Inaspettato [Esmeralda Craft]

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

Cosimo didn’t know how he felt about Snakes; he started pondering, in the back of his mind, the logistics of going back for this beloved pet of Esmeralda’s. But the way she talked about her mother, she wondered how much the woman would care, or whether she would even notice. He wondered whether Esmeralda underestimated her mother, and whether Mrs Craft would come tearing down his door like some banshee from hell because he’d kidnapped her daughter. But then, he’d just jumped to the conclusion that Esmeralda lived with her mother. It must have been the vibe that she gave off. Some kind of aura of childish innocence.

Cosimo nodded and shrugged his shoulders.

”I cannot say that I have… I do not think I have ever touched a snake, but I assume I could get used to it,” he said. He didn’t have a particular fear of them, he’d just never had the opportunity to touch a snake. No one he knew had them as pets and where he lived, there weren’t many wild. Not that someone would really want to touch a wild snake, just because.

”Do you live with your mother? How old are you?” he asked. He had heard, of course, that it was impolite to ask a woman their age. Why only women, anyway? But he couldn’t quite figure Esmeralda out. And, he had decided that Mer just would not do. Esmeralda sounded far better, and would roll off the tongue with a poetic grace.

There was another twist in his gut, wondering if he was going the right thing. She did exude an innocent kind of charm, but was he taking her away from somewhere she ought to be? If she did still live with her mother, how old could she be? Would she be too young? Would she be old enough, but of a questionable mentality if she still lived with her mother? So many question that he couldn’t answer, but he continued to walk forward. Continued on the path down into the more thickly natural area of the park. Up ahead, the lights from the Ivory tower could be seen through the trees. He did not turn back.

[Esmeralda Craft (DELETED 6851)]

Esmeralda immediately considered lying to him. She might have done so, but she didn't know what he wanted to hear. She had grown up around that - lying to make people happy, or make them do things. She was always tempted to tell people of her mother's lies, but what stopped her was the fact that she had done the same things herself to get her way. So she looked at Cosimo and told the truth. She figured it would be alright, she was of a reasonable age and intelligence, if she was a little.. Unsteady.

"I turned 19 last month.. I live with my mother, yes, but I rarely see her. I have the means to take care of myself.. Her house is large enough that we could be there at the same time and we'd struggle to find each other. It's empty, though.." She faded off. She didn't mean literally - her house was lavishly furnished with money from previous generations hard work, but it gave off an unfriendly aura - it was cold and impersonalised. No room screamed of her mother's personality, and no room seemed to belong to Esmeralda, either. Her snake's vivarium was even kept in a sort of cabinet, so that the doors could be closed to hide it. The python didn't mind.

Esmeralda reasoned that she probably hadn't been in all of the rooms in that house. She had been in her old nursery the most, where the porcelain dolls were kept on display. She daren't touch them, because her mother could find them misarranged, but she did spend time watching them. They were more lively than the house itself. There was the garden, too, where she spent her nights. She had been forbidden from planting any more flowers, because of the alarming rate that she accidentally killed them, but she still wandered bare-foot along the grass, and didn't touch anything.

"Mother is very busy, I would imagine. She strikes me as the sort of woman who would be." She was almost joking, and her tone did lighten, but it was true that she did not know what her mother did with her days. She knew where the family's money came from, and who her ancestors were, but was never taught about what happened in the immediate generation of Craft women.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

Nineteen. A full fourteen years younger than Cosimo himself, but not too young, he reasoned. Out of school, at least. And old enough to make up her own mind. Well, he would hope so, anyway, given some of the things that he had to make his mind up about when he was nineteen. The description of the house distracted Cosimo, and he tried to imagine a house so big. Had he ever been inside of one? Probably, in Italy somewhere, but it would have been a house that had been turned into something else. A museum, or some such thing. He didn’t think people lived in those kinds of houses anymore.

A brief thought crossed his mind that this mother could be taken care of and then the house would belong to Esmeralda. It was a lingering habit, thinking of the things that he didn’t have that he could have given the right circumstances; trying to figure out what those circumstances were, and how to manipulate the world and its inhabitants to get everything perfectly aligned. But it would not be his house. It would be Esmeralda’s. And for all his father had tried, Cosimo was nothing like him. He refused to think so cruelly or coldly, calculating only what something was worth in regards to himself rather than to those around him.

He had to laugh at Esmeralda’s description of her mother.

”She sounds delightful,” he said, jokingly. ”And like the two of you do not get along,” he said. The gravel was now crunching underfoot—the drive that led to the towers where he had been staying. A residence, he supposed, which could be as big as the house that Esmeralda had described, but it felt more like an odd kind of hotel than a house. Especially as there were different apartments, and a penthouse. The establishment was four to five levels tall, the tips of the greenery of the rooftop garden just visible from where they walked down below. Yes, Cosimo decided. That was where he was going to take her.

[Esmeralda Craft (DELETED 6851)]

She smiled at Cosimo, her eyes lighting up with laughter. "I do not have a hatred for her. I know that. But I do not feel a motherly or parental love for her." Esmeralda shakes her head. "I don't think anyone could. She was different - I think - when she was with my father. He was a man destined to have children, and I guess that evened her out. I do not blame her for the way she mourns him." She idly plays with the fabric of her dress, looking down at the gravel as she stands on it. The shadow the building casts envelopes them, even darker than the night, and she looked up.

Her feet stopped moving. She didn't stop on purpose, it felt like something made her. She watched the building, noting everything from the colour to the shape of the windows, from the roof to the ground level. She felt something new as she looked at it, something that nagged inside of her. She wasn't sure if it was pleasant or if it hurt, but it only spurred her on. She began walking again, over taking Cosimo and walking ahead of him as they near the building.

"This is where you live?" She looked back at him over her shoulder, her expression lifted by curiosity. "It's grand.." Her voice was like a stage whisper, hushed but clear. She knew there was time to turn back, but she was pulled in by the presence of this tower, and for a moment, forgot everything about her home. Even her dear little snake.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

The tower hadn’t left this kind of impression on Cosimo when he first entered it. Because he hadn’t come through the front doors. Instead, he had been summoned; pulled from wherever he was standing in the city and in the blink of an eye, landing on the roof, amongst all the flowers that were all so lovingly cared for. A vibrant garden above the city and away from its chaos. It might seem like a quiet little city, but it wasn’t. Not really. It churned with a chaos that most could not see; Cosimo had not yet witnessed or experienced the fullness of what that chaos could do. He merely stood on the periphery, looking in. Hoping that he never had to suffer, and trying his best to always remain aloof, above the crawling darkness that threatened to pull them all in.

You couldn’t be a vampire, living only at night time and feeding off the blood of the living, without being touched by darkness.

Cosimo picked up the pace to catch up to Esmeralda, wanting to keep her close by his side. Although those he’d met in the Deux Corbeaux family seemed nice enough, and seemed like they would not hurt a friend, he had to admit that he did not know them all well enough, just yet, and nor was he aware if there was any protocol about bringing humans home. She would be able to get in now, at Cosimo’s side, but he would have to ask Elizabeth, later, if Esmeralda could get some keys.

He nodded when she asked if this was where he lived, though it was followed with a shrug.

”Yes, and no. It is my home inasmuch as Elizabeth has told me to make myself at home. But where others have rooms and apartments of their own, I do not. I… what is the word. I… squat? In the penthouse. But I am welcome to it. I think,” he said. He pushed through the front door. It wasn’t a conventional space. Not in the least. There were doors within little alcoves that led to the other apartments; all the doors were closed and there was no sound coming from within. There was a pool in the middle, with poolside chairs lined up beside it. Even one of those large colourful balls floated in the water.

Cosimo led Esmeralda past the pool and into one of the alcoves, where there was a secret door that led through to a hall; the floors were a pale wood and the décor was warm, welcoming, with large chairs here and there. The hall wended around to where the elevator stood. He couldn’t help but grin at Esmeralda, as if he were introducing her to a brand new playground. Even if it was an odd kind of grin, tinged with the terror that kept rising – that he was going to screw this up, somehow.

[Esmeralda Craft (DELETED 6851)]

She couldn't quite believe it. She wanted to reach out to touch everything, but reframed because she knew it would seem rude. Everything in the building looked beautiful to her, and her eyes flashed around as she tried - and struggled - to take in every detail. Her pace noticeably slowed as she worked on finding everything, as if it was a puzzle that she needed every piece to. As they moved into the hall, Esmeralda extended her hand to the walls, but didn't quite touch them. She felt like she could feel an energy in this building that was lacking every where she visited.

She pulled her hand back abruptly as they reached the elevator. She didn't much like elevators. To her, they were like big, heavy metal bugs that shuttled from floor to floor, and she didn't much like the thought of being inside of a bug. She wanted to eat, not be eaten. She wondered briefly if they could take advantage of her and her mother's abode - for the most part, Esmeralda knew when Arleigh would be out, and at night there would be little risk of getting court. If he ever needs a place to stay, She decided to herself, I'll offer.

She grinned a little to herself, thinking of her mother's face if she discovered them hiding in her room. She'd go pale as a ghost - paler than Esmeralda, that is. She got a shot of excitement at the thought of scaring her mother so passively. Like when she hid spiders in her clothes. Mer often said, in her sweet voice, The poor thing just got confused, and your clothes are like a blanket! in an effort to get herself out of trouble. Her mother always knew it had been her - but didn't even make the time to actually scold her.

"Do you know how many people reside here?" She asked, her eyebrows pulling together. She wasn't all that used to living around people, and though she loved the thought of seeing so much life - or, well, unlife - she did worry that she would do things considered impolite or frowned upon, or blatantly odd.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

The elevator was not the rumbling kind. It was smooth and fast and almost as if you weren’t even in a moving contraption at all. Like magic. Though Cosimo remained completely unaware of Esmeralda’s fear of the thing. He stood waiting for the doors to open; someone must have gone up recently, for the thing to take its time coming back down again.

He didn’t know the answer to the girl’s question. He couldn’t say that he’d actually even met the entire family. He got the impression that it might once have been larger, and that this grand tower was now empty where it was once full. His blue eyes narrowed at the silver doors as he thought about it, before he finally answered with some hesitance.

”I have only seen… five different people. But I am not sure that they all live here. I rarely see anyone anywhere but on the roof. That is where I am taking you now. It is beautiful up there. I think it is perfect. We have these, see?” he said, pulling the small tome from his pocket. Opening it up, there was a foreign language inside; that of the fae. He did not speak the words now, because that would just be tedious. And he did not give Esmeralda the chance to read them out loud either, just yet.

”When we say the words out loud, we appear, poof! up on the roof,” he said with a click of his finger, and then pointing up. He then offered that smile of his, easy and somewhat lazy upon his features. The doors of the elevator finally slid open, silent as the grave, and Cosimo did not hesitate to step inside, gesturing for Esmeralda to follow, his fingers upon the button to keep the doors open, ready to press the button for the roof. He wasn’t sure whether there were even stairs that went all the way up. Surely there had to be? He hadn’t found them. And was wary, due to those traps Elizabeth was always warning him about.

[Esmeralda Craft (DELETED 6851)]

She looked into the elevator, glancing all around it before she actually stepped in. She stood next to Cosimo and faced the doors. She moved her back over her shoulders and then clasped her hands behind her back. The relatively small number of people calmed her - she was sure she could keep her appearance up around that size of a group. Like all of the dinner parties and charity events she was taken to. She would often be dressed by her mother for those - which infuriated her, because she was fully capable of doing so herself. Of course, she did often forget her shoes..

She looked down at her bare feet, very aware that she should have worn something on them. It was a long walk into the city from her home, and the walk did make her feet hurt, though that wasn't the issue - this was a major point in her life, suppose it go smoothly, and she looked vaguely homeless, or like a ghost from a cheap horror. She decided the latter was worse. On the other hand, she very rarely wore shoes. She found that she was more agile and better-balanced with out them. And she had become used to walking on harsh ground.

She thought of something, and turned her head to Cosimo. "Will I have chance to return home? If I am going to briefly stay here, there are things I will need.. My mother will not see me, I promise." She would try to persuade him if he said no, but she didn't think he would deny it. It was a reasonable request - and it wasn't like people just carried around bags with all of their belongings in all the time. Most people at least have shoes, Mer. She reminded herself. That made her giggle, and she covered her mouth with her hand. Don't laugh to yourself, he'll think you're laughing at him. She scolded mentally. She moved her hand back behind her back, and looked at him, fully intending to listen.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

When she giggled, Cosimo did not think that she was laughing at him. In fact, he projected onto her the same kind of nervousness that he was feeling. But surely it had to be worse for her. Even if this was something she had asked for. Even if it turned out to be all she had ever wanted. Wasn’t everyone nervous when they were about to receive the one thing they think will make them happy, forevermore? What if it didn’t meet her expectations? Cosimo supposed he would not be at fault, because she was the one who had asked.

He did see the way she was looking at her feet, though, and they did look a bit dirty, there in the clean elevator. But, Cosimo had come through here in much worse states before. He’d thrown up all over Elizabeth’s lovely manicured lawn, up on the roof. And he’d never been reprimanded for that. He doubted the lack of shoes would insult anyone much. Even if it did, the only opinion that he really cared for was that of his sire.

”Yes, of course,” he said. As if that was something she had to ask! ”You will want your… python. And clothes,” he said. Was he making himself too much at home, inviting this girl to come and stay with her python, too? His instinct told him no. And he would argue for it, he suppose. He was always a little bit of a rebel.

When the doors slid open again, fresh air rushed to greet them. Cosimo ushered Esmeralda out into the garden, which must have taken years to cultivate, and a lot of money. There was a pond and the whispering chuckle of running water; there were bridges and wooden walkways. The grass was a vibrant green, and there were flowers of all kinds. But not roses. No roses. There was a Buddhist feel to the place, with its pagodas and its sandpits and their rakes, all neat and mindful.

”This way,” Cosimo said, leading Esmeralda to the pagoda he liked best; the one that was most hidden from the main garden area. He didn’t think they would be disturbed, here.

[Esmeralda Craft (DELETED 6851)]

"My snake, uh, Hecate, it's not a problem if she can't stay.. I would understand, I mean.. Lots of people don't like them. I can probably just sneak home to feed her - she only eats once a week, anyway. I.. don't want to be a burden." As she talked, she looked around the garden, brining her hands to her chest. She was always wary about accidentally touching pretty flowers, seeing as she was so terrible at looking after them. The hard work that had gone into the beautiful garden was obvious. She could see that it had been cared for so well, and every inch she could see looked gorgeous.

"I just need a few clothes, and money.. I have plenty saved up." She never knew what to do with money. So if she was ever given it, or earned it, or found it, it when in a box on her dresser. When she was younger, she bought toys, and went through a dreadful phase of buying make up in her early teen years, but since had barely found anything she wanted. Especially when she became consumed by the idea that creatures, vampires, existed in the city. She didn't go out as much during the day, because she wanted to try to catch a sighting of one at night. Since actually meeting one, time had gone quickly, despite neither of them being in much of a rush.

As they reached the secluded Pagoda, she realised this was where it was going to happen. She did wonder if it would go well, seeing as he had said he'd never done it before. She turned to him, looking at him intently for a moment. She trusted him, for some reason, but there was still the slight worry. But she knew there was danger in his kind and finding another as pleasant as he, with experience, would be difficult, and she did not want to be sired by another. He was just right.