overtop his so that she straddled him, facing him directly and tipping the drink he offered her quickly away. Her head was starting to feel fairly blurry and the man looked more attractive after the drink than he did before. He was so much bolder than the whiny human slaves she owned. It bolstered her own sense of forwardness to keep up with him.
"Volgograd," she repeated, testing the odd word on her tongue. Giggling, she dipped her head around his and put her mouth to his ear, fingers splayed across his broad chest between them. "I don't think you are where you think you are," she crooned.
Smoothing her hands up his shoulders and resting them finally on the sides of his thick neck, she said. "Tell me your name, man from Volgograd."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:19 pm
Yakov & Ruslan Yakov watched her assume a more sensual posture and down the drink he had handed her. He beamed, pleased, but not surprised in the least. The women that frequented their favorite bars were always too eager to meet his needs, but at least this one was exotic. "Oh?" he raised an eyebrow, "Have we really wandered so far tonight?" Ruslan didn't respond, engrossed with his cat. "One wanders far when they get hungry," he flirted. He took a large gulp from the pitcher that had now been filled with vodka. "Yakov. The Bear-Choker of Siberia," he reaffirmed Ruslan's mentioning. His rough, calloused hand slid along her soft waist, trying his best to discipline his movements from reckless drunk to handling a delicate flower. "And what might you be called?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:21 pm
"I see you're fond of Dahlia," Lance said with a neutral tone, referencing the kitten. Unsure if he should be happy or upset by this, he continued with, "She seems to enjoying all of the attention she's been getting today."
That wasn't untrue. Dahlia, if the man hadn't renamed her already, purred loudly, though whether this was an attempt for food or happiness and content, he didn't know.
"Lance West, by the way," he said lightly. "You're from Siberia, then?"
Still puzzled by this, he clenched his hands tightly, trying to restrain himself from interrogating this man. This human. From Siberia. He had to be joking. There was no way it wasn't a prank. Lance folded his arms. Whatever information this man had could prove useful.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:31 pm
Relieving the pitcher from his hands, she poured some into her glass to sip on while they conversed, noting his lingering looks and the placement of his hands. "You have wandered far, indeed. My people have legends of this place. They call it a bridge between worlds. I always thought it was pisswater foolishness. But now I see. Who knows what kind of distances we crossed to meet here tonight."
Swallowing the drink she poured for herself, she blinked to refocus her eyes and took in his name. Bears weren't native to her part of the world, but she knew what they were. The imagery of his name pulled a smile to her lips. She could believe this man choked bears, whether it was a figure of speech or not. His powerful arms were more than welcome to encircle her tonight. She couldn't help but wonder if he preferred things rough or if he was secretly a tender-heart between the sheets.
She would find out.
"Yakov Bear-Choker of Siberia," she repeated, making sure to sound sufficiently impressed. "I hope there is a good story behind that. They call me Jóna. I'm afraid I don't have any impressive titles to go with it, but at least it's not difficult to remember and even easier to cry out."
Maybe she would have a fancy title once she survived the trials. If she survived the trials.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:55 pm
Yakov & Ruslan Ruslan raised a brow curiously as he attempted to pronounce the name brokenly. "Dah-lee-yah?" He looked down to the bundle of fluff in his arms. "A strange name for a kitten," he shook his head lightly. "I call her Kitty now," he stated proudly as he stroked her nose. He took a drink from the bar without bothering to see what was inside it before downing it. "Lance West," he contemplated. "Another strange name. Yes, we are from there. What of it?" the suspicious tone in his voice grew as his words flowed. His giggly demeanor was beginning to fade from drunken bliss to reasonable paranoia. "Your people?" Yakov asked. "Is Volgograd that foreign to you?" he laughed, looking up her leathery wardrobe up and down. "I never would have guessed." However, her name wasn't one that sounded too foreign to him. He nodded, "Jóna," his hand wandered and slid to grab the outside of her thigh. "I like how that sounds." He took another shot from the counter, feeling his words lag behind in his mind when he went to speak. "You want to hear story of how I choked bear?" Though it was a story he had often used to pick up the more stubborn or intellectual girls, it wasn't one he would ever tire of telling. That, and how it paled in comparison now to his more recent escapades, augmented and working in special operations. "I grew up with a large family in Siberia. It is a cold, cold place!" he feigned shaking as if he were cold, trying to embellish the story with his mannerisms in order to charm her as much as possible. "When I was a little boy, I dreamed of growing stronger than the strongest man in our village. And so I did! I grew to the size of a tree," he boasted, flexing a bicep. "Then one day, I was seventeen years, and I saw a bear near our fish stock. The bear stood, and it was so tall!" he raised a hand into the air as if to pantomime it's height. "Even taller than me! -at the time," he took a swig of his pitcher. "So, I decided to prove my strength- that I was the strongest and that I was the best. I ran to the bear and wrapped my arms around its neck!" he nearly shouted with enthusiasm. "The giant bear yelled and growled, flailing wildly, rolling around in the snow, desperately trying to get me off, but I was like a stubborn tick, and I held on. I squeezed and squeezed my arms around its neck until suddenly- the bear collapse. I stood up and saw that it had been strangulated. I looked around, and the whole village had gathered from the noise of the bear. And from that day on, I am known as The Bear-Choker." He finally resumed a more relaxed posture and took another swig of his drink, confident she would be beyond impressed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 12:10 am
"Did not notice? You and are hardly the same. Volgograd is completely foreign to me." She traced a fingertip along the blunted curve of his ear with a giggle.
Jóna nearly fell off his lap as Yakov got into his story, enthusiastically pantomiming half of it. She rode it out stubbornly, listening to the story as it got wilder and wilder, trying to imagine it. She was adequately impressed, also grabbing for another drink, fumbling with the glass before getting her fingers firmly around it.
"We do something similar where I'm from. We don't have bears, though. Instead, we have alligators. Big, monstrous creatures. All teeth and claws and scales. They hide beneath the surface of the water to snatch you in if you happen to pass at the wrong place at the wrong time. They get big, bigger than you. There are competitions for killing them with nothing but your hands and a small weapon." She tapped the hilt of her knife with her free hand, wavering in and out of focus and blinking to clear it. "Me and my knife took down one last year that was eleven feet long and probably six hundred pounds. What they like to do is fasten onto you with their jaws and then drag you under the water and roll. This one had me by the arm and sleeve." She held up her arm, nearly hitting him in the face, showing off the speckled pink scars on her forearm. "Rolling and rolling and all I had was this knife and still I managed to cut it open!"
Grinning, she added demurely, "Of course, I don't think I would have been able to kill it with my bare hands." She ran said hands up his thick biceps, admiring them. "Bear-Choker," she repeated again. "Truly impressive."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 12:15 am
"I name all of my cats after flowers," Lance said with a shrug. "But if you prefer to call her Kitty, then by all means, do so."
"Cosmo, please," he said to the bartender as he put down a few coins.
"Strange," he mused as he continued, "because all of our expeditions to Russia have completely failed. Half the continent of Europe and all of Asia are frozen over to the point where it's impossible to sustain any form of life after the End War."
The bartender slid him his Cosmo, and he slowly sipped the cocktail. He mulled over possibilities. Ghosts from before the End War. Time travelers. Fakers. Somehow immortal before the others. He stared at Jóna before returning his gaze to the man with the cat. She was going to have sex with a ghost. Well, that piqued his curiousity far more than he cared to admit. He had her pinned for a lot of things, but a necrophiliac definitely wasn't one of those things! Especially because it wasn't corporeal.
How would that even work?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:06 am
Yakov & Ruslan Yakov received her gestures warmly, still grinning like a child with a new toy. "And how foreign is this exotic lady that has fallen into my lap?" His grip began something like a massage along her thigh. "Ah, the alligator. Those are much further south, but I have never seen one on during any of our... travels." He made a discontented face, almost like something of a pout before puffing out his chest. "Hah!" he laughed, "Something bigger than me? You must have had too many," he jested. "Nothing is bigger than Yakov. Nothing is stronger than Yakov. Nothing." He slammed down the shot from his hand in defiance, drink sloshing against the walls of the glass before spilling onto the surface of the bar. However, he still shot her a playful grin as he admired the scars along her arm. He listened to the remainder of her tale, ego successfully stroked by her every compliment. "You like your rolling rough, I see," he remarked slyly. He took a hand to cup her chin, an unusually gentlemanly gesture for him. "Just so Yakov's hands know... How delicate is this new flower of mine?" Ruslan listened to Lance, but not without a new sense of skepticism. "Why are you interrogating me about my homeland? Your knowledge of the world is a fantasy. You spread lies." He took a shot of vodka and slammed it back down to the bar. "We don't like liars with the names of our people in their mouths," he said flatly as he shot him a silvery glare.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 5:02 am
Lance sipped on his Cosmo and said cheerfully, "No, see, if I was interogating you, you wouldn't really be in the position to make those kinds of comments."
The Siberian man was getting on his nerves, but Lance hid that emotion, forcing a smile. If that man wanted to further accuse him of having otherworldly notions about a land that hadn't existed for several centuries, Lance planned to help him figure out exactly whether or not there was an afterlife. The man was clearly delusional, but Kira might enjoy that. And even if she didn't, his obvious insanity might be enough to throw her over the edge, and he felt that any opportunity to make Kira lose her mind would be something he couldn't risk missing out on.
Trying to even things over on the off chance that this man was an Immortal who was making a weak attempt at trying to unnerve Lance, he said, "Tell me about yourself."
He sipped more of his Cosmopolitan, the vodka burning his throat nicely. This was a curious situation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 9:26 am
Riasha came back with a few pieces of paper and pen in her hand, clicking it nervously. "Such interesting things they have here. When we right, the ink is outside of the pen and has to be dipped," she says. "But this pen has the ink inside it, and it pops in and out when I press the button on the back." She clicks it a few more times, and though she smiles about it, she still seems nervous.
Sitting down near Lance and the second Siberian, she put one sheet in front of her. Slowly she sketches out a map, starting with the shape of the land, and then filling in some geographical features like rivers or mountains. Drawing some small squares, she writes names down in a script that is neither English nor Cyrillic. Finally she dots in some boarders. It won't look like anything familiar to either version of earth. To the 'north' of the main area she drew is a place that she shades in with many diagonal lines.
"You asked earlier where I am from," she says to Lance. "I don't have a home the way most people do. We don't have houses, just our wagons, and we keep on the road. I've traveled most of this area," she says, pointing with a finger to all the areas she drew in except for the shaded area to the north. "But we never go north."
She gives the Siberian a reproachful look. "He might not be lying. I've never heard of many of the things that either of you have mentioned. I'm more likely to believe that this place doesn't belong to anywhere at all, which means it belongs to everywhere. Just like my people."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
