Dazed and Confused [Madeleine]

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

Wearing || Setting: Corner Store, Wickbridge
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The fluorescent lights were bright as Cosimo wandered the aisles of the smallish corner store. It was one of those twenty-four hour establishments, though it was clean enough. The tiles were scuffed in certain places – not real tiles, then, but linoleum. The kind of material that rubber soled shoes squeak on, if people don’t walk properly. Cosimo normally walked properly, but tonight he was kind of distracted.

What did he need again? Cat food. Yes. He’d moved Artu from Ivory Towers to the new apartment at Sanctuary. He’d left the cat behind, to get acquainted with his new home. But Cosimo had run out of food, and some more kitty litter probably wouldn’t go astray, either. Although those items were tucked away in the basket he carried around, he found himself distracted. There was a stand of candles. Would Athena like candles? And if she didn’t like candles, then what else? His blue eyes drifted down the aisle, trying to put himself in the shoes of the female. If she was going to be at his place more often—and he smiled, now, thinking of her fingers running through his hair—then what else might she like?

The woman manning the counter was of middling age, though she had severe features that warranted no funny business. Cosimo gave her a dazed smile as he passed her by for probably the fifth time. He was a thief by trade. It was a kind-of job. Self-employed, he was. But he didn’t actually plan on stealing anything from this woman. He made sure to keep his hands out of his pockets. But really, he was preoccupied and wasn’t much focusing on whether he looked like a thief or not.

Overhead, the radio played. Which station, he did not know. The music was white, background noise as he continued to meander, throwing random things into his basket that he thought Athena might enjoy.

[Madeleine (DELETED 6963)]

--Setting: Main Street, Entering Corner Store--
---Attire: Elegant---

Madeleine stood at the mouth of an alley where the only source of light came from the flickering lamp post above which seemed to illuminate her auburn locks that had been pulled up into an intricate hairstyle for the night. She had been invited to some sort of wealthy dinner party by a friend and would have rather gorged her own eyeballs out with her newly painted nails than go. The worst part is that her friend insisted that she went through a full appearance transformation. Apparently she took it painfully serious. Mona had even booked a hair stylist that worked part time as a cosmetologist as well. Madeleine was just grateful that the stylist hadn't gone overboard on makeup. He only did so much to define her amber eyes instead of masking her natural beauty. Mona wanted her freckles covered but the stylist insisted that they were beautiful and left them as is. The rest was history. Being poked at and prodded was not the most favorable part of the night, but definitely not the worst.

Soft clicks echoed from her high heels, which she might have considered adorable if they didn't feel like she was walking on glass. Madeleine hadn't even practiced how to walk proper in them before getting shoved out the door. During this "dinner party" that she later found out to be a mixer, or club for the rich, she high tailed it out of there. No way in hell she was going to dance with a strange man in heels that could literally kill someone. She tugged a curl from her hair with a defiant puff of air that came out as vapor and twirled towards the sky like tendrils of a smoking fire. She paid that little attention as she begun to turn the corner, the bright lights of the corner store suddenly catching her interest.

Without so much as a second thought, she strode up to that little twenty four hour store in her godly outfit (not godly in a good way) and flung the door open, causing a man who was leaving to gasp. She didn't even care that he blatantly checked her out - she was on a mission. This was life or death. She stalked down the aisles until she located what she was looking for. A pristine assortment of homemade chocolates on a plate, wrapped delicately in plastic wrap. Sweets were a sort of weakness to the girl. The bane of her existence. Someone could truthfully torture her with sweets if they wanted to.


Her amber eyes flickered among the varies kinds, trying to decide which one had the better assortments for the best price. She begun to subconsciously nibble her lower lip, weighing two different options in her hands. She had opted for a frustrated look of a child unsure of what to get in a candy store, being on a budget and all. She promised herself she would spend no extra momey this month on sweets and was betraying that very promise right then and there.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

Although Cosimo could not eat—and nor could Athena—he walked through the food aisle anyway. He took his time, letting the nostalgia wash over him. How he wished he could consume these things. Overhead, the music changed; the song was eerie, almost like it did not belong on a commercial radio station. Like a pop ballad, Cosimo assumed, except there was something about it. Maybe he recognised the voice? Was it familiar? It struck at him, weaved its way to his very core, much in the same way Athena had, over time. Except this was immediate.

There was an app on his phone that he knew could find the song, if it listened long enough. He wanted to know what it was. Even as he pulled the phone from his back pocket, he wandered around the corner; there were no messages from Athena, he noticed. He had grown used to her messages. Maybe after checking what the song was, he could send her one instead. Because why not?

He stopped because he knew there was someone in front of him; the smell of the perfume was mixed with the smell of fresh, human heat. It was, to say the very least, alluring. Cosimo glanced up, and as soon as his eyes rested upon that red-clad woman, with her teeth pressing dimples into that pout of a lip, he was lost.

At first his brain did not compute. The hair should be dark, not brown. There should be tattoos. The eyes should be a piercing, arctic blue. The attire should be… well, not this. This was never something that Cosimo was attracted to. Was he? But this wasn’t attraction. This was… this was different. It didn’t feel natural. This was not Athena, except…

… he picked up a plastic box. Inside, little chocolate balls were wrapped in the crinkled gold foil, with the rich brown cups holding them in. He held them out to the brunette. She looked familiar. He recognised her from somewhere. Where?

”Buonasera,” he greeted her, his voice strangely lilted. Deep and gruff. ”Ferrero Rocher. Italian brand,” he said, his accent thick. ”If you are looking for chocolate, it is these that I will recommend,” he said. Even now, already, he knew that he would not let the woman buy them for herself. Even if the chocolates were not for herself. He would buy them for her.