Beauty from the Cracks. (Dragomir Temple.)

[Lynnette (DELETED 9652)]

It was a sobering experience. To meet in the parlor of those who were before, those who's existence came prior, is rather strange, a feeling not abated by the dead spirits embodying the lost within the area. I took a (rather unnecessary) breath, and moved my head back and forth, identifying all of the physical phenomenons within the area. In an instant, I identified a door, and my curiosity dictated unto me a desire that radiated throughout my being: a desire to explore. I moved to the door in an instant, and threw it open, and a room occupied by curiosities met my eyes. Cluttered and unkempt, by no short margin, but it was filled with beauties beyond my initial conception, and among them was a piano, a Grand Piano from the Bechstein company, a bit out of place in a small place like this, but not uncommon, I brushed aside the objects placed upon the top of it, opened up the cabinet, to see, once again to my surprise, that the strings were in good condition. I found the bench that accompanied the masterful piano, sat it at the keys, opened the lid, and looked at the keys for a moment, before thinking: Where'd these memories come from, I wonder? before muscle memory brought itself to the surface, and my fingers to each of the starting positions, and I began a song, to which a long dead memory pieced itself together and named it: 3rd movement of the Piano portion of the Moonlight sonata, by Beethoven, in D minor. For what seems like a few moments, my hands took control of themselves and played, stretching to meet the strenuous demands of the keys, piecing out each and every individual note, layering them into their respective places, and pushing into the work, a melancholic feel, every note strung along with a sorrow from which I had no knowledge.

[Cordelia]

Cordelia didn't come to the Temple that often. But tonight, it felt right. She was originally just going to come and sit at the altar she had bled upon. It felt like an eternity ago, and with this new childe of her dark blood, she felt the need for reflection. As she closed the entrance door behind her, though, she noted a significant difference. There was music. Piano music. Not the norm for this place, certainly. Moments passed as she absorbed the sound, not even fully realizing that she was walking towards this side door she'd never noticed before.

Carefully, she pushed it open, peering inside. The figure at the piano was familiar, if new - Lynnette had found something she knew! With a soft chuckle, Cordelia moved into the room, gently closing the door behind her and crossing to stand behind her, watching her fingers move across the keys. It was mesmerizing, and new. Not much was new anymore in this city. Stagnation had taken over the city of late, and it was rather sad.

Still, the brunette did not speak. She merely stood. Watching.

[Oakley]

WEARING

Have you ever witnessed the Temple, Oakley?
You should. It is a beautiful place…

She couldn’t recall how long ago those words had been uttered into her ear, but the soft spoken voice had haunted her ever since. The woman that had saved her from certain death had a way of staying with her, even when she hadn’t seen her in what felt like an eternity. It was strange, how quickly she went from believing she couldn’t live without Yvette, to barely being able to recall the color of her eyes or the touch of her skin. With each passing day, the slightly unhinged telepath faded further and further from her mind, but her voice – and those haunting words – only seemed to grow louder.

That was why she found herself outside of the Temple, her fingers warily pressing to the door, as if she were afraid it would crumble beneath her touch. She had never been a religious person, though that wasn’t what kept her from the sanctuary for so long. It was the way her sire had whispered the words, as if telling her that a certain fate waited for her within the walls. With the voice ringing louder and louder in her mind, however, it had left her with no choice but to finally step inside. Holding a breath in her dead lungs, the small telepath pressed her palm against the door and slowly eased it open. For a moment, she braced herself for something horrific – an explosion, a fire, or maybe even arrows.

What she hadn’t expected was music.

Furrowing her brows, she finished pushing the door open and stepped inside, the sound of her heels echoing off the walls as the door swung shut with a bang. The sudden sound caused her to jump, and it was due to that startled movement that her heel caught, sending her stumbling forward. Reaching a hand out, she caught herself on a pillar, her eyes wide as she scanned the Temple for any witness to her common display of gracelessness. Usually, she had someone with her – Quaid, more than likely – to act as a barrier, or in more extreme cases, a human pillar. It wasn’t often that she was able to survive on her own, and it wasn’t usual that he had let her venture into the city by herself.

In fact, she was only alone because he had been spending far too long buried beneath the city where she couldn’t go. Well, she could, but what good was she when she couldn’t stand on her own two feet for more than five seconds? Shaking her head with a silent smile, the telepath tilted her head as the music continued to play, the melody enrapturing her. It managed to dim the buzzing that had been overwhelming her mind since she had stepped out of her house, each stroke of the keys quieting another thought that shouldn’t be within her mind. It didn’t take her long to find the source of the music, nor did it take her more than a second to put a name to the face of the second woman.

Cordelia.

It was in that moment she realized just how large of a mistake she had made. She knew nothing of these two women, nor did they know a thing about her. Which, in turn, meant that they didn’t realize she didn’t – couldn’t – wouldn’t – speak. Taking a step back, she was about to turn and hopefully make an exit without being noticed, but instead, she tripped over a basket and fell into the wall. It was obvious there was no way they wouldn’t have noticed that, and so she quickly dusted off her jeans and smoothed out her wild hair, pretending all the while that she had meant to do that.

[Lynnette (DELETED 9652)]

And with the song coming to a crashing halt, the piece ended, leaving an eerie silence in the air. I blink for a moment, before losing myself in the lost memory once more, and my hands took off, racing at a pace that blurred and blinded, moving through Chopin's Op.10, No.4. The notes flurried through the air, chilling itself through air like the wind. I noted a crash in the background, but I ignored it. My hands flew, dancing to old rhythms that my mind forgot, but my hands remembered. They played among the fields of daisies that was of the lost memories. Tears streamed down my face at the sudden sorrow of not knowing my own past. I played until my tears dried, and as the song died again, and the impulse to follow a phantom memory, one that disappeared in smoke. I stood and wiped my cheeks, moving away the dried tears, and noticing the two that stood, though one was fallen over. I bowed, and slowly fled deeper into the room, hiding among the detritus.

[Quaid McCain]

I’ll never understand what gets into this girl.

Quaid stood outside of the building he’d seen her staring at more and more often as of late, her eyes darting toward it any time they passed, her gaze lingering longer than he thought normal. Something was pulling her there, though what it was, he wasn’t really sure. It looked just like any other old church. There were hundreds of them, in any number of places. Nothing about this one seemed so special. He sighed, and ran a hand back through his hair as he looked over the building again, eyes narrowed as he tried to find some sort of detail that maybe she had seen that he hadn’t. If she had, he still couldn’t find it.

He sighed, and pushed his palms into his eyes. She was all but hopeless without him, and they both knew it, but she insisted on running out on her own. Somehow, she hadn’t snapped her own neck on a flight of stairs somewhere yet, and left him to figure this whole vampire thing out for himself. He still couldn’t figure out how she had lived long enough to even become a vampire. It seemed like an actual miracle to him that she’d ever had a day-to-day life as a flesh and blood mortal woman, that Death literally lurked around every corner for her, and she’d somehow managed to not walk face-first into him. And she was older than he was, at that. It just all fascinated him, and, frankly, he thought it was kind of cute, how helpless she turned out to be.

It made him feel useful, like he had a real purpose in taking care of her.

He smirked to himself, and reached into his pocket, checking his phone. Still nothing. That much, at least, was unusual for her, seeing how easy it was for her to just send a text with that brain of hers. That was something that was still taking some getting used to.

He glanced down one end of the street, then the other, before he sighed again and made his way across in the dark, slipping up the steps with an inherantly stealthy gait, his footfalls silent as a breath. His fingers slid along the surface of the door, feeling its surface, gauging its material and how heavy it might be, his eyes subconsciously checking the hinges for the slightest sign of rust, or, more preferrably, a well oiled and maintained sheen. In the dim light, he couldn’t make out either for certain, and closed his eyes as he let his head tip back in silent supplication to some unseen force.

Please let these doors be quiet.

He moved carefully, but deliberately, his motions fluid and steady, the door swinging open in an even pace, the hinges mostly silent beyond the quiet rustle of metal sliding against metal, without the scream of lacking lubrication. He smiled, and slid inside, keeping himself to the darkness as he moved through the foyer of the old building, his footfalls quiet as he approached the unmistakable silhouette of his sire, even as she turned to stumble into a table, making a loud, crashing spectacle of herself, the loud bang of her misstep drowned with the dying notes of the grand piano on the far end of the chapel. He watched from the darkness as a woman stood from the piano and made a quick, nervous bow, and rushed into the shadow beyond the altar.

What the literal **** is going on in here?

He knit his brows as he turned to where his sire was righting herself, and moved to help her upright, pushing the table back into place. “Oak, what are you doing in here? Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?” he spoke quietly, his eyes only just making out a fourth person in the darkness. “Who are these people? Do you know them?”

[Cordelia]

Lynnette wasn't just able to play piano. She was good at it! This startled Cordelia, as she hadn't expected her new childe to have such a wonderful hidden talent. The shadow had nothing of the sort, unfortunately.

Of course, the loud crashing startled her, causing her hand to leap to the grip of the weapon tucked in its holster in her jacket. Not one, but two others stood within the room. Cordelia's head tilted in an almost birdlike fashion, even as she extended the same hand she had held the weapon with towards where Lynnette had run off to and summoned up the capabilities that lurked within her, causing the shadows around her to fade, much the same way she did when the whim struck her to make a space much safer...for the humans, anyway.

The good thing? She could tell they were Dragomir. She didn't recognize one, and barely recognized the other. That's what happened when you had a knack for going dead to the world. You forgot people.

"Hello," she called, offering a gentle smile, before turning to her childe. "Lynnette, it's all right. No one will hurt you here. I promise." What she didn't add was, If they even try, I'll rip them apart until their souls wander the Shadow Realm. Cordelia could be protective. The gift just didn't show itself too often.

[Oakley]

When his fingers gently touched her elbow to keep her upright, she gave a quiet huff and brushed her own through her tangled mess of hair. She had known he was coming - his thoughts had brushed across her mind and taken residence in her skull with a comforting warmth she had come to appreciate. Once she was on her feet, her shirt smoothed back into its rightful place and her hair straightened over her shoulders, she slipped her fingers through his and gave his large hand a gentle squeeze. His concern was touching – if not a tad over-bearing – especially when he subtly adjusted his form to stand before her.

Did he even realize he did it?

Laughing silently, she danced the fingers of her free hand up his back, before giving the taught muscles of his shoulder a pat. She knew them, of course. How could he not? They were family. It was strange, how the Dragomir always seemed to know each other, even if they didn’t. As she curled her fingers around the nape of his neck, a soft buzz began in her mind, a familiar sound that she had grown to loathe. It was the threat of another thought, one that didn’t belong to her. Turning her head away, she rubbed her temple for a second and tried to ignore the myriad of sounds pressing against her.

Instead, she chose to focus on the slender brunette – Cordelia – and nudged Quaid in her direction.

[Quaid McCain]

As his sire squeezed his fingers, reassuring him soundlessly that she was fine, he breathed a sigh of relief. The act itself was, in essence, redundant, but it was all a part of familiarity, something that gave him some semblance of being normal. It was basically the right thing to do, the thing that the moment called for, were he any other person. He pushed his fingers through his hair as he shifted his frame at her side. He gazed into that hazy darkness, peering at the shape of the person he wasn’t entirely sure that he knew, but that his sire seemed to have recognized. He shrugged a shoulder, and let his initial concern shed away.

At her greeting, he inclined his head and offered a sort of informal wave of his hand. “Hey.” His eyes turned with her, to where the other figure had vanished deeper into the shadows of the sanctuary. His dark eyes swept over the large room, seeing the labyrinthine floor plan, what with the arrangement of furniture throughout the room creating an obstacle every few feet, no matter the direction you intended to travel. He let his eyes sweep back to his sire, his brows lifted in question as he tugged her hand. “So what are you doing in here?”