Congratu....Condolences? [Keara Aithne]

[Peter Parkman]

There was no reason why Peter should not answer Keara’s query. He turned to glance over his shoulder, even inched a little backwards, as if he weren’t even going to bother with an answer. As if he was just going to walk away, no more questions asked and none answered. The reasonable, adult part of Peter’s brain kicked in, however, and he knew that Keara deserved to know why he was so averse to going near the water. She was taking time out of her night, so soon after her recent physical woes, to help him. To walk away now would be rude. Not the actions of the gentleman that Peter was raised to be.

He cleared his throat.

”I … I can’t swim,” he said. It should have been answer enough, but it wasn’t the only reason he didn’t want to go near the water. He shrugged his shoulders and crossed his arms over his chest – not in a way that exuded attitude, but a way a child might hug himself, with palms flat against the sides of chest and a pained expression causing deep lines to rift over his brow. He stared over Keara’s shoulder as if the lake were a monster that they would disturb, any second now – and it wouldn’t be happy. It would come lumbering after them in fury.

”I don’t know why, but I just don’t like water,” he shakes his head, closes his eyes, and clears his throat. He wasn’t explaining himself properly, which was completely unlike him. His brain was rattled, just thinking about it.

”It was okay. It was fine. You… we met at the dock, and I’ve been on Enver’s boat and I was fine, but it’s not fine anymore. I never did like water, I didn’t like boats and there’s no way you’d get me in swimming trunks, ever but it was never this… strong. I just… I really don’t want to go anywhere near it,” he said, green eyes wide and lit by dim light. It was a poor excuse, but it was all that he had.

[Keara Aithne]

What else could she do but take pity on him. His words were so filled with negative emotion that she just paused and listened. Without even knowing it, she'd moved a little further from their destination, just as he had done, trying to maintain a comfortable distance between them. She stood between him and the lake, (if that were at all possible), and gave a slight nod as his explanation came to its conclusion.

"Strange it is, these feelings that describe you do. Swim you would not need to. Not if you this power do possess. Walk you could above the waters surface. Quite something that is for to do. Enjoy I do such things myself but even then, linger too long you should not."

She reached out and lightly touched his shoulder with her right hand. Hesitantly she rubbed lightly at his arm for a moment or two before her hand came to rest on his bicep.

"Worry not Peter. If so much apprehension feel you do, attempt this task now we shall not. But if wish you do for the power to see or attempt, be there I shall. Hmm...if this power tonight tested cannot be, chose I must another."

She fell silent as she began to consider the other basic Shadow powers. The ability to hunt silently was a little difficult to demonstrate. Becoming untraceable too presented similar problems. She wanted to test what he was capable of but more than that, she wanted to see if he had the skills she thought he should possess. Being a shadow he should of course be able to manipulate the darkness about him to some degree and so that became the focus of this night, as Keara could test his ability to manipulate the world around him.

"Here in the park we may stay for our testing to continue. If like you would for toward the asylum to go, that acceptable would be. A little nervous here you still appear to be."

If Peter chose to backtrack a little Keara would follow, her hand still lightly touching his arm for support. Her words had been filled with quiet compassion and understanding, even if she didn't fully understand why her childe feared the open waters so. She too knew what it was to fear the mundane in as much as she had a deep rooted fear of something herself; though to her, her fear was completely rational, she knew to others that it was not. This was possibly what had caused her to abandon the test instead of simply teleporting her childe onto the lake to stand or swim, as his power dictated.

[Peter Parkman]

At first, Peter was worried that Keara was going to try to persuade him otherwise; was going to try to talk him into going to the lake, and if he refused, force him to go anyway. The way she first responded to his earnest appeal for her mercy, it seemed as if a refusal to agree was about to occur. He would have disagreed. What he failed and ended up in the water anyway? He would be forced to try to swim. And how long is lingering ‘too long’? What if something went wrong, even if he were capable of what it was that Keara described? His tongue got stick at the back of his throat, tenseness clogging his airway. He was like a timid puppy caught in a cage in the middle of a brightly lit shopping centre; he flinched when Keara reached out to touch him.

And only relaxed, visibly, when she next spoke. To tell him not to worry. Truthfully, he hadn’t expected such easy understanding. He’d expected, perhaps, incredulity if not laughter – though it struck him that Keara had never appeared to be the type to laugh at the misfortunes or the quirks of others. She had enough quirks of her own, and he supposed, in the end, who better than she to understand?

Peter nodded, short and sharp, and retreated a small ways back toward the Asylum. He didn’t go too far. Just enough to reassure himself that he was far enough. He couldn’t see any water through the trees. He cleared his throat and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.

”What next?” he asked. He was still somewhat nervous, but less so than before. Now that the threat of open water had been removed, a small inkling of curiosity returned. He had yet to still comprehend the fact that, should he wish to, he’d be able to walk on water. He wasn’t sure what use it could possibly serve, in the long run, but it was interesting nonetheless.

[Keara Aithne]

“Next try we shall for to see how you the shadows can to your advantage use. Manipulated in some ways they can be. Learn we can for them to command or for deeper within them to sink so that better hidden we are. The reason for the name which our path bares does, more obvious is when begin you do for to see wherein our strength lies.”

She could feel him relax a little as they moved closer to home and with that came the hope that he wouldn’t shy away from this challenge as he had the last. This would be slightly more challenging as tasks went, as he would have to try to affect the shadows of the area on a massive scale. It would perhaps take him a little practise if he did in fact have the power, but therein lay the challenge. She was confident enough in his intelligence that she thought him capable of the task; not that intellect played a large role in it all. To her, just as casting shadows upon herself took a certain degree of concentration, so did the wielding of certain powers. For her, it wasn’t enough to push or pull the shadows with simplistic thought, she actively took part in the process within her own mind. When commanding the darkness about her she would look at how the shadows fell and then imagine them as she wanted them to be, deeper, darker, stretching or lighter and faded, falling just as she required them too.

“Require we do the presence of light and shade for our next task to perform. Well. That perhaps strictly true is not but easier the results for to see shall be.”

She was guiding them towards the dimly lit path that wound through the park. It would offer them the perfect training ground for what they were about to practise as Peter would be able to see the results of his labour; if the power was within him that was.

“When stronger you have grown and begin you do bridges to cross, then further training perhaps we can do. Enver too of use to you may be. Know I do that touched upon the path of the Necromancer has and that a close neighbour of ours is.”

It was perhaps a little early to be talking of bridges and neighbouring paths but she wanted to remind Peter that she’d be there to help him even as his powers grew and that Enver too would want to be of service if he was allowed to be. She may have even thought to let him know where they were so that they could join them that night but Enver had not yet touched upon the path sire and childe were born into. As such his presence there would perhaps be nothing more than distracting as his role would have been purely that of a spectator. That too may have placed more pressure upon Peter to perform and the realisation of all that made Keara certain that excluding him, on this occasion, was the correct decision.

[Peter Parkman]

There was a concentrated frown etched into Peter’s brow as he listened to Keara and mentally deciphered her words, and the information that she was giving him. They slowly filtered into his brain, and he was sure he understood; they could, to some extent, control the shadows. He had no idea how that could work, or how it might look. There was both a mental and physical twitch as his rational brain tried to figure it out. Light and darkness was a matter of physics, was it not? Without moving the source of light, how could he possibly be capable of creating more shadows? Without one the other could not exist.

And yet, he swallowed and nodded. There was no reason why Keara should lie to him. There was no reason why she would make this up.

There were things that Peter had read. All his time spent in the library researching their kind was not for nothing. There were places that one could go to find the documents that pertained to vampirism; things that, if found by the stray human, would not be believed. There were vague things that Peter knew about wraiths and bridges and paths but without knowing exactly where he stood, there was no way really to properly apply said information to himself. But now here was Keara, a bountiful source of knowledge. If he had questions, all he had to do was ask.

But perhaps it was best, first, to focus on the things that he was currently capable of, before even attempting to find someone to unlock within him, or teach him how to do other things. The last thing he wanted to do was overwhelm himself, because that would lead nowhere good.

”Alright,” he said finally. ”I think maybe you should show me first… and explain how you’re doing what you’re doing while you’re doing it,” he said. A convoluted sentence, but it made perfect sense in his mind. They had reached the path, or near to it, a little closer to one lamp then to the other. Peter found himself pushing his hands into his pockets, his shoulders hunched, glancing left and right and back again, as if they might be witnessed by passer-by. There’s no one around, though. No one but them, and the breeze whispering through the leaves, and the distant sound of traffic.

[Keara Aithne]

"Oh, do that I can."

She was happy to show Peter what she could do, after all commanding the shadows was what they were born to do. It had been too long since she'd called the shadows to life, so she couldn't show him that anymore; though that would hardly have been an appropriate power to show him, as it would have involved him or someone else playing the victim to it. So instead she'd teach him to raise and lower the security of an area, as that skill was both pain free and useful. It could certainly help him to feed more safely, if he chose to fed from the source that was.

"Show you first I shall, how we the shadows of an area thicken can. At least that best way is for me to explain what happens does. How think of it I do."

They were in the perfect place to try, as there was sufficient light and dark in the surrounding area. While she wasn't exactly sure how best to describe how she herself triggered the power or what it was that it did exactly, she was going to try. If they were lucky, this would be a power Peter possessed. While it wasn't one that Keara used regularly, in the times she had found use for it, it was all too useful. As she began to ponder how often she used the power, she soon began to realise that it was one she, more often than not, used to create a little added privacy when she was with Enver. It was certainly handy in helping them stay hidden in those times when toming home, as quick as it was, wasn't quick enough what with their appetite for one another being what it was. Her quirky smile played on her lips, pulling at the corner of her mouth as she remembered this; the memories proving to be a little too distracting, causing the silence between them to drag on a little longer than it probably should have.

The fact that she was distracted soon became apparent and not just due to the lack of conversation, there was a distinct lack of action that accompanied it. The shadows about them did not increase in density and neither did it lighten and disperse. She couldn't even begin to command the darkness about them, as she had yet to take in the minutia of the scene around them so that she could see how the light cast the shadows in its natural state.

[Peter Parkman]

The way Keara said it, she made the shadows sound like some kind of ingredient in a cosmic soup. Thicken them, as if said soup wouldn’t be quite as digestible if not thick enough. And were they capable of the opposite, then? Of thinning the shadows? Peter was distracted thinking about soup, and how much he missed it. Nice, thick, creamy pumpkin soup, with sour cream mixed in, and a piece of sourdough bread to soak it all up.

Peter wasn’t quite as distracted as Keara seemed to be, however. Although he was thinking about soup, he hadn’t lost focus completely. He was standing there in the mix of shadows and light; he was watching them, waiting for the darkness to thicken. He’d never focused on the difference between shadow and light before. Hadn’t ever really noticed the gradation of it. From bright white through to pitch black, and all the tones in between.

He had no idea how it might look. As the silence burgeoned around them, as the whispering of the leaves in the trees and the chirping of crickets invaded his senses, he started to imagine how it would be. He was staring into the dim darkness of the park, and he imagined the dark not just as an absence of light, but as an entity that was alive. Not just an alive entity, but as an entity that was not harmful, that did not ever move of its own whim. Darkness was only ever a thing that could be commanded.

What would his superhero name be, if he had only one minion, and it was darkness? Would he even be a superhero? Or would he be the nemesis? Maybe the antihero. Antiheroes were complex. They had a lot more going on than just black and white.

And if that minion were darkness, what could he make it do? How would it move? It would creep forward, timidly, tame, by gradations so as not to be noticeable. Not the blinking off of a light, but the dimming of it, like storm clouds creeping over a bright sun. That’s what seemed to be happening now. As Peter focused, as he imagined what it might look like, it came to life around him – the darkening of the light. He glanced up, as if wondering whether clouds had moved over the moon. But of course he knew better.

He laughed.

”That’s pretty great,” he said. He could feel the shadows thickening – no, they were not in the middle of soup.

And of course he assumed that it was Keara doing the work. He had no idea that his sire was lost in her own memories. None whatsoever.

[Keara Aithne]

Peter's voice roused her from her musings and as she cast her eyes around her once more, she noted that the shadows had deepened. She hadn't done a thing and so she looked from Peter to the area and back to Peter again. She had been meaning to show him how to manipulate his surrounds, to talk him through the process. She'd been ready to walk him through her process, to make him take in the light source, the objects and the way the shadows naturally fell about them. She hadn't been prepared for him to simply perform the task while she lost herself in thoughts of Enver.

A soft laugh passed her lips as she realised he was a natural shadow. It shouldn't have been a surprise, most vampires took to their paths eventually whether they had training or not. In the back of her mind she knew that he had had to learn how to project his own shadow and that this was only an extension of that art. Though she didn't know for sure that he'd mastered that ability yet, she more hoped he had.

"That it is. Especially since begun I had not. Know we do now that you this power possess. Unless there another of our kind in our presence is."

Keara looked about her as if she were testing this last theory but she neither heard or saw anyone in the immediate vicinity. Though even if someone were hiding in their midst, she doubted they'd be displaying their skills for Peter and her to see. Logically, the darkness had to have been manipulated by Peter himself.

"Seems to me it does, that you the shadows well do understand."

She could have gone on and described how she liked the way in which he had so naturally manipulated the scene but she doubted he needed to hear such praise. It was clearly a part of him though and she was sure that his intellect played a strong part in his success. She couldn't abide stupidity herself; siring a stupid childe was like purposely trying to out their kind. Of course mistakes happened. Even those that were carefully chosen had a habit of surprising their sires. Peter may have been sired for less than noble motives but she was more than happy and proud to claim him as her own.

[Peter Parkman]

Peter glanced around, too – he was more willing to accept, to begin with, that someone else had caused the disruption between shadow and light. He was modest, and didn’t think that he’d take to anything naturally. He thought too much. Though, in this case, it would seem that his overthinking had been the cause of the discovery.

To begin with, his features were contorted into confused disbelief. Keara’s laugh, and her admittance of not being the cause of the power – he replayed her words in his head. She had an odd way of speaking, and perhaps the back-to-front manner of her sentence had been the cause for confusion. He turned his wide eyes back to his sire, head tilted forward and mouth open, as if he were about to ask her to repeat herself.

The confusion grappled with and overpowered Peter’s focus; where before he’d been living in an imaginary scenario, as soon as the real world broke in, the imagined scene fled. Where the shadows may have rolled in neatly, calmly, and gradually, as soon as Peter realised he might be the cause of the power, they suddenly dispersed. It was as if a nearby light had been switched on, bathing them once again in the full glow of the nearby lamplight. The shadows flickered and disappeared, like a dream that flees as soon as the dreamer is jolted awake, or a meandering thought drifting through one’s brain just before sleep, turning tail and hiding as soon as one tries to take hold of it.

It was like that now. Peter blinked at the world around him, looking at those shadows as if he’d never seen shadows before. They were steadfast, right back where they should be. And as much as he focused on them and tried to make them come to him, they wouldn’t budge. He was thinking too much. He shook his head.

”Maybe,” he said. ”Though I… don’t think that I understand quite how I did that,” he said, turning back to Keara. He was a man who loved his instruction manuals. He liked order. He didn’t like things to be vague. He liked to know how everything worked, and why. Either Keara would have the answer, or he would have to figure it out on his own. Even now, his brow was furrowed, his thoughts groping back five minutes into the past. What had he been thinking about, then? What had he done that was different to what he normally did?

”How do you do it?” he asked, hoping that Keara’s explanation would help him to figure out his own.

[Keara Aithne]

Her brow crinkled slightly as the shadows seemed to disperse again, either Peter had set things right or he hadn't fixed the power correctly, as it had the potential to last long after the caster had set the scene. She'd wondered about that at times, how in the shifting times, the shadows would react, so that the scene would remain as it should. Though she never dwelt long on the subject, as some things simply weren't worth contemplating. The workings of some of the powers she possessed were totally beyond her own comprehension. Sifting forms for instance. She knew how to do it, and yet the process of it escaped her entirely.

"Well," she began, "When I the power do use. Take I do a moment for the scene to survey. Look I do for where the sources of light traced can be. Note I do the directions in which the shadows fall. Or do not fall. Then think I do over how desire I do the scene to appear. Darker or lighter. Then happens it does. All this quite natural to me is. In seconds this task performed can be. Believe I do that so easy for us is, due to the fact that we our own shadows must control. This skill learned by now you surely have... Long ago easier that task was. Light sources not so dazzling as in this time were. Though candle light it's own challenges does present. Shadows then moveable are."

She was veering onto a tangent but she couldn't help it, the memories were bleeding into the explanation and as she'd recalled them, they almost had to be sounded out. Her mind seemed to work that way at times, though it happened more frequently if she were excited or tired. Any extreme of emotion could unbalance her mind since her return. As much as Enver was her biggest weakness and greatest distraction, he was also the one constant that kept her centered; only in order to do that, he had to be there. Without Enver to anchor her, she often seemed to slip into old habits.

"Oh hope I do that mastered this skill you have. If not. Perhaps teaching you that first I should be. Unless I that unto you already taught have."

A look of confusion past over her features and she absentmindedly began to rub at her right temple, as if the action might dislodge some forgotten memory.

"Difficult that was after so long a time as I in that accursed realm did spend. For the new world to see. For to the brightness to adjust. Still... Like I do not certain areas of the city. For offend my eyes they do. Shadows better place for our kind are. Darkness. Like the darkness. Safer there is. In the sewers. In the catacombs. Like the catacombs I do. Comforting they are. I Enver there did meet..."

And with that the verbals stopped. Enver had stolen her mind and her thoughts once more and she was set a drift in sea of memories. As thoughts of him filled her conscious mind, she walked a few steps and closed the distance between her and the nearest inanimate object. As soon as the lamppost was within reach , she had her fingertips pressed against it and it wasn't long before her arm had wrapped around it completely. Her body was pressed up against it as if she were unable to stand without it and once there, she then ceased to move.