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"Much A Lot" - [Lancaster]

Posted: 10 Jan 2015, 05:14
by Asteria
--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--

Asteria: The wind whipped about her form as she walked along the nearly-deserted streets of Harper Rock. It’d been ages since she’d walked somewhere, long enough that she couldn’t remember the last time and felt inclined to take the more…human route this time around. It allowed her to take in the sites, to see what’d changed and what had remained the same since she’d taken up a more hermit-esque lifestyle. From what she could tell, there were a few who looked around like they knew more than they should, skirting buildings and keeping to the light; it wouldn’t surprise her if things had gone south with that, with how close they’d been to figuring things out the last time she’d paid attention.

A light caught her attention, the movement in front of it casting a shadow that slid over her form in the blink of an eye. Lancaster’s. The light was inviting, despite the hesitance she felt toward the establishment and those within it. While it’d been a while since she’d walked anywhere, it’d been even longer since she’d spoken to her sire. In all honesty, she wasn’t certain the reason anymore that had caused her to drift. Perhaps it was due to feeling replaced, or maybe due to how she felt around Pi who was generally in the same vicinity as Elliot.

Throwing caution to the wind, the Greek pushed through the door and let the warmth envelop her, feeling the familiarity seeping into her much like the cold had been only moments before. Her coat was shrugged off, slung over an arm as her emerald orbs scanned for a familiar face, be it her sire’s or otherwise.
((-A T T I R E-))
Lancaster: Music was Elliot’s go to source of relaxation. Whether it was at home or at work, if he was stressed and didn’t know how to make the stress go away, he knew that he could play. And he could sing. And by playing and singing it would help ease the tension, even if it wasn’t a cure. Lancaster’s was as much home to him as the Den, or as the Crypt, or any other homestead that he kept with Pi. Tonight, Pi wasn’t in sight, but Elliot was upon the stage – he had been for a while, and after this one song, he needed to take a break. He needed to attend to other things. He couldn’t run from his stress forever, and life would continue regardless. There were distractions to be found elsewhere.

Besides which, he found that he was distracted. He wanted to be a sleepwalker – he wanted to be able to drift from reality for a while and for there to be no consequences. But real life was making itself known, and he could no longer wander around with his head in the clouds.

The music stopped – he thanked the crowd and got a few claps. There weren’t as many people around tonight. He wandered to the back of the stage where he flicked the sound system back to the overhead juke box, on random. As he was exiting the stage, he caught a familiar face over the crowd, over by the door. Asteria. When had he seen Asteria last? He couldn’t remember. He approached, awkward with all his long limbs and his hunched shoulders. He didn’t know whether to hug her or shake her hand, so he just stood with his hands pushed into his back pockets.

“Asteria. It’s been a while,” he said with an arch of the brow – a silent expectation that she would then tell him what she’d been up to.
[ Song and Attire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deHcHWr18NY ]
Asteria: She should have expected him to be on the stage. In the years that she’d known him (and the months that she’d fairly stalked him while trying to discern what he was), she’d found him on the stage more often than not. While off he could appear standoffish, lanky and lumbering, up there it was natural. He fell into a rhythm that others found themselves subconsciously swaying to, and she was no exception. There she stood, by the door as a few others entered and exited behind her, the cool air sweeping around her legs, but she paid it no mind. Her focus was entirely on Lancaster and the song she’d not heard prior.

As the song came to a close, she found herself snapping out of her near-reverent state, her hands clapping along with the rest that separated her from the man of the hour. It was hard to miss him as he moved about, the dark hair atop his head bobbing about as he meandered in her direction. Back to his semi-usual awkward, came a passing thought, taking in his stance and wondering what she should do to offset it. Her usual greeting was more involved, a hug with a kiss on the cheek if not one on each. But he’d paused. There was no hug exchanged, not even a handshake, as he stood, looming over him with a height she still found surprising after all this time.

“Nay, it has,” was all she offered initially, accent thick--thicker than he’d heard last--head nodding toward one of the tables. “Wish to sit and cat, or do you have work of hard to be doing?” Then, after a brief pause, she corrected herself. “Chat. Not cat. It has been a while since I have needed to speak English fluidly. That is the word, oxi?”

Lancaster: Elliot was wary. Here was a man who had been accustomed all his life to having nothing to worry about. His mother was healthy, and he didn’t hear or see his half-brother much to worry about him. Every now and again he still talked to his mother – they exchanged emails. She still thought he was flitting around the world; upset because he cared about the world more than he cared about her. Maybe that was the constant at the back of his mind, the way that he was disappointing his mother.

Backpacking, he’d not stayed anywhere long enough to have anything to worry about. He didn’t get attached to anyone or anything. Everything had changed now, however, and after a very long period of nothing at all, now everything seemed to be coming to the fore. Problems with Pi and a rival business. Problems with Skylar and her new boyfriend. Aliyah, and her own problems with her parents. Dhara, who might be in danger where she is because of what she knows. And now Asteria. Wanting to sit and chat.

“Is everything okay?” he said, removing one hand to gesture to one of the booths which had just freed up. He had a towel in his back pocket; he moved all the empty glasses from the table aside so that he could wipe it down.

Asteria: Leave it to him to think there was an issue. She had distanced herself, it was true, pulling back from everyone and everything and delving deep into the world of the demi-fae and what it had to offer. The only time she saw the light of day was if she’d gone too long without feeding and her ability to blood boost wasn’t able to withstand the amount of pints she needed. But, with their track record of talks, the bulk of their chats had been around times things blew up so she couldn’t write off his outward wary.

No, she followed his lead, footstep after footstep to the booth that had freed up, hands grabbing up the glasses without much ado; she was there, so it made sense she’d be of assistance.

“Nothing is wrong, agaph,” the woman responded with a shrug of her shoulders. “I am just try to not be such a crab and thought that, if I wanted to start speaking with someone, that it would be the first person that came to mind.” A hand brushed her hair back out of habit, having adjusted the glasses to one hand so that she could partake of the subconscious gesture with no issue. “I know it has been some time, but all I want is to net up.”

Lancaster: When things were going good, it was easy to see. Elliot was freer with his body, and not quite so tense. If things were going good, he’d have offered Asteria a hug in greeting. There would have been an easy and broad smile and a welcoming gleam to his eyes. He realised, probably too late, that he wasn’t being himself; he laughed and nodded, taking the glasses from Asteria’s hands and palming them off on one of the passing waitresses, who took them with a smile and no complaint.

“Net up?” he asked. He took a seat in the booth, sliding in against the smooth leather. He made a conscious effort to try to relax. He nodded, pushed the dark hair out of his eyes and hailed the exact same waitress as before, still with the dirty glasses in her hands; Elliot was the boss. He could ask for what he wanted. And his staff were treated well – they were happy to do as he asked. “Can you bring me the usual, Katie?” he asked. She nodded. Elliot turned to Asteria. “Can I get you anything?” Assuming that she also knew that the bar was well stocked with blood from Arbor Vitae.

Asteria: The laugh was more what she was used to. When things weren’t falling apart, Lan could be quite personable; downright funny, even. He could joke with her about being a small dog in someone’s purse with a bark worse than his bite. Hell, he could have joked with her about her terrible choice of an animal when they’d spoke of her shifting last, how she’d thought a hyena would be suitable, but he’d written it off in a comical way. But, despite the laugh, she wasn’t overly convinced that he was being his genial self.

“Nai, um…” Hands pantomimed in the air between them, sliding into the other side of the booth as she struggled with a word she couldn’t remember. “Net…you use it to…get…things… “ The frustration her face was evident, the word ‘catch’ on the tip of her tongue, but escaping her. Shaking her head as she pinched the end of her nose. “Everwhat that word is…”

Thankfully, Katie had come back at Elliot’s behest and it gave her something new to focus on. Had it been alcohol, she may have been a bit more enthusiastic about it, but blood would do just the same. “Surprise me? I’m not pricky.” Only when she wandered away did Asteria lean back a bit more, one leg crossing over the other as she let out a sigh. “So! What is news with you, Elliot? Thing of any going on? When was the last time that we are speaking?”

Lancaster: From what Elliot could remember, Asteria wasn’t one to drink alcohol. Couldn’t, because of her Path. He was well versed in the paths of his childer; remembered them, regardless of how long it had been between visits. Elliot mumbled something to Katie about one of the better bottled from the fresh delivery from Arbor; Katie nodded and wandered off to retrieve the order. Elliot turned back to Asteria, eyes narrowing a little in order to arrange her words so that they made sense. It didn’t take much.

Unable to lie, Elliot answered the questions easily. There was no beating around the bush; no discomfort or evasion. “Everything was going fine, Ast. If you’d come to me a week ago…” he shook his head. If she were observant, she’d see the shiny new ring on Elliot’s finger, where wedding rings usually sit. There had been no wedding – but it was news that he didn’t know how to phrase, so he left it for now. “Some fucktard from down the road is blackmailing Pi. We haven’t sorted that out yet. Skylar’s new boyfriend is in Tytonidae. She’s living with him, and I don’t know how I feel about that. Jaeger’s newest – Aliyah – is struggling, I think,” he said, waving his hands in the air as if all these things were flies that he could just brush away.

“Otherwise nothing much, Ast. What about yourself?”

Re: "Much A Lot" - [Lancaster]

Posted: 10 Jan 2015, 05:18
by Lancaster
--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--

Asteria: Something caught her eye as he spoke, the light catching off of his finger in just a way that her brow lifted in the smallest of fractions. Though she was surprised to have not seen anything of this news no the family board, she didn’t think now was the time to comment to that end. There were other issues rolling off of his tongue without so much as a glimmer of hesitation. Appreciative of his candor, she listened without interruption, waiting for his piece to be spoken.

“It hears like much productive has been going on…” Her brow had furrowed, lips pursing in thought as she ran over the lot of the information and tried to decipher it. Any updates with her could wait; it wasn’t as though she’d been up to much. “I do not know what a tard of **** is, but I know the mailing of black well. What stairs have been taken to get it finalized? And Skylar…she is of the thread of music, nai? If she is with someone of the owls, will he have the way of getting to the Den like she? Aliyah…I cannot say that I am of shock at this as Aidan had much an issue. What is the issue of biggest?”

Lancaster: Elliot scoffs as he laughs; there’s the old gleam lingering at the edges of his blue eyes. He wants to tease Asteria about her English. How is it that it could have got so bad in so short a time? He focuses on one statement at a time.

“Fucktard – a non-gentlemanly asshole of epic proportions,” he said. And then: “You get what an asshole is, right?” he asked, just to be sure. He could find some more florid descriptions, but they might go over Asteria’s head as much as the first word had. “The steps that have been taken? Not much. We’ve tried to find the guy to ‘talk’ to him, but he’s been elusive,” Elliot said, framing ‘talk’ in scare-quotes, his fingers rabbit-ears in the air. “I’m not sure what you mean with Skylar and thread of music. I’m not worried about him getting into the Den, I’m just worried about Skylar and her safety,” Elliot said. He shrugged.

“They’re all much of a muchness. It’s all just happening at the same time, and it’s all… “ he gestured with his hands, his face screwed up as he searched for the word. “…Stagnant. And it stinks,” he said. “But never mind all that. Where have you been? Somewhere where you haven’t been practicing your English much, yeah?”

Asteria: “Nai! I know the hole of ***!” she replied, the victory for recognizing the word plain as day in her eyes as she sat up a little straighter. Words she recognized were always a good thing when the first it was used to define wasn’t something that translated being it didn’t exist by normal standards. As for the rest, she wasn’t sure what else there was to say save for that she should have expected this. The line had a knack for falling into a routine of silence, and relatively good relations only to have things fall apart in rapid succession.

“I have been here. Not here but here. Things started to go down and I started to stay in my room. With all of the things of every going on, it made more dollars to stay in and work on a way to help. So, I have been learned of the ways of the demi-fae, educating on their speak. …And nai, my English is not so well now… Aidan can talk Greek to me, so I have gotten…lazy? That is the word, oxi?” Her nose wrinkled, a huff escaping. “I am to try and practice, but was it not a problem when I to work alone.”

She slanted him a look, eyes quirking up with humor. “Am I muchly too bad?”

Lancaster: “Muchly too bad, yes,” Elliot said. “But I enjoy the challenge?” he added. His brow furrowed into a frown as he tried to understand the rest of it, in order to respond. The frown slipped into place like an old friend, easily resting in the ruts between his eyes. “What went down? What was going on?” he asked. Maybe he should know. Maybe he shouldn’t. But he would ask anyway, rather than seem uncaring or ignorant. At least he was seeking the knowledge rather than letting it slip away.

“And how’s Aidan? I haven’t seen her in a while, either,” he said. There was no bitterness attached to his tone. For a while he and Pi had tried to make something of d’Artois – to bring the group together, but people had a tendency to drift. The spontaneous Christmas even had only four people in attendance, including himself and Pi. He had accepted it as a way of life – people had their own things going on, and shouldn’t be expected to drop it all for d’Artois.

Asteria: “There was no one thing…I was to get hit lot so it was much easy to stay inside. I know this does not make many dollars, but…It was…hard to drink? Hard to walk. Hard to do things of any outwith get hurt in the time. I did not want Aidan to worry.” It was the simplest explanation that she had, but there had been so many things to backfire on her end that it made more sense to start living the hermit lifestyle. It kept things safe, Aidan included. Even Lan, in her mind, despite him being unaware of it all. Drama had overtaken her life and she’d sought desperately to avoid it.

“Aidan is…she is Aidan. A lot very of the feeling she has is not talked of… She is much struggling with her family, and she is some hurt by Jaeger more, but she does not like to talk.” There was a pause. “That he has so many childs and would return not any call from her hurt.”

Lancaster: Elliot shrugged. He had a few choice things to say about Jaeger himself. He had a few choice things to say about all of it, but he bit his tongue. Asteria hadn’t told him of any of her troubles, so he could not have been expected to help her. He could have called her, he knew. Part of keeping a family together was staying in contact; but Elliot had a habit of slipping into his old lifestyle. Without meaning to. It was habit for him to move on; regardless of staying in the same place, he didn’t use his phone much. Skylar was often teasing him because of his lack of ability to use technology. Even now, he had no idea where his phone was.

When he sighed, it was to let it go. There was no blame to put on anyone’s shoulders because there was nothing wrong, not really. He focused on Asteria’s mention of Jaeger instead; Aliyah knew nothing. When he’d met her face to face for the first time, she’d been sleeping on dirt floors. She didn’t know she couldn’t eat or drink. She didn’t know she had to be invited into places. She didn’t know anything.

“I don’t think he’s paying more attention to his new childer than he is to Aidan. He pays them the exact same amount of attention. Which is none,” he said. Elliot wore his emotions on his sleeves, and the anger is evident in his tone. “I was the one to give Aliyah somewhere to stay – she’d been homeless until then. She knew nothing. For all I know, he turned her and then dumped her. If that would make Aidan feel any better…”

Asteria: There was no blame to be placed on anyone. The family was as they had always been: people thrown together with a loose connection, some taking to that connection more than others, while continuing to drift along their own path. Sometimes those paths crossed, but you could be from that line and not know everyone by face. She’d gotten used to it, though with how easily they’d adopted people in, she wasn’t certain how she felt in that aspect.

“I think that would make her much happy on the one hand…but, she would not feel happy on the other. It is a rock and cliff, oxi? To knowing that he is not chose another child atop her when she had been trying would be relieving, but that he could not…mmmm ‘keep it in his shorts’…” Many a word was saved for when she saw Jaeger next, but those words wouldn’t make her feel any better about any of it.

“I know that you have her gathered, but if you need? I am still here. Just say words and I am here.”

Lancaster: “Have who gathered?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. He shook his head. “You need to get out more, Ast. You need to practice your English,” he said with that small smile of his. The same one that was normally reserved for Pi when she started talking at him in French and he had no idea what she was saying. One of these days he’d get off his backside and try to learn the language. For now, he normally just shook his head, shrugged, and smiled. He knew it infuriated Pi, that he wouldn’t learn. But he also wondered if she enjoyed having that one thing – he did know that he’d prefer not to know Pi completely. To leave some things to mystery. He’d be scared, to know her completely.

“And yes,” Elliot said. “He should maybe have his teeth wrenched out, or something. He needs to stop siring people and then just leaving them to fend for themselves. It’s not… ethical,” he said with a twisted expression. He knew he himself was no angel, with the ways in which he’d sired people – but at least he hadn’t left them to the wolves afterwards.

Asteria: The smile was taken in and wondered at. It wasn’t as though he’d never smiled at her, but more that she’d not gotten that particular one. Her head cocked a bit to the side, before a low laugh of her own escaped, her head shaking as her hair splayed out about her shoulders. “Nai, nai, I know…My English is muchly bad, as you have spoken,” she managed through the musical sound. “I will wish to work on it if you will help! Then, if I am muchly bad, it will be your being.” A matter-of-fact nod accompanied, but her words were purely in jest. As it was, she was already planning on working on her English to surprise him the next time she saw him; it gave her motivation.

Lancaster: Elliot’s anger wasn’t pandered to, which was a good thing. Instead, Asteria focused on her English. Elliot understood what she meant, after a few seconds; that she could practice with him, and if she wasn’t any good, then it would be his fault. On his shoulders. The smile broadened on his lips and he nodded. “If you practice with me, you’ll pick up a bastardised English. We Australians are all criminals, didn’t ya know? We ruin the English language,” he said. He didn’t believe it himself, really. Well. To an extent. Having travelled so much, though, the only broad Australian thing he’d kept was the accent. Many of colloquialisms stayed at home.

Asteria: “And if I practice with Aidan, I will learn…bad English. She uses ‘****’ much a lot…much a lot…I do not think that your English ******** will be bad! Just you will be bad, oxi?” She waggled her brows, and grinned mischievously. “Are you down for the challenge of the educating?”

Lancaster: "I'm not sure I'm a good teacher," Elliot said. "I also say **** a lot. Usually in conjunction with 'tard' and 'wit'. Maybe dickhead, too," he said, pondering all the words he had for people he hated. "I think I'd just sit here correcting your sentences. Like a lot not much a lot. Yeah?" he said. "Swear words are as much a part of language as any other word. I don't know if I'd call them bad."

Asteria: “Dependent on who you asking, oxi? I do not think body of every would like to be of hearing all the fucks that Aidan is using,” she reasoned. “The words is much a part, but is not a part of proper. Or…is it a part of proper now? I do not know if this is change or not.” Her brow furrowed, eyes focused on nothing in particular as she made the mental note not to have “much” and “a lot” next to each other.

Lancaster: "If you're asking whether it's acceptible by high-minded folk to use '****' in regular sentences, then no, it's not proper," he said. "Everybody, not body of every," he noted on the side. Finally, at this point, Katie returned with the orders. A bottle of whiskey and a tumbler for Elliot, and a bottle of blood and a large wine glass for Asteria. She apologised for the wait before scurrying off, and Elliot was quick to uncork his bottle and pour his tumbler half full of the golden liquid.